Ontario U students failing language test more. how 'n why

http://news.therecord.com/News/Local/article/576218

But Barrett can't explain some of the problems.

"Students say, 'How could I have failed? I got 93 in Grade 12 English!' "It's extremely puzzling to me," Barrett said.

High schools all have different standards, she said. Unlike the United States or the United Kingdom, Canada doesn’t have standardized university entrance exams for high-school students.

In addition, the university level doesn't have a formal relationship with high school teachers in Canada, so there's no simple way to communicate the skills that are necessary for success in university.

The most common mistakes made by English-speaking students are punctuation errors, she said. Students often don't know how to use a colon, or an apostrophe.

"Possessives are a nightmare," said Barrett.

Ironically, these problems are less of an issue for students learning English as a second language. Their grammar is not so bad, but they don't always have a "feel" for everyday quirks of the language.

For example, they might not understand why you can say, "I flew to London on a plane," but you wouldn't say, "I drove to Toronto on a car," Barrett said.

One of the biggest problems for foreign students is lack of practice in speaking English.
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D: 5% worse than 5 years ago.

I could not have entered university today with my high school marks.
Articles like this vindicate my suspicion that high school marks are being inflated.

I have advice for U students.
When you get an essay back, read over the marking.
See what grammar and syntax errors you made.
I could have improved faster if I had done so...

creepy xray of speech, animated

http://img248.imageshack.us/img248/3334/bothred1.gif

D: it looks terribly complex, doesn't it?
Consider that nerve signals arrive at different times to various speech parts.
The parts have different musculature and inertia.
It boggles the mind that we can speak!

on how to categorize african click-sounds. IPA

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090715131551.htm



"We wanted to classify clicks in the same way we classify other consonants," said Miller, who was a visiting faculty member at the University of British Columbia during the 2008-2009 academic year. "We think we've been pretty successful in doing that."

N|uu is severely endangered with fewer than 10 remaining speakers, all of whom are more than 60 years of age. Linguists are working diligently to document the unique aspects of this language before it disappears.

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D: see the related article list.
Science Daily is excellent for related articles.
I can spend hours just clicking related links - and have.

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http://www.ipasource.com/

D: here is opera translations in IPA.
This demonstrates how precise a phoneme system can be.
http://www.ipasource.com/extras/free/fr1.pdf

D: a sample.

Now if I can just finish HIOXian, LOL!
Darn prepaid credit card still won't work after 2 months of hassle.
(For the font editor software textbook.)
I should have just bought a prepaid from 7/11.
BMO is driving me NUTS.

As of 2008, there are 107 distinct letters, 52 diacritics, and four prosody marks in the IPA proper.

D: So about 150 'letters'.
HIOXian should manage that, but much more methodically.
And more clearly on a computer monitor, or for scanning and copying.

plain language on medical consent forms

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090708153242.htm

The Toolkit is based on plain language—a communication style centered on the audience's needs and abilities. Researchers can see how to use plain language in study materials through the Toolkit's many concrete examples, including an alternative word list. Here's a brief excerpt:

* Instead of Abdomen, try Stomach, tummy, belly
* instead of Abrasion, try Scrape, scratch
* Instead of Absorb, try Take in fluids, soak up
* Instead of Abstain from, try Don't, don't use, don't have, go without
* Instead of Accomplish, try Carry out, do
* Instead of Accrue, try Add, build up, collect, gather
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D: sometimes the plain language is either imprecise or requires multiword lexemes.
But sometimes it works just fine.
English suffers from massively redundant vocabulary.

See my entry on sofas, couches, and chesterfields.

I once needed to explain "celibate" as "can't get none" in one of my factory placements, LOL!

monkeys know grammar

BBC today: monkeys recognize bad grammar.

D: I work in a blue-collar setting.
There are certain errors that the 'unwashed masses' make in English.

1) double negatives.
"I ain't done nothing wrong."
2) strong/weak verbs
"I seen him."
3) in a few cases, confusing parts of speech.
I.e. these/ those/ them/ their.

D: I saw the high school scores for literacy.
I think only 15% were failing some benchmark test in Ontario.
In English, 5-10% would be expected to fail without intervention due to learning disabilities.

political correctness, minority group names

http://www.freep.com/article/20090705/ENT/90705020/Little+people+call+for+U.S.+to+ban++midget+


"Little people are calling on the Federal Communications Commission to ban the use of the word "midget" on broadcast TV.
Advertisement

The group Little People of America said today the word is just as offensive as racial slurs. "

midge
The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology | 1996 | | © The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology 1996, originally published by Oxford University Press 1996. (Hide copyright information) Copyright

midge OE. myċġ(e), corr. to OS. muggia (Du. mug), OHG. mucca (G. mücke), ON. mý :- Gmc. *muʒjaz, *muʒjōn, rel. to L. musca fly, Gr. muîa.
Hence midget sand-fly (in Canada); extremely small person. XIX.

D: I tried to back-track the etymololgy more, but ran into stuff over my head.
Something about palatisation and a word for a god.

