Living "on" dorms

Work Teaching English in Taiwan
1

Lately I’ve been grading TOEFL speaking practice tests (yes, I need the extra cash in these lean summer months!). This involves listening to recorded material, so I don’t meet the students in person. In this work, I frequently hear very common errors made by local English learners, such as “he think”, “there are two reason”, etc. But not every student makes these errors.

There’s one error, however, that the students I’ve been grading universally get wrong. And I’ve listened to perhaps 40 of these recordings in which the student makes this mistake. Instead of “living in dorms”, they say, without exception (at least so far), “living on dorms”.

I don’t know why this is. Part of the question has to do with “living on campus”, so I see the possibility of interference from this, but even so, I’d expect at least a few students to get this one right. I don’t think it could be L1 interference, since Chinese doesn’t even use a preposition in 住宿舍.

Can anyone out there with EFL experience shed some light on why this error is so pervasive?

2

This error has nothing to do with L1 interference, but rather the way language is presented in textbooks here.(And these textbooks are written by Taiwanese English teachers because a native speaker wouldn’t make that error, unless it was a typo.) Typically, Taiwanese students learn English from textbooks that present language as isolated items, devoid of any co-textual clues. Thus they would learn “living” and “on” as seperate items.(Actually, it’s not uncommon here for students to be sent home with a list of prepositions to learn, as if these words have meaning on their own!) Anyway, to cut a long story short, students try and combine two words that have no lexical relationship together. Thus if I asked students to find an adjective that means “a lot of cars on the road”, they might answer “crowded”, and then go ahead and use it with “traffic”, making the nonsensical “crowded traffic”. Or, like a student of mine the other day, they might use a complicated word that means “walk”(ie, “saunter”) and fuse that word with “dog”, making “to saunter the dog”! Now the error is quite logical considering the way they’ve been taught language. However, it’d be much more constructive to teach the verb “living” alongside its partner “in” and then teach students which nouns collocate with “living in”, such as: “the city”, “a rented apartment”, “paradise”, “hell”, and of course, “a dorm”. If there was more emphasis on LEXIS here in Taiwan and less on grammar, then we’d “iron in” all those errors. Or should that be “iron out”? Hey, pass me the Chinese-English dictionary.

3

Chris, I’m not sure why the Taiwanese students are saying “living on dorms,” but please do me a favor?

My full time job is to grade actual TOEFL speaking tests. Every day I do this, I wonder who it is who teaches these test takers that the first thing they should do after innitially responding to the prompt is to state how many reasons they have for whatever position they’ve just taken. Example, “Some may prefer to live off campus, but I prefer to live in the dorm. There are three reasons for this.”

Any response like that is never, ever, going to score at the top. A three is the best these respondants are likely to be able to hope for but usually they’ll end up being 2s. The reason for this is that using that phrase is nothing more than employing a formula. This phrase is simply a simplified restatement of the prompt and the beginning of a framed response. It only helps to take up seconds of tape time so that they have come up with that much less original speach. I hate this prase!

So, if you’re near anyone who teaches actual students, pass the word along for me, will you? Please discourage the use of this phrase for students who are already beyond the first scoring level. Otherwise, it’s not helping them at all and may be hurting them.

4

[quote=“housecat”]Chris, I’m not sure why the Taiwanese students are saying “living on dorms,” but please do me a favor?

My full time job is to grade actual TOEFL speaking tests. Every day I do this, I wonder who it is who teaches these test takers that the first thing they should do after initially responding to the prompt is to state how many reasons they have for whatever position they’ve just taken. Example, “Some may prefer to live off campus, but I prefer to live in the dorm. There are three reasons for this.”[/quote]

Oh, I hear this one all the time! And I object to it for three reasons … :slight_smile: I mean, I object to it for the same reasons you do. They should just drop this formulaic time-waster and get to the topic.

And I don’t know how many times they’ve said “for three reason” (note the dropped -s), and run out of time before even getting halfway through the second!

I do know some teachers, and I’ll pass on the word.

5

[quote=“Chris”]
I don’t know why this is. Part of the question has to do with “living on campus”, so I see the possibility of interference from this, [/quote]

That’s most likely the exact reason. Given an amount of–understandable–uncertainty about what correct English preposition usage is in a particular situation, the “living on” prompt proves irresistible. As an experiment, maybe you could try wording the question as “living at school” or something and see what happens.

6

[quote=“housecat”]Chris, I’m not sure why the Taiwanese students are saying “living on dorms,” but please do me a favor?

