Identify and correct errors involving types of clauses

(By growing the body of literature/There is a growing body of literature/With a growing body of literature/It is a growing body of literature), (having suggested/that suggests/by suggesting/to suggest) that languages (who marginalize publications/ marginalizing/whose publications are marginalized/which publications are marginalized) are negatively stereotyped and discriminated against.

Researchers asked undergraduate students to fill out questionnaires (describing English lingua franca/to describe English lingua franca /that describes English lingua franca /for to describing English lingua franca), (that is replacing German and French/who was replacing German and French/which was replacing German and French/whom was replacing German and French) both in education and business.

Unit 1-14. TEACHING AND LEARNING EURO-ENGLISH IN SWITZERLAND

Section 1. Guidelines for reading texts on the use of English in European education

It is part of the EU’s multilingualism policy to encourage all citizens to learn and speak more languages, in order to improve mutual understanding and communication. Multilingualism is regarded as a form of empowerment, which, however, includes the appropriation of English to a degree that may eventually give rise to a European variety of English.

The education systems in Europe, particularly at the university level, are in the process of becoming more mutually compatible, with the result that English is becoming more prevalent not only as the lingua franca of research but also of instruction. It should therefore surprise no one that EU research programmes are administered completely in English.

What might a European variety English be like? Projects aimed at collecting and analyzing samples of intra-European English have been launched in the last few years, but a linguistic description still lies some distance in the future. The term Euro-English was first used to denote the particular register of English spoken by bureaucrats in multinational discussions in Brussels, but is also used to denote the emerging variety of English spoken as a lingua franca by EU residents. If Euro-English were one day to become a recognized, standardizing variety of World English, would it be a target language to be taught in European schools? And, if this were the case, how might English teaching have to change? These are among the questions that arise as work on the description of Euro-English progresses. Some of these questionss are discussed in the article by an American teacher Mercia Mcneil who lived in Swtzerland and taught English for two years at a Swiss German university

Text 1-14. TEACHING AND LEARNING EURO-ENGLISH IN SWITZERLAND: A BRIEF ANALYSIS AND SOME IDEAS FOR TEACHING

(After Merica Mcneil)

My Swiss connection:

I taught English as a Foreign Language (EFL) for two years in Switzerland at the University of Applied Sciences in Winterthur, which is a mere 20-minute express train ride from Zurich, the country’s largest city. My job title was English Teaching Assistant. I usually took half of the class, while the other half stayed with their Swiss English teacher. I worked with a variety of teachers and classes and so I led class with each group of students every other week.

I usually had a good deal of freedom to do what I wanted with the students in class. Sometimes I was asked to give students extra practice using specified vocabulary or grammar. Other times I was able to create lessons on topics of choice, for example about current events, communication strategies, cultural topics, sometimes American, such as Martin Luther King, Jr., sometimes Swiss, such as controversial issues in current events. I had half the class at a time and the emphasis was on improving communicative competency. Sometimes students talked in pairs or small groups, and sometimes they gave oral presentations.

My class offered students the opportunity to practice speaking and listening to each other and with a native speaker in English and to learn about each other’s countries, cultures, and educational topics of interest, such as comparing and contrasting the Swiss and American education systems. Also, I’m pretty sure their motivation to speak English was increased because I’m a native speaker, was close to their age, I tried to provide interesting material, and my class was more relaxed because it was not in my job description to give grades or tests. Most of the classes were pretty much a monolingual groups with the majority being Swiss German, although there were a few other L1s represented.

I worked with students at a variety of levels from low intermediate to advanced. The students were taking English because it was a required course for them. Their motivations varied. Not surprisingly, oftentimes, some of the more advanced students had already spent some time abroad in an English speaking country. Some of them had gone to study abroad for a few months in Australia, England, Ireland, or the U.S., while some went on vacation to one of these countries. For these students, they were motivated to communicate with native speakers of English or non-native speakers in those countries.

