Understanding Errors Made by Arabic Speaking ELL's

Understanding the errors of arabic speaking ell’s

View more presentations from anbray723.

Chapter 9 Fisherman Story

John would have become a farmer if he could have, but he has never had the money to buy land.

His brother bought land last winter, but sold it to the neighbor when the economy crashed. John loves fishing, but longs to be more successful. When he was feeling down, he painted his boat, “Troubled Waters,” blue and shined it up. John asked his brother what he thought of the new look, but his brother just laughed and said, “You’re always fishing for compliments.”

If John had had more energy, he might have argued with his brother, but instead, he began making more nets, with the hopes of increasing his catch the next day.

                                                       THE TRANSFORMATION 

John wanted to be a farmer but he did not have the money to buy land.

His brother bought land last winter, but he sold it to a neighbor when the economy crashed. John loves to fish but he wishes he was more successful. When he felt down, he painted his boat, “Troubled Waters”, blue and shined it up.  John asked his brother what he thought of the new look.  He brother laughed and said “you’re always wishing for compliments”.

John did not argue with his brother.  He made more nets instead.  He hoped to increase his future catch.

ANALYSIS: I think that this story sounds awkward even from the perspective of a native speaker.  The conditional and future tense are used often where a simple present tense would suffice.  I don’t think that the “you’re always fishing for compliments” line would be well understood by an ELL either.  The statement involves a pun that is obvious to a native speaker but is likely too subtle for an ELL to detect, thus the statement taken out of context does not make sense.  The word catch in the final sentence is also likely to cause confusion because it is being used as a noun instead of a verb.  Students are likely most familiar with the verb “to catch” and not the noun which symbolize the quantity of the fish that a fisherman caught on a particular day.

Chapter 8 Application Questions

#1        A good school? (Mrs. Thomas and Mrs. Rashid are both parents of students in the district where Mrs. Thomas also teaches.)
Mrs. Thomas: Johnny has Mr. Smith as a teacher next year. I hear he is an excellent teacher.
Mrs. Rashid: He's very nice.
Mrs. T: Are you happy with the school district?
Mrs. Rashid: There are many lovely people in the neighborhood.

 Choose one dialog. Identify where the miscommunication occurs. Explain what each speaker might be thinking. 

 Explain what cultural factors may contribute to the miscommunication in the conversation.

The miscommunication in this dialog occurs when Mrs. Rashid responds to the question about the school district by saying “there are many lovely people in the neighborhood”.  It appears as if she is violating the Maxim of Relevance but upon closer observation of the statement, you can see that she is in fact responding “correctly” to the question.  The word “district” is defined as “a region or locality” according to www.dictionary.com.  When you take the definition of district into consideration than Mrs. Rashid’s statement makes much more sense. She is commenting on the school district as if Mrs. Thompson were referring to the physical locality of the school district itself.  However, social conjecture in America alludes to the fact that Mrs.Thompson is not referring to the neighborhood where the school is located, rather the quality of the school/s, the teachers and the school community. In America, the statement “Are you happy with the school district?” has a different connotation than what it literally translates to and this is an obvious cause of confusion for someone who is unaware of this social convention.

Grice's Conversational Maxims

Grice’s Conversational Maxims

Maxim of Relevance- Be relevant

Conversation: A group of friends and I were talking about work and another friend joined our conversation.  Obviously the newest edition to the group was unaware of the pervious conversation that had taken place, so in mid conversation our newest friend contributed: “Did you watch Big Bang Theory Last night?” to which I responded “Do you know why the sky is blue?” ::with sarcasm::.  Obviously I asked an irrelevant question to poke fun at our friend whose contribution was extremely off-topic.  This would be an example of a violation of the Maxim of Relevance because both contributions to the conversation were irrelevant to the subject at hand.

Maxim of Quality – Try to make your contribution true

Conversation: A conversation that I have witnessed between husband and wife is always a good example of the Maxim of Quality.  When the wife is getting dressed and she asks her husband “how do I look?” or “does this make me look fat?” the husband will often revert to the generic answer “yes of course honey, you look wonderful” .  Even if the statement is not necessarily trye Why? Well first of all it is always the smartest answer for a husband and second of all because in this instance the husband feels that violating the Maxim of Quality will preserve his wife’s feelings.

