Can they handle the truth?

[lolwhites]

The recent developments on the What the H is a sentence? thread raises an issue which I think we might want to deal with separately as a question on general principle:

Many books offer exercises which involve writing appropriate answers to questions e.g. Are you a student? - Yes, I am. Of course, in the real world there are many ways one could answer that question positively e.g. Yes, sure, uh-huh.... The danger of insisting on Yes, I am is that we give the students the impression that there's only one way to say it. However, if we give students all the possiblities there's a clear danger of overload. To quote one of my colleagues "You'll confuse the students". I'm reminded me of Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men when he says to Tom Cruise "You want the truth? You can't handle the truth!"

Obviously I've just given 2 extreme positions, but how do you strike the right balance?

[fluffyhamster]

I'd arrange the items according to frequency, then juggle them a little according to various, often conflicting criteria (course/book structure, traditional notions of structural complexity, morpheme acquisition orders, discourse and information structure, given vs new, etc), then perhaps knock off the ones left trailing at the bottom, before finally leaving it to the students to decide just how much they wanted to take; obviously only the first few items would be the focus in class (using a few items would add a little bit of variety). The one thing that would override all such considerations, however, would be the immediate communicative need in whatever context, but hopefully a decent book would account for such needs somewhere within it, meaning the teacher at least would have an account to refer to and utilize (if nothing was otherwise coming to mind).

[fluffyhamster]

I realized that I was blurring the lines between written (relatively simple and closed) exercise and spoken activity (often more open) in my above post, which is silly when it comes to language "facts" e.g. 'am' is the form of 'be' we use after 'I', but maybe that blurring is helpful, because it begs the questions, why are we fixated with "correct" answers all the time, and why isn't more time spent designing more open exercises?

That is, if a written exercise is prepared to accept a wider range of correct answers, is it still just a written exercise, or could it not be viewed as a springboard into a conversation that the exercise book has no way of ever fully accounting for, plotting, anticipating? The range of possible answers at least, should be more open, no?

[Lorikeet]

I sometimes ask my students if this is good English (for example):

"Are you coming tomorrow? Yes."

Sometimes they say, "No, it's not. You need to say, 'Yes, I am.'"

I explain that "Yes, I am." is a good answer to the question, and it's the one that most teachers like because it shows more of the grammar. However, "Yes." is fine, as is "Uh-huh" and "Mm-Hmm" and "Sure" and [just nodding my head]. It usually gets a laugh, as "uh-huh" sounds funny to them, but they get the point. I don't think it is confusing at all.

[woodcutter]

Can they handle the truth? This is the subtext to a lot of other discussions.

The scores, I believe, are .....No, not all at once - 1 person

Yes, certainly. Lay on the heaviest linguistics from the kick off - Everyone else.

[fluffyhamster]

Ha ha, "funny", woody, but I'd hardly say answers to yes/no questions are "the heaviest linguistics". The only one laying anything on in the pedagogy that is just 'a bit too much' and totally unnecessary is you!

[JuanTwoThree]

As I said, I have students use these "short answers" for a number of reasons, not all of them very good I'm the first to admit:

The younger students' "real" teachers (hah hah) do it and my classes are the extra ones. When I go against the orthodoxy I need to be on solider ground than this. You have to choose your battles.

It's all over the books (see above).

Spanish is notoriously curt, at least in its European form. Students get to understand a general need for utterances to be a bit longer in English (It's a bit of an eye-opener when a sweet Grandma screams "Open!" into the speaker of the automatic door-opener).

It is a bit of practice in an oral form that is not completely unnatural. It's a sort of drill in auxiliary verbs that people also actually do (or we wouldn't be having this debate).

It's a way to quickly revise what you have "done" with the class and discretely check who's lost their way.

It raises awareness of "do" questions and question word-order (both important for Spanish speakers).

It helps with "Do you play football on Saturday? vs "Are you playing football on Saturday".

It helps with "Did you see/Have you seen....?"

It makes the students listen more carefully to each other. Normally they are echoing the first word of the speaker's question.

It makes for good games like giving 4 lives to each student and have them firing polar questions at each other, perhaps using a soft ball to "choose" the answerer until everybody is "OUT" . Competitive little s...s.

Let's be honest. It IS politer than a muttered monosyllable from some slumped hormonal adolescent.

