Introduction
Everyone is interested in what had happened when he or she was born. What was going on in the country, what were the people doing, how were they living. The information can be acquired in different ways: asking parents or grandparents about that day or reading books about that time or searching in libraries for information.
The easiest way to find particulars is to look at a newspaper which deals with the events, happenings, stories that happened on your day of birth. To find the information, next day’s newspaper is need because the paper comes out from the press in the evening or morning, with yesterday’s news. For example, the newspaper which you buy on April 28 is about the news that happened on April 27.
In order to find what happened on my birthday I had look in next day’s newspaper. The newspaper I used was NÉPSZABADSÁG, volume XXXII, issue 98.
This newspaper (NÉPSZABADSÁG) was the central newspaper of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party. This newspaper was the government’s paper, so if the government wanted to acquaint the people of Hungary with information, they published it in NÉPSZABADSÁG.
The articles of the newspaper were censored in advance, in order to avoid unnecessary information or not wanted articles.
My aim with this research paper is to find out what happened on the 27th of April 1979. I wish to find out not only what happened. I also would like to know what was going on in Hungary back than. Was the 27th of April an important day? What happened on the 27th of April in Hungary?
Method
I used two methods in this paper. The first was a very simple one. It may sound simple but indeed it is a complex research which has several different parts. These parts are the following, in order of importance:
- reading and understanding the articles of the newspaper. The emphasis is on understanding because the articles were written eighteen years ago. The language differs a little bit from today’s language.
- making short notes from the articles
-drawing a conclusion or conclusions from the text by using the articles and notes together.
All of these units are very simple ones. But only if they are dealt with separately. The difficult part is putting them together into one text. I used the simple, well known way of understanding a text: I made notes while I was reading an article. I chose fifteen articles on which I based my results and discussion. The articles dealt with internal affairs, sport and common affairs of Hungary. I chose only Hungarian-related articles because I only wanted to know what happened in Hungary. The other countries had no importance to me. This is why I excluded the other countries.
I enclose only two examples in this paper. The first one shows one note from the fifteen notes I made while I was reading the newspaper. From these notes and the articles I came to my summation. The second example lists words which are related to the second method I used.
The first method was reading, understanding and taking notes from the texts. With the help of this I produced my conclusion.
The second method was to look at the words in connection with communism. This method was needed because from this I could picture the language usage of communism. These words also helped me to understand what was the year 1979 like in Hungary.
The examples are written in English and Hungarian because the real meanings of the words can be understood only in Hungarian. Some words might not be correct translations because I was not sure about some abbreviations.
Example 1
Diáknapok ------- - Április 28 - Május 2
7000 diák
Kisz KB és Állami Ifjusági Bizottság által meghirdetett
szakmai és politikai tanácskozások
sport és humor
tükrözi a pedagógusok és a KISZ szervezetek munkáját
kultúrában és politikában
Student days ------- - from April 28 to May 2
7000 students
sport and humour
professional and political conferences
shows the cultural and political work of teachers and KISZ organisations
Results and discussion
After reading the fifteen articles I found that Hungary was a real communist country. The words that were used show this. Example two shows the most frequently used communist words.
The titles of the articles also show that Hungary was a communist country.
I also found that nothing important happened on the 27th of April in 1979. I should know it by the age of eighteen. But nothing significant happened.
To be reassured about the fact that the 27th of April was an ordinary day I should not have read the daily journal. Hungary was living its life. Life was going on without any unusual events.
The governing force was still the communist party, known as the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party. The country’s foreign affairs were going well.
The first thing that caught my attention was on page three:
” Éljen és virágozzék szeretett hazánk, a Magyar Népköztársaság!”(3)
This sentence clearly states that Hungary was a communist country. It also shows the way of thinking: Hungary will live with communism for ever.
As I was reading an article on page three, namely ” Felelõséggel a környékért”, I could not believe what the author was writing. Here is the quotation from the text:
” A városoknak kulcsszerepük van a lakosság - beleértve a környezõ községeket- minden irányú ellátásában, foglalkoztatásában, letelepedésben”
(Palkó, 3).”
The author said that the cities were playing a big role in the life of the villages that surround the city. This is obvious. The city helps the smaller villages in almost everything. It seems that this was not so clear to those people who governed Hungary in 1979. This article shows that Hungary was not so developed in 1979. The whole section deals with this topic: the cities should take care of the problems of the smaller villages.
Example 2
There are two articles which characterise the 27th of April 1979. One of them states that this day was a boring, usual day and the other states what was before the 27th of April 1979 and what was after it.
For the boring one the title is enough because it says everything:
”Borbély Sándor a Pamutfonóiparnál”(3)
This title summarises the whole day of April 27 in one sentence: nothing happened. With such simplicity that no more information should or even could be added.
The second article has the title ”Baranyai szõttesek” and its first paragraph is the important one:
”Szövetkezetünk életének története egy kicsit tükre az ország gazdasági fejlõdésének... Voltak nehézségeink, kezdetben szegények voltunk ... ma már elmondhatjuk: egy erõs szövetkezet tagjai vagyunk” (Szente, 8 ).
This in English looks like this: Our co-operative’s history is somewhat like our country’s development in economics. We had difficulties, we were poor in the beginning. But now we are part of a strong co-operative. So before the 27th of April 1979, the country was in bad shape, but after it everything turned out fine. I am not saying that the changes occurred because of me , but they did happened on the 27th of April. This is an example to show that on my day of birth good things happened too. these two quotations show that my birthday was contradictory. On one hand it was a boring day but on the other hand it was memorable.