Maxim of Quantity- Do not make your contribution more or less informative than required

Conversation:  My father is often in violation of the Maxim of Quantity.  When you confront him with a problem in which you are seeking a relatively simple solution you always get an extremely lengthy answer. For example, “Dad my car won’t start.  I’m pretty sure that it is the battery, how can I check to see if my battery is dead?”  His response starts with “the battery? Well are you sure? What type of noise did the car make? Did the lights turn on? Etc”  So this far into the conversation my father still has not answered the initial question which was: How do I check to see if my battery is dead?”  This would be an example of a violation of the Maxim of Quantity because he asking for information that is more informative than required.

Maxim of Manner- avoid ambiguity and obscurity; be brief and orderly

Conversation: I often intentionally violate this maxim to elude a message to someone subtly.  For example, we are working in the teacher workroom and another teacher approaches me about a student who is having problems in their class:  “Allyson did you have _________________________ in your class last year?” to which I would respond “yes”.  “Well did he/she have any behavioral issues in your room?” to which I would respond “do you mean did I have to write him/her up 3 times for being late for class, once for cheating on a test and a third time for screaming profanities to a student in the hallway? No, of course not.  He/she is an upstanding student”.  I think in this case the maxim is violated to place emphasis on the fact that the student is not only a behavioral problem but a significant one.  Sarcasm can often communicate an idea further than an outright statement like, “yes I had behavioral issues with the student”.  However, it is easy to see why violation of this maxim using sarcasm would cause considerable confusion for an ELL who might take the statement literally or be confused by the conflicting ideas in it.

Application Questions Chapter 5

PILL “The word pill ultimately comes from the Latin pila “ball,” or more specifically from the Medieval Latin pilula “little ball.” So a pill is a small ball or pellet of medicine. This is the earliest sense of the word in English, dating to before 1400, appearing in the English translation of Lanfranc’s Science of Cirurgie in Bodleian Ashmole MS 1396”

ALE/BEER “Ale and beer are both words that go back to Old English. Today, we distinguish the two as different beverages, but this distinction did not exist in Old English.”

BACHELOR “The English word bachelor comes from the Old French bacheler, meaning a “young man.” The word ultimately comes from Latin *baccalaris (the asterisk designated a root that has been reconstructed but is not found in extant literature).”

BIKINI “test of an atomic weapon at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Bikini was the site for numerous nuclear weapons tests through 1958. Four days after this first test, fashion designer Jacques Heim exhibited a two-piece swimsuit which he dubbed the bikini in an attempt to ride the publicity wave created by the well-publicized detonation.”

CHOW “This term for food is a clipping of the older chow-chow, a Chinese-English pidgin word of unknown origin meaning food or, in particular, a mixture or medley of foodstuffs.”

CURFEW “The word curfew originates in the medieval practice of ringing a bell at a fixed time in the evening as an order to bank the hearths and prepare for sleep. It comes from the Anglo-Norman coeverfu, the equivalent of the Old French cuevre-fe, or cover fire.”

EUREKA “This exclamation is from the Greek heureka, meaning I have found it.”

GOLF “Despite the claims of some that the name of this game is an acronym, its origin is unknown. The place of origin, however, is known and it should come as no surprise that the game comes from Scotland.  The earliest known reference to golf is from 1457 in the Acts of James II of Scotland, where it is banned.”

HELL “Hell is another Old English word. It is attested to in the early ninth century, but the word and the concept is undoubtedly older, dating back to pre-Christian Germanic mythology. In Norse mythology, Hel was the goddess of the underworld”

HOOLIGAN “Hooligan is a variant of the Irish name Houlihan or O hUallachain, and somewhere along the line some street tough of that name left it for posterity. But the specific person whom the term originally referred to has been lost to the ages.”

Wilton, Dave.  (2011, Oct 9) Retrieved from http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php

Phonetic	Semantic	Etymological
Bat	Align/alignment	Boutique (French)
fed	Forgive/forgiven	Edifice(Latin)
go	Corrupt/corruption	Animal (Latin)
kit	Design/designer	Angst (German)
Send	Origin/original	Demagogue (Greek)

8.  Words that end in ch and tch

-ch		-tch
Reach		catch
rich		match
beach		watch
speech		Switch
search		stretch
lurch		pitch
march		fetch
leech	scratch
Beseech	patch
teach	stitch
much	hatch
torch	clutch

It appears that the –ch­ follows a long vowel sound such as the sound made by the –ea­ and ­–ee.  It is likely that the transfer from a long vowel to a fricative –ch is easier than transfer to a –tch because the t will be lost following a longer vowel.  Whereas the short vowel sound made by the a  in catch and the e in stretch allows the mouth to form the fricative –tch­ more easily, thus the reason why these words are spelled with a –tch.

