Introduction
Proficiency essays are written by first- year English majors at Janus Pannonius University (JPU) as one part of their Proficiency Tests at the end of their first two semesters. There are four parts of these tests: a listening comprehension test, a reading comprehension test, a multiple choice grammar test and an essay writing test. My research was taken on the latter part, which was the essay writing test. In 1996 students could choose from 125 different themes, which they put together with the help of the topic table, which consisted of three columns and five rows. Each column had a role. The first one contained the type of the essay: discussion, explanation, doubt-raising, presentation or analysis of the subject matter, which was to make up from the second and third columns. The former contained the main topic: e-mailing, listening, calling, faxing or arguing, and the latter indicated whom the topic referred to: a friend, a teacher, a lover, a parent or a boss. The essays had to consist of four or five paragraphs, with an estimated 400-450 words. Students were recommended 70 minutes to fulfil the task, but they could keep on working up to two hours, when the essays were collected by the tutors. The options of the evaluation were also indicated on the introduction sheet, which held five parts: focus , accuracy, vocabulary, paragraph organisation and essay organisation. Each part could get 10 points, which meant that 50 points were the highest an essay could reach. Essays were cross-marked by two tutors. They both read all the texts to avoid the risk of not paying attention to any mistakes or being subjective. My essay’s main purpose is to show the typical mistakes and the most important issues of accuracy and vocabulary that students have to take good care of. I also wanted to see what effect these two components had on the final score.
Methods
I read eleven essays, seven of them were scored higher than 26, which meant a pass, and four of them were fails. I made a table (see below), where I indicated the essays’ total scores, as well as the given points on accuracy and vocabulary. I listed the mistakes sorted into different categories according to ready made (Horvath, 1997),(Marius & Weiner, 1985) and my own ideas ,and put an ‘X’ in the appropriate box to show, which were the typical faults that I found both in the lowest and the highest scored essays. The categories of accuracy are the following: spelling error, awkward construction, error in number agreement, conjunction error, punctuation error, error in pronoun use, left out word, sentence fragment . There were three types of vocabulary mistakes: incorrect idiom, inappropriate choice or wrong word and unnecessary repetition. To make the categories more understandable, I listed the mistakes with a short explanation and also presented some examples I came across while having been reading the texts. The little letters after the head categories, between the brackets show the code of the mistake (Marius & Weiner), which can also be seen in the table after each category name. If there were also other types of errors in the example sentence, I listed their codes behind the head category code. I underlined the errors in the sentences to make them easier to find and to analyse.
Results
Mistakes in accuracy
Spelling error (sp): The letters in the word are not in the correct order and some of them are also missing.
importan , addults , familyes
Awkward construction (k): The order of the words is incorrect.
..., who is standing always behind us, It makes the teacher feel comfortable and the students too.
Error in number agreement (agr):The noun in plural is followed by the third-singular form of the verb or the other way round or the adverb which should be followed by the plural form of the noun takes the singular form.
...a parent try...,
There are different software that ...,
... a much more trouble...
Punctuation error (p):The usage of commas, colons and semicolons is not appropriate, they are either missing or not necessary.
...and the only reason for that is: we have not those kind of problems.
Error in pronoun use (pro): Non-pronouns occur as pronouns, pronouns do not agree in number with their antecedent, they do not refer to the subject of the sentence or they have nothing to refer to neither in the previous or the following sentences.
... be open to everything what is said to you.
...persons, who is not satisfied with his wife or her husband...,
This is how we believe discipline should be maintained.
To argue with teachers is just impossible, and most of the time, it will never ever occur to them to try to disagree with them.
By the way, this is the basis of every relationship, lies won’t help anyone: what’s more they would be much more confused.
Left out word (^): Either a preposition, an article or any necessary parts of the complete phrases are missing.
... while listen a teacher...
Sentence fragment (frag): A part of the sentence is made to look like a complete sentence by beginning it with a capital letter and ending it with a period.
Probably, because the people questioned do not distinct between love as loving your relatives, loves as loving your boyfriend or girlfriend, and love as loving a friend.
Conjunction error (con)(frag, agr, sp): The correlative or the coordinating conjunctions are not used properly.
Since it shows that there are other persons in the room who share the teacher’s interests.
A parent has a much more trouble like addult as we have as a youth.
Mistakes in vocabulary
Incorrect idiom (id): A made up phrase, which does not make sense in English language.
The root of this problem comes from...,
... serve different positions...
... start arguments on a low voice...
The golden rule is...
Inappropriate choice or wrong word(ww): The word used in the particular phrase is not the best, other synonyms would be better.
...when treating other people- involving our lover - is rather hard.,
...children have to listen carefully to their parent’s speech
Students are more welcome to represent their own opinions and arguments.
Needless repetition (rep)(frag): The sentence or the paragraph consist one phrase several times, which makes the text boring.
Probably, because the people questioned do not distinct between love as loving your relatives, love as loving your boyfriend or girlfriend, and love as loving a friend.
The blue colour shows the most common mistakes, which were spelling error, punctuation error and incorrect idioms. The yellow and pink colour indicates essays of different total scores with the same number of types of mistakes.
The table
Essay Total
Score
Accuracy
Score
Spelling error (sp)
Awkward construction (k)
Error in number agreement (agr)
Conjunction error (con)
Punctuation error (p)
Error in pronoun use (pro)
Left out word
Sentence fragment (frag)
Vocabulary Scores
Incorrect idiom (id)
Inappropriate choice or wrong word (ww)
Needless repetition (rep)
Number of types of mistakes
Discussion
There are two matters of discussion, which this research pointed out: there are still many mistakes in accuracy and vocabulary in proficiency level essays at JPU and due to the five-option evaluation these mistakes do not always make significant differences in the total scores of pass or fail. My research indicated that there are mistakes, which occur in all of the texts: spelling error, punctuation error and incorrect idiom usage. Spelling mistakes can be easily avoided with the help of a thesaurus, which should be allowed to use at all level of English. Native speakers will also commit this fault. Punctuation rules can be studied, but there are still many suggestions on the right usage of commas, colons and semicolons. First-year students do not have practised enough. Most of them follow the Hungarian punctuation rules or do not follow any rules at all. Knowing the right idioms requires much higher level of English, than these students were at, that is why this fault occurred in each essays. Considering the fact, that the writers had all taken parts in courses on English grammar and usage of English , these mistakes were all known for them. The reason for their inaccuracy was the pressure of time, therefore careless revising, or the simple lack of grammatical knowledge or the little stock of words in mind. Proficiency essays of 1996 showed that even if students were still lacking much practise in grammar, they passed the essay test, because their focus, paragraph organisation and essay organisation were graded much higher than the vocabulary or accuracy. These three former options in the evaluation focus on the essay-writing technique, that students are familiarised with from primary school right up to the JPU course of Research and writing skills. Those students who were good at essay-writing techniques, got more appreciation on their essays, even if their grammatical knowledge showed real weakness.
Conclusion
Essay writing task in proficiency level test requires a lot of knowledge in vocabulary, careful use of English grammatical rules and quick and thorough revision. This research reveals some of the mistakes in accuracy and vocabulary, which students should take special care of. It reveals that a proficiency level essay has more to do with the applied grammar and English usage and demand more practise in organising our thoughts in a way that all our readers understand us.