For the advanced students, some of them already had work experience using English talking to native speakers and/or using English as a lingua franca. Some of the students accepted the challenge of writing their thesis in English, some of which I helped revise. All students had to provide an abstract of their senior project in English. Sometimes this proved challenging for me because there was technical jargon with which I was unfamiliar. Some professors in our department met with students who needed help in this challenging task.

I taught some Swiss students also in an English as a Second Language (ESL) environment at Global Village, a language school in Honolulu. When I taught Business English there, a majority of my students were Swiss German. Many of them needed English for their jobs in Switzerland to be able to communicate with native speakers of English sometimes, and also with non-native speakers of English.

Many of the mistakes students make is due to L1 influence. Because I have studied German, Swiss German, and French extensively, I was able to use these skills to understand Swiss students and, in helping them, say what they wanted to express, although sometimes it was easier to express in a way that would not be familiar or natural sounding to another native speaker of English. When such things came up in speaking class in exercises, conversation or student presentations, I would sometimes explain this point to students for future reference, however, I usually emphasized communicative competence and thus was not a stickler for requiring students to conform to traditional native speaker norms. Now that I look back on it, this seems to match Euro-English ideals as it was appropriate in expressing their “underlying cultural context” (Modiano 2003), i.e. Modiano mentions an example of a metaphor Swedes might use in English “blue-eyed” to mean naïve. Similar to Swedish, this expression is also in German “blau augig” and means the same. In Switzerland, where speakers from different L1s are increasingly using English as a lingua franca, some misunderstanding can occur when a speaker uses expressions unique to their L1. For example, in a survey that Heather Murray conducted of English teachers in Switzerland results from the questionnaire show that the majority of teachers (58.8%) from the French-speaking part rejected the term handy (a cell phone), a term, a typical false loanword from German (Murray 2003).

A new model for English language teaching:

The idealized variety of English that is taught in schools in Europe is usually British or American English. Traditionally, if students deviate from the native speaker norm, they are considered incorrect, even though if they are understood. Wouldn’t it be better instead to focus on communicative competence? Changing tradition and standards would take a lot of struggle. Some linguists are fighting for change and want to revolutionize English language teaching and learning to introduce Euro-English as a new model for English language teaching and learning in Europe. That would entail a total readjustment in our goals of English language teaching and learning and would thus necessitate new materials and assessment to match this new ideology. In this paper, I will draw on my own experience teaching English in Switzerland and present research discussing several pros and cons of Euro-English as a new model for English language teaching. In the end, I will offer some considerations and ideas for English language teaching.

Why I chose this topic:

I chose this topic because I have dealt with the questions of standards in language teaching and learning when I was teaching English abroad as students and teachers often asked me questions on correct or appropriate language in my native speaker opinion. Additionally, these topics are becoming increasingly more visible in the English Language Teaching (ELT) realm. English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), which is also called English as an International Language (EIL), and Euro-English have received a great deal of attention in the last decade. I will briefly explain the terms ELF and Euro-English later. Much is being researched in this area, such as the VOICE corpus project in Austria, which is the first large-scale corpus of its kind documenting spoken samples of non-native speakers. Due to the overwhelmingly wide scope I am going to focus on the situation in Switzerland because it is of particular interest to me and I can provide insider information because I lived and taught English there for two years at a Swiss German university

In this paper I will first briefly discuss the growing importance of English in Switzerland. Next, we will examine whether we should continue to uphold traditional standards of British English or American English as the target language. Then we will discuss whether Euro-English should be taken into account as a model and look at pros and cons. This decision should match what we do in the classroom as it affects teachers consider what acceptable English is. We should also think about teaching materials to match our mindset. Are they already available or do we as teachers need to create them? Will publishers be willing to provide such materials in the future? If we adjust our model of English and our goals using it, we must reconsider how to correct and assess students.