You always end up dropping it. I don't insist on it at all times or say that other answers are "wrong". If asked, I probably say that it's a good way to practise and use the auxiliaries and that it's rarely incorrect to use these "short answers".

NB At all times I'm talking about spoken practice. Completing these answers in a workbook or an exam seems a bit silly.

[fluffyhamster]

Fair enough, JTT. Obviously, if there are specific reasons for practising auxiliaries (e.g. your students are ill-mannered, needing expand their answers and/or practise saying things in ways that will create a positive impression; 99% of your colleagues don't just say 'No' - or 'Yes' - in their teaching), then I think we will all be inclined to be a lot less vociferous in our objections, and even accepting of the practice; woodcutter, however, hasn't himself advanced one reason beyond a rather silly 'It is best to learn (unnatural) language in unnatural ways' type of reasoning, or variations along those lines, which is why the "debate" has dragged on for so long.

I must say, though, how does your approach necessarily help with accurately hearing a (sudden) question (just for the sake of argument, let's assume that the number of the various types of question that will be asked will be similar between classrooms of different methodological persuasions)? Does auditory recognition and auditory memory depend for their development on an explicit "echoing" or "parroting" phase? Wouldn't a close look at the question itself help resolve any possible confusion?

[lolwhites]

Actually, I only meant short answers to be taken as an exanple of the sirt of thing I'm talking about. The principle extends across the whole range of language.

Generally speaking, how do you strike a balance between not confusing the students when they start to learn English, and not storing up problems for another teacher later on (also known as the But My Last Teacher Said Syndrome)?

[woodcutter]

The original post was talking about a question in a book. I would not advocate marking a very short answer wrong in such a situation, and certainly not in an exam. Not unless specific warning and direction was given. Which is not difficult to do.

The kind of things that JTT mentions can come with the proviso "This is a helpful exercise! These kind of answers are a little more polite!"

They do not need to come with any kind of IF YOU DON'T DO IT YOU ARE WRONG.

In fact I believe I am more careful than some of you about that, which is why I believe that the current rules of English, as best we can discern them, should be set out so that students have some comeback to defend themselves against the WRONG monsters.

[fluffyhamster]

The kind of things that JTT mentions can come with the proviso "This is a helpful exercise! These kind of answers are a little more polite!"

'Yes' is a sufficient and necessary (functionally) answer as far as replies go, whereas 'Yes (of course) I'm a student(!?)' could make the answerer sound either like they are trapped in a "language" classroom, or irritated, or both.

Anything polite about possibly sounding irritated, strange etc (to the listener, even if the speaker didn't intend to)?

Bit in bold above is mine, from the 'What the H is a sentence?' thread, here's the link if you want or need to see it in all its fully contextualized glory once again:
http://www.eslcafe.com/forums/teacher/v ... 3808#13808

[fluffyhamster]

They do not need to come with any kind of IF YOU DON'T DO IT YOU ARE WRONG.

In fact I believe I am more careful than some of you about that, which is why I believe that the current rules of English, as best we can discern them, should be set out so that students have some comeback to defend themselves against the WRONG monsters.

Nobody here, apart from you, is telling the students what to say in addition (preference?) to what is natural, sufficient, efficient, easy, not a problem etc (that is, what would probably be their natural inclination and phrasing). Additions are made (only) when they are of real communicative value, interest, import etc.

Basically, go look up "ellipsis", you tw*t!

[fluffyhamster]

Look, all that a lot of us would say to a student is, 'Say what you like, whatever you feel is appropriate', and if, in response to this sort of question, the student really didn't have a clue (and I would argue that always supplying a "full" answer - inside or outside of the classroom it matters not, for should there be that great a divide!? - amounts to ultimately not having much of a clue, although I can imagine myself tolerating such "behaviour" if it had become an ingrained habit), we could simply hint that a nod of the head and a smile, along with a 'Yes', should do the trick: it's what people do after in all in many languages besides English.

[woodcutter]

Fluffy hamster, we are a pair of boring old farts whose idea of fun is Dave's ESL applied linguistics forum. Our purple haired East-Asian charges are not desperate to tell us about their weekends. We are not desperate to know about their weekends. Yet we both ask them, I suppose, since we enter that boxy room each day in order to elicit speech, and when they answer naturally, "uh, you know, not much" it's a pain in the rectum. It's sometimes tough to get people making sentences which will stretch them. We should use every trick in the book.