Showing posts with label vocabulary. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vocabulary. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
W 099 F
Introduction
Bilingual university students need dictionaries, but many of them have problems with using them. I understand them very well as I am an English major, too. In the first year I had to confront applying dictionaries because there were a lot of texts to interpret and several essays to write. After I read ten of my groupmates' writings I noticed that most of them did not pay enough attention to accuracy. They aimed at trying to find the easiest way to get over with their work quickly and apply words that come to their minds at once. They told me that using dictionaries was a waste of time. They did not even know any techniques to improve their writings. I would like to give some help to them by presenting what kind of dictionaries an English major uses and how she applies them for essay writing.
Method
I interviewed one of my classmates who also attended a writing course this year. I chose Zita (the name has been changed to avoid recognition) because as she was one of my best friends, I assumed that she would not reject to answer my questions. I recorded the talk on tape to be able to listen to it as many times as I wanted, and this way I could quote some of her views as well. I made the interview in a room in the dormitory one day before I wrote this research paper. I did not really need to ask her a lot of questions because when she heard the first question ”How do you use dictionaries for essay writing?” she told me everything in detail. Zita works for the U.S. Army, so she has a special wordpower, full of American slang. That is why I was interested if she needed any dictionaries at all. I wondered if she was afraid of using words that may have seemed awkward for those readers who did not speak American English. I asked her what kind of dictionaries she preferred for writing and what her opinion was about them.
Results and discussion
Zita said that she, as a first-year student, also had troubles in writing mainly at the beginning of the semester. She had had to write some essays before but those could be called short stories. Her English teacher did not consider the essay writing serious, and although she had a dictionary did not need to open it at all. She built the words and expressions, which she picked up from the American soldiers, into the texts. Her classmates thought that as she could speak English almost fluently her essays must have been the same good. As she said she did not know what to do with the topic she got for the first time. She suspected that she must grasp it in an other way than before. Strictly speaking, she was scared a bit that the non-formal words she used would not fit in the context.
While she was writing her essay she looked the formal adequates of the words in the Synonym Finder to take her work more variable. According to her, that dictionary is useful but difficult to choose the right expression from the long list. "You cannot know which word has a meaning in the context unless you have read a lot in English before", said Zita. For these reasons "Synonym Finder must be used with caution. Even though two words may be quite similar in meaning, the substitution of one for the other may not always be appropriate, and the writer’s intent may be ill served." Zita also told me that the book also helped her when the proper word did not occur to her at a particular moment, though it was on the tip of her tongue.
Zita realised, after she had written her first essay at the university, that she had to be more careful with her spelling. Several American words are spelled another way, and teachers told her not to mix the British and American spelling. Since then she has been taking care of looking up the words that existed in British English.
If she does not recognise the meaning of the term she looks for the information in Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary because it includes the most current English. Besides the authors of it took care of every single detail and the definitions are clear and easy to follow. She often uses the wordbook for solving grammar problems because it has study pages that give answer even the basic linguistic questions. "Oxford Learner's Dictionary provides me the biggest help while writing an essay", said Zita. It is not just a list of words and their meanings. It contains much more information that can help to write good, natural English. For writing something she considers how to link one word to the other in a sentence important. The dictionary gives her instructions about the grammar of a word and about the structures that often follow it. It also tells whether the word is formal or informal, helping her to select what is appropriate for a particular context.
On one occassion she looked up the equivalent of the word 'writer' in the Synonym Finder because the expression appeared in her essay a lot of times. She chose the term 'scribe', but since she doubted the meaning she checked it in the Oxford Dictionary. She found the following definition under the headword: "a person who made copies of writings before printing was invented". After reading it she realized that she had to look for another, more adequate word.
Zita also has a bilingual dictionary by Országh László, but she applies it for essay writing only on few occasions. It contains much more expressions, idioms, and prepositions than the earlier editions, but its word content still makes up of some old and old-fashioned words. That is why Zita do not find it suitable for writing. She uses it only that time when she has the idea of a word only in Hungarian. Then she can do nothing but look it up in that dictionary.
Conclusion
On the basis of an English learner’s ideas I have presented how the different dictionaries gives help for writing. Zita told me everything in detail about the content of three types of wordbooks and about why each one has advantages for writers. They had to open them more seldom than the beginners if they have mastered the foreign language perfectly. But they may hesitate even then and look for a better word or expression in the Synonym Finder, the unknown terms in the Országh László Dictionary and the grammar in the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary.
Bilingual university students need dictionaries, but many of them have problems with using them. I understand them very well as I am an English major, too. In the first year I had to confront applying dictionaries because there were a lot of texts to interpret and several essays to write. After I read ten of my groupmates' writings I noticed that most of them did not pay enough attention to accuracy. They aimed at trying to find the easiest way to get over with their work quickly and apply words that come to their minds at once. They told me that using dictionaries was a waste of time. They did not even know any techniques to improve their writings. I would like to give some help to them by presenting what kind of dictionaries an English major uses and how she applies them for essay writing.
Method
I interviewed one of my classmates who also attended a writing course this year. I chose Zita (the name has been changed to avoid recognition) because as she was one of my best friends, I assumed that she would not reject to answer my questions. I recorded the talk on tape to be able to listen to it as many times as I wanted, and this way I could quote some of her views as well. I made the interview in a room in the dormitory one day before I wrote this research paper. I did not really need to ask her a lot of questions because when she heard the first question ”How do you use dictionaries for essay writing?” she told me everything in detail. Zita works for the U.S. Army, so she has a special wordpower, full of American slang. That is why I was interested if she needed any dictionaries at all. I wondered if she was afraid of using words that may have seemed awkward for those readers who did not speak American English. I asked her what kind of dictionaries she preferred for writing and what her opinion was about them.
Results and discussion
Zita said that she, as a first-year student, also had troubles in writing mainly at the beginning of the semester. She had had to write some essays before but those could be called short stories. Her English teacher did not consider the essay writing serious, and although she had a dictionary did not need to open it at all. She built the words and expressions, which she picked up from the American soldiers, into the texts. Her classmates thought that as she could speak English almost fluently her essays must have been the same good. As she said she did not know what to do with the topic she got for the first time. She suspected that she must grasp it in an other way than before. Strictly speaking, she was scared a bit that the non-formal words she used would not fit in the context.
While she was writing her essay she looked the formal adequates of the words in the Synonym Finder to take her work more variable. According to her, that dictionary is useful but difficult to choose the right expression from the long list. "You cannot know which word has a meaning in the context unless you have read a lot in English before", said Zita. For these reasons "Synonym Finder must be used with caution. Even though two words may be quite similar in meaning, the substitution of one for the other may not always be appropriate, and the writer’s intent may be ill served." Zita also told me that the book also helped her when the proper word did not occur to her at a particular moment, though it was on the tip of her tongue.
Zita realised, after she had written her first essay at the university, that she had to be more careful with her spelling. Several American words are spelled another way, and teachers told her not to mix the British and American spelling. Since then she has been taking care of looking up the words that existed in British English.
If she does not recognise the meaning of the term she looks for the information in Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary because it includes the most current English. Besides the authors of it took care of every single detail and the definitions are clear and easy to follow. She often uses the wordbook for solving grammar problems because it has study pages that give answer even the basic linguistic questions. "Oxford Learner's Dictionary provides me the biggest help while writing an essay", said Zita. It is not just a list of words and their meanings. It contains much more information that can help to write good, natural English. For writing something she considers how to link one word to the other in a sentence important. The dictionary gives her instructions about the grammar of a word and about the structures that often follow it. It also tells whether the word is formal or informal, helping her to select what is appropriate for a particular context.