The growing importance of English in Switzerland:

Most of the students were pretty motivated to learn English because they believed it to be important not only for their future jobs, but also for international traveling purposes. For example, if they go to Ticino, the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, they would probably use English as a Lingua Franca. In Switzerland, they are required to study another national language, for example Swiss Germans have to study French, and French Swiss have to study German. However, my Swiss friends told me that many Swiss would prefer to speak in English together because then it is a foreign language for both people. In this way, English is increasingly being used as a lingua franca in Switzerland.

Another reason for this is that although the French Swiss study High German, German-speaking Swiss actually speak Swiss German dialects, which are quite different than High German, although they do use High German in writing, in school, and in formal situations. Therefore, although Swiss French speakers may study years of German in school, they most likely would not be able to understand a normal conversation between two German-speaking Swiss because they would most likely be speaking their Swiss German dialect. Actually, I’ve heard that many German-speaking Swiss do not really like or feel comfortable speaking High German, but that is another topic.

A Survey of Swiss English Teachers

A survey of a representative sample of 253 English teachers in Switzerland was conducted by Heather Murray to gather information about their attitudes toward Euro-English. I would like to point out the results of a relevant question relating to teaching materials. Teachers used a five point scale ranging from ‘strongly agree’ to ‘don’t know’ to ‘strongly disagree.’ Here is the relevant statement and the results:

Most of the situations in my course book assume that my learners will later be speaking English with native speakers; I think there should be more situations showing non-native speakers communicating with each other. (Murray 2003)

This question was to take a poll of whether teachers think Euro-English situations should be shown in course books. At the moment, lingua franca English is almost never represented in course books. The responses were different from native and non-native English speaking English teachers; native speakers showed weak agreement while non-native speakers showed weak disagreement. When comparing age groups taught, a similar difference appeared, where 60% of teachers of adults agreed while 66% of teachers of teens disagreed, which could lead one to believe that a native speaker model is deemed more important in teaching English to teens than to adults (Murray 2003).

So why do people still insist that we still look to the native speaker of English as the official authority? Many are unhappy with this tradition and are trying to change things. When English is used as a lingua franca in a certain geographical area, over time, some differences emerge. There is thus an immersion of Englishes. There is not one standard monolithic English, but many different emerging Englishes around the world. For example in the English in India or in Switzerland is very different than where I’m from in the U.S. in terms of accent, pronunciation, and surely there are different words that are unique to each. But they are using English as a lingua franca in order to communicate meaning. Actually, the differences between Swiss-English and British English or American English aren’t that big of a deal. There is mostly mutual intelligibility. And in my opinion, that is the most important for communication in the real world. However, if one has to pass a standardized test in English, that is another thing all together. Perhaps the tests need to be changed? I don’t think the big (money-making) industries of Cambridge and ETS are going to change very easily.

(To be continued in Unit 2-14)

GUIDELINES FOR WRITING A SUMMARY

Instruction: The purpose of a summary is to give the reader, in about 1/3 of the original length of an article/paper, a clear, objective picture of the original paper or article. Most importantly, the summary restates only the main points of a text without giving examples or details, such as dates, numbers or statistics.

There are quite a few skills to be practiced in summary wreiting: note-taking, paraphrasing (using your own words and sentence structure), condensing, etc. Below are some important tips for writing a summary.

Tips for writing a summary

1. First, read the text or article to get a general idea of the subject matter as well as the author's attitude.

2. Then read through a second time to identify the main points – either paragraph by paragraph, or heading by heading / sub-heading.

Identify the topic sentences. These are usually the first sentences of each paragraph. They give the main idea for the paragraph (with the following sentences supporting this main idea). Also look for the concluding sentence in the paragraph, as this often summarises the paragraph.

3. Now write the main idea of each paragraph (or section) in one sentence. Use your own words, rather than the author's words. This is important: if you copy what the author has written, you risk writing too much!

4. Start pulling out key facts or findings from the text which support the author's main idea (or ideas). You may need to either summarise these (if there are a lot of them) or decide which are the most important or relevant.

