Archive for the ‘Error correction’ Category

They avoid using the expression in this IHT article on the Japanese government policy on getting people to dress down for the summer, but I think it is a good opportunity to continue my occassional “Japanese English” series of posts:

Japanese English Compound Nouns Expressions

Which of these ‘Japanese English’ expressions would you find in the Oxford English Dictionary? Which wouldn’t you find but a native English speaker might guess the meaning of anyway? Which would definitely need explaining? How would you explain them?
Walkman/ Paper driver/ Salaryman/ Anime / A short short/ Hello work/ J-pop / Golden week/ Pair look/ Recruit suit/ Long seller/ Cosplay/  One man bus/ Karaoke/ A sayonara homerun 

Choose the correct explanation for what Japanese people mean when they use the Japanese English expressions below (the other explanations are what English native speakers might think the expressions mean the first time they hear them):
Cheek dance = people who are dancing very close/ a person who is moving their face as they swish water around in their mouth after they clean their teeth
High teens = young people who are taking drugs/ people who are between 15 and 19
A girl hunt = when men go out to pick up women/ the time women go out to look for men
No make = the time when you wear no lipstick etc./ a product that has no branding
Season off = a holiday that is very long/ the time when most people don’t take a holiday
A cutter = a knife that you use on paper / a person who takes out bad scenes from movies
A nighter = a baseball game that takes place after dark/ a person who spends all evening in a disco
High miss = a young lady who is tall/ an older lady who isn’t married
Home drama = a soap opera or a domestic accident
Easy order = a semi-tailored suit or a drive through take out restaurant
Health meter = bathroom scales or a blood pressure monitor
Free talking = a hands-free phone or an open discussion
A magic pen = a marker or something that writes with invisible ink
Non pro = being an amateur or being against something
To crank in = to start an old car or to start shooting a film
A meat shop = a pickup bar or a butcher’s
A plus driver = an elderly motorist or a Phillips screwdriver
A TV game=a quiz show that is on TV or a video game that you can play on your TV
A mini theatre= a cinema that seats few people or a home entertainment system

Business and technical English
Without using any words in the expressions, explain what any one of the Japanese English expressions below mean. When your partner thinks they know which one you are talking about, they will say the number of at that expression. Tell them if that was your intention.

1. cool biz
2. An OL
3. CM
4. salary loan
5. The dollar shock
6. The oil shock
7. Golden hour
8. Minus driver
9. Symbol mark
10. Excellent company
11. Base up
12. A Y shirt
13. Pocketable
14. Order made
15. Building money
16. An OB
17. Tunnel company
18. paper company
19. a one man president
20. main bank
21. Image up
22. Country risk
23. a non bank
24. image down
25. name value
26. minus image
27. cost down
28. level up

Answer key

Cheek dance = people who are dancing very close
High teens = people who are between 15 and 19
A girl hunt = when men go out to pick up women
No make = the time when you wear no lipstick etc
Season off = the time when most people don’t take a holiday
A cutter = a knife that you use on paper
A nighter = a baseball game that takes place after dark
High miss = an older lady who isn’t married
Home drama = a soap opera
Easy order = a semi-tailored suit
Health meter = bathroom scales
Free talking = an open discussion
A magic pen = a marker
Non pro = being an amateur
To crank in = to start shooting a film
A meat shop = a butcher’s
A plus driver = a Phillips screwdriver
A TV game= a video game that you can play on your TV
A mini theatre= a cinema that seats few people

1. cool biz: Dressing down for the summer
2. An OL: Office lady- a female office worker
3. CM: Commercial message: An ad
4. salary loan: A loan from a consumer loan company
5. The dollar shock: When the yen was revalued
6. The oil shock: When the price of all suddenly went up
7. Golden hour: prime time
8. Minus driver: a normal screwdriver
9. Symbol mark: a logo
10. Excellent company: a blue chip company
11. Base up: a pay rise to your or everyone’s basic pay
12. A Y shirt- a white shirt- a business shirt
13. Pocketable- portable/ fits in your pocket
14. Order made- custom made
15. Building money- making monet
16. An OB- old boy
17. Tunnel company- a paper company
18. paper company
19. a one man president- a manager who makes all the decisions on their own
20. main bank- …that your company does business with
21. Image up- improving your image
22. Country risk- a risky country to invest in
23. a non bank- other sources of credit
24. image down-
25. name value- the value of a brand name etc.
26. minus image
27. cost down- reducing costs
28. level up- improving the level

Trying to find fun stuff to practice emailling in class is one of the banes* of my life, so I think I deserve a little smugness on having come up with a new idea on how to do so. You can see the results on the page “Worksheet- Email error game” on the right. Click now! No, not later, now!