On one occassion she looked up the equivalent of the word 'writer' in the Synonym Finder because the expression appeared in her essay a lot of times. She chose the term 'scribe', but since she doubted the meaning she checked it in the Oxford Dictionary. She found the following definition under the headword: "a person who made copies of writings before printing was invented". After reading it she realized that she had to look for another, more adequate word.
Zita also has a bilingual dictionary by Országh László, but she applies it for essay writing only on few occasions. It contains much more expressions, idioms, and prepositions than the earlier editions, but its word content still makes up of some old and old-fashioned words. That is why Zita do not find it suitable for writing. She uses it only that time when she has the idea of a word only in Hungarian. Then she can do nothing but look it up in that dictionary.
Conclusion
On the basis of an English learner’s ideas I have presented how the different dictionaries gives help for writing. Zita told me everything in detail about the content of three types of wordbooks and about why each one has advantages for writers. They had to open them more seldom than the beginners if they have mastered the foreign language perfectly. But they may hesitate even then and look for a better word or expression in the Synonym Finder, the unknown terms in the Országh László Dictionary and the grammar in the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary.
W 068 F
Introduction
Young people use idioms and slang expressions but they do not often think about them. They are a part of their lives, and they tend to use them more and pick them up mostly unconsciously in their first language but this is more conscious when learning a foreign language. Besides picking up slang expressions from television, newspapers, music and friends, students develop their vocabulary consciously from coursebooks and dictionaries.
As I learn English as a foreign language I am curious to know how English Majors develop their vocabulary: how they learn slang expressions and how they can guess the meanings of new expressions from context. In this paper I describe how I conducted a survey on eleven English majors’ ways of developing their vocabulary. Although I asked few students, I think their answers were typical of other English majors.
Hypotheses
I based my research questions on the learning strategies of my friends and my own experience. I hypothesised that
English major students know some American slang idioms.
They pick them up not only at school but also from other sources.
They can guess the meanings of unknown expressions from context
The more sources they use for learning the more they know
I expected students to have favourites.
Method
I compiled a questionnaire of eight questions: five closed and three open questions. I based my questionnaire on Street Speak: Essential American Slang and Idioms (Burke, David and David Harrington: 1998). The aim of the first question was to find out how many slang idioms students knew. The second question asked how they picked them up. The third and the fourth aimed to find out whether they used them in general and in their university assignments. As students were asked to collect rewritten essays for their Writing and Research Skills Course and they were asked whether they used such expressions in them. The fifth one asked about their favourites and how often they used it. The sixth and the seventh were concrete questions on American slang expressions: in question six they had to tick the ones they knew and then turn over and guess the meanings of the previous expressions in context. Finally, they were asked to tick the one they liked the most.
Participants
Altogether, 11 first-year participants in the Writing and Research Skills course at JPU filled in a questionnaire, four boys, and seven girls, all of them around the age of twenty. They weren’t asked to write their names on them.
Procedure
I distributed the questionnaires to 11 students the last week of November 1998, before an English class; they all seemed to like the task. Some of them gave them back before and some after the class. All participants answered all the questions. They gave only a few words to the open questions.
Results and Discussion
I will analyse the answers according to the questions using the tables of the questionnaire.
Table 1. How do you estimate your knowledge of American slang idioms? Please tick one.
I know few slang expressions 3
I know some slang expressions 6
I know a lot of slang expressions 2
Most of the students said that they knew some slang expressions; only two of them indicated that they knew a lot, with only three ticking the option ‘few’.
Table 2. How did you pick up the ones you know? Please tick the ones true for you.
Watching movies, videos in English 11
Reading printed English texts 5
Listening to pop music 7
While staying abroad 4
From foreign friends 3
At school 7
Others 0
Those who claimed that they knew only a few slang expressions ticked that they picked them up in school and both who claimed that they knew a lot ticked that they learned them while staying abroad. The most frequent way of picking up slang is watching movies and videos in English; in the second place are listening to pop music and learning at school. I don’t know whether they watched movies or listened to music at school. They most often develop their vocabulary outside school.
Table 3. Do you use them, in general?
Yes 6
No 5
The students who knew a lot of slang expressions said that they often used them, the ones who knew only a few of them said that they didn’t. Four of them who knew some expressions use them in general, and three don’t.
Table 4. Did you use some in your Portfolio?
Yes 1
No 10
The only one who used slang expressions in a university assignment was someone who said that he or she knows only some slang expressions. This is somewhat puzzling as I expected students who knew a lot of expressions to use some in their portfolios. It is possible that students knowing more about slang didn’t think it was appropriate to use in their portfolios.
Question 5. Which is your favourite slang expression? Do you often use it?
Five of the students said that they didn’t have a favourite, and I couldn’t find any relationship between knowing a lot of expressions and having a favourite. The favourite expressions were the following: to paint the town red, getting busted, she is on bobtail, beating around the bush, that’s ain’t pie-nuts, to kick the bucket, put somebody up. These are not all slang expressions and the spelling was also problematic.
Question 6. Please tick American slang expressions you know.
1. to pull the show on the road
2. to give something two thumbs up
3. to put someone on
4. to have a sweet tooth
5. rock-bottom
6. to cut class
7. to be in the pink
8. to tie the knot
9. a blind date
10. to be in the boonies
The ones who knew a few ticked three or four out of ten; the ones who knew a lot ticked eight or nine; and the ones ticking some knew between three and seven. So, there was a relationship between what students claimed and how many expressions they ticked. And now let’s see how many they guessed out of ten.
Question 7. Please guess the meanings of the expressions in context or give a synonym
1. I don’t want to go to school. Let’s cut class today and go to the movies.
2. Tonight I’m going on a blind date. I hope he’s better than the last one. He was horrible.
3. I think Joe was putting you on when he said he was married. He just wanted to see your reaction.
4. I’m going to buy a new car today. The dealer is selling them at rock-bottom prices.
5. I heard you and Nicholas tied the knot last month. Congratulations.
6. Let’s get the show on the road! The movie was supposed to start ten minutes ago.
7. My grandmother lives in the boonies. It takes us hours to get to her house.
8. My grandmother is feeling much better. She is finally in the pink again.
9. Did you see all the candy Irene ate? She must really have a sweet tooth.
10. Let’s go see that movie. It should be really good. The critics gave two thumbs up.
Those three who said they knew a few expressions guessed correctly five, six and nine; those who said they knew a lot guessed eight and nine; the other six guessed eight on average. It seems that the students estimated their knowledge well: the ones who said they were good guessed more from context.
Question 8. Please give a tick on the left that you like the most.
This is the rank order of the most liked expressions. Although I asked only for one favourite, there were three who ticked more than one.
No 6 5 votes
No 10 4 votes
No 3 and No 7 2 votes
No 1, No 2, No 4, No 8 1 vote
Conclusion
I have found that the eleven English major students know quite a few American slang idioms. They pick them up not only at school but most often by watching English movies and videos; and by listening to pop music. About half of them have favourites. In the task I gave them they could guess the meanings of the unknown expressions from context very well. I expected that the more sources they used the more they would know, but this hypothesis wasn’t supported by my research.
On the whole, it seems that they liked the tasks, they filled in the questionnaire carefully. One of them even drew an illustration. I have found out about some English majors’ use of idioms and slang expressions and this topic would be worth more research.