However, if you are summarising a number of texts or articles, start to look for common themes running through all the texts. Are the texts broadly in agreement, or do they have different points of view or findings? Choose only a few supporting details to illustrate similarity or contrast.

5. When you have written all your sentences, you should be able to get a good overview of the whole text. This overview can be your introduction to your summary. In your introduction, you'll also need to give the author's name and the title of the text you are summarising.

Your summary should now look like this: text/author information; your overview (the introduction); the single sentences summarising the main ideas, with the key facts or figures that support the ideas.

6. At this point, you'll need to organise all the information in the most logical way. You might also have repeated ideas or details that you'll need to delete.

7. Don't forget to include linking words so your reader can easily follow your thoughts. This will help your summary flow better, and help you avoid writing short sentences without any connection between them.

Important points to remember

Don't copy the article. Instead, paraphrase. While paraphrasing, use verbs of saying and reporting, e.g.: “the author argues, claims, maintains, states, suggests, etc.” If you quote directly from the original text, use quotation marks. (Minimise how often you do this.)

Don't give your opinion.

Edit what you write. Check your English grammar, spelling and punctuation mistakes.

Section 2. Grammar workout

Adverb clauses

An adverb clause consists of a connecting word, called an adverb clause marker (or subordinate conjunction), and at least a subject and a verb. An adverb clause can precede the main clause or follow it. When the adverb clause comes first, it is separated from the main clause by a comma.

Example:

The demand for economical cars increases when gasoline becomes more expensive.

When gasoline becomes more expensive, the demand for economical cars increases.

In this example, the adverb clause marker when joins the adverb clause to the main clause. The verb clause contains a subject (gasoline) and a verb (becomes).

The following markers are commonly used:

Examples:

Time: Your heart rate increases when you exercise.

Time: Some people like to listen to music while they are studying.

Time: Some people arrived in taxis while others took the subway.

Time: One train was arriving as another was departing.

Time: We haven't seen Professor Hill since she returned from her trip.

Time: Don't put off going to the dentist until you have a prob­lem.

Time: Once the dean arrives, the meeting can begin.

Time: Before he left the country, he bought some traveler's checks.

Time: She will give a short speech after she is presented with the award.

Cause: Because the speaker was sick, the program was canceled.

Opposition (contrary cause): Since credit cards are so convenient, many people use them.

Contrast: Although he earns a good salary, he never saves any money.

Contrast: Even though she was tired, she stayed up late.

Condition: If the automobile had not been invented, what would people use for basic transportation?

Condition: I won't go unless you do.

In structure items, any part of a full adverb clause – the marker, the subject, the verb, and so on – can be missing from the stem.

Clause markers with ever: Words that end with -ever are sometimes used as adverb clause markers: whoever, whatever, whenever, wherever, whichever, however. In some sentences, these words are actually noun-clause markers.

Examples:

Put that box wherever you can find room for it.

They stay at that hotel whenever they're in Boston.

No matter how/ Wqhatever way/However you solve the problem, you'll get the same answer.

Reduced adverb clauses

When the subject of the main clause and the subject of the adverb clause are the same person or thing, the adverb clause can be reduced (shortened). Reduced adverb clauses do not contain a main verb or a subject. They consist of a marker and a participle (either a present or a past participle) or a marker and an adjective.

Examples:

When linguists are studying a minority language, they don't neglect its social functions, (full adverb clause).

When studying a minority language, linguists don't neglect its social functions, (reduced clause with present participle).

Although it had been limited, the regional language was still operational, (full adverb clause).

Although limited, the regional language was still operational, (reduced clause with a past participle).

Although he was nervous, the lecturer gave a wonderful speech, (full adverb clause) Although nervous, the lecturer gave a wonderful speech, (reduced clause with an adjective).

You will most often see reduced adverb clauses with the markers although, while, if, when, before, after, and until. Reduced adverb clauses are NEVER used after because.