Apostrophes' dont matter! Or do they?

http://metro.co.uk/2009/01/29/birmingham-bans-apostrophes-from-road-signs-406036/

Can you see the very small difference between the two signs above?

The top sign has an apostrophe (')  between Paul and s.  The bottom sign doesn't have the apostrophe.

Changes like these to signs are being made in cities in the UK.  "Moving with the times" defenders would say.

"Dropping standards" and "dumbing down" the English language are claims being made by critics of the scheme.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/images/newsgraphics/2013/0808-tests/0808-tests.png

An expert from Cambridge English Language Assessment – provider of over 4 million English language exams each year around the world – comments:

“Dumbing down the standard of English is not the road we want to go down, but you have to put this decision into context,” says Roger Johnson, Acting Chief Executive of Cambridge English Language Assessment.

“Lots of people do struggle with using apostrophes, and it’s important that learners are taught how to use them correctly but removing apostrophes from street names in Cambridge is unlikely to have an effect on English learning standards worldwide. Interestingly, we tend to find that students learning English as a foreign language master the apostrophe remarkably well. This is also true of some other complicated grammar rules, which is really encouraging. I’d be much more concerned if there was a proposal to stop teaching grammar in classrooms around the world.”

The apostrophe is a powerful punctuation mark that can have a huge impact on the meaning of a sentence. It was first introduced into English from French in the 16^th Century and is used to indicate either possession or the omission of letters.

Where do we need apostrophes in this sentence?

Charlies dogs eating its bone because its very hungry and hasnt eaten anything today.

(The spellchecker as I'm writing this only picks up on two missing apostrophes - but there are 4 needed in their sentence!)

What do you think?  I wonder how many times we actually think about the fact that a person lies behind the name of the street?  I mean, if we see the signs below on a door, we know that Daniel, Nicholas and  Suzie sleep in the room behind this door and we would no doubt think we have an idea as to how old they are, things they (don't) like, etc.

http://www.etsy.com/market/super_hero_boys

http://decalpitstop.com/ca/daniel_room2.jpg

http://www.etsy.com/es/listing/107862295/dormitorio-puerta-signo-bebe-guarderia

But most of the time, if we see

or

http://vipticketsandcorporatehospitality.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Lords.jpg

we do not think about the person (Thomas Lord) (or newspaper in the first case) behind the name.  

And I wonder what changes will appear if the guidelines on street signs are carried out to the end:

The naming policy also bans street names which would be "difficult to pronounce or awkward to spell"

Will this mean that Leicester Square, Marylebone Station, Greenwich Park and Tottenham Road will disappear????

Webinar: Changes to Cambridge English: First, First for Schools and Advanced

This webinar will focus on the revised versions of Cambridge English: First, Cambridge English: First for Schools and Cambridge English: Advanced, which go live in 2015.

It is aimed at teachers who are preparing, or going to prepare candidates for these exams. The presenters will concentrate on the formats and timings of the exams in order to fully inform teachers of the changes which are taking place.

To register for this webinar, please choose your preferred date and time.

Monday 11 November 2013  14.00 – 15.00 (UK time)

Wednesday 13 November 2013  10.00 – 11.00 (UK time)

What is English? (Repost from Cambridge English South East Europe's blog)

I've been thinking recently about the word 'like'.  It's a confusing word for students, because really early on, they will come across it as a verb and as a preposition (e.g.  I like vegetables like carrots and tomatoes.)  Then, they will come across the verb followed by both the gerund AND the infinitive. (e.g.  I like swimming in the sea.  I like to swim in the evenings.)  And I was wondering how long it would be till 'like' as a noun appears in the dictionary.  (How many likes did that photo get?)  
So today, I thought I'd repost a blog post I received in my inbox today because I thought it was really  interesting and it starts off by talking about the frequency of use of the word 'like'!

What is English?