Young people use idioms and slang expressions but they do not often think about them. They are a part of their lives, and they tend to use them more and pick them up mostly unconsciously in their first language but this is more conscious when learning a foreign language. Besides picking up slang expressions from television, newspapers, music and friends, students develop their vocabulary consciously from coursebooks and dictionaries.
As I learn English as a foreign language I am curious to know how English Majors develop their vocabulary: how they learn slang expressions and how they can guess the meanings of new expressions from context. In this paper I describe how I conducted a survey on eleven English majors’ ways of developing their vocabulary. Although I asked few students, I think their answers were typical of other English majors.
Hypotheses
I based my research questions on the learning strategies of my friends and my own experience. I hypothesised that
English major students know some American slang idioms.
They pick them up not only at school but also from other sources.
They can guess the meanings of unknown expressions from context
The more sources they use for learning the more they know
I expected students to have favourites.
Method
I compiled a questionnaire of eight questions: five closed and three open questions. I based my questionnaire on Street Speak: Essential American Slang and Idioms (Burke, David and David Harrington: 1998). The aim of the first question was to find out how many slang idioms students knew. The second question asked how they picked them up. The third and the fourth aimed to find out whether they used them in general and in their university assignments. As students were asked to collect rewritten essays for their Writing and Research Skills Course and they were asked whether they used such expressions in them. The fifth one asked about their favourites and how often they used it. The sixth and the seventh were concrete questions on American slang expressions: in question six they had to tick the ones they knew and then turn over and guess the meanings of the previous expressions in context. Finally, they were asked to tick the one they liked the most.
Participants
Altogether, 11 first-year participants in the Writing and Research Skills course at JPU filled in a questionnaire, four boys, and seven girls, all of them around the age of twenty. They weren’t asked to write their names on them.
Procedure
I distributed the questionnaires to 11 students the last week of November 1998, before an English class; they all seemed to like the task. Some of them gave them back before and some after the class. All participants answered all the questions. They gave only a few words to the open questions.
Results and Discussion
I will analyse the answers according to the questions using the tables of the questionnaire.
Table 1. How do you estimate your knowledge of American slang idioms? Please tick one.
I know few slang expressions 3
I know some slang expressions 6
I know a lot of slang expressions 2
Most of the students said that they knew some slang expressions; only two of them indicated that they knew a lot, with only three ticking the option ‘few’.
Table 2. How did you pick up the ones you know? Please tick the ones true for you.
Watching movies, videos in English 11
Reading printed English texts 5
Listening to pop music 7
While staying abroad 4
From foreign friends 3
At school 7
Others 0
Those who claimed that they knew only a few slang expressions ticked that they picked them up in school and both who claimed that they knew a lot ticked that they learned them while staying abroad. The most frequent way of picking up slang is watching movies and videos in English; in the second place are listening to pop music and learning at school. I don’t know whether they watched movies or listened to music at school. They most often develop their vocabulary outside school.
Table 3. Do you use them, in general?
Yes 6
No 5
The students who knew a lot of slang expressions said that they often used them, the ones who knew only a few of them said that they didn’t. Four of them who knew some expressions use them in general, and three don’t.
Table 4. Did you use some in your Portfolio?
Yes 1
No 10
The only one who used slang expressions in a university assignment was someone who said that he or she knows only some slang expressions. This is somewhat puzzling as I expected students who knew a lot of expressions to use some in their portfolios. It is possible that students knowing more about slang didn’t think it was appropriate to use in their portfolios.
Question 5. Which is your favourite slang expression? Do you often use it?
Five of the students said that they didn’t have a favourite, and I couldn’t find any relationship between knowing a lot of expressions and having a favourite. The favourite expressions were the following: to paint the town red, getting busted, she is on bobtail, beating around the bush, that’s ain’t pie-nuts, to kick the bucket, put somebody up. These are not all slang expressions and the spelling was also problematic.
Question 6. Please tick American slang expressions you know.
1. to pull the show on the road
2. to give something two thumbs up
3. to put someone on
4. to have a sweet tooth
5. rock-bottom
6. to cut class
7. to be in the pink
8. to tie the knot
9. a blind date
10. to be in the boonies
The ones who knew a few ticked three or four out of ten; the ones who knew a lot ticked eight or nine; and the ones ticking some knew between three and seven. So, there was a relationship between what students claimed and how many expressions they ticked. And now let’s see how many they guessed out of ten.
Question 7. Please guess the meanings of the expressions in context or give a synonym
1. I don’t want to go to school. Let’s cut class today and go to the movies.
2. Tonight I’m going on a blind date. I hope he’s better than the last one. He was horrible.
3. I think Joe was putting you on when he said he was married. He just wanted to see your reaction.
4. I’m going to buy a new car today. The dealer is selling them at rock-bottom prices.
5. I heard you and Nicholas tied the knot last month. Congratulations.
6. Let’s get the show on the road! The movie was supposed to start ten minutes ago.
7. My grandmother lives in the boonies. It takes us hours to get to her house.
8. My grandmother is feeling much better. She is finally in the pink again.
9. Did you see all the candy Irene ate? She must really have a sweet tooth.
10. Let’s go see that movie. It should be really good. The critics gave two thumbs up.
Those three who said they knew a few expressions guessed correctly five, six and nine; those who said they knew a lot guessed eight and nine; the other six guessed eight on average. It seems that the students estimated their knowledge well: the ones who said they were good guessed more from context.
Question 8. Please give a tick on the left that you like the most.
This is the rank order of the most liked expressions. Although I asked only for one favourite, there were three who ticked more than one.
No 6 5 votes
No 10 4 votes
No 3 and No 7 2 votes
No 1, No 2, No 4, No 8 1 vote
Conclusion
I have found that the eleven English major students know quite a few American slang idioms. They pick them up not only at school but most often by watching English movies and videos; and by listening to pop music. About half of them have favourites. In the task I gave them they could guess the meanings of the unknown expressions from context very well. I expected that the more sources they used the more they would know, but this hypothesis wasn’t supported by my research.
On the whole, it seems that they liked the tasks, they filled in the questionnaire carefully. One of them even drew an illustration. I have found out about some English majors’ use of idioms and slang expressions and this topic would be worth more research.
W 066 F
INTRODUCTION
English major students at Janus Pannonius University in Pécs are required to attend a course which aims to improve their writing and research skills. During the term students have to submit a portfolio, a collection of their personal essays.
They have a wide range of optional topics listed at the beginning of the course so that they have enough time to work on them. Students get tips in sessions on how to improve their writings. They also read works of William Zinsser and portfolios of previous-year students. The tutor reads the first drafts of their essays and gives advice for making them better.
During the course students learn about the elements of concrete language use, which they can apply to their own writings. That is why I have chosen to examine these factors in the essays. The basis of my research contains nine scripts of five portfolios that students wrote during the autumn semester of 1998. I will examine how concretely students express their ideas in their essays. (For further analysis on students' portfolio scripts see Bauer 1998.)
I selected the following essays out of the possible forty:
1. “Miami Studio” by Barabás Mariann
2. “The Tutor” by Horváth József and Barabás Mariann
3. “About a Boy” by Krutek László
4. “Joe' s Office” by Krutek László
5. “The Girl in the Mirror” by Piskó Beáta
6. “Stepping out into a Different World” by Piskó Beáta
7. “Five-Two-Seven” by Fehér Fatime
8. “About me as an Outsider” by Kópis Andrea
9. “One of the Most Beautiful Places in the World: The Transfogaras Mountains” by Kópis Andrea
(From now on I will refer to the essays by using their number in this order.)
