A Job Well Done

I follow a wonderfully-named blog called "lathophobic aphasia" http://giaklamata.blogspot.com/
by a chap with a lot of EFL under his belt and an excellent take on the joys and sorrows of the English teacher's life. He's been talking recently about "learner English" aka comic learner errors, a subject beloved of all EFLers.

As it happens I've been marking and reviewing writing exams. Here are a few of the delights I've stumbled upon (the topic was whether old people should be cared for by their families or in special homes).


I think tace car for the old People it well be like wine you take care for your sealdrenor your babey.

Thay need more care for food ho thiy eat and take abath and sleap also and if thay sike not soud yo bo you well thake him far the housebetal.

In my opening the beast please to be old people fine is home with family.

Another thing meny some of the people desn’t like niers, you wan’t help you one in you family.

I conclusion I hop every one to do what the beast for old people in my opeining everyone do this with any pearse.

Alson, the children meby bess in oyr live our withe them family so the will not tok care with bernts.

Meade the havi some desses and the should get madecen but the forget takeit then they will be very secia and ne one the new.

And I listen all people put the old man in the sameplaces.

Some people now put your mother and father of you old people on the special hospital and no need old people on your house.

In conctusion…


The interesting thing to note is that it's usually pretty clear what they are trying to say - in fact, if you read it aloud and allow for L1 interference (my students are Gulf Arabic speakers) and pronunciation confusions (p/b for instance), indifference to vowels in spelling, plus inadequate spacing between words, you can understand almost everything here - though I drew a blank on part of the second sentence - soud is presumable should, but yo bo I do' 'no'.

So the students are, in spite of appearences, getting somewhere. The problems are

a) knowing where to start in helping them

b) overcoming the horrors that the "surface errors" inspire in any teacher and most native speakers.


Anyway, reading these scripts made me feel fairly secia, but I try not to get mad(ecen). Definitely not soud yo bo, bro!

In conctusion, (but certainly not in my opening) I’m going home.

It’s the beast place for me.

I’ll check there are no old people on my house, especially not the mother and father of you old people, who must be ancient.

I’m planning to do something tonight that will be like wine.

A LOT like wine.

so much to blog, so little time

The pace just gets quicker, with teaching and grading, testing and final presentations all galloping faster and faster to the end of the week. Something in my brain goes dead and I find myself sneaking peeks onto the net...

And answering emails. There has been an email-based debate about teaching vocab here - basically, what when and how.

The background to it is that on the course I teach, a new target is for students to "learn" - which means they must be assessed - on the Academic Word Lists, the top frequency words in Academic writing.

This came in for the first time 2 years ago. So one of my big jobs last year was devising assessments... which we now have a bunch of.

Oddly, the requirement for the course was that students should demonstrate passive understanding of 65% of the list and active production of 60% of the list... I suspect the figures should be rather different for realistic language learning (I'd guess 75% passive recognition - 50% active production would be more likely, though I don't know any research on the figures).

Anyway, devising an instrument that assesses production is quite hard, and the freer the production the harder it is.

There is now the suggestion that some of the AWL should be devolved down onto the level below.

However, the problem I notice most is not with students learning an academic word list (they are good at "learning" - in the sense of "memorising the translation of" lists of words). It is with the more basic vocabulary - what is often called the basic 3,000 words.

Plus they suffer difficulties with forming sentences and word forms (as in history - historical - historian) - it seems hard for students to recognise what a plausible sentence of English looks like, even into their 2nd year. Obviously, this affects their writing, but it also affects their reading.

A lot of exam reading comprehension consists of recognising parallel expressions (so in a text which mentions "eyesight" the question might ask about "vision") - one expression might contain the Academic list word but the other will use a paraphrase.

Students sometimes say "I know what this means in Arabic" but being unable to find other English words is a barrier (and it also encourages students to plagiarise... another can of worms).

Personally, I think that more lists would be pretty deadly - another move, as if we needed more, towards the "memorise-test-forget" cycle a lot of our teaching seems to aim to emulate. I would like more reading - more extensive reading and more focused reading with vocab support. But it's harder to measure the benefits of that.

I even proposed a test - some students in Foundations doing the AWL earlier, and some doing extensive reading with vocab support - then see who does better in the AWL in Year 1, and in everything else.

I'd be willing to bet money the readers would not only learn the AWL's better, but score better in reading and writing....