Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Ya-ta Boy]

Challenge for English Teachers

My co-teacher is going to take her test for her teaching license in a few weeks. She brought over a sample test (from 2004) for me to look at and answer some of the questions that were giving her trouble. Then she asked me to tell her how to make answers to this kind of question. I couldn��t think of any advice to give her. Can you?

#1. Indirection itself does not reflect powerlessness. It is easy to think of situations where indirectness is the prerogative of those in power. For example, a wealthy couple who know that their servants will do their bidding need not give direct orders, but can simply state wishes: The woman of the house says, ��It��s chilly in here,�� and the servant sets about raising the temperature. The man of the house says, ��It��s dinner time,�� and the servant sees about having dinner served. Perhaps the ultimate indirectness is ____________________________: The hostess rings a bell and the maid brings the next course; or a parent enters the room where children are misbehaving and stands with hands on hips, and the children immediately stop what they��re doing.

Fill in the blank in 10 words or so, including ALL the words in the box. You may change their forms, if necessary.
(Box) all, something, anything, someone, get, without, say


#2. When one listens to everyday conversations, implicatures appear everywhere. It is often enough for a speaker to just hint at a certain piece of information; the addressee will interpret that information as relevant to the ongoing interaction and will infer the speaker��s intention. This facilitates processing for the listener. It probably also does so for the speaker. Speakers manage to select just the relevant information for expression.

A blatant failure to respect a conversational maxim can convey some intention in a marked way. Here is an example of such exploitation: Arnold and Betty jointly attend a harpsichord performance. When it is over, the following conversation ensues.

Arnold: How did you like it?
Betty: It was a nice piano recital.

Betty��s answer violates the maxim of quality, since she knows perfectly well that the instrument was a harpsichord. This is in fact mutually known. Arnold therefore infers that Betty is flouting a maxim, and, on the assumption that Betty is cooperative, Arnold will try to find out what Betty intended to convey. The most likely interpretation here is that the performer played the harpsichord as if it were a piano—i.e., without real feel for the instrument. A less likely but possible interpretation is that the harpsichord was such an awful make that it sounded like a piano. Which interpretation ____________________________________.

There is no standard or conversational way to infer the intention in this case of flouting a maxim. A speaker who exploits a maxim, for instance, to produce irony, as in the above example, must estimate whether enough contextual conditions are fulfilled in order for the addressed interlocutor to make the inference. It should further be noticed that Betty��s remark does not convey the same information that would have been conveyed if she had said ��The performer played without real feel for the instrument.�� That would not have been ironical; the breaking of the maxim creates the special effect of irony.

Fill in the blank with ALL AND ONLY the words and phrases in the box.
(Box) Arnold, the, mutually, context, depends, infer from, will, Betty��s answer, upon, known

a) Your challenge is to first answer the two questions. (I have the ��correct�� answers and will post them later.)
b) Then can you explain how you arrived at the answers so I can give that help to my co-teacher?

[Jeff's Academy]

(edit to delete answers)

Not much of a challenge to subsequent readers if the answers are posted.

a) I figured out the answers.

b) How? Hard to explain...by piecing the words together in a logical and grammatically correct way...(certainly not the answer they're looking for).

[Demonicat]

It seems from the questions that they're trying to build an amazing degree of verbosity. I suppose that its better for a teacher to not be monosyllabic, but it sounds like those who pass will sound like George Clooney from "O brother, where art thou".

[Yu_Bum_suk]

A teacher from my school is also taking that test. I can see why she's a bit distraught over studying for it.

[Ya-ta Boy]

If it makes anyone feel any better, I gave up and asked for the answers.

And no, I don't know what these questions are intended to test. They don't test anyone's ability to teach English, that is for certain.

[fidel]

First answer
when someone gets something without saying anything at all

[fidel]

Second answer
Which interpretation Arnold will infer from Betty's answer will depend upon the mutually known context.

How did I reach these conclusions?

Natural skill baby, natural skill!

[billybrobby]

[hypnotist]

I guess you can start by looking for the various joining words. In the first one we have 'without'. We also have two verbs which means we're likely to be looking for the form "doing A without doing B". "Getting A without saying B" seems to fit better here than "saying A without getting B".

The discussion is about having requests fulfilled, so looking at "something" and "someone" the form "getting something from someone" suggests itself - but so does "saying something to someone" and "saying anything to someone".

