Yvonne,
Your example sentences certainly seem like first drafts. The errors seem to be
the kind that a lot of beginning writers would make when they are not careful
but just want to get the ideas down quickly perhaps intending to fix the grammar
later. Does the person exhibiting such a deficit simply not realize that there
are logical problems, that the concepts need to be aligned better? Surely the
teacher should know the value of review and revision. Maybe such a lesson could
be given more emphasis. Is there even a writing course given as a prerequisite
to your class? Could we have here an example of the kind of carelessness that
might be caused by our society of quick-and-dirty text messaging and of
impersonal telegraphic comunication by the media? I wonder if there are simply
more people today who want to get credentials without really caring to work
through the details? Is it a problem of attitude?
Bruce
>>> "Yvonne Stapp" <[log in to unmask]> 08/07/06 7:00 AM >>>
Rebecca,
The examples are written. That's the only kind of data I'm
interested in. The examples are responses to exam questions
from my online intro linguistics course. I should point out
that the exams are "open book" -students can refer to the
text and articles and also to the video lectures; they have
24 hours to complete the exam and are instructed to
proofread their exams before submitting them. The use of
these responses made it possible to see where the areas of
language vulnerability are.
Most people taking the linguistics intro course are
teaching or planning to teach ESL, but speech-hearing majors
often make up as much as a third of the class. The examples
I posted were only from ESL people because I've been
particularly concerned about the relationship between the
relationship between the language skills/knowledge of ESL
teachers and the very poor progress of ESL students in the K-
12 system.
In a paper I just submitted I distinguished the kinds of
errors in these and other samples from the kinds of errors
that represent distortions of information. I categorized
the error data (lexical, grammatical/morphological and
coherence)and provided comparisons between data samples and
samples of impairment in each case.
yvonne
---- Original message ----
>Date: Mon, 7 Aug 2006 07:19:49 -0400
>From: Rebecca Wheeler <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Re: native-speaker (ESL teacher) problems with the
language
>To: [log in to unmask]
>
>Yvonne,
>Regarding the "language problems" you cite from native
English speakers,
>were these examples spoken or written?
>
>thx,
>
>Rebecca
>
>
>Rebecca Wheeler
>Associate Professor
>Language and Literacy
>Christopher Newport University
>Newport News, VA 23606
>
>[log in to unmask]
>
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Yvonne Stapp PhD
Assistant Professor of ESL
James Madison University
Dept of Exceptional Education MSC 6908
Memorial Hall 3130B
Harrisonburg, VA 22807
phone 540-568-4525
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