My full time job is to grade actual TOEFL speaking tests. Every day I do this, I wonder who it is who teaches these test takers that the first thing they should do after innitially responding to the prompt is to state how many reasons they have for whatever position they’ve just taken. Example, “Some may prefer to live off campus, but I prefer to live in the dorm. There are three reasons for this.”

Any response like that is never, ever, going to score at the top. A three is the best these respondants are likely to be able to hope for but usually they’ll end up being 2s. The reason for this is that using that phrase is nothing more than employing a formula. This phrase is simply a simplified restatement of the prompt and the beginning of a framed response. It only helps to take up seconds of tape time so that they have come up with that much less original speach. I hate this prase!

So, if you’re near anyone who teaches actual students, pass the word along for me, will you? Please discourage the use of this phrase for students who are already beyond the first scoring level. Otherwise, it’s not helping them at all and may be hurting them.[/quote]

That’s bullshit. You are docking students for using a set phrase. What next, no idioms? Seriously, just because many students use this is no reason to give anyone a poor score. It’s simply a way of organizing one’s thoughts. If they use the formula properly then they should not be docked simply because you don’t like it. I think you are being very very unfair.

7

One problem is that these formulas are time-wasters, and they set themselves up for points deduction in topic development when they say they have three reasons and run out of time before even finishing the second. Instead of addressing the topic, they needlessly spend half their time mumbling through fillers:

“I preefer leaving on dorm threereasonfirstreason I prefer leaving on dorm becowze XXXXXXXXX, second reason I preefer leaving on dorm becowze…”

8

[quote=“Chris”]One problem is that these formulas are time-wasters, and they set themselves up for points deduction in topic development when they say they have three reasons and run out of time before even finishing the second. Instead of addressing the topic, they needlessly spend half their time mumbling through fillers:

“I preefer leaving on dorm threereasonfirstreason I prefer leaving on dorm becowze XXXXXXXXX, second reason I preefer leaving on dorm becowze…”[/quote]

Point taken but rhetorical structures are what makes language comprehensible.

9

[quote=“Mucha Man”][quote=“housecat”]Chris, I’m not sure why the Taiwanese students are saying “living on dorms,” but please do me a favor?

My full time job is to grade actual TOEFL speaking tests. Every day I do this, I wonder who it is who teaches these test takers that the first thing they should do after innitially responding to the prompt is to state how many reasons they have for whatever position they’ve just taken. Example, “Some may prefer to live off campus, but I prefer to live in the dorm. There are three reasons for this.”

Any response like that is never, ever, going to score at the top. A three is the best these respondants are likely to be able to hope for but usually they’ll end up being 2s. The reason for this is that using that phrase is nothing more than employing a formula. This phrase is simply a simplified restatement of the prompt and the beginning of a framed response. It only helps to take up seconds of tape time so that they have come up with that much less original speach. I hate this prase!

So, if you’re near anyone who teaches actual students, pass the word along for me, will you? Please discourage the use of this phrase for students who are already beyond the first scoring level. Otherwise, it’s not helping them at all and may be hurting them.[/quote]

That’s bullshit. You are docking students for using a set phrase. What next, no idioms? Seriously, just because many students use this is no reason to give anyone a poor score. It’s simply a way of organizing one’s thoughts. If they use the formula properly then they should not be docked simply because you don’t like it. I think you are being very very unfair.[/quote]

I don’t dock them for this phrase. I don’t dock them for anything. They are scorred according to a rubric. They must attain sufficent topic development to progress to a higher score. Lower level students who use a lot of framed language show that they do not have the fluency to construct a higher level response without these “props.” I hear this phrase, though, from students at all fluency levels 1-3. Level four students usually have no need for such a prop or crutch because they are able to articulate their responses more automatically. Using such a prop or crutch at a higher level handicaps the student. Trully, only the lowest level students should use this as an effective testing stratagy.

10

[quote=“housecat”][quote=“Muzha Man”][quote=“housecat”]Chris, I’m not sure why the Taiwanese students are saying “living on dorms,” but please do me a favor?

My full time job is to grade actual TOEFL speaking tests. Every day I do this, I wonder who it is who teaches these test takers that the first thing they should do after innitially responding to the prompt is to state how many reasons they have for whatever position they’ve just taken. Example, “Some may prefer to live off campus, but I prefer to live in the dorm. There are three reasons for this.”

Any response like that is never, ever, going to score at the top. A three is the best these respondants are likely to be able to hope for but usually they’ll end up being 2s. The reason for this is that using that phrase is nothing more than employing a formula. This phrase is simply a simplified restatement of the prompt and the beginning of a framed response. It only helps to take up seconds of tape time so that they have come up with that much less original speach. I hate this prase!

