http://www.englishforums.com/search/pro.htm?q=tag%3aIELTS+tag%3aDialectsSearch results for 'tag:IELTS tag:Dialects' matching tags 'IELTS' and 'Dialects'en-USCSMOD (Build: 3273.32735)http://www.englishforums.com/English/InferiorDialects/crqbn/post.htm#171696Mon, 19 Dec 2005 09:36:48 GMT946f00bb-57d3-4b7b-a9a2-059b5341af52:171696randy_tamI am not quite close to homeless I am living at my aunt s home because my granny invited 3 of her siplings to stay aiya according to my parents this is going to last 2 weeks or more I am currently using my uncle s PC just to get here and take a look at what you say Though I cannot come here as frequently as I used to Looking at dictionaries for meanings phonetic representations whatever does not mean you are forming rules of some sort I am sorry I didn t include this in describing what a native speaker s going to do with a dictionary lol This is especially true with languages belonging to the Sino family the orthography of which is ideographic for which reason the phonological form can hardly be guessed just from its shape I remember I read a passage during my F3 Chinese lessons called lt 漢字的結構 gt in which the author asserted that there s a kind of Chinese letters the 形聲字 whose pronunciations could be guessed I can hardly agree with this Even an L1 speaker of Chinese without prior training can hardly succeed in this This is also true to a certain extent of English because of its hybrid source of etymons um I mean the root of a lexical item I don t really remember the English jargon for it French Old English German Irish Greek Latin all contribute to the English language as it is today leading to the lack of consistency between the orthographical and phonological forms of English words These little cracks of course can not be formulated by the human cognitive system simply by means of conjecture etc Language is of course not a science but the STUDY into it can be just as one may well argue whether translatology is an art or a science I am not really sure whether university English courses lay more stress on the scientific side of languages than on the cultural side thereof To the best of my knowledge this is not the case Both are given equal stress I come to this conclusion from information available to me Lingnan University where I am taking my undergraduate yr1 course in Contemporary English and Education and Chinese University where a friend of mine is currently a yr2 student in English both have introductory courses into English Grammar as well as introductory courses into literature in English The workload is virtually the same for the 2 parts at least in yr 1 But as the course goes on more such courses as language and culture or sociolinguistics are available making the curriculum more relevant to the relationship between language and social factors But your statement is true in that Hong Kongers are culturally more and more illiterate being ignorant not only in foreign cultures but also in their own Their ignorance in local culture being irrelevant here I d like to suggest some plausible reasons why language education from a cultural perspective is losing its ground 1 It appears students are less motivated in their learning these days What I mean by this is that days at school become more and more dreary schooling is more or less a long toil against which students devise one of the most primitive countermeasures known to man go have some sleep and look for your Juliet in your dream handsome Romeo But this countermeasure has its roots in that at night students have to attend tutorial classes which they deem even more useful than classes at school They having had such classes head back home have their dinner do some homework and perhaps some reading as well and hey mama I need time to play and relax a while Voila time to sleep puppy it s already 0300 in the midnight Frankly last year when I was having my A Level I spent almost 7 hours everyday after school just to revise and read something more I didn t take tutorial classes save for economics it was already 1200 when I returned home from the self study facilities It was hell All this lead to a persistent fatigue in students So the consequence is that even if the cultural side of language is come across at school there could hardly be anyone listening lol reminds me of my UE class Almost 2 3 of our class were sleeping if no assignments were given 2 One may well ask an old question why do students opt for tutorial classes instead of school To this old question I give an old answer because students think tutorial classes are more useful in that they cut the craps and just get straight to the point gt I didn t take tutorials so don t blame me for that But from what I hear from my ex gf my friends and my classmates this is the case What is meant then by craps ie anything that is not relevant to the examinations ahead Examinations strangely enough dominate students minds My classmates may well think that I am good at linguistics and so they will immediately conclude without exception so you must score a high GPA Sadly the thing that is immediately associated with good or bad is a score Your suggestion about IELTS that I took 2 years ago lol without attending any tutorial classes or doing preparations of any sort just fulfilling your minimum requirement when I was a 6th former therefore in this context does not really render any use in determining the always abtract language standard of English teachers IELTS has nothing about culture Given that absurd formula good bad score and given the fact that actually there are tutorial classes given on this test available in Hong Kong IELTS is simply another UE 3 These lead to the 3rd possible cause All that Hong Kong as a physiological identity separated from its people wants about English is to make it a little utility the current English curriculum is concerned with how to use English as the name of the subject suggests Use of English not how to appreciate English as a language or as Sapir Whorf s hypothesis suggests a fruit of a culture Think about the writing assignments Letter to the editor Letter of complaint Informal letter to a friend sharing students own experience perhaps and essays on the sheer knowledge on some current social issues Listening is more or less to make students a phono type write whatever you hear of course that needs some thought but what is needed in a real dialogue any puns suggested the attitude of the speaker slips of tongue all these are absent Oral haha that s a joke Just keep talking and make your points understandable to your partners to score high If this is not enough sham having some foreign accents What is the most important part in English exams in Hong Kong as an interviewee in a programme produced by TVB name really forgotten but the programme is great pointed out is comprehension not how to express oneself accounting for the deteriorating English language standard these days 4 What makes the situation even worse is the availability of such lures as PC games movies and the Internet _ am I not surfing the net Students 20 years ago may take pleasure in reading fictions Le Docteur Pascal Women in Love the God of Small Things I didn t take AL E Lit I really read it for pleasure Sybil by Benjamin Disraeli these are all fictions that I like But as other forms of leisure can be more easily reached today reading to learn from the experience of another person a function of literature becomes a hefty burden from which every students wants to escape So the entire English pedagogic machine becomes a miserable thing brewing students who treat English as nothing more than a tool to show their erudition as is observed from the fact that complaint letters written in English to the Government or to such other authorities as concerned are paid more attention to even if the author thereof is a Hong Konger I do not mean Hong Kongers are in their nature inferior to non Hong Kongers What I am trying to bring out is that there exists a sort of linguistic discrimination even if the government has declared equal legal status of Chinese and English Discriminations of this sort conduce to English being treated the utilitarian way Actually I was writing an essay on this attitude toward English when the semester started But the study was halted by the profs on the grounds that I am but a yr1 student so that I should leave the topic to my yr 3 actually yr 4 final paper Anyway I don t give a damn anymore Your suggestion relative to the English curriculum is good but I wonder if it would be possible even in the university as the topics suggested are each already a large topic Or are you actually suggesting it as a framework that is to be followed through during the 16 years university years inclusive of schooling I love linguistics not really because I treat language in a parochial scientific way I am limiting language to the essence leaving this undefined because I am more interested in the common traits shared by ALL human languages Culture yes that sounds great and in my literature studies I remember I once looked into the relationship between gender roles and why Alice Munro s lt Boys and Girls gt is written that way But still linguistics studied in the way I mentioned before is what I am most interested in for which reason I am not really ok with the course I am taking and am therefore applying by non JUPAS for CU linguistics to see if I have a chance