Was it good for you?

As an extra treat, will try to summarize what can make emailing lessons fun:

The fun emailing lessons magical formula

• Make it competitive
• Give time limits 
• Have teams
• Give points
• Make first reading tasks quick and easy
• Make writing tasks interactive (students read and respond to each others’ emails, e.g. deciding if the advice written in it is good or not)
• Cut it up into bits of paper, and if possible get them to shuffle them around
• Turn over the sheets during some of the activities to vary the interactions
• Test their memories, e.g. by having an email on the board that disappears word by word
• Test their logical powers, e.g. by asking them to solve a murder mystery where the clues are all emails
• Use pictures for the arty ones, such as covering emoticons
• Introduce language that is totally inappropriate for business emails too (e.g. What’s up dudes!!), to lighten things up and show them what they can’t do
• Get them moving, e.g. standing in a line in the same order as the cut up paragraphs of the email they are holding or showing thumbs up and thumbs down in response to emails you show them
• Er, that’s it…

Any more hints? Any requests? Am confident I can come up with at least one more fun lesson, or at least more confident about that than I am about ever working out how to give you access to said lessons in an easier to use format (Sorry!) 

*What on earth is a “bane”??

“…researchers have also found, however, that the ability to understand the content and to function in (CLIL) classroom interaction does not ensure that students will continue to improve …in areas of accuracy on language… that does not usually interfere with meaning” Patsy.M.Lightbown and Nina Spada, in “How Languages are Learned 3rd Edition” (Oxford University Press)

agreement- Verbs matching their pronouns, e.g. third person -s. If students make mistakes with this you can prompt them using this technical term, e.g. Student “My sister she get up at six and thirty” Teacher “Agreement” S “Sorry?” T “Your verb and pronoun disagree” “Eh?” “I said, your verb and the word before it are having a bit of a row” “What??” “If you don’t change that verb ending soon it’s going to come to blows, I’m telling you” “This teacher, he explain very bad” “Oh dear. Agreement!” etc.

ALT (Alien Language Teacher)- a native speaking assistant teacher who helps give lessons in Junior High schools etc. Not to be confused with ALF (Alien Language Friend)- someone who gives informal English conversation lessons in cafes.

approximants- Sounds that are as close as your students are ever going to get to native speaker pronunciation of English, e.g. a sound that is somewhere between an /r/, /l/ and /w/ but is at least usually identifiable as only one of those sounds.

assimilation- A form of connected speech where a sound in a word is modified by its neighbours, e.g. by being forced to buy a computer operated sprinkler because the sound next door has one

back-reference- The technical term for bitching about someone when they are not there, e.g. “Have you heard the news? It seems he’s one of them too!”

CALL (Computer assisted language learning- pronounced /kal/)- An intermediate step on the way to TELL (totally electronic language learning) and HAL (hologram assisted learning).

CMC (Computer-mediated communication)- When everything the teacher says goes through the students’ electronic dictionaries before it is accepted as true

complexity- How much of a complex students have about using things like conjuctions and pronouns for back-reference

compound sentence- A sentence with two or more clauses, usually long like the protective wall around the foreigner compounds teachers in Saudi live in

compounding- A way of forming words by combining two or more nouns or adjectives. Not to be confused with “pounding“, which is the technical term for when a student makes endless identical failed efforts at pronouncing a word until the teacher screams at them to stop

concord- Another name for agreement, such as agreeing to add an -e onto the end of the supersonic plane name just to make the French shut up for a minute

connected speech- When the student who always starts long monologues about random topics manages, by some fluke, to say something perfectly connected to what you want to do next in the lesson

connotation- The good, bad, humurous, old-fashioned etc. associations of words and expressions. The word “connotation” is derived from the French word “con”, which is a nice way of saying “bloody stupid”

fricatives- Sounds that are produced by friction. The word “fricative” is derived from the eupheumism “fricking”, and was originally used only to mean the insulting “raspberry” sound produced with your tongue

hybrid language learning- When strong students help weaker ones not just by explaining grammar but by contributing some of their genes with the use of modern classroom cloning technology (as yet only available at the British Council)