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D: I should tell you my own background with political correctness.
I had the ill fortune of being a white male in the liberal arts starting in 1991.
I was in some class taught by our race relations officer on campus.
Something about diversity in Canada.
The textbook cannot have been more than a year old or so.
He informed us, with a serious expression, that the textbook was now wrong.
The term "challenged" was now banned. Henceforth it would instead be "differently abled".
I thought all this was just surreal.
Fast forward a coupla years.
I'm in a student house now near the end of my first degree.
I find this pamphlet booklet lying around in the house with University proposed language guidelines.
At one point it suggests that the phrase "dark and stormy night" or thereabouts is racist. I get a good chuckle out of this.
My roomie comes home and I ask about the satire he left for me.
...
He said it was not satire. It was serious.

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Now, I like etymology. I really do. After all, I'm a language geek. <:
I will often look up the origins of a word out of interest.
However, I don't think knowing a word's origin is relevant to modern language usage.

For example, the term for a cheap handgun "Saturday Night Special", *may* be a reference to the racist term "N****Rtown Saturday Night". Well, maybe.

Negro Look up Negro at Dictionary.com
"member of a black-skinned race of Africa," 1555, from Sp. or Port. negro "black," from L. nigrum (nom. niger) "black," of unknown origin.

D: For the last few decades, the latest trendy fashionable word to use for ?!? group has changed.
Once upon a time, the term "negro" was neutral, not an epithet.
Then it fell out of fashion. Notice I do say fashion, in the same sense as bell-bottom jeans or any other cultural fad.
Negro? Black? African-American? I cannot be sure, being outside the academia for a decade, what the latest polite term is.

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In the real world, most people were unaware that "differently abled is the new challenged".
I still know people that think Oriental is neutral, as opposed to Asian.
Far East implies a certain Western centrism, so I'm not sure about it.

An older person using the wrong term isn't racist.
They just don't follow the latest quasi-satirical academic edicts.
So too, non-academics.

D: the problem is NOT the term we use.
It is the negative stereotype associated with it.
If we do not address the stereotype, then inevitably the stereotype taints the new 'correct' term, and then we must find a new term.
We are always running away from the racism, or sexism, or ethnicism, or whatever.
We will always be running away. We leave a trail of compromised words.
And many confused non-academics, or retired university students that don't know bell bottoms are back in, or low-hip-huggers, or acid-washed jeans or whatever the linguistic equivalent is.

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I'd like recount another example of an ulterior motive to change the emotional association for a term.
In the Depression of the 1930s, the term "slow down" was emotionally loaded.
Much of economics is about consumer confidence. Belief affects actual money.
They chose a new term, still clean of emotionally negative baggage.
The word was "recession".
In the most recent recession, I saw the term slow down being used to avoid the stigma attached the word recession.
We have come full circle in less than a century, ROTFL!
The revolution turned us a full 360 degrees, and we ended up precisely where we started!
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I like deaf subculture. Typically if you ask a deaf person what to call them, they'll look at you like you're stupid and say deaf.
Not hard of hearing or hearing impaired (unless they are).

When I submitted my first language proposal, "Deafese", to langmaker.com, they did not respond right away. I realized they maybe they thought the name was derogatory.
I suppose I could have called it "hard-of-hearing-ese", but that is quite a mouthful.
Visemese was my first choice, but almost nobody knows the a viseme means visual phoneme.

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I grew up without any racism in my house. I didn't even know any of the put-down epithets. That got me into trouble on occasion.
I didn't know that certain truncations of country national membership titles were considered epithets. And so on.

In conclusion, sure we can find new terms for, say midgets. But I predict that in a few years, "little people" will be a put down too.
And somebody who discriminates can sarcastically use the term "little people" as a put down. Somebody who does not discriminate can use the term "midget" neutrally.

As a language designer, I dislike the trail of used up words that have become worn out.
As one interested in some aspects of philosophical languages with their taxonomic lexical approach, I don't allow for stigma and newly coined words for old terms.

Take, for example, 3 terms I have seen for ? African American ?
1) People of the Sun
2) black
3) Starts with N, ends with R. I ain't saying it!

The first carries positive connotations in the sense of being a positive stereotype. The sun loves us! We are favoured. OK.
The second is basically considered neutral.
The third is nasty nasty nasty. And just about anybody alive knows it refers to a negative stereotype, because the term has been around for so long.

In a designed language, one can use word particle and infixes in a regular and methodical fashion.

Woman. Lady! And whatever put down you care for. W***E or S**t for example.

Man. Human. Adult.
Woman. Female human adult.
Lady - plus / prestige or honour.
S**T - less.

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Esperanto.
Zamenhof actually explicitly allowed for just this terminology, which really dates the language.


http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/ranto/o.html

is "dirty woman, slut"; is "crone, contemptible female". ...

D: high and low status, and insults, are a part of human society.
Any attempt to ignore it will fail anyway.

I like Korean honorifics in that respect.
just tack them on the end, primarily.
The one-sided nature of Esperanto, with male as the default, is just a sign that it is a century old.
I'm sure something designed today will feel dated in a 100 years too.

As a language designer, just allow for neutral terms which are easy to learn with regular rules.
And have generic postive/ negative prestige expressions.

Aside: have you heard politicians speaking? They don't say "human adults".
They say men and women or flatteringly ladies and gentlemen.
Human adult plural (positive stereotype/ social prestige).
<:

D>






mademoiselle Look up mademoiselle at Dictionary.com
1450, "unmarried Frenchwoman," from Fr. (12c.), from a compound of ma dameisele (see damsel), lit. "young mistress."