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Old 04-22-2004, 08:43 AM   #21
uss
20th Level Warrior
 

Join Date: November 16, 2001
Location: Estonia
Age: 35
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Quote:
Originally posted by Bungleau:

, It sounds like she's going for literal translation. IMHO, as someone who speaks five languages to differing degrees of skill, literal translation is not applicable to daily conversation and communication. Idea translation is. What's that? It's getting the idea across. Kids do it all the time, because they don't know the words.
Yes, she does want literal translation. As it is a word/expression test, she wants us to learn new words from it.

The thing that sucks though, is that the teacher doesn't care whether you write the synonym or leave a blank slot - they both count as negative. In my opinion, it would be fairer if you'd get at least half the points by writing a synonym of the word. As you said, the idea gets across. Knowing the synonym for the required word would mean that you'd still manage in such a real life situation.

Another thing that sucks is that if you know too much English, you might get puzzled by thinking which word to use every now and then. Like in the first expression of the test, "To notice the enormous statue of Christ," the teacher scribbled red lines all over my writing of the word 'enormous' and wrote the word 'huge' atop of it. She apparently thought I didn't know the word, which means that I "learnt nothing new." *sigh*
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Old 05-21-2004, 03:43 AM   #22
Eagle eye
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Join Date: May 13, 2004
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Age: 32
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I'm from New Zealand, the country that speaks english the best in the world.
To me, those sentences looked perfectly fine.
What country is ya' teacher from? I think she might have a problem.
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Old 05-21-2004, 06:01 AM   #23
Donut
Jack Burton
 

Join Date: March 1, 2001
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Quote:
Originally posted by Eagle eye:
I'm from New Zealand, the country that speaks english the best in the world.
To me, those sentences looked perfectly fine.
What country is ya' teacher from? I think she might have a problem.
Do you mean the "bist" in the world? [img]smile.gif[/img]
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Old 05-21-2004, 08:00 AM   #24
Wysardry
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These sentences do seem very fragmentary to me, and how "correct" they are would depend on what form the test took.

If the idea was to translate the words exactly without restructuring the sentence to make sense grammatically, the teacher's answers could well be right.

They could also be right if they were answers to questions, such as "Where are you going?" or "What are you going to do?" (if background text was provided to give clues). The answer "To watch in amazement to march them into the mist" would need a more complex question for it to make sense, and personally I'd still prefer it contained a comma to reduce confusion.

The structure of British English is more rigid than other dialects, which is likely one of the reasons it was chosen by your teacher or school. The other being that it makes more sense to learn the version spoken and written by the country of origin, and England is where it started.

The same thing would apply when learning French: you'd learn the language of France rather than Canada or elsewhere.

You can only learn the basics from American TV shows as they not only have slightly different grammatical rules, they also use different terms. For example, in the UK we would use the word "pavement" rather than "sidewalk" (although most would understand what the latter meant).

Forums are of limited use as a learning aid, as English is not the native language of many of the participants, plus slang and abbreviated terms are used.
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Old 05-21-2004, 08:12 AM   #25
uss
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Join Date: November 16, 2001
Location: Estonia
Age: 35
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My teacher is Estonian.

Eagle Eye, is New Zealand the best English speaking country in the world like Estonia is the world's smartest country or is that an actual opinion? [img]smile.gif[/img]

*sigh* She is the only teacher that currently really-really annoys me.

You see, English is the only lesson in which we have to do homework every day. Homework is 2-3 pages from the workbook and/or book. That's a minimum of 20 minutes of studying English each day!

Since I mostly have A's and B's in English, I decided to permanently stop doing homework at home at one point. From a certain perspective, that's unfair, since I should obey. From my point of view however, I'm already learning a lot of English as is by writing these long posts in IW.

Anyway, my teacher doesn't like it at all and wants to make me study English at home, even though I cooperate in class. She even gave me an F in two instances(Actually it's a 2/5 by the Estonian grade system, which means failure). Stubbornly as ever, I refused to do homework, since I fail to see any clear advantages in studying English at home.