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English speakers who are 18 or under use the word ‘like’ in conversation over five times as often as speakers who are over 70; ‘because’ is the most misspelled English word globally; the word ‘love’ is said and written over six times more frequently than the word ‘hate’. We know all of this because of a multibillion-word database called the Cambridge English Corpus.

If the Cambridge English Corpus, created by Cambridge University Press, were to be printed on single-sided A4 paper and stacked into a tower, it would stand 600 m high, almost twice the height of the tallest building in the UK. If it was read aloud at an average reading speed, it would take 88,766 hours to read; working 7 hours a day, 5 days a week, that’s 49 years.

The multibillion-word Cambridge English Corpus is a constantly updated record of how English is being used today in all its forms – spoken, written, business, academic, learner and e-language. Amassed over two decades, the electronic database draws on sources that range from the more expected (books, newspapers, journals, radio, television) to the more surprising (song lyrics, junk mail, voicemail messages and recordings from flight control).

Cambridge University Press researchers use the Corpus to investigate the most common words, phrases and grammatical patterns in English, and then use the results to improve English language teaching books.

“Context in English is important,” explained Dr Claire Dembry, Language Research Manager, “we analyse patterns in language and how English changes depending on context and circumstances. For learners of English to become proficient, these sorts of subtle differences can be extremely important, and it is only by amassing a vast number of examples that our writers, lexicographers and researchers can determine how best to describe the patterns of English in our learning materials.”

It all began in the 1990s, when a few CDs of American newspapers in electronic form were loaded into a database that both stored the data and ‘queried’ it, working out the relationships between words. Gradually, the embryo corpus was extended with further material and, today, almost any conceivable form of English can be found in the database.

At an early stage, Cambridge University Press realised that just as important as knowing how English is being used, is the knowledge of the features of English that learners find difficult. “This decision, which led to the Cambridge Learner Corpus, had far-reaching effects and has become probably the single most important unique selling point for the Press’s English Language Teaching publishing,” said Ann Fiddes, Global Language Research Manager.

It turns out that words such as because (misspelled as becouse), which (wich), accommodation (accomodation), advertisement (advertisment) and beautiful (beatiful) are the top five words most commonly misspelled by learners globally.

To arrive at conclusions like this has taken years of painstaking identification (and tagging with computer readable codes) of misspellings and grammatical errors made in Cambridge English Language Assessment Examinations in the Cambridge Learner Corpus.

Comprehensive information about the learners who originally wrote the exam scripts – first language, nationality, age, gender, scores, and so on – is stored.  These data, along with the ‘error tagging’, has enabled Cambridge University Press to publish materials addressing directly the different types of errors of individual markets and individual language groups.

“This is hugely important for the Press and has meant that we have, for example, been able to publish the successful English for Spanish Speakers editions of global products, and become the market leader in Corpus-based publishing,” explained Fiddes.

Now, Cambridge University Press and Cambridge English Language Assessment have joined forces and set their sights on academic English. 

The Cambridge English Corpus already contains over 400 million words of academic English – the largest and most extensive collection of its kind.  It takes as its source written and spoken academic language at undergraduate, postgraduate and professional level from a range of academic disciplines and worldwide institutions. New research is pulling in data from sixth-form students as well as other academic levels, covering a much wider range of disciplines, genres and language backgrounds.

“Some interesting patterns have already emerged,” said Fiddes. “In our collection of academic English samples, the size adjectives significant, considerable, substantial and serious are much more frequent than big, massive, enormous and tremendous. In spoken English, however, big tops the list. We also found that in academic English, verbs such as solve, pose, face, resolve, tackle and circumvent frequently occur with the noun problem. These kinds of insights help us to develop a better understanding of the language skills needed by students at English-speaking universities.”

As part of their current research, the team welcomes contributions of academic English to the corpus, and invite anyone interested in participating to contact them for more information (www.cambridge.org/camcae).

“Corpus work is very closely linked with advances in technology and we are investigating automating many of our manual systems, such as error tagging and speech transcription,” added Fiddes. “Our research has already allowed us to partially automate the mark up of errors in learner writing.