So, if you’re near anyone who teaches actual students, pass the word along for me, will you? Please discourage the use of this phrase for students who are already beyond the first scoring level. Otherwise, it’s not helping them at all and may be hurting them.[/quote]

That’s bullshit. You are docking students for using a set phrase. What next, no idioms? Seriously, just because many students use this is no reason to give anyone a poor score. It’s simply a way of organizing one’s thoughts. If they use the formula properly then they should not be docked simply because you don’t like it. I think you are being very very unfair.[/quote]

I don’t dock them for this phrase. I don’t dock them for anything. They are scorred according to a rubric. They must attain sufficent topic development to progress to a higher score. Lower level students who use a lot of framed language show that they do not have the fluency to construct a higher level response without these “props.” I hear this phrase, though, from students at all fluency levels 1-3. Level four students usually have no need for such a prop or crutch because they are able to articulate their responses more automatically. Using such a prop or crutch at a higher level handicaps the student. Trully, only the lowest level students should use this as an effective testing stratagy.[/quote]

Thank you for the articulate response. I believe you are correct. Now go to bed. It’s late.

11

[quote=“Mucha Man”][quote=“housecat”][quote=“Muzha Man”]
That’s bullshit. You are docking students for using a set phrase. What next, no idioms? Seriously, just because many students use this is no reason to give anyone a poor score. It’s simply a way of organizing one’s thoughts. If they use the formula properly then they should not be docked simply because you don’t like it. I think you are being very very unfair.[/quote]

I don’t dock them for this phrase. I don’t dock them for anything. They are scorred according to a rubric. They must attain sufficent topic development to progress to a higher score. Lower level students who use a lot of framed language show that they do not have the fluency to construct a higher level response without these “props.” I hear this phrase, though, from students at all fluency levels 1-3. Level four students usually have no need for such a prop or crutch because they are able to articulate their responses more automatically. Using such a prop or crutch at a higher level handicaps the student. Trully, only the lowest level students should use this as an effective testing stratagy.[/quote]

Thank you for the articulate response. I believe you are correct. Now go to bed. It’s late.[/quote]

It’s two in the afternoon here in Arkansas. I would love a nap, though.

12

Yo Chris,

I can think of plenty of reasons why they’re not giving you the correct response, but I’m mystified as to why they’re all giving you the same wrong answer. Someone (everyone) must be teaching it wrong, and my guess would be that this is happening at High School level. I can’t see any reason to learn a word like “dorms” at a younger age. Maybe take a look in the Far East Reader?

I’d put the basic problem down to a lack of thought about how furriners use English, which is also relevant to this:

[quote=“housecat”]I wonder who it is who teaches these test takers that the first thing they should do after innitially responding to the prompt is to state how many reasons they have for whatever position they’ve just taken. Example, “Some may prefer to live off campus, but I prefer to live in the dorm. There are three reasons for this.”…

Any response like that is never, ever, going to score at the top. A three is the best these respondants are likely to be able to hope for but usually they’ll end up being 2s. The reason for this is that using that phrase is nothing more than employing a formula…

So, if you’re near anyone who teaches actual students, pass the word along for me, will you? Please discourage the use of this phrase for students who are already beyond the first scoring level. Otherwise, it’s not helping them at all and may be hurting them.[/quote]

Basically, in my opinion, I think there are three reasons for this…

I’m joshing. Sorry. But I can offer a few observations.

I teach IELTS, but I assume it’s much the same. Responses are expected to be structured as well as grammatically correct. The students come into these classes from a background of vocabulary learning with little attention ever having been paid to how foreigners communicate with each other.

The students learn lots of words, translate them to Chinese, and then when they want to communicate in English they simply translate their own thought processes back again - usually minus the niceties of verb tenses, etc. They’ve simply never learned to develop a coherent argument and often have trouble even with simple sentences. They treat English as if it’s Chinese.

Think back. Do you remember your High School English classes? Criticism from teachers of any subject requiring essays about your writing being too woolly, messy, disorganised, etc? I do. This stuff takes years to learn how to do reasonably well, if you have the luxury of being a native-speaker. If you have spent your education completely ignoring this skill - and it isn’t taught in Chinese either - then what hope do you have as a young adult when suddenly confronted with a requirement to completely change the way you go about explaining something?