Barabás Mariann shares her experience in a beauty salon with us when she accompanied her friend to get artificial nails. In her other essay she describes her tutor. Krutek László gives his own profile form an outsider' s point of view in “About a boy”. His other writing is about what he saw when he visited his teacher' s new office. Piskó Beáta has the two longest essays. The first is about one of her days, as someone else would see it. In the other one she leads us to Egypt. Fehér Fatime did not have a person' s description in her collection so I used only one of her works. It is about her room in the secondary school dorm she used to live. The author of the last two essays is Kópis Andrea. We can read her portrait from an outsider's prospect. The last piece takes us to Transylvania where our guide is Kópis Andrea.
METHOD
During this semester the tutor gave nine options to the students, out of which seven are represented in the five portfolios I examined. For the distribution of the essays in the five portfolios see Table 1.
There were two types which none of the five students chose: one is when the students have to record the essay on a tape, and the other is when they have to write two essays with different first and last paragraphs, but the rest is same. Two students wrote filter-test type essays, which is a writing task they have to complete at an exam at the end of the first year. It gives 125 theme choices for the students. Another possibility was to write an essay together with another student or the tutor. Other options were to describe how they use their thesaurus, how they write or describe any place they had been to. Out of the four profile-type essays three were self-description from the point of view of an outsider and one was about another person.
Table 1: Distribution of essay-types in the portfolios
I chose two types of essays for my analysis which most students had in their collection: place description, which all portfolios contained, and the profile, which only four students wrote. That gives the number of nine essays, which gave the basis for the analysis.
The concreteness of the text is associated with the verbs that are used in it because they “push the sentence forward and give it momentum. Active verbs push hard; passive verbs tug fitfully. Most verbs also carry somewhere in their sound a suggestion of what they mean” (Zinsser 1998, 111). Therefore, I counted the verbs comparing to the number of words, grouped them from different aspects. I examined whether they are active or passive verbs, meaningful verbs or 'be'-forms. I grouped them according to the number of syllables they consist of.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
According to the length of the essays the number of verbs shows an even distribution. In all essays it falls between 12.5 - 17.7 %. It was the lowest in the last and the highest in the second writing.
Table 2: Distribution of verbs in the essays
When we compare the number of active verbs with that of passive verbs we can find similarities, too. In the second and third essays the authors did not use any passive verbs. In the essays No 4, 5, 7, 8, 9 there was only one passive verb. The two profiles have not got any and the rest have only one passive verb in them. Perhaps the type of the task determines the number of passive verbs. Observing the percentage of passive verbs we can find the same result. All the place descriptions have more than 2 percent and all but one of the character-descriptions have less than that. The highest result comes with the longest work. There is one more result that sticks out: one of the profiles (No 8) has a high percentage of passive verbs, but this derives from the brevity of the writing. It still has only one passive verb in it.
Table 3: Number and percentage of active and passive verbs
I grouped the verbs: those which carry meaning and the different 'be'-forms. The proportion of this latter varied between 14.5 - 36.6 %. This shows bigger difference between the pieces of writings than the previous results, the highest is in the eighth and the lowest is in the fifth essay. Even this result shows that meaningful verbs dominate the texts: 379 verbs out of 493 (77%) were of that category. I made subcategories within this group. I thought that examining the length of the verbs is relevant for the shorter the verb the more powerful it is, and the more concrete meaning it carries. I counted the syllables of the verbs apart from the 'be'-forms and found that there was only one verb with more than four syllables in the nine essays and only 68 verbs contained two or three syllables. These altogether make 69, only 14% of all verbs.
Table 4: Number and percentage of ‘be’-forms and the subcategorisation of meaningful verbs by their syllables
In the nine scripts 63% of all verbs (310 out of 493) were meaningful, one-syllable verbs. This result significantly shows that writers of these essays use shorter, more concrete verbs.
CONCLUSION
After examining the verbs of the texts I found that the short and active verbs are dominant, which makes the writings concrete.
In another research it would be worth to analyse these factors among students who have not participated in the course. Comparing those results with that of my research we could see how much it is influenced by the factor that students were conscious of using concrete language in their essays.
This result may interest English major students, especially those whose scripts I have used for my research. Other students who are involved with similar research can use my results as a reference material.
English major students at Janus Pannonius University in Pécs are required to attend a course which aims to improve their writing and research skills. During the term students have to submit a portfolio, a collection of their personal essays.
They have a wide range of optional topics listed at the beginning of the course so that they have enough time to work on them. Students get tips in sessions on how to improve their writings. They also read works of William Zinsser and portfolios of previous-year students. The tutor reads the first drafts of their essays and gives advice for making them better.
During the course students learn about the elements of concrete language use, which they can apply to their own writings. That is why I have chosen to examine these factors in the essays. The basis of my research contains nine scripts of five portfolios that students wrote during the autumn semester of 1998. I will examine how concretely students express their ideas in their essays. (For further analysis on students' portfolio scripts see Bauer 1998.)
I selected the following essays out of the possible forty:
1. “Miami Studio” by Barabás Mariann
2. “The Tutor” by Horváth József and Barabás Mariann
3. “About a Boy” by Krutek László
4. “Joe' s Office” by Krutek László
5. “The Girl in the Mirror” by Piskó Beáta
6. “Stepping out into a Different World” by Piskó Beáta
7. “Five-Two-Seven” by Fehér Fatime
8. “About me as an Outsider” by Kópis Andrea
9. “One of the Most Beautiful Places in the World: The Transfogaras Mountains” by Kópis Andrea
(From now on I will refer to the essays by using their number in this order.)
Barabás Mariann shares her experience in a beauty salon with us when she accompanied her friend to get artificial nails. In her other essay she describes her tutor. Krutek László gives his own profile form an outsider' s point of view in “About a boy”. His other writing is about what he saw when he visited his teacher' s new office. Piskó Beáta has the two longest essays. The first is about one of her days, as someone else would see it. In the other one she leads us to Egypt. Fehér Fatime did not have a person' s description in her collection so I used only one of her works. It is about her room in the secondary school dorm she used to live. The author of the last two essays is Kópis Andrea. We can read her portrait from an outsider's prospect. The last piece takes us to Transylvania where our guide is Kópis Andrea.
METHOD
During this semester the tutor gave nine options to the students, out of which seven are represented in the five portfolios I examined. For the distribution of the essays in the five portfolios see Table 1.
There were two types which none of the five students chose: one is when the students have to record the essay on a tape, and the other is when they have to write two essays with different first and last paragraphs, but the rest is same. Two students wrote filter-test type essays, which is a writing task they have to complete at an exam at the end of the first year. It gives 125 theme choices for the students. Another possibility was to write an essay together with another student or the tutor. Other options were to describe how they use their thesaurus, how they write or describe any place they had been to. Out of the four profile-type essays three were self-description from the point of view of an outsider and one was about another person.
Table 1: Distribution of essay-types in the portfolios
I chose two types of essays for my analysis which most students had in their collection: place description, which all portfolios contained, and the profile, which only four students wrote. That gives the number of nine essays, which gave the basis for the analysis.