Juncture- The age of the rule of the Junker class in Germany, who were famous for pausing between each and every word to give them all a suitably strong Germanic emphasis

liaison- When an extra sound between a final vowel and the first sound of the next word passes notes back and forward between those two sounds until they get together for some really hot connected speech

non-voiced- Negative feedback to using games in class that doesn’t come out until the end-of-course feedback form because they always seem to be having fun

plosive sounds- The sounds students make just before they explode with frustration, e.g. the first four sounds in “bu bu bu bu..but I DID do my homework!!”

schema- A scheme or plot that is very complex and intelligent, hence the use of Latin to describe it

vowels- Sounds that are made without any significant obstruction or constriction. The word is derived by shortening the phrase “v(ery loose b)owels”

(Full list of the Alternative ELT Jargon Dictionary available on the Articles page above)

aptitude- your inbuilt ‘talent’ for learning languages. Not to be confused with ‘apitude’, which is your ability to make a realistic bee -like buzzing noise with your mouth.

ARC- (Authentic, Restricted, Clarification). This more-flexible variation on PPP is thought by the cabalist school of English teaching to be the original language teaching method passed on by Noah after the great flood, PPP being a later corrupted version.

articulators- The special parts of the mouth, nose and throat (e.g. larynx, pharynx, hard palate, alveolar ridge) that are only used when we pronounce articles (a, an or the) in English.

attention- the stance with ramrod straight back and eyes directly forward that helps language learners concentrate on the language point being taught and not be distracted by other things. Experienced teachers find that shouting “Attention!” during the important part of a grammar explanation and having their students jump up and line up helps retention. Another useful technique to focus attention taken from the army is to use framing language like “Right! (You horrible little lot!)” (language in brackets is optional).

audiolingual method- Literally, the ’sound tongue’ method. Based on behaviourist experiments such as the famously salivating Pavlov’s dog, students would be made to control the panel of a language lab booth using only their tongue in order to help them physically memorize the dialogues on the tape. This method died out when it was found that student errors are in fact contagious, and were being picked up by future students licking the same booth controls (this is also why Japanese students wear face masks on days when they are making many language errors, so as not to pass them on).

base form- This rather negative expression for the form ‘be’, ‘do’, ‘have’ etc. comes from a medieval superstition that this verb form was somehow dirty and brought bad luck. It has now been replaced by the expression ‘infinitive without to’.

Behaviourism- The idea that skills such as speaking another language could be taught in the same way as disciplining a child or teaching a dog how to fetch. It became less popular after the last generation of makers of craft dunce hats in Cornwall died out, and using dog leads and collars in the language classroom is now only a very specialist, if exclusive, market.

bilabial- Used to describe someone whose lips can go either way, i.e. look exactly the same the other way round. This can help learners pronounce consonants where both lips are used: /p/, /b/, /w/ and /m/.

bilingualism- Literally ‘having two tongues’. This is still considered a negative thing in countries such as the USA, although it does have certain advantages.

clause- Clauses are the largeest grammatical unit smaller than a whole sentence. Not to be confused with ‘Klaus’, who is the man with the largest waistline ever to attempt to wear leather shorts.

co-ordinate clauses- When two or more clauses of equal rank are linked they are co-ordinate clauses. As well as learning to spot these, students will need the classroom language of talking about them, e.g. “Do you think this clause looks okay with this one?” “It’s a bit last year, why don’t you try it together with this?” “Does my main clause look big with this?” “Oh no, darling, just throw in this conjunction and it is sooooo you”

blended learning- The idea that in order for the attention deficit disorder young people of today to be able to learn a language, everything has to reduced to an easily-digested, computer-generated, un-intellectually-stimulating mush; like making baby food in a blender.

bottom-up processing- As an extension on NLP theories of where people look when they are thinking and what that means about their preferred learning style, researchers have found that they direction in which you scan the face and body of good looking people of the other sex is related to how you best process the information in a text. For example, people who start looking at the arse and work their way up (bottom-up processors) tend to do well at noticing the small details of a text but less well in noticing how the information is arranged into paragraphs etc.

chunks- Strings of language that are not digested properly and come out whole when you’ve had too many beers during a language exchange party.

CLL- (community language learning- pronounced /cululu/). Based on counselling therapy, students sit in a circle and are helped by the teacher to cooperatively produce a dialogue in English on a tape about their relationship with the local catholic priest.

dummy operator- The word ‘do’ and ‘did’, used to make questions and negatives of sentences that do not have an auxiliary verb such as the ‘could’ in the question “Couldn’t you think of anything more amusing to write about that?”