This might sound a bit over the top, and it’s off-topic too, but take a moment to consider how Chinese people use the word “because”. It’s usually the first word they speak or write, and is followed by all the minutae of the reasons why, separated by commas in one great big paragraph. No sentences, no structure, no summary, no introduction and in IELTS they’ll often run out of time before getting to the point. What happened to stating the main idea at the beginning? What happened to MY English-teacher’s rule that you should never start a sentence with “because”?

Faced with limited time (say 20-100 hours of instruction, compared to the 10-20 years which have brought them to this point), teachers have little option other than to teach a formulaic approach. The students just aren’t going to get it in a hurry, and not at all if you can’t persuade them of the importance of doing so.

So while the low grade a student is going to get may be disappointing, it’s still a fair assessment of their abilities, and it’s better than the even lower grade they would get if you left them to their own devices. Honestly, if I can teach someone to write something that approximately follows the conventions that are expected, from scratch, in a tiny fraction of the time it took me to learn to do it not much better, then I’m pretty pleased - and it does make a difference.

I had a young guy come to me a few months back wanting help. He had studied English for nearly twenty years, and after about ten minutes with him I hesitated a guess that he would be likely to get a 4.5 in the IELTS test. He confirmed that he had taken the test three times already that year, scoring two 4.5s with a 5.0 in between. He needed a 6.5 to get onto his university course, or a 5.5 to get into the pre-sessional English classes offered by the university.

The literature says an average student needs 400 hours of study to progress one band, and we had three months available to find time around the limitations of his full-time job and my other classes. I hammered him on formulaic structures, concentrating on stating the main idea first followed by a brief mention of what is going to come. Oh, and describe past events in the past tense too. That’s all. Total study time was less than 30 hours, and he got his 5.5! I didn’t teach him language, I just taught him that he has to start learning to use language like we foreigners do. Maybe one day his actual language skills will progress to the point where he can write and speak more naturally, but until then I’m just glad that he is bridging the cultural gap that stands between most students and success.

Interestingly, this very question came up in all three of the classes I taught on Sunday. One student summed things up nicely by telling me that she couldn’t obey my first rule: one sentence, one idea. It took five minutes to explain this to me. She simply didn’t know when to stop. She couldn’t break her argument or description down into small pieces, she could only throw everything at me and hope I would figure it out - which is what she does in her own language. Only when students have mastered the basics can they go on to do things well, so I support any teacher who is teaching students to follow some simple rules until they are at a level where they can start to improvise.

Having said that, I discourage the “there are three reasons” thing as being a bit too robotic. And as soon as students start organising their thoughts properly I start pushing them to experiment with other ways of expressing themselves. Walk, then run, in other words.

While I’m here, perhaps Chris, housecat, or anyone else who is familiar with TOEFL or TOEIC could add to the thread on tests: All the tests

Thanks

13

You could just teach them what “in” means. You could for example find a box and put your copy of “Teaching Collocation - Further Developments in the Lexical Approach” “in” the box. Tell them first that you are going to put the book “in” the box. After that ask them where you put the book. “IN” the box? That’s right. Then take the box and put it “on” a table somewhere far away. Tell them you are going to put in “on” a table. Beside the box (with the book “in” it) draw a map with a campus “on” it. Say "Hey look, this map has a campus “ON” it. Draw a person in the middle of the map. Say “this person lives ON campus.” Then ask for scissors and a piece of paper. Make a paper dorm and a paper person. This will take awhile so you can prattle on about cutting paper WITH scissors etc. Try not to gesticulate wildly and poke anybody in the eye. Put the person inside the dorm. Say “this person lives ON campus IN a dorm.” Ask “do you live IN a dorm or IN your own apartment?” "Oh, IN a dorm. Isn’t that fascinating? Etc.

This is a good way to teach because the students will actually “learn” something.

They have likely extrapolated from “on” campus. That’s why they all make the same mistake. You are not going to help anyone by phiolosphizing about lexical analysis and collocation. Collocation is what “caused” the problem. What they need to be taught is the basic sense of “in” for christ’s sake.

14

We’re riding along on the crest of a wave
And the sun is in the sky
All our eyes on the distant horizon
Look out for passers-by

We’ll do the HAILING!
While all the ships are out a-sailing
We’re riding along on the crest of a wave
And the sun

Is

HIIIIIGH!

15

[quote=“sandman”]We’re riding along on the crest of a wave
And the sun is in the sky[/quote]

OK, so it “would” be easier and more fun to draw a wave and a man ON it and and a sky with a sun IN it but today is not bob god of the abstract nonsensical repetitive and poetical day, it isn’t even bob god of the abstract nonsensical repititive and lexigraphical day, it is plain old bob god of the abstract nonsensical repetitive and for christ’s sake common goddam “sensical” day and that was the best he could think of.

