| Pages in topic: < [1 2] | Off topic: mistakes in English lesson Thread poster: Richardson Lisa
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| wow this subject has really got a lot of chains rattling!! | Oct 21, 2010 |
Thanks all for the comments and contributions. I'm still not too sure about how to deal with the problem, but all your answers are certainly food for thought. I suppose at the end of the day the most important thing is that my daughter feels completely comfortable about expressing herself in English and the grammar is secondary (ouch, did I really say that!). I have never taught her grammar in the strict sense of the term so it will all be relatively new to her, and she's bound to make mistakes ... See more Thanks all for the comments and contributions. I'm still not too sure about how to deal with the problem, but all your answers are certainly food for thought. I suppose at the end of the day the most important thing is that my daughter feels completely comfortable about expressing herself in English and the grammar is secondary (ouch, did I really say that!). I have never taught her grammar in the strict sense of the term so it will all be relatively new to her, and she's bound to make mistakes - let's just hope the teacher doesn't!!!
Thanks
Lisa ▲ Collapse
| | | | Neil Coffey 
United Kingdom
Local time: 11:37
French to English
+ ...
| Assess in terms of *reasonable* expectations | Oct 22, 2010 |
Richardson Lisa wrote:
I wonder if anyone has had this problem and if so how did they deal with it? My daughter has just started college (6ème) and has come home with this written in her workbook- "there isn't any absent today". I imagine this is a literal translation of "il n'y a pas d'absents". Anyway, the question is not so much linguistic as what to do about it?
If your expectation is that none of the teacher's utterances (or indeed phrases that they write down and teach) will ever be outside of native speaker usage, then it's probably unreasonable to expect mainstream collège education to necessarily provide this.
So then the question arises: does it matter? I suppose I would turn things round and look at what your daughter *is* getting out of the English lessons. Is she learning a decent amount of basic vocabulary and grammar? In the example you give, for example, there's an argument that what matters is whether or not the "there isn't..." construction is being taught, not whether the specific nouns in question are used idiomatically.
Then beyond that, does she actually want to be an English specialist? What role do you see her schooling having on her English learning, and what role do you see yourself as having?
Don't underestimate just how incredibly basic most children's level of language learning will be. I say this because I run a couple of language web sites and language learning fora and get quite a good overall perspective of general levels of language learning and the vast majority of learners are really coming out of high school or even university with what by our standards as translators would be an incredibly basic level. Rightly or wrongly, mainstream schooling has to cater to that incredibly basic level to some extent. If you think your daughter requires a service other than mainstream schooling, then that's something you'll have to weigh up, but I wouldn't necessarily assume that the teacher is incompetent for the level they're required to teach at.
[Edited at 2010-10-22 00:48 GMT]
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Hi Neil and thanks for your input.
As I said in my last post I just want her to be comfortable speaking English and not afraid to express herself even with mistakes, and this is the case so far. Again as I said, I've never taught her grammar (and I don't think it's my role to do so),she's just learnt English by ear so she can say it right but without really knowing why. I correct her when she makes mistakes, but try in general just to let her speak freely and feel confident with her langu... See more Hi Neil and thanks for your input.
As I said in my last post I just want her to be comfortable speaking English and not afraid to express herself even with mistakes, and this is the case so far. Again as I said, I've never taught her grammar (and I don't think it's my role to do so),she's just learnt English by ear so she can say it right but without really knowing why. I correct her when she makes mistakes, but try in general just to let her speak freely and feel confident with her language ability. I hope that her English learning in school will give her a structural background, improve her writing and reading skills etc.
And whilst I entirely agree that the majority of non native speakers (including teachers) will make mistakes I think it's quite worrying if there are problems at this level of learning. My daughter's eleven and at the moment learning very simple stuff like "Have you got a pet?"etc so it really isn't rocket science!! However, that doesn't mean that I assume the teacher is incompetent.
Well, next installment to come - we'll see how the year progresses
thanks again
Lisa ▲ Collapse
| | | | | could be worse | Oct 25, 2010 |
On many occasions at Junior school I had cause to correct English written by the teacher in my daughters' books.
This even continued at secondary school when my daughter's homework question contained that fantastic verb 'to of'.
What could you of done better?
I fully appreciate it may well be extremely common in spoken English, yet never in my wildest dreams did I imagine it would be used by a teacher?
The answer I always got when questioning ... See more On many occasions at Junior school I had cause to correct English written by the teacher in my daughters' books.
This even continued at secondary school when my daughter's homework question contained that fantastic verb 'to of'.
What could you of done better?
I fully appreciate it may well be extremely common in spoken English, yet never in my wildest dreams did I imagine it would be used by a teacher?
The answer I always got when questioning the errors was 'I am not very good at English'
Great, native English speakers in English schools and they can't even get the basics right! ▲ Collapse
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Steve Booth wrote:
On many occasions at Junior school I had cause to correct English written by the teacher in my daughters' books.
This even continued at secondary school when my daughter's homework question contained that fantastic verb 'to of'.
What could you of done better?
Wow Steve, that is worrying! Do they just make up the lessons as they go or are they actually working to some sort of program?
I've sort of resigned myself to correcting my daughter for the moment. Hopefully in class she'll be able to recognise any real whoppers like that. Though I'm not sure - the other day in a test she got 20/20 and the teacher had written 'very well' on the paper. 'Very well what' I asked my daughter ? 'Its very well ' she replied as in 'I'm very well thank-you'...and so a new lesson begins
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