I need a teacher's opinion on...

[wjserson]

Harzer, I'm not quite sure what to do here, but I might have proved my point by making my typos. You understood every point I made in my last posting. So why nitpick over them? That's kind of superficial, isn't it? By arguing against my point you prove them... in a way.

I'm simply stating that: the fact that eurotraveller uses the spelling mistakes of the Americans (s)he knows to prove that (s)he deserves a specific job is somewhat superficial and won't help his/her case. The fact that you and others might value the written form rather than the language it represents is somewhat hypocritical. We English teachers try our best to assess one's true language competency and judging by their writing isn't always going to do that.

I think that the ability to write is a manditory requirement for almost everything in life. Eurotraveller can write extremely well. But it was his/her oral English that was judged incomprehensible. I know some people judge accents very harshly, but comparing your own writing to the writing of native speakers won't help.

Thanks LL

[Lorikeet]

Dear paksu

Maybe, if we translated your post back into either Malayasian or Chinese, it would make perfect sense. In English however it is difficult to follow what you mean sentence by sentence and quite impossible to discern your general point, if indeed you have one.

Dear Mr Jones

The passage did not show grammar or construction errors using the microsoft word spell and grammar checker. Who should be blamed ?

Just as an aside, you can never rely on the Microsoft grammar checker to catch your non-native speaker errors. I have run a set of "Correct these mistakes" through such a grammar checker, and it didn't pick them up either. I think it is only programmed to catch certain errors, like he/she and third person -s, etc.

[fluffyhamster]

...the word "fish" could be written "phyti" if the written form accurately represented the oral...

Whilst that's an amusing example (along with the original "ghoti"!), it does rather overlook the fact that English spelling is more consistent than that ("ph" has the same value at the beginning and end of words, whereas "gh" is "hard", as in "ghost", in initial position; there is a big difference between "tin" and "action" etc).

That being said, any consistencies, to be sure, are/were not aimed at achieving so much a 1-2-1 mapping between sound and form (with a consequent reduction in redundancy as far as scientifically possible) as a "logical" i.e. internally "consistent" (to the scribes of antiquity) orthography.

Reading a language written in a consistent system (e.g. English in IPA, Chinese in Pinyin) can actually be quite laborious for already-skilled readers who are familiar with the visual clues that the "fuller" orthography offers.

I once read an article in which Schwarzenegger was described as having English not unlike a recently arrived immigrant taxi driver; mind you, that was probably ten years ago now, and even back then, I am sure he had better unrehearsed English than the American reporter had German!

[revel]

Hey everyone!

I personally think it is rather unfair to attack, to directly attack, other posters on any of these threads. We do get our Shun-xuis that boldly ask for attacks, but those are few and far between. Have Dave's forums gotten dull and lackluster recently and need a bit of harsh language to liven them up?

A listener will filter what he/she hears through what he/she expects to hear in the given situation. If the listener expects to hear a nice round open "a" and instead is offered a short, closed "a" then the listener might not understand the word, and maybe even not understand the entire utterance. The listener might blame the speaker for not pronouncing that "a" as the listener expected, from his/her experience with the sound, might even be as boorish to comment that the speaker's language is "broken" or even "incorrect".

However, a listener who is able to expand on his/her filter by taking into consideration the multiple reasons that the speaker has pronounced that "a" in a different, unexpected manner, might just understand the word, the utterance. Does that suddenly make the speaker's language more cohesive, more correct? Unless the speaker is alone in the woods, there is a listener who is responsible for at least a part of successfull communication. Perhaps a listener who spends a lot of time with hispanic speakers of ESL would have great difficulty in understanding those who are Asian and speaking ESL as well. Those students of ESL certainly have their own difficulties understanding the different accents and pronunciations and even grammatical idiosyncracies of so-called native speakers, usually based on the size of the openings in the net through which they filter the sounds they are hearing.

Spelling in English is a b*tch, often seemingly based on silly rules. Writing in English does not always represent oral speech, though it might have its roots in such oral production. We might be expected, for example, to write correctly, both in spelling as in grammar, here in Dave's forums, as we are many of us English teachers. And yet I've seen many more confusions crop out of grammar or structure than out of spelling foibles. If you're writing an informal note, "you're" is quite alright. If you are writing a more formal document, perhaps you should avoid the contraction. Language should not be divorced from its purposes.

Bla bla bla, I'm afraid I'm going on without having said anything concrete. Do let's not jump down each other's throats so rapidly, there is already enough silly conflict in this world....not meaning to be political there!

peace,
revel.

[LarryLatham]

..."you're" is quite alright.

Yes, and it's even all right. (Sorry, revel...I couldn't help myself.)

Do let's not jump down each other's throats so rapidly, there is already enough silly conflict in this world....

Point taken, revel, and it's a good one. I do believe that people engaged in academic argument should press their points with conviction, if indeed they are convinced of the truth of them. But they should also expect holders of rival views to be just as forceful...and let the best argument win! It is just as important to know when to back off, and to be intellectually honest enough to admit when a competing view makes more sense than yours does.

At the same time, personal attacks are out of bounds most of the time. They often are advanced by holders of beliefs who haven't much in the way of evidence.

I'll join with you in appealing to our group here to keep it clean for the most part. Ultimately, it'll be more fun than wrestling in the dirt.

Larry Latham

[woodcutter]

Just to note than even LL is mildly slapping Revel's wrist for writing "alright" when this is now very, very common. Prescriptivism!

(Sorry to butt in on the wrong thread)

[revel]

Hey all!

Alright already! Even in university I was getting that little note on papers "all right, not alright." And when is it finally going to turn into alrite? I think that on that same university paper I got a "its is the possesive pronoun or adjective, while it's is the pronoun with the contracted verb." My mother was an excellent speller, I am not, it's not genetic anyway!

Perhaps this time the lesson will stick. I'll certainly try to make it important to myself. (This from a teacher who has to look in the book to make sure that he is teaching the correct spelling of the numbers to seven-year-olds....hehe).

peace,
revel.

[LarryLatham]

Me too, revel. I make frequent use of my spell checker, dictionary, and thesaurus. I'd hardly be able to write without them.

Larry Latham

[eurotraveller]

For those who don't believe that US newspapers said so.....

from a 2003 newspaper:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/language ... 00106.html

The folowing link praises AS, but is talking about Gray Davis' complaint:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/language ... 00307.html


eurotraveller

[eurotraveller]

Thank you all for the wonderful answers, pros and cos .

eurotarveler