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English majors (and British English speakers) - is this wrong?


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Oh, and in the interest of full disclosure, I was not an English major...And I love linguistics, but most of it's been self-study. So, I'm fairly knowledgeable and opinionated, but I don't know that I qualify as "expert". ;)

 

Same here. My knowledge is limited to teaching it over and over to oodles of kids. ;)

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Perhaps this explains why Matryoshka's suggestions make sense to me lol. We are both reverse engineering.

 

About the dictionary... My family uses my mother to settle any arguments so I don't tend to think of the dictionary that way. I think different dictionaries have more or less conservative philosophies. Perhaps you need to switch to a more conservative one?

 

Nan

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I just realized that I pronounce "there" differently when it means -

 

"how many people were there?" (focus on how many?)....I pronounce it "thur"

 

"how many people were there?" (as in place)....is more like "thare"

 

Is that regional? (I grew up in the East)....

 

Joan

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I just realized that I pronounce "there" differently when it means -

 

"how many people were there?" (focus on how many?)....I pronounce it "thur"

 

"how many people were there?" (as in place)....is more like "thare"

 

Is that regional? (I grew up in the East)....

 

Joan

 

I just practiced, and I think I do this as well.

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About the dictionary... My family uses my mother to settle any arguments so I don't tend to think of the dictionary that way. I think different dictionaries have more or less conservative philosophies. Perhaps you need to switch to a more conservative one?

 

I use an old/new Websters - I'd think it is conservative.....but I'm not quite sure what you meant by the bolded part Nan....what is "that way"?

 

Ok ladies - I sent my email this morning....and will let you know the answer. :-)

 

Joan

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Update - I got a brief mail back from the 'corrector' saying that she'd already answered my questions (even though she hadn't answered my new questions or addressed the support for my previous statements), that she did not design the test and that the acceptable answers are the same for everyone. She proposed that I write to the cantonal (state level - but our 'state' is the size of a large county in the US :-)) administration if I have more questions. So now I've sent them a copy of our exchanges.

 

I'll let you know how it goes....

 

Joan

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By "that way", I meant as an argument settler, as "right". I think of the dictionary as one person's (really a group's) attempt to give a brief snapshot of how a language is being used today and include some historical and grammatical information. Grammar changes over time and according to region, just as word definitions do, so I think of dictionaries as changable. When I was growing up, we found places where we used words differently than the dictionary, or words that were missing (mostly archaic ones). Perhaps it was arrogant of us, but we just said, "Oh, I guess the authors didn't know about that." lol Or chose not to include that. I relied on a dictionary heavily when I was reading French and saw how different they were. (The Bantam one was much better for my purposes. The Larousse was missing most of the words I tried to look up in it.) Then, when I was working, I did a project involving dictionaries and had an opportunity to compare several, and saw how widely they can vary. My partner was from Australia and found the Oxford dictionary more accurate than the American ones we were using when it came to grammatical information. This could have been a matter of regional differences or a matter of American ignorance or American over simplification or American de-emphasis. I don't know enough grammar to tell. I just thought that perhaps you would like either an older, unabridged dictionary or an older Oxford dictionary better.

 

About the update - If *I* were the writer of the test, I would appreciate clarification from an English speaking parent. Hopefully they will, too, rather than just being annoyed because someone is questioning their authority. At least you tried.

 

Nan

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When I lived in China, I had a friend whose children went to Chinese school. They had grown up in Australia, but were not excused from English lessons. They were regularly given bad marks in English for not following the rules. In their case, it was things like: the text book said that if someone said 'Hello,' you had to reply 'How are you?'. If they responded with, 'Hello,' (or whatever) they were marked wrong.

 

The English teachers had not lived overseas and were not confident enough to be flexible.

 

L

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found the Oxford dictionary more accurate than the American ones we were using when it came to grammatical information.

 

I just thought that perhaps you would like either an older, unabridged dictionary or an older Oxford dictionary better.

 

About the update - If *I* were the writer of the test, I would appreciate clarification from an English speaking parent. Hopefully they will, too, rather than just being annoyed because someone is questioning their authority. At least you tried.

