Thursday, December 2, 2010

Unfortunate Adventures in Spelling or Homophones: the Silent Final Exam Killer

Recently there has been no posting by yours truly, and I'm sorry. I may have been dabbling in being emo on and off (gonna blame the weather and holiday season away from home), and when that happens I try really hard not to word vomit it all over my blog. Alternately, during those times when I am not sulking about the drizzling rain and lack of halls-decking, my life is tragically uninteresting. Currently I also have a bunch of free time at work so I figured I was way overdue for writing something.

Right now the high school is having final exams, and I still can't for the life of me figure out why they do the testing now. There's still three weeks of class left, but you know, sure, let's have the final. So usually I have to give a listening test to the students. Pretty straightforward set-up: I read a paragraph and students have to fill in the blanks with the words I used. My sophomores have been working on the three auxiliary verbs "must," "will," and "can." So I made a few sentences that use one of the auxiliary verbs plus another verb, and the students had to write the two verbs in a blank.

Below are some unfortunate wrong responses and homophone issues that I totally did not forsee. First I'll give the sentence with the correct answer in bold and under that I'll provide the students' answers.

(The topic was, loosely, 'school rules.')
"Students can drive their own car to school."
"Students can july their own car to school." (I love summer.)
"Students con drive their own car to school." (Is it still a con if it's their own car to begin with? Or is it the opposite of pro driving?)

"They must eat lunch outside the classroom."
"They muse eat lunch outside the classroom." (Noooo, wait! I need that muse for inspiration later!!)
"They must lathi lunch outside the classroom." (Okay, really. What even happened here?)

(The topic was 'taking a trip.')
"I can see Buckingham Palace."
"I can she Buckingham Palace." (This is why we shouldn't use katakana to teach pronunciation.)

"We will enjoy our trip."
"We will enjoin our trip." (Like...surgery?)
"We wee enjoy our trip." (Not even correct in Ireland.)

(The topic was pretending our school was a wizard school.)
"Teachers will wear robes."
"Teachers will where robes." (Oooo, so close.)
"Teachers will were robes." (Pronounce it like the "were" in "werewolf" and you can see where the slip-up occurred.)
"Teachers will way robes." (I'm seeing a trend in which students don't know how to spell a word and just add a "y" to the end in the hopes that it's correct.)

"Everyone can use magic."
"Everyone can you magic." (The number of students that made this mistake makes me feel bad for putting it on their test.)
"Everyone can you's magic." (Almost clever.)

"Students can fly on brooms."
"Students can fry on brooms." (That is pretty magical in my opinion.)
"Students can fay on brooms." (Oiiiii.)
"Students can flay on brooms." (Just one little letter changes Harry Potter into Hannibal Lecter.)

Clearly I need to work harder here. I might suggest instituting spelling tests. I might just leave it alone, because this makes the whole grading process much more enjoyable for me. Poor students, they don't even know what they're doing to those brooms.

2 comments:

  1. Who ever said "W e will enjoin our trip" needs to head to law school stat. That would be a correct sentence (depending on what "trip" is). :)

    Everyone.... can you magic? This sounds like a new black person dance waiting to happen. Goodbye Soulja Boy and Cupid Shuffle.

    Reading this provided an AMAZING study break.

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  2. You made me laugh out loud! What's so funny is that the students made mistakes like that in our class and English was their first language!!

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