By the way, he’s been meaning to ask you something…

The other day he was at the gym and picked up what he thought were 25KG dumbells and did numerous arm curls with them. He was quite proud of that, thinking to himself 25KG = 25 times 2.2 = 55lbs etc. Later he realized 1KG does not equal 2.2 pounds but rather 2.2KGs equals 1LB. At this point he was becoming somehwat confused as one might imagine and concluded that he had been likely been somewhat grandiose the day before and at any rate he didn’t even know whether the 25 meant kilograms or pounds regardless of what the conversion might be. The worst case scenario of course would be that the 25 meant 1Kg and 2.2Kg = 1Lb in which case he had been pround of himself for curling whatever 25 divided by 2.2 is, in any event, not a lot.

Today he went in and weighed the weights and discovered that the 25 must have meant KG and that 1KG must equal 2.2 pounds because the number on the scale said 55 (pounds).

So anyway, that’s the question. It’s not a great question he realizes but the best he could come up with on such short notice, etc.

16

To which the answer is: pay more attention to your abs. Chix don’t dig bulging biceps as much as defined abs.

17

[quote=“bob”]You could just teach them what “in” means. You could for example find a box and put your copy of “Teaching Collocation - Further Developments in the Lexical Approach” “in” the box. Tell them first that you are going to put the book “in” the box. After that ask them where you put the book. “IN” the box? That’s right. Then take the box and put it “on” a table somewhere far away. Tell them you are going to put in “on” a table. Beside the box (with the book “in” it) draw a map with a campus “on” it. Say "Hey look, this map has a campus “ON” it. Draw a person in the middle of the map. Say “this person lives ON campus.” Then ask for scissors and a piece of paper. Make a paper dorm and a paper person. This will take awhile so you can prattle on about cutting paper WITH scissors etc. Try not to gesticulate wildly and poke anybody in the eye. Put the person inside the dorm. Say “this person lives ON campus IN a dorm.” Ask “do you live IN a dorm or IN your own apartment?” "Oh, IN a dorm. Isn’t that fascinating? Etc.

This is a good way to teach because the students will actually “learn” something.

They have likely extrapolated from “on” campus. That’s why they all make the same mistake. You are not going to help anyone by phiolosphizing about lexical analysis and collocation. Collocation is what “caused” the problem. What they need to be taught is the basic sense of “in” for christ’s sake.[/quote]

But Bob old buddy, “in” only has a sense of “In-ness” in certain situations. For example, how would you teach these:

. . . to ensure the parts are made in the right order.
. . . the process in engineering evolved naturally.
. . . we find it easiest to communicate in pictures.
. . . reflected in our descriptions of . . .
. . . flows continuously in both directions . . .
. . . the output required in the primary stage . . .

I could keep going on and on and on. Stick to collocation, otherwise you’re gonna be doing a lot of cutting and pasting!

18

And I for one certainly can’t blame them for that.

There was another one of those women there today wearing work out pants cut so low you could see her tampax. It was pink tampax with a frilly design. It (the frilly tampax) is an elaboration on the “butt crack” design designers have been experimenting with these last few years I suspect. She seemed to enjoy riding the mechanical pony. I have noticed the mechanical pony is quite popular. That is all I know about her/them. Was that a question?

19

That was at the end. But the pink frilly Tampax is leaving me confused, as is the electric pony. I’d ask a question, but I’m not sure I could deal in a mature fashion with the answer.

20

[quote=“lotusblossom”] But Bob old buddy, “in” only has a sense of “In-ness” in certain situations. For example, how would you teach these:

. . . to ensure the parts are made in the right order.
. . . the process in engineering evolved naturally.
. . . we find it easiest to communicate in pictures.
. . . reflected in our descriptions of . . .
. . . flows continuously in both directions . . .
. . . the output required in the primary stage . . .

I could keep going on and on and on. Stick to collocation, otherwise you’re gonna be doing a lot of cutting and pasting![/quote]

I’d explain that the dictionary I use “Cobuild” lists words according to collocational frequency. The most common sense of “in” is “in”. I’d explain that “in” is also used to fill the preposition slot because in English we like to indicate the grammatical relationship between words and when word order does not accomplish this our only recourse is prepositions. This leads to probably hundreds of usages of “in” that do not conform readily to the basic sense of “in”.

“In” the dorm is not one of those instances.

I believe that to be an accurate account of how English actually works so it is what I say.