EFL- English as a Foreign Language- usually meaning people studying English for use outside of English speaking countries, e.g. people studying over the summer in the UK then returning to their countries. Pronounced /eful/.

EFLuant- The dark side of EFL: 1 week teacher training certificates, cafe lessons, chain schools etc. etc.

linguistics- Literally, ‘the science of the tongue’. This definition is only to be used when someone you are chatting up asks you what you do if you are both very very drunk. Ditto applied linguistics.

mentalist- Young language teachers followers of Noam Chomsky who use illegal substances at all night ‘linguistic raves’.

non-finite clause- a non-finite clause is one that contains a non-finite verb, i.e. a verb that is not marked for tense and person such as an infinitive. Not to be confused with a infinite clause, which is what French students produce when trying to do IELTS or CAE writing.

stance- Stance (also, appraisal) is the way people show their personal attitude to what they are hearing or reading. As the word originally comes from how people stand, in linguistics stance language is divided into categories based on body language, e.g. ‘hands on hip stance language’ and ‘I’m a little tea pot stance language’.

zero article- the ‘invisible’ article used instead of ‘a’/’an’ or ‘the’ when you are refering to something general using a plural or uncountable noun, e.g. “- apples grow on trees”. Native speakers use a tiny, almost unnoticeable hiccupping movement of the diaphragm to mark the zero article. You can develop this skill in students by having them cough or hiccup loudly when they use a zero article and then gradually reduce the noise level as they go up in language level.

More on the page on the right…

Giggling aloud to this Japanzine article on Engrish Japanese band names without a single feeling of middle class guilt that I might be insensitive in some way to some person made me finally face my demons and post my offending post- the one that has 23 year-old female sociology graduates from my school chasing me down to scalp me. Enjoy, and then join the lynch mob…

“Japanese English”, “Engrish”, “Japlish” or just plain rubbish??
You might never have heard all of the expressions “Nihon-sei English”, “Japanese English”, “Engrish” or “Japlish”, but you have certainly come across the results- printed in bold and nonsensical words across T-shirts, causing confusion and/ or amusement on menus and street signs, and causing incomprehension when we least expect it in English and Japanese language classrooms. And with thousands of English words in the Japanese language and thousands more not yet absorbed but floating around being used and misused day to day in the classroom and in the workplace, the Japanese use of English is not going to be getting any less Japanese!  Although many of the examples below come from the (non-teaching) site Enrish.com and most are provided purely for your entertainment, there are a few that have come up in my classroom and might be worth a mention in yours. As you read through, please choose at least 5 you could use as examples in class: (NB: ones with speech marks are supposed to be things people could say, the others are all written examples on things such as T-shirts and notebooks)

