Cause for despair?
Tutor voice 3
|
[Lecturer of French in a pre-1992 university] Maybe I'm just getting old and cynical, but the quality of language produced by students these days is incredibly poor - especially first- and second-years, but also some finalists. I really get fed up with constantly correcting the same basic error time after time…I sometimes wonder what secondary schools are teaching kids…I don't just mean most of the group make the same errors but also that an individual student will keep making the same stupid mistake and no matter how often I correct it, he or she will just keep on doing it, week after week. |
Leaving aside the debate about falling grammatical standards (see Sheppard, 1993; McCulloch, 1995; Klapper, 1997, 1998; Gray, 1999), this comment about students' apparent inability to learn from their errors echoes many a moan over coffee in university common rooms. Schmidt and O'Dochartaigh (2001: 31) quote the strikingly similar view of one of their interviewees, a lecturer in German: 'It really frustrates me and makes me wonder why I'm here, when a student, no matter how many times I point out that it's wrong, gives me an English plural in German such as 'Die Politikers'. Sometimes I wonder who let them onto the course!' So, does the linguistic fallibility of today's students signal the end of civilization as we know it? What are we to make of this apparent incorrigibility? The answer is to be sought in the study of second language acquisition.
 |
|
|
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
|