The concreteness of the text is associated with the verbs that are used in it because they “push the sentence forward and give it momentum. Active verbs push hard; passive verbs tug fitfully. Most verbs also carry somewhere in their sound a suggestion of what they mean” (Zinsser 1998, 111). Therefore, I counted the verbs comparing to the number of words, grouped them from different aspects. I examined whether they are active or passive verbs, meaningful verbs or 'be'-forms. I grouped them according to the number of syllables they consist of.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
According to the length of the essays the number of verbs shows an even distribution. In all essays it falls between 12.5 - 17.7 %. It was the lowest in the last and the highest in the second writing.
Table 2: Distribution of verbs in the essays
When we compare the number of active verbs with that of passive verbs we can find similarities, too. In the second and third essays the authors did not use any passive verbs. In the essays No 4, 5, 7, 8, 9 there was only one passive verb. The two profiles have not got any and the rest have only one passive verb in them. Perhaps the type of the task determines the number of passive verbs. Observing the percentage of passive verbs we can find the same result. All the place descriptions have more than 2 percent and all but one of the character-descriptions have less than that. The highest result comes with the longest work. There is one more result that sticks out: one of the profiles (No 8) has a high percentage of passive verbs, but this derives from the brevity of the writing. It still has only one passive verb in it.
Table 3: Number and percentage of active and passive verbs
I grouped the verbs: those which carry meaning and the different 'be'-forms. The proportion of this latter varied between 14.5 - 36.6 %. This shows bigger difference between the pieces of writings than the previous results, the highest is in the eighth and the lowest is in the fifth essay. Even this result shows that meaningful verbs dominate the texts: 379 verbs out of 493 (77%) were of that category. I made subcategories within this group. I thought that examining the length of the verbs is relevant for the shorter the verb the more powerful it is, and the more concrete meaning it carries. I counted the syllables of the verbs apart from the 'be'-forms and found that there was only one verb with more than four syllables in the nine essays and only 68 verbs contained two or three syllables. These altogether make 69, only 14% of all verbs.
Table 4: Number and percentage of ‘be’-forms and the subcategorisation of meaningful verbs by their syllables
In the nine scripts 63% of all verbs (310 out of 493) were meaningful, one-syllable verbs. This result significantly shows that writers of these essays use shorter, more concrete verbs.
CONCLUSION
After examining the verbs of the texts I found that the short and active verbs are dominant, which makes the writings concrete.
In another research it would be worth to analyse these factors among students who have not participated in the course. Comparing those results with that of my research we could see how much it is influenced by the factor that students were conscious of using concrete language in their essays.
This result may interest English major students, especially those whose scripts I have used for my research. Other students who are involved with similar research can use my results as a reference material.
W 028 F
Clutch, weep, glare, jerk, loathe. These verbs sound well and push forward. They are short, yet tell much about the action they refer to. When fulfilling writing assignements writers have to pay much attention to the selection of appropriate words relevant to their themes. Among the parts of speech it is verbs on which the success and enjoyability of most of the writings depend. An essay with many effective verbs will delight its readers, while another essay built up by sentences that contain overused and less informative verbs will make the reader lose interest.
My aim in analyzing 5 Proficiency Essays written in the English Department of Janus Pannonius University in May 1997 was to find out whether the type and number of verbs used in the essays influenced the evaluation.
Method
To conduct the analysis I collected five Proficiency Essay that differed in the scores from five up to nine. I examined them focusing on the use of verbs. For doing so I took into account three aspects. First I counted how many times passive forms appeared in the individual essays, then I wanted to find out whether the testees could make their texts vivid by selecting effective verbs. At last I compared the essays on the basis of the frequency of the appearance of 'be' forms.
Discussion and Results
According to Zinsser verbs are the most important of all your tools (11), the tools a good writer can make use of. That is why it can be assumed that the type and number of verbs used in the essays may have influenced the evaluation. The best essay, which was awarded with 9 scores out of 10 shows a fluent writer with good English proficiency. Only three times did s/he use the passive voice, s/he rather concentrated on selecting effective and active verbs which push hard and carry sentiments. " They would go for one , single catastrophe, an explosion of a problem great enough to sweep harmony away." "The poor creature cannot just sit still and resist all the temptations and provocations of the world." (66,1) The testee introduced his/her topic sentences by using ' be' forms but it did not become characteristic of the essay. "Destruction is the very basis of human nature." "There are basically two ways of ruining a perfect Christmas." (66,1) Only the writer of this essay achieved the maximum two scores in vocabulary, which might have resulted from that the testee could express him/herself with short and effective verbs specific to the theme.
The essay on How to Survive a Hollywood Movie (39) presented the largest number of passive forms among the five essays. Though "the difference between an active-verb style and a passive-verb style - in pace, clarity and vigor - is the difference between life and death for a writer.” ( Zinsser 110) This testee must have ignored this difference between the two types of verbs as s/he often used passive forms, sometimes creating a few clumsy phrases. Passive verbs "tug fitfully" ( Zinsser 111 ) in phrases such as: "their hair suddenly become thoroughly combed" or "it must be made sure"(39,1) They interrupt the fluency of the text as well as the inaccurate use of the verb ‘secure’ in the following context: "There is no time to secure him about her similar feelings."(39,1) The testee confused the meaning of ‘secure’ with that of ‘assure’s which resulted in the creation of this awkward sentence.
Essays (46), (32) and (53) had one feature in common, they presented an overuse of 'be' and 'have' forms. In essay (32) 'be' and 'have' forms occurred eighteen, in essay(32) sixteen and in essay (53) fifteen times. Texts overrun by expressions like: 'there are', 'it is quite a', 'has a fear of' and 'it is not' lose their vitality and originality and will make the reader lose interest in reading. To elaborate on their theme these candidates used mostly basic and everyday verbs, such as: ( buy, work, go, get).
The essay on How to Survive a Hollywood Movie (46) contained - apart from 'be' and 'have' forms - only twenty-five verbs out of the five hundred words written by the testee. The following lines reflect well the overall style of the essay: "Life would not be complete without Hollywood, Hollywood would hardly be Hollywood without rage."(46,2)The text lacked vivid verbs that could give it dynamics but exceeded in the use of verbs which express intellectual activities, such as : ( know, reckon, mean, suppose ). The verb ‘know’ occured three, ‘reckon’ two times in the text, though their appearance was irrevelant to the topic of the essay.
By analyzing essay(32) the same tendency can be noticed, the candidate often used copulas and verbs related to thinking, though s/he managed to involve more effective verbs in his/her composition than the previous testee. Sometimes the testee came up with some concrete language and with concrete verbs: " do not forget to wrap the presents"(32,3) or "spoil the whole feast" (32,1).
'Be' forms appear in essay (53) too, though less often. This text is almost free of passive forms. The testee describes every little detail of the Christmas preparation by using active verbs. "She cuts her finger", "pulls the poor girl’s hair" and similar phrases push the text forward and give it vitality.
In general, when evaluating vocabulary skills testers have to pay attention to that whether the words - including verbs, nouns, adjectives and adverbs - are well-chosen and relevant to the theme of the essays. Apart from the use of verbs the type and number of nouns adjectives and adverbs also influence the assessment. When I looked at the scores awarded to Vocabulary skills I found that only essay(66) got the maximum 2 scores, all the others received 1 score. However, the one-score-essays differed a lot in the use of verbs. The narrow score limit did not allow the testers to lay much emphasis on verb use; they had to give scores on the basis of the average of Vocabulary skills. That is why the differences concerning the choice of verbs among the one- score-essays cannot be expressed directly in the evaluation of Vocabulary skills. They rather become conspicuous by looking at the total scores achieved by the candidates.