-ge	-dge
age	fridge
allege	fledge
anchorage	ridge
beige	badge
plunge	judge
engage	Fudge

 I believe that the –ge ­and ­­–dge­ distinctions are much more difficult to figure out.  After analysis of the words, I was unable to discern a reasonable pattern that distinguishes between the two.  At first it appeared that the –dge­ ending only appeared with words that had a first letter that required a stop, or a restriction of airflow.  However, the word beige which ends in a –ge ruined that generalization.  Overll, I found that my pronunciation in normal speech blended the d  in the -dge endings and made them sound exactly the same as those that ended in just a ­–ge­.  This makes me hesitant to apply a single spelling rule to these two endings.

Application Questions

Allophones are variations on a phoneme.  We were asked to consider the phoneme /p/ and try to find variations of /p/ in the English language in order to determine its allophones.  The primary allophones for /p/ are [p] and  [p^h].  This variation can be seen is words such as pit and spit. Pit uses the [p] phoneme and spit uses the [p^h]  phoneme but they are allophones because they are treated the same in the English language.  However, not all languages have the same allophones.  The fact that allophones are distinct to individual languages is what can cause confusion for learners.  Learners may not have the same allophones in their language and therefore might ignore important differences in physical appearance or sound variation (Freeman et al., 2004, p. 93).  For example, in the Chinese language [p] and  [p^h] are not allophones, which means that when native speakers of Chinese attempt to learn English they may struggle with understanding why the words like pit and spit sound different but are treated the same^. 

Freeman's stated that many people are fascinated by the study of dialect and it is easy to see why. Dialects represent "variations in language marked by certain ways of pronouncing words" and they can vary based on region or social class.  Therefore, two people can be speaking an identical language but have entirely different means of pronouncing words.  English is an excellent example of a language that has many dialects.  “Proper English” is a dialect of English spoken in England, which is different from the English that is spoken in Australia and an even different still is the English spoken in America.  In fact variations exist within America regionally.  In the northern United States, the word “vacuum” is used to describe the device that vacuums your floor whereas in the southern United States the word referring to the same object is “sweeper”.  In western Pennsylvania people use the expression “yinz” to refer to a group of people instead of “you all” (Example:“yinz going to the diner with us?” ).   Many people argue that some dialects sound more distinguished than others.  In the example of English, many believe that “proper” English sounds more refined than the dialect of English spoken in the northern United States.  To go one step further, many also argue that the dialect of English spoken in the northern United States sounds more sophisticated than that spoken in the southern US.

I hate to say that I agree with dialect reduction but to answer truthfully, I do believe that in some instances dialect reduction is necessary.  The primary reason that I support dialect reduction is that in some instances, the dialect has strayed so far from the standard speech that it is nearly impossible to understand .  The “cork” dialect in Ireland is an example of a dialect that is nearly impossible to understand even by other English speakers.  In this instance, I believe that dialect reduction is necessary because the language has essentially become incommunicable.   The second circumstance where I believe that dialect reduction is necessary is when a dialect has developed in such a way that a large majority of people in society deem it socially unacceptable.  Pinker points out in his text that the “Black English Vernacular” has become a popular form of speech in the United States in major cities and some rural areas (Pinker et al.,1994, p. 17).  This is a hot topic amongst linguists and columnists across the country because the dialect is far astray from Standard English.  I believe that this dialect poses several problems, but I support dialect reduction in this instance because BEV makes frequent use of slang and curse words.  I don’t believe that curse words are socially acceptable in a professional setting nor is the usage of improper grammatical structure.  My personal opinion is that this dialect also makes the speaker sound uneducated and therefore could affect their odds of acquiring a job during the interview process.  I especially don’t believe that this dialect should be taught in schools because it teaches poor grammatical structure.  I support the idea that standard forms of language should be taught to new language learners.