So we have:

1) "getting something from someone without saying B" or 2) "getting A without saying something to someone" and the words "all" and "anything",

OR 3) "getting A without saying anything to someone" and the words "all" and "something".

We can see that for the first two the form "anything at all" for the gap is probable. Does this work for 2)? "Getting anything at all without saying someone to someone" - no. What about 1)? "Getting something from someone without saying anything at all". That works.

What about 3)? "Something at all" isn't right so we probably need to split the two leftover words. A can naturally be replaced by "something", and we can revert to using "anything at all", giving us "getting something without saying anything at all to someone".

So I'd say either:
"Getting something from someone without saying anything at all"
or
"Getting something without saying anything at all to someone".

The former sounds slightly better since the sense of the examples is that the person making the request already knows who she wants to fulfil that request.

(I could equally have gone through this process starting from the form "when/where A does B without doing C", giving me the other suggested answer - but I didn't.)

[Doutdes]

[fidel]

Sorry, should have proofread.
You're right
Same sentence without the second will and add the s back on to depend.

Which interpretation Arnold will infer from Betty's answer depends upon the mutually known context.

[Sliver]

These questions are directly related to discourse pragmatics related to Grices Theory of Meaning and the Gricean Maxims (from H. Paul Grice) and is pretty heavy stuff (but I suspect you know this).

I have an excellent article summarising these in PDF.

The early works of H. P. Grice and his maxims eludes a concept that understanding of meaning is based on a ��mutual knowledge�� between speakers. This mutual knowledge is not based solely on linguistic parameters but also that ��circumstances of the utterance (along with other types of pragmatic knowledge [elaborated in the article]) will help in deciphering speaker meaning�� (Blum-Kulka 1997:39).

The article elaborates further on the maxims in a clear and concise way. If you want I can send it.

Blum-Kulka, S. 1997, Discourse as Social Interaction, Dijk [ed] London: Sage

[Ya-ta Boy]

For all those who are waiting with baited breath:

#1. 'to get someone to do something without saying anything at all' (or anything that means that within reason).

#2. Which interpretation 'Arnold will infer from Betty's answer depends upon the context mutually known'.

These are the answers that my co-teacher found in the book that was provided.

And I also thank you for your time and effort. It doesn't help me explain to her how to solve this sort of problem, but that is not your fault. The best I could come up with was to match prepositions with their 'partner' and make chunks, then arrange them in some logical and grammatically correct order, which is what most of you said.

As billybrobby said, these are like a word jumble and there isn't any way to teach her how to do them. It just requires a great deal of talent with this particular kind of problem.

This is one of my biggest complaints against the licensing system used here in Korea. They don't set a minimum standard for passing. The result is that it isn't how much you know. It is how much anyone else knows who happens to be taking the test the same time you are. My area (province) hired 8 teachers last year. This year it will be 22. So it doesn't really matter how hard you studied or how much material anyone knows. It is a matter of getting one of the top 22 scores. I think this makes things artificially competitive.

I've been teaching for eons. I learned a long time ago that some people have a talent for taking tests, just as other people have a talent for hunting down wildebeests. Neither has much to do with how well you can teach the subject matter. That is another skill altogether but no one seems to test for that skill.

[CaptainConjunction]

I know this is really not the point of this thread, but... what a shame this kind of test doesn't focus on the more important element of teaching.

Here's a test question for y'all:

Which is more important?

A) Knowing enough English to sound like an pompous ass
B) Being able to communicate what you know to your students

But if I started getting into why this test was dumb then it'd just be another rant. So I'll stop now

[Kenny Kimchee]

Instead of designing a test that could assess how well the test taker might be able to teach a given subject or would react to a hypothetical classroom situation (e.g. the Praxis test series in the States), the test taker is asked to read an esoteric essay on linguistics and then diagram sentences.

In the East Asian scheme of things this makes perfect sense, as it is a holdover from long ago when applicants to the civil service had to recite huge tracts of Confucian writings from memory. They didn't necessarily have to know what the writings meant, they just had to recite them; it appears that we have the same thing with the teacher's exam.

Just imagine: they go through all this just so they can conduct English grammar classes in 90% Korean. If you look at it this way, though, the test makes perfect sense: if you just want "grammar translation machines" and not "teachers" then a test like this is the perfect way to separate the wheat from the chaff. If you can pass this test then teaching the passive voice should be a breeze!