I found that the essays - on account of less effective verbs - gradually lose their vitality and rhythm in proportion to the decrease of the total scores. The top-scorer essay reveals a writer with good English proficiency who excelled in vocabulary and in the use of vivid and effective verbs as well. Testers awarded 8 scores to essay(39), 7 scores to essay(53), 6 scores to essay(32) and 5 scores to essay(46). From the analysis it turns out that essays(39) and (53) presented more vivid verbs than essays(32) and (46) and that the latter two were overrun rather by adjectives and nouns than by verbs.
Conclusion
I have presented five Proficiency Essays and then concluded that the type and number of verbs have influenced the final assessment. As I have looked at only few essays I have not had enough evidence of the reliability of my results. Analyzing other essays might modify my results.
My aim in analyzing 5 Proficiency Essays written in the English Department of Janus Pannonius University in May 1997 was to find out whether the type and number of verbs used in the essays influenced the evaluation.
Method
To conduct the analysis I collected five Proficiency Essay that differed in the scores from five up to nine. I examined them focusing on the use of verbs. For doing so I took into account three aspects. First I counted how many times passive forms appeared in the individual essays, then I wanted to find out whether the testees could make their texts vivid by selecting effective verbs. At last I compared the essays on the basis of the frequency of the appearance of 'be' forms.
Discussion and Results
According to Zinsser verbs are the most important of all your tools (11), the tools a good writer can make use of. That is why it can be assumed that the type and number of verbs used in the essays may have influenced the evaluation. The best essay, which was awarded with 9 scores out of 10 shows a fluent writer with good English proficiency. Only three times did s/he use the passive voice, s/he rather concentrated on selecting effective and active verbs which push hard and carry sentiments. " They would go for one , single catastrophe, an explosion of a problem great enough to sweep harmony away." "The poor creature cannot just sit still and resist all the temptations and provocations of the world." (66,1) The testee introduced his/her topic sentences by using ' be' forms but it did not become characteristic of the essay. "Destruction is the very basis of human nature." "There are basically two ways of ruining a perfect Christmas." (66,1) Only the writer of this essay achieved the maximum two scores in vocabulary, which might have resulted from that the testee could express him/herself with short and effective verbs specific to the theme.
The essay on How to Survive a Hollywood Movie (39) presented the largest number of passive forms among the five essays. Though "the difference between an active-verb style and a passive-verb style - in pace, clarity and vigor - is the difference between life and death for a writer.” ( Zinsser 110) This testee must have ignored this difference between the two types of verbs as s/he often used passive forms, sometimes creating a few clumsy phrases. Passive verbs "tug fitfully" ( Zinsser 111 ) in phrases such as: "their hair suddenly become thoroughly combed" or "it must be made sure"(39,1) They interrupt the fluency of the text as well as the inaccurate use of the verb ‘secure’ in the following context: "There is no time to secure him about her similar feelings."(39,1) The testee confused the meaning of ‘secure’ with that of ‘assure’s which resulted in the creation of this awkward sentence.
Essays (46), (32) and (53) had one feature in common, they presented an overuse of 'be' and 'have' forms. In essay (32) 'be' and 'have' forms occurred eighteen, in essay(32) sixteen and in essay (53) fifteen times. Texts overrun by expressions like: 'there are', 'it is quite a', 'has a fear of' and 'it is not' lose their vitality and originality and will make the reader lose interest in reading. To elaborate on their theme these candidates used mostly basic and everyday verbs, such as: ( buy, work, go, get).
The essay on How to Survive a Hollywood Movie (46) contained - apart from 'be' and 'have' forms - only twenty-five verbs out of the five hundred words written by the testee. The following lines reflect well the overall style of the essay: "Life would not be complete without Hollywood, Hollywood would hardly be Hollywood without rage."(46,2)The text lacked vivid verbs that could give it dynamics but exceeded in the use of verbs which express intellectual activities, such as : ( know, reckon, mean, suppose ). The verb ‘know’ occured three, ‘reckon’ two times in the text, though their appearance was irrevelant to the topic of the essay.
By analyzing essay(32) the same tendency can be noticed, the candidate often used copulas and verbs related to thinking, though s/he managed to involve more effective verbs in his/her composition than the previous testee. Sometimes the testee came up with some concrete language and with concrete verbs: " do not forget to wrap the presents"(32,3) or "spoil the whole feast" (32,1).
'Be' forms appear in essay (53) too, though less often. This text is almost free of passive forms. The testee describes every little detail of the Christmas preparation by using active verbs. "She cuts her finger", "pulls the poor girl’s hair" and similar phrases push the text forward and give it vitality.
In general, when evaluating vocabulary skills testers have to pay attention to that whether the words - including verbs, nouns, adjectives and adverbs - are well-chosen and relevant to the theme of the essays. Apart from the use of verbs the type and number of nouns adjectives and adverbs also influence the assessment. When I looked at the scores awarded to Vocabulary skills I found that only essay(66) got the maximum 2 scores, all the others received 1 score. However, the one-score-essays differed a lot in the use of verbs. The narrow score limit did not allow the testers to lay much emphasis on verb use; they had to give scores on the basis of the average of Vocabulary skills. That is why the differences concerning the choice of verbs among the one- score-essays cannot be expressed directly in the evaluation of Vocabulary skills. They rather become conspicuous by looking at the total scores achieved by the candidates.
I found that the essays - on account of less effective verbs - gradually lose their vitality and rhythm in proportion to the decrease of the total scores. The top-scorer essay reveals a writer with good English proficiency who excelled in vocabulary and in the use of vivid and effective verbs as well. Testers awarded 8 scores to essay(39), 7 scores to essay(53), 6 scores to essay(32) and 5 scores to essay(46). From the analysis it turns out that essays(39) and (53) presented more vivid verbs than essays(32) and (46) and that the latter two were overrun rather by adjectives and nouns than by verbs.
Conclusion
I have presented five Proficiency Essays and then concluded that the type and number of verbs have influenced the final assessment. As I have looked at only few essays I have not had enough evidence of the reliability of my results. Analyzing other essays might modify my results.
W 018 F
INTRODUCTION
The vocabulary of an essay reflects the writers' knowledge about the topic, and it emphasises the features of the theme. Specific words draw the readers' attention and make the text relevant to a subject. The expressions determine the style and the tone of the essay.
This research paper discusses whether the vocabulary contains words which specify the topic or not, and whether this is reflected in the marks or not in seven essays of the 1997 proficiency test at CPU.
METHOD
These essays were written by seven first year students at JPU at the end of their second semester in 1997. It was an obligatory test which examined various parts of the second language learners' knowledge. The test had four parts: a grammar multiple choice test, a listening comprehension test, a reading comprehension test and an essay writing test.
The essay writing part of the filter test had requirements: the length was limited at about 450 words of four or five paragraphs. The time for completing their work was two and a half hours. It had to focus on and define the chosen topic in the first paragraph, which had to be followed by the discussion. The writers had to pay attention not only to the paragraph and essay organisation but the usage of vocabulary and accuracy as well. The two cross- markers awarded the marks on the bases of these five categories.
I gathered three sources to my research: seven proficiency test essays (PTEs) selected from 80 papers (five of the essays were coded, two others' name were printed in the edition), the notes in the PTEs given by the cross- markers and a book which contained useful information about the PTEs. From this edition I got to know the details about cross marking: I found a question raised by the cross- markers which was relevant to my research: " Is the vocabulary specific to the topic? " ( Horváth 95).