 

You're right - I'm going to have a look at Oxford....I do have an older unabridged dictionary...Thanks for the clarification.

 

They were regularly given bad marks in English for not following the rules.

 

The English teachers had not lived overseas and were not confident enough to be flexible.

 

Funny - but not funny for them I'm sure - about getting marked down...

 

About confidence and flexibility - I know that my own lack of experience makes me rule oriented when correcting certain subjects...my own children call me to task about this...and I'm humbled...

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First, the disclaimer: I am not an English native speaker, I am a native Spanish speaker. I have studied English as a foreign language at college. I passed the Cambridge University Certificate of Proficiency in English (CPE) back in the day. I have lived now for roughly the same number of years in the UK and the US (half my entire life now).

 

In the exam, the statement read "In 1950 there were 100.000 people at the World Cup Final in Brazil", therefore the corresponding question would be "How many people were there at the World Cup Final in Brazil in 1950?".

 

I believe for your dd's question (How many people were at the World Cup Final in Brazil in 1950?) to be accepted as correct, the statement would have had to be "In 1950, 100.000 people were at the World Cup Final in Brazil".

 

As a student of English as a foreign language, we studied the constructions 'there is and there are etc.' as structures. We did a lot of exercises to practise correct usage of verb tense, number and word order. I believe this is where the corrector is coming from. The structure in the original sentence was 'there were', not just 'were', therefore to pose the question you need to include this structure and of course reverse the word order.

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Could part of the issue be the equivalence between "there are" "es gibt" and "il y a"? (I think I remember the French correctly. )

 

In English you use a conjugation of "to be" while the other languages use a more idiomatic phrase where the verb alone would have a different meaning. It seems the desired answer wants to hold "there were" intact as an idiom even though the "were" can be used on its own to form a correct sentence too.

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As a student of English as a foreign language, we studied the constructions 'there is and there are etc.' as structures. We did a lot of exercises to practise correct usage of verb tense, number and word order. I believe this is where the corrector is coming from. The structure in the original sentence was 'there were', not just 'were', therefore to pose the question you need to include this structure and of course reverse the word order.

 

Yes, it is the study of English as a foreign language that makes a difference. I can't remember ever going over in our grammar books, exercises of such a nature. And IRL, people don't speak exactly like the formulas learned for EFL either.

 

(In addition, she's studies French as a maternal tongue so doesn't have the same exposure to this type of exercise. And I don't think her German lessons follow this type of formula)

 

I agree that they were wanting the exact formula question, but that was not in the directions and if you haven't learned English as a second language, then you don't think in such strict delineations either. But also, I don't think Americans tend to add the 'there' in a sentence where the construction is long....We'd say - How many were there? but if we add on "at..........." we would take out the "there" intuitively.

 

It happens that there was another American who also took the same test and lost a point for the same question. Her mother is even an English teacher from the US. They haven't been here that long so I came to the board before I discussed it with her. She too found it incorrect.

 

I was thinking, oh well, now I know what to tell foreigners who have to take this test. But then I realized...then they'll have to spend even more time preparing their children for an English test which will have no bearing on their understanding of English for their studies...It is an understanding of studying a foreign language. This too bothered me as it is stressful enough doing homeschooling in one's home country, then add on studying in a foreign country, then add on trying to learn the way English as a second language is studied and it somehow seems unnecessary.

 

But recently I have been thinking that learning to live within constraints is a growing experience. So I guess I better stop complaining :-)

Joan

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But recently I have been thinking that learning to live within constraints is a growing experience.

 

 

I think it is. When I was attempting to pass the Chinese driving test, I had to go to a class specifically designed for foreigners, as the English version of the test was so badly translated that some of the questions meant to exact opposite of the equivalent Chinese questions. So you had to learn to answer what the questioner wanted, not what the question asked. In the end, there's no point in raging at these things.

 

L

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In the end, there's no point in raging at these things.

 

I quite agree for myself - but I'm really more concerned about home eders to come who could end up with problems due to English tests in French....I kind of doubt that they would be eliminated from homeschooling but its an unnecessary stress that the admin is adding when they say they are "concerned about the welfare of the children"...and this is not done out of concern for children's welfare.

 

Joan

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