Some others have happily taken example, skipping homework most of the time. My teacher has begun to spite us, even said 'You think you are such bigshots that you don't have to learn English at home, don't you? Well you're wrong! [Nagnagnag!]' which seems quite unprofessional.

I forgot to mention that she has such a loud and scary voice that stings into the ear. I covered my ears with my hands in today's lesson and oh man, that's when I figured that her voice is the only and sure one I can make out when covering the ears. She has "developed" the so called English American pronounciation through 20 years. What does that mean? Well, it means that she has outnaggened her voice by an unbelievable measure and it's even more annoying than Nanny's voice! Sadly, I sit very close to her. I think she might even be the reason why I'm very fed up with hearing the English language and therefore avoid any TVs and listen only to Japanese and Instrumental music.

Also, you can't imagine how boring the lesson is! What do we do in a normal lesson, you ask? Well, remember how I said she leaves 2-3 pages of homework every day? All we ever do in English lessons is revise the same damn exercises!

This shit is reaching a breaking point! I like it if she'd understand which people in my class TRULY need tutelage in the English language.

Oh well, at least I can take great pleasure in the fact that Summer is coming, and the genious Estonian Education Ministry has fixated a 3 months, the whole summer, of holiday!
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Old 05-21-2004, 09:14 AM   #26
Bungleau
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Join Date: October 29, 2001
Location: Western Wilds of Michigan
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Will you have her for an English professor next year? If so, then you have my condolences. If not, then grit your teeth and wait for the summer break. You can make it...

One thing to remember is that the average teacher is scared of the exceptional student. That is, the average person who is teaching others and is not completely sure of their own skills and abilities (even after 20 years!) is often uncomfortable with exceptional students who may expose the teacher's lack of knowledge. That may or may not be your case, but it can make the rest of the time easier if you have pity on that poor teacher.
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Old 05-21-2004, 10:21 AM   #27
Donut
Jack Burton
 

Join Date: March 1, 2001
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Quote:
Originally posted by uss:
My teacher is Estonian.
I decided to permanently stop doing homework at home at one point.
I'll try to help you here. The correct syntax would be "I decided to stop doing homework at home permenantly"

"to permenantly stop" is an example of a split infinitive where you have placed a word between "to" and "stop".
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Old 05-21-2004, 02:21 PM   #28
uss
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Join Date: November 16, 2001
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Bungleau, I think she will be my teacher again next year.

I know what you mean about the teacher being scared of exceptional students. The class(well, mostly me) has questioned her on several occasions. It always ends with her gritting her gritting her teeth and angrily shouting "It was in the book! You can call to London if you want to!" She absolutely refuses to believe(aknowledge?) that any student could possibly be more correct than the book or herself.


Oh yeah, Donut, you're right. Lining up the words is a mistake I do too often. The purpose of your post wasn't to show me that I'm not so superior in knowledge of the English language, or was it? I'm not saying that I'm so good that I shouldn't do any homework, but rather that some others in my class know a lot less. For example, I think only about half of the class knows the words frequent, permanent, temporary. One classmate pronounces 'snake' as 'snack' and makes many other obvious mistakes.
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Old 05-21-2004, 04:12 PM   #29
Bungleau
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Join Date: October 29, 2001
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If she's your teacher again next year, then this homework defiance thing is going to have to stop. She can make your life miserable, and you're giving her the ammunition.

Instead, you'll have to do the homework (at least a token attempt) so that she has nothing to use against you.

And consider that it's just one more year until you're free of her... right?
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Old 05-22-2004, 03:49 AM   #30
uss
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Join Date: November 16, 2001
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Quote:
Originally posted by Bungleau:
If she's your teacher again next year, then this homework defiance thing is going to have to stop. She can make your life miserable, and you're giving her the ammunition.

Instead, you'll have to do the homework (at least a token attempt) so that she has nothing to use against you.

And consider that it's just one more year until you're free of her... right?
That's a nice idea. I might start doing homework out of spite.

Now that I think of it, it *is* possible that she'll be my teacher 'til the end of the 12-th.. That's 4 years!
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