The title of these seven essays was: "How to Survive a Hollywood Movie". The writers composed this title from a theme selection table. This way students could choose the title which appealed to them the best.
The total score of an essay was ten points and each group of the evaluation was worth two points. The candidates had to achieve five points in order to pass the exam. In spite of the fact that the topic was the same, different marks were given by the cross- markers: from three points to ten points. I especially focused on the vocabulary scores. One of the essays vocabulary got zero point, four of the essays got one point and two of them two points.
I selected phrases from each essay. These items could be related to Hollywood, to cinema, to films and to actors. After collecting these materials I tried to make connection between the quality and the quantity of words and the scores.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
I divided the essays into three groups according to the scores on vocabulary to be able to analyse them.
One essay was assessed zero from the point of view of vocabulary. It contained four phrases related to the title, to the vocabulary of Hollywood movie. These phrases were "film", "hall of the cinema", "hero" and "music" (72). They are the bases of this category: They constructed the backbone of the text in such a content.
I also found four phrases which referred to the other essential part of the title: survival. These were "eating", "drinking", "relaxing" and "listening to music" (72). The writer of this essay used these words more than once so repetitions could be observed because of the lack of the synonyms which is one of the causes of the low score.
Four essays got one point to the vocabulary usage. In these four papers three words were common: "film", "cinema" and "movie" (71, 8, 84, 33). Two of them used the words "audience" (71, 87), "popcorn" (33, 8) and "picture" (33, 87). There were items which appeared only in one essay, but they reflected the atmosphere of Hollywood and the ironic style of the writer as well. In the essay coded 87 such elements could be found: "Hollywood Monster", "cameraman", "plot", "cliché" and "movie techniques".
From these papers I listed more colorful vocabulary related to the survival topic than from the essay of the first group. They offered sophisticated strategies to those readers who wanted to get over such a film. Inviting a friend, gathering pieces of information about a star, eating, drinking, listening to music, auto- suggestion, being late and wearing sunglasses were the most often shared advice. The expressions indicated that the authors knew what they were talking about and, at the same time, they gave an ironic tone to the texts.
The third category consisted of two tenpoint essays by Bizse Ferenc and Bagi Ádám. This means that they were perfect in every respect. They used the items which appeared in the other essays as well. In addition, these two authors wrote more complex expressions like "masterpiece", "movie theatre", "image", "cinema goer", "super hero". They put down some adequate words related to the production and the screening of a film. "Dolby- stereo system", "project onto a screen", "spotlight", "sound effect" specify and identify the theme and the aim of the authors.
These two writers gave some sophisticated tricks to the reader to get out of the cinema alive. They proposed writing, developing thoughts and saving self- esteem in the course of the film. They called the readers' attention to the former precautions as well.
CONCLUSION
As I have compared the words related to the title of seven essays, I found that their lexis differed either in quality and quantity. My division (according to the given scores) has shown that the difference between them is reflected in the awarded marks, although the cross- markers had to take into consideration other words of the texts when they gave the points.
The vocabulary of an essay reflects the writers' knowledge about the topic, and it emphasises the features of the theme. Specific words draw the readers' attention and make the text relevant to a subject. The expressions determine the style and the tone of the essay.
This research paper discusses whether the vocabulary contains words which specify the topic or not, and whether this is reflected in the marks or not in seven essays of the 1997 proficiency test at CPU.
METHOD
These essays were written by seven first year students at JPU at the end of their second semester in 1997. It was an obligatory test which examined various parts of the second language learners' knowledge. The test had four parts: a grammar multiple choice test, a listening comprehension test, a reading comprehension test and an essay writing test.
The essay writing part of the filter test had requirements: the length was limited at about 450 words of four or five paragraphs. The time for completing their work was two and a half hours. It had to focus on and define the chosen topic in the first paragraph, which had to be followed by the discussion. The writers had to pay attention not only to the paragraph and essay organisation but the usage of vocabulary and accuracy as well. The two cross- markers awarded the marks on the bases of these five categories.
I gathered three sources to my research: seven proficiency test essays (PTEs) selected from 80 papers (five of the essays were coded, two others' name were printed in the edition), the notes in the PTEs given by the cross- markers and a book which contained useful information about the PTEs. From this edition I got to know the details about cross marking: I found a question raised by the cross- markers which was relevant to my research: " Is the vocabulary specific to the topic? " ( Horváth 95).
The title of these seven essays was: "How to Survive a Hollywood Movie". The writers composed this title from a theme selection table. This way students could choose the title which appealed to them the best.
The total score of an essay was ten points and each group of the evaluation was worth two points. The candidates had to achieve five points in order to pass the exam. In spite of the fact that the topic was the same, different marks were given by the cross- markers: from three points to ten points. I especially focused on the vocabulary scores. One of the essays vocabulary got zero point, four of the essays got one point and two of them two points.
I selected phrases from each essay. These items could be related to Hollywood, to cinema, to films and to actors. After collecting these materials I tried to make connection between the quality and the quantity of words and the scores.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
I divided the essays into three groups according to the scores on vocabulary to be able to analyse them.
One essay was assessed zero from the point of view of vocabulary. It contained four phrases related to the title, to the vocabulary of Hollywood movie. These phrases were "film", "hall of the cinema", "hero" and "music" (72). They are the bases of this category: They constructed the backbone of the text in such a content.
I also found four phrases which referred to the other essential part of the title: survival. These were "eating", "drinking", "relaxing" and "listening to music" (72). The writer of this essay used these words more than once so repetitions could be observed because of the lack of the synonyms which is one of the causes of the low score.
Four essays got one point to the vocabulary usage. In these four papers three words were common: "film", "cinema" and "movie" (71, 8, 84, 33). Two of them used the words "audience" (71, 87), "popcorn" (33, 8) and "picture" (33, 87). There were items which appeared only in one essay, but they reflected the atmosphere of Hollywood and the ironic style of the writer as well. In the essay coded 87 such elements could be found: "Hollywood Monster", "cameraman", "plot", "cliché" and "movie techniques".
From these papers I listed more colorful vocabulary related to the survival topic than from the essay of the first group. They offered sophisticated strategies to those readers who wanted to get over such a film. Inviting a friend, gathering pieces of information about a star, eating, drinking, listening to music, auto- suggestion, being late and wearing sunglasses were the most often shared advice. The expressions indicated that the authors knew what they were talking about and, at the same time, they gave an ironic tone to the texts.
The third category consisted of two tenpoint essays by Bizse Ferenc and Bagi Ádám. This means that they were perfect in every respect. They used the items which appeared in the other essays as well. In addition, these two authors wrote more complex expressions like "masterpiece", "movie theatre", "image", "cinema goer", "super hero". They put down some adequate words related to the production and the screening of a film. "Dolby- stereo system", "project onto a screen", "spotlight", "sound effect" specify and identify the theme and the aim of the authors.
These two writers gave some sophisticated tricks to the reader to get out of the cinema alive. They proposed writing, developing thoughts and saving self- esteem in the course of the film. They called the readers' attention to the former precautions as well.
CONCLUSION
As I have compared the words related to the title of seven essays, I found that their lexis differed either in quality and quantity. My division (according to the given scores) has shown that the difference between them is reflected in the awarded marks, although the cross- markers had to take into consideration other words of the texts when they gave the points.
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