Editing ESL Speakers

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Editing ESL Speakers
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Todays Plan

• How do students acquire a second language?
• (Models of Second Language Acquisition)
• What types of errors will you see in your
  editing?
• What are some of the genre considerations you
  should bring to your editing? (Personal
  statements).
• What is comprehensive editing?
• What should your tutoring session be like?

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Models of Second Language Acquisition

• Pre-production
• Students do not usually produce their own
  language.
• Students understand language that has been made
  comprehensible.
• Early Production
• Students have a small, active vocabulary.
• They feel ready to speak in one- or two-word
  phrases.
• Speech Emergence
• There is a noticeable increase in listening
  comprehension.
• Students will try to speak in short phrases.
• They will begin to use the social language
  necessary in the classroom.
• Nearly fluent
• Students understand what is said in the
  classroom.
• They can express their ideas comprehensibly in
  both oral and written communication.
• They will be able to read most grade-level
  material.

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Second Language Acquisition and Second Culture
Acquisition

• How you believe second language acquisition
  occurs is usually connected to what type of
  cognitive psychologist you are.
• Generally speaking, however, linguists believe
  that L2 acquisition proceeds rather predictably
  and does depend in part on your native language.

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Main Types of Mistakes

• Translating the native language into English.
• Mistaking one word for another in English.
• Mistakes in features that are non-existent in the
  native language, or generalizing a pattern which
  does not generalize (he work in a store).
• Mistakes in sociocultural knowledge.

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Translating Native Language into English

• German weekend example.
• Greek candle example.
• Chinese How to say . . example.

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Mistaking One Word for Another in English

• Its/its
• Where/wear
• To/two/too

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Having difficulty with features not in the native
language
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Verbs
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Plurals of Nouns
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Plurals of Nouns
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Gender and Nouns
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Sociocultural Knowledge

• In 1989, a China Airlines flight, flying in zero
  visibility, crashed into the side of a mountain
  shortly after take-off. On the voice recorder,
  the last words of the Chinese pilot to the
  co-pilot were, "What does pull up mean?" When I
  first heard this story, I wondered why a pilot,
  presumably trained in the international English
  used for aviation, would not understand a command
  from the tower. On investigation, I learned that
  the official term used in "control tower" talk is
  climb. However, the warning system built in to
  U.S.-made planes issues the message "Pull up!"
  when altitude drops or an object looms ahead.
• As a former teacher of English as a Second
  Language, I knew that expressions such as pull
  upphrasal verbs or two-word verbsare often very
  difficult for non-native speakers of English
  because they are idiomatic that is, their
  meanings cannot be derived by knowledge of the
  individual words. Pull up once corresponded to
  the physical action of a pilot in pulling the
  control lever that adjusted the degree of ascent
  or descent of the plane. Now, however, most
  controls in a modern jetliner consist of dials
  and buttonsthere's no "pulling" involved. So it
  is understandable that someone not familiar with
  the term pull up would not be able to derive an
  accurate meaning for it.
• However, as a current teacher of technical
  writing, I introduce my students to the
  principles of Plain English, advocating the use
  of "everyday" English terms, including phrasal
  verbs such as pull up. I began to wonder if Plain
  English is, in fact, Obscure Englishfor those
  not brought up in an English-speaking
  environment.
• Excerpt from Emily Thrushs Technical
  Communication article.

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Sociocultural Knowledge, II

• Min Huangs job relocation example.

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Polish

• Nouns decline for case and number and can be
  either masculine, feminine or neuter.
• Adjectives, pronouns and numerals decline for
  case, number and gender.
• Verbs have personal and impersonal forms.
  Personal forms conjugate for person, number,
  tense, voice and mood. Some forms can be
  masculine, feminine or neuter. Impersonal forms
  either decline for case, number and gender or do
  not inflect.
• Fortunately, adverbs, preposition, conjunctions
  and particles do not inflect.
• And finally, in Polish there is no article.

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More About Polish

• Polish makes a distinction between what are
  called perfective and imperfective verbs. Almost
  every English verb occurs as a pair of verbs in
  Polish for example, the English verb 'see'
  exists as the Polish verbs widziec and zobaczyc.
  The first is typically used to describe an
  ongoing event Widze cie (I see you) and the
  second for a typical future event Jutro cie
  zobacze (I'll see you tomorrow).

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Polish Links

• http//www.woe.edu.pl/2000/3_00/perfect.html
• http//www.dataeast-wv.com/languagetoolkit/FAQs/FA
  QsPage.html
• http//www.polandembassy.org/

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Thai Language

• The official national language, spoken by almost
  100 per cent of the population, is Thai,
  classified by linguists as belonging to a Chinese
  -Thai branch of the Sino -Tibetan family. 
  Dialects are spoken in rural areas. 
• It is a tonal language (5 tones), uninflected,
  and predominantly monosyllabic. 
• Most polysyllabic words in the vocabulary have
  been borrowed, mainly from Khmer, Pali, or
  Sanskrit. 

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Thai Language, contd.

• No plurals.
• No verb tenses (additional words added to show
  time).
• Read left to right.
• Alphabet 44 consonants, 32 vowels

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Thai Links

• http//www.nationmultimedia.com/edu/edu_back/feb_2
  8_mar_5/real.html
• http//www.nationmultimedia.com/edu/edu_back/feb_2
  1_27/real.html
• http//www.gaybutton.com/samesame.html
• http//www.english-learning.co.uk/classic20m.html
  

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Korean
Linguistic and ethnological studies have
classified the Korean language into the
Ural-Altaic language group, along with Turkish,
Hungarian, Finnish, Mongolian, Tibetan and
Japanese. Alphabet 10 vowels, 14 consonants Has
no conjunctions.
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Interesting thing about Korean

• Script invented in 1443 under King Sejong so that
  Koreans could write their own language without
  using Chinese script.
• The written language actually shows you in the
  character how you should configure your mouth.