• “I usually eat a pan for breakfast”
• “What’s your job?” “I am a bite”
•  Dank- high quality fresh bread and confectionary
• “I want to give my grandfather a high vision”
•  “I always feel embarrassed sitting on a silver seat on the train” 
• I live in a one room mansion”
• “I want to buy my car”
• “My sister wants to change to man to man”
•  “All the men who have barcodes look terrible”
• “When I was young I often went on a girl hunt, but now I just go fishing”
• “In my first apartment there was no room for living”
• “Working at the front is very enjoyable”
• “He is standing on form number 3”   
• “I eat jam sand every day for breakfast”
• “I took my children to the shops to buy some new hard”
• “Sorry I was late. I got stuck in the neck”
• “I had a very heavy suitcase, so I gave it to the boy”
• “I bought some shade for my new apartment” 
• Used sweat
• “I spent two hours with my girlfriend practicising strokes” 
• (On a bed side clock) Alarming instructions
• Azabu Psycho Clinic   
• Leave your behind and welcome to here
• “I’ve never seen a real father, only on TV”
• “We stood on a mountain listening to the rock”
• “I still don’t know how to crawl”
• “There were so many people standing by the cherry tree and flashing” 
• “Let’s not walk by that river, I don’t like the smell of plants”
• This mint gives you strong mouth and refreshing wind
• “Will Paul Sac please expose himself to a stewardess immediately?” 
• For rest rooms, go back towards your behind
• You are invited to take advantage of the chambermaid
• Ladies have fits upstairs
• Thank you for coming in Hokkaido
• “I have a good table manner
• We accept orders to take away your curry 
• We serve people like you as good food
• Beware of being eaten by children due to small parts
• Warning, keep out of children
• Please leave a pet outside
• Please call me your telephone
• “My favourite anime is Toy Story”
• “Are salarymen different in your country?”
• “I had a complete overhaul”
• “Hilary Clinton used to be fast lady”
• “I couldn’t eat all my ranch”
• “This software is the latest virgin”
• “In America, you always have to give the waiter a chip”
• “Our teacher told us to cut our wrists into 10 pieces”
• “He took off his clothes and got in the bus”
• “I rub my mother very much”
• “OK, let’s have a branch together”
• “I couldn’t pat the ball into the last hole”
• “Before the guests came I put a new rag on the living room floor”
• “I went to the doctor because I had a lamp under my skin”
• “Ichiro broke his butt 8 times last season”
• “This dessert is berry good”
•  “Come and see my new cheek desk”
• “I love shitty life”
• Pocari Sweat
• Black Man Pants 
• Restaurant and Café White Lover
• Lip gross
• Stuff entrance
• Eye rashes perm
•  If you want to do a vowel movement, don’t stop
• After you vomit, rinse your mouse
• Bone free to follow your heart
• We pray for General MacArthur’s erection
• For your bland new days
• Remember to flash the toilet
• I never thought I’d be frying over a jungle 
• “We drove along the skyline”
• “This is not my mind”
• “I ate too much Viking”
• “I’m in the mood for a medium-sized jockey”
•  “My teacher wrote it on the whiteboard using magic”
• “I am going to stop eating bread to become more smart”
• Hyper Nonsense World Tabasco Shower
• Do not cover, do not enter, do not question, do not destroy, take my head
• Primitive cool- collective heterosexual scenario and turn the women red
• It is great and I want you who are the bag which is easy to use to surely use
• This cute mild curry uses 100% Japanese apple and cheerful hamster
• J.Quick&Hard.co., Jaguar
• I’ve always been impressed by natural low
• After a clam comes a storm
• Let’s enjoy your life
• Use your brain to read English
• Man can’t live without air and water and this bag. We trust to divine providence
• I’m a foot soldier. No human! Go ape!
• Light Drink and Salad- Nice Eat You?
• Not to be used for the other use
• This coat is warmer than my family
• Venice, Italy: City of canals for woman cyclist
• Casual yet rich in substance. That’s how you are, and so is Blendy coffee
• Happy the birth of Jesus Christ the girl
• You! Invaders! Get you the hot bullets of shotgun to die!   

Which ones you chose probably depends on what kind of mistake it is and why the mistake was made. In fact, “mistake” is probably not the right word at all for language that is provided for purely decorative reasons on bags, T-shirts, pencil cases, gift bags etc. and that even Japanese with a high level of English seem to be able to completely screen out (e.g. “Primitive cool- collective heterosexual scenario and turn the women red”). Others are probably meant to be read, or at least noticed, but only to provide a particular atmosphere rather than a specific meaning (e.g. the English language version of a manga title- “Hyper Nonsense World Tabasco Shower”).

Have another look through the list above (trying not to giggle so much this time) and find at least one example of each of the following reasons:

The person who said or wrote this:

1. Didn’t know they were using a word that is taken into Japanese from another language (e.g. German) and so is not English
2. Didn’t know they were using a expression “made in Japan” from English words that is not understandable outside Japan
3. Didn’t know that the short form of an English word they were using is only used in Japan
4. Didn’t know that the English word or expression has other meanings that it doesn’t have in Japanese
5. Didn’t know that a word has more limited meanings in English
6. Made a grammatical mistake with a form that doesn’t exist in Japanese
7. Used a Japanese English word or expression that has a more limited meaning in English than it originally had in Japanese
8. Used an English word or expression that has more meanings in Japanese than in English
9. Made a pronunciation mistake with a sound that doesn’t exist in Japanese
10. Didn’t understand the racist, sexist or other negative connotations a word has in English
11. Made a spelling mistake
12. Used a word or expression that has different meanings in Japanese and English
13. Used the words purely to create an atmosphere or effect and wasn’t worried about the meaning
14. Was just having a bad day!
15. No idea what they were trying to say or why they were trying to say it!!

No room here for all the answers, but to give you a clue the examples  are arranged in the same order as the categories above. If you want to know more and the reasons behind them please keep reading in the coming newsletters, where we will have a look at the categories one at a time.