[revel]

Good morning all!

Firstly, I will have to support all of JuanTwoThree's reasons in his post above. I agree totally with his objectives in practicing the complete "Yes, I do" over the complete "Yes".

Then I would like to address lolwhites question: "....how do you strike a balance between not confusing the students when they start to learn English...." My answer is, by being clear about the objectives.

Teaching Spanish speakers to use "Do/does/did" in a question is certainly a challenge. Even students who have studied English for years will still blurt out an occasional "He do" or "Do he" and not even realise it until it is brought to their attention that such "does not exist" (at least in my classroom, let's not get into regional variations here). By doing several question/answer sentence drills a student gets the feeling for the use of this auxiliary, will still make the mistake, perhaps, but will also catch him/herself and correct the gaffe, finally saying the thing "correctly" because it feels good whereas the other does not. English speakers do not say "Does he" because of a grammatical rule but rather because it is their habit. Even those who say "Do he" are doing so because of a habit that is common in their linguistic community. Habits are only acquired through repeated exposure. This is an objective that should be made clear to the student before practice is begun.

The same exercise could have a different objective, for example, the correct pronunciation of the "th" vs the "d". Since European Spanish speakers pronounce the written "d" as a voiced "th", they often are confused when listening, as when they hear a "th" their brain automatically presents them with the graphic representation of a "d", so that "they" becomes "day" and though they say "they" when they mean "day" they know that the written word "day" means día and wonder what that word is doing there, thus losing the entire meaning of the sentence (visual interference, the sharing of an alphabet with differing sound values). This is often seen in students' writings, when "the" is written as "de". Having the students look at the answer "Yes, they do" and having them consciously move their tongue to the correct position for each of the sounds helps them to overcome this interference. This is an objective that should be made clear to the student before practice is begun.

The work done in class should be placed in context and perspective. The next few minutes we are going to work on stretching your vocal aparatus so that the vowel sounds are not so curt. The next few we will be saying a collection of sentences with varying number of sylables that must fall into this particular rhythmic pattern so that you get used to reduction. Then we will be alternating between the use of the root form and the -ing form so that you get a feeling for what verbs usually use one and what verbs usually use the other. In this next exercise we will be trying to communicate, sharing and asking for information, don't worry about how you are going to say it, just say it, use the level of English you presently have, push yourself if you feel able, but get that information exchange going. By presenting clear, simple objectives for each of our activities in the classroom, we help to avoid the confusion that so often crops up when students look at one of these wonderful, entertaining, modern textbooks with so many drawings, photos, short exercises, grammar side-bars etc.

Answering, finally, fluffy's concern: "....how does your approach necessarily help with accurately hearing a (sudden) question (just for the sake of argument, let's assume that the number of the various types of question that will be asked will be similar between classrooms of different methodological persuasions)? Does auditory recognition and auditory memory depend for their development on an explicit "echoing" or "parroting" phase? Wouldn't a close look at the question itself help resolve any possible confusion?" to the first part of the question: by making the student aware of the basic form of the question and by making that form a part of the student's language habits. I don't believe auditory recognition depends on "echoing"; however, I do believe that it is easier to comprehend when what is to be understood is already a part of the language habit. The "parroting" phase is temporal, it is trying to get that chain of sounds to fit comfortably into a mouth. No, fluffy, I don't think that simply being aware of a basic form helps a student avoid confusion. I draw your attention to my comments in another thread about the three hours of second-conditional leading to zero production in the following oral class. Those students can certainly do a fill in the blank exercise or a multiple choice question that will lead to a second conditional sentence, they have all the clues right before their eyes, and so being aware of the structure helps them to recognize that structure on the page. Being able to produce the second conditional requires oral practice, which in the limited time offered in the ESL classroom, often means focused repeating and practicing of the form until the pattern is available for that moment when a conditional sentence is needed.

Each objective is a part of the whole, which might well be being able to effectively use English as a communicative device. If students are practicing at home then there is little need to do so in class, but so few practice at home that often the class needs to be half presentation and half "polly wants a cracker".

peace,
revel.