“These technologies will increase the speed at which we can maintain our grasp on what English is now, and what it might be in the future. ”

For more information about the Cambridge English Corpus, please visit www.cambridge.org/corpus

Amazing colours

I have been finding out what arrangements need to be made (and steps taken) for a colour blind student who will shortly be taking the Cambridge English: Starters Test in a school here in Cantabria.  Cambridge English Language Assessment have procedures for dealing with many different special needs

Obviously, because colour plays an important part in the Young Learner Tests, colour blind candidates would be at a great disadvantage if they took the test without these considerations being made.

Back in March, I wrote about types of colour blindness and recommended loading pictures onto Vischeck to see what they look like to a colour blind student.

Recently, I was reading about the Stroop Effect in a hotel magazine.  Click on this link to take a test and find out for yourself what the Stroop Effect is!

Fun and intriguing I found!

I then fed words from the Stroop Effect Test into an online tool (Vischeck didn't seem to be working so I found another site to do this: http://asada.tukusi.ne.jp/cvsconv/

http://informationbombardment.com/fun-stuff/stroop-effect/

Deuteranope vision

Tritanope vision

Notice how the words 'black' and 'purple' almost disappear if you have Tritanope vision!

And, of course, I found a great talk on Ted.com.  Fascinating.  I don't know if I could stand to have colour sounds playing in my head all day, but I suppose that Neil Harbisson's life has been enriched by being able to 'perceive' colour in a different way.

Artist Neil Harbisson was born completely color blind, but these days a device attached to his head turns color into audible frequencies. Instead of seeing a world in grayscale, Harbisson can hear a symphony of color -- and yes, even listen to faces and paintings

And of course, we often hear about colours being related to moods.  I found this image on pinterest the other day and that inspired me to bring together all my colour related pictures and videos and information and write this post!

Today we chat with Gerard McLoughlin who will be delivering a talk at The Cambridge Experience Valencia

Today I have the pleasure to chat with Gerard McLoughlin. Gerard has been a teacher and trainer for 20 years. He is currently a teacher and trainer on CELTA and DELTA courses at International House Barcelona. He has an MA in ELT and is a co-author of Next Generation, a Bachillerato coursebook for Cambridge University Press.

Gerard will be delivering the talk "Accuracy to Fluency" next Saturday 11th of May at the Cambridge Experience Valencia - Hotel Silken Puerta Valencia. 

Entrance is free but teachers wanting to attend need to register in advance here.

Hello Gerard! Why did you decide to go into English language teaching?

When I first finished collage I knew I wanted to live in Italy and asked around about how I could get work there. Friends told me about teaching English and that’s what made me start. Once I was there I realised that being in the classroom suited my personality. I love helping people and the classroom gives me an opportunity to do exactly that. I could never see myself doing anything else. I never get bored whether I’m training teachers or teaching.

Gerard McLoughlin

Who or what inspires you?

My students! Our classes are about sharing information and I learn so much from being with them. It has really helped me to grow as a person and understand what makes people click.

What's your all time top-tip for English language teachers?

Be yourself, listen to your students and help them say what they want to say.

Do you have a favourite ELT website?

This is a hard one as I have so many both ELT and non-ELT. One of the things I do in my classes is try to develop students’ awareness of issues and world conditions they might not have considered. My all time favourite for doing this is Disabled Access Friendly   It has a wealth of material and lesson plans that I use quite regularly in my classes. But as most teachers I also find a lot  of ideas on everday websites such as The Guardian  and New York Times.

A gadget you can't live without?

I’m not a big gadget person. I suppose it’s because of my generation.  I couldn’t live without my laptop, I use it all the time for keeping in touch with family and friends and keeping up to date with what’s happening in the world.

And finally, why do you think teachers should see your talk?

That’s a hard one.  My talk is about how I help students develop their speaking. I find that speaking is also about listening and both speakers have a role. It’s a two way conversation and how do we make that seem natural? Come and find out! 

Thanks Gerard! It's been a pleasure to chat with you!