Leads to homogeneity and middle ancestors
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Korean then looks like
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Common Mistakes in Korean

• Sentence fragments
• Sentences beginning with and
• Inappropriate tone

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Korean Links

• http//www.sigmainstitute.com/koreanonline/culture
  .shtml
• http//www.mct.go.kr/korea/index.html
• http//www.koreaembassy.org/visiting/ekorea/index.
  cfm

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Indian

• Official Language Hindi40.2 mother tongue
• Recognized Official Languages 15
• Official Working Language English
• Estimated Dialects 1600
• Some Indian languages have evolved from the
  Indo-European group of languages. This set is
  known as the Indic group of languages. The other
  set of languages are Dravidian and are native to
  South India, though a distinct influence of
  Sanskrit and Hindi is evident in these languages.
  Most of the Indian languages have their own
  script and are spoken in the respective states
  along with English.

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Urdu

• Urdu is the state language of Jammu and Kashmir
  and it evolved with Hindi in the capital of
  India, Delhi. Urdu is the language adopted by the
  majority of the Muslims in India. Urdu is written
  in the Persio-Arabic script and contains many
  words from the Persian language.
• Ab ge agarwahle kay say ha?
• Ab ge agarwahle kay say hae?

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Indian Links

• Indian embassy language info
• http//meadev.nic.in/earthquake/culture/language/l
  anguage.htm

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Chinese Language

• -have multiple scriptsmost citizens now know
  simplified
• -Of the 56 ethnic groups in China, the Hui and
  Manchu use the same languages as Han people,
  while the rest of groups have their own spoken
  and written languages.
• -no alphabet, but romanization is called pin-yin
• -tonalfour tones, plus neutral tone
• -3500-5,000 characters to read a newspaper
• -40,000 for a Ph.D.

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Chinese

• No plural nouns
• No gendered pronoun when spoken
• No past tense in verbs
• No articles
• Different question formation.
• Tendency to overuse superlatives.

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Chinese questions

• Ni uh le ma?
• You eat already question?

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Chinese

• http//englishdaily626.com/c-mistakes23.html
• http//www.cc.nctu.edu.tw/tedknoy/html/Jp-news2.h
  tm

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Overall Problems

• Sections may not be introduced
• Tenses may shift unnecessarily
• Probably be article issues

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Visuals Problems

• Visuals might not be adequately explained
• They might appear before or after the text that
  mentions them
• They might not be referenced in the text at all

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Visuals Problems II

• The captions on the visuals may be inconsistent
  (some are bold, some are sentences, some are
  fragments)
• Their numbers might not be in order (Figure 2
  then Figure 4
• The figure thats being referenced may not be the
  same as the one that has that number (the author
  is talking about a statistic in Figure 3 that
  actually appears in Figure 4)

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Comprehensive Editing

• Analyze the documents readers, purpose, and uses
  to determine what the document should do and the
  ways it will be used.
• Evaluate the documents content, organization,
  visual design, and style to determine whether the
  document accomplishes what it should (see page
  240).
• Establish editing objectives to set forth a
  specific plan for editing.
• Review the plan with the writer to work toward
  consensus.

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Client Tutoring Session

• Begin with two to three examples of what your
  client did well.
• Briefly describe the changes you made.
• Show the client how he or she can tell what
  changes you made (explain the comment function,
  point out the change in color, etc.)
• If your client begins to ask many questions at
  this point, stop your explanations and go on to
  the next part.

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Client Tutoring Session, contd

• Using POSITIVE LANGUAGE, describe the top two or
  three areas for improvement.

NO The top three mistakes you made the most often
. . The two errors I noticed the most . . .
YES The top three ways to improve your writing .
. . These two techniques will make your writing
even stronger . . .
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Client Tutoring Session, contd

• After explaining the first technique, have the
  client practice the techniqueideally, on his or
  her own paper, rather than isolated examples.
• Then, explain the second technique and practice
  it.
• Then, the third.
• Summarize what you have done with the client.
• Provide information on the Writing Center, where
  the client can go for additional help. Distribute
  bookmark.

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• Express good wishes for the success of his or her
  project, and say goodbye!
• Write up a short memo for me about
• What you did
• How you think it went
• What you learned
• Your examples and resources should be clearly
  labeled, so if you run out of time to practice
  each technique, your client can still follow what
  he or she should practice.

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Overall, be encouraging!

• You probably know how difficult it is to take a
  foreign language now imagine taking graduate
  courses in it.
• And finally, remember that this client has
  probably struggled with the errors you are
  pointing out, in addition to others, for years,
  and may be very, very frustrated. Be kind.

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Choosing Errors

• Choose the errors you review based on a number of
  factors (and please communicate this thought
  process to me in your memo)
• What you would consider the worst errors
• What are the most frequent errors
• What errors can you teach them about in an hour
  (naturally, they wont master it in an hour, but
  you can discuss it)

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Resources for Tutoring Session

• http//www.wwnorton.com/write/waor/CH28.pdf

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References

• My personal experience.
• Rude, C. Our textbook.
• Thrush, E.A. (August, 2001). A study of plain
  English vocabulary and international audiences.
  Technical Communication, 48 (3), 289-296.