TOEFL Challenges

There are certain students who go through the motions of learning and yet do not absorb what they are taught. Some of them use the phraseology of the language they speak regularly when learning; they apply that to the learnt material, or filter the learning with it. This is one of the most challenging aspects of teaching any second language.

When I get a learner who already speaks fluently but makes a number of mistakes in the form, often there is less need to have that person adopt a new mode of speaking. The logic is as long as the person can get his idea across, let him and then work to repair some of the form.

I work on some of the favourite translations or transliterations that the person uses in his speech so that he can apply those corrections to other words he knows are not spoken in the new language. Today the student mentioned “signification” instead of “meaning”, or its transliterated form, “significance.” I had the student see that we do have tion endings but with significance, that is not the case. At the same time I had the student see that the larger word could be substituted for something more common or simpler, as the word meaning.

Not all errors are transliterations some are preferred usages as when the speaker states that he “passed” some time in front of the television. There I will mention that the preferred choice of verb is “spent” because passed is usually associated with an event that has gone by or the motion of the person or object in reference to something else as occurs for example, when walking by something.

Teaching English to a new learner supposes that he will greet you with a clear and uncluttered mind and that is often a naïve thought. Most learners have picked up the language informally or from someone else who has not been properly instructed. That learning will often confuse him especially when he has to relearn the same material. This is an everyday challenge for many instructors.