One thing was sure to me. The day I was born was a communist day. This can be seen on the first page of the newspaper:
”Világ proletárjai, egyesüljetek!”(1)
This is the well known call of the communists. In English it looks like this: Proletarians of the World unite! Every communist newspaper had this on the first page.
Conclusion
So what was the 27th of April like? What happened in Hungary? Two easy questions. The 27th of April 1979 was an ordinary, normal day. Nothing important happened in Hungary. Only one important thing happened: I was born. I found out that almost the same life was going on in 1979 as it is going on right now. The newspapers were the same: they contain so little information and so much scrap, that nothing can be taken out as information. The only difference is that those papers were blue-pencilled by the communist and now nobody does that. With this paper I got the information, what I wanted to know.
Wednesday, May 9, 2007
W 129 M
Introduction
The success of the lectures depends both on the students and teachers; therefore lecturers have to pay considerable attention on the effectiveness of the teaching. Writers of the English Department are to submit many essays to the different courses where they have to fulfil certain requirements. The basis of the essays' style is academic writing therefore the fitness centre, the "Writing and Research Skills course", is very important for university students studying English.
In this research paper I intend to investigate a part of the training process applied by Horváth József, a tutor of the English Department at Janus Pannonius University: how beneficial the system of using portfolios for improving academic writing is. This is one of the major reasons for my choosing Content Analysis of at Least Five Portfolios from the options of themes offered by the tutor. The other was to demonstrate the most frequent mistakes made by students so that the writers could improve their style of writing, and the teacher could see how remunerative and practical his procedure is. By analysing the essays in each portfolio I wish to discover whether it would perform a function for other lecturers to adopt the method analysed, or whether there is a need for modification in the portfolio process.
Method
There were six portfolios at my disposal including mine as well: one from ANG 1601, three from ANG 1602, and two from ANG 1603- Ang 1601, ANG 1602, and ANG 1603 are the courses for improving academic writing at JPU. Altogether, I found 36 essays in the dedicated notebooks which I investigated according to content analysis.
Content analysis is an objective way of finding generalities, results and conclusions in research based on the system of classification which requires the researcher to read each work thoroughly; I read every portfolio three times. I categorized each essay according to ten aspects: did the essay have a title; was the title underlined; was there a date referring to the creation of the piece; was the comment of teacher positive; were the comments suggested by teacher accepted and adopted; mistakes corrected; mistakes not corrected; number of paragraphs in each essay; was there a smiling face ( :) ); was there a sad face ( :( ).
Having graded each essay according to the items, I compared the same aspects of each portfolio. Thus I was able to see whether there were any similarities or features allowing me to draw concrete conclusions. So my personal opinion does not influence the results of the research which is the proof for justifying the objectivity of content analysis.
Results and Discussion
The first step of my investigation, that is reading and filling blanks of tables, is presented in the following evaluation figures. If there is an "x" in the table it means that the essay had a title; the title was underlined; there was a date indicating the piece' s day of creation; the teacher gave positive comments on the essay; the student adopted the instructions; mistakes were corrected; one mistake was not corrected; there was a drawing.
Titles
In the comparison of the six tables it turned out that most of the students did not give a title- though they were asked to do so. The tutor, Horváth József, wrote the following advice to Úz Márk' s portfolio, who is a student in ANG 1601:
"I suggest you give a title to all your subsequent essays in this portfolio. This would be useful for you when you look for one, and me when I begin reading a new piece. And it would be useful to other students who may read the portfolio." The same was proposed to Harmath Virág, who is a student in ANG 1602: "P.S. And please remember to give a title to each of your writings in this portfolio." Altogether, there were two instructions that implied giving a title in the collections of writings. According to the tables showing the statistics, there were more notebooks without titles of essays than with titles.
Horváth indicated that the dating of writings is beneficial both for the teacher and the student or for other scholars reading (or analysing) the portfolios. Only two writers out of six dated and underlined the titles of the writings and the rest of the students did not follow the example. Not only did Úz and Harmath forget to date the essays, but they did not adopt the tutor' s first negative comment, that is the portfolio used as a source of communication was not successful in this respect, which suggests that a greater emphasis should have been put on the correction in order to make student realise the significance of the comment. Of course there were examples of asking the student for adopting the pieces of pieces of advice and for revision of the text as well.
Comments and correction
Juxtaposing the quantity of positive comments and the number of mistakes detected and corrected by teacher, I drew the conclusion that there were more corrections than positive comments. This means in general that there was a lot to be improved in the style of academic writing of the six students.
I found the following comments praising the style of essays: detailed introduction, coherent paragraph, good description, and adequate style. Horváth was thankful for giving source of the Three in One piece, for a personal account and for accepting pieces of pieces of advice. Comments about revisions seemed to be especially approving.
I collected all the mistakes found in the portfolios of the six students and made a list where I put them in order of frequency (see Table 7 below). There were various cases when the mistake corrected in the previous essay was repeated in the following one, which signifies lack of revision, but opposed to this the teaching was remunerative when considering the comment approving of review of essay. Horváth asked for simplification and clarification for more occasions and due to this in most of the instances students- such as Csontos Zsuzsanna who rewrote "How to Apply Make-up" or Makra Melinda, who simplified the "How a See-saw is made" essay- accomplished the task.
Analysing the portfolios, I found a few mistakes which were not corrected. Most of them were rather spelling mistakes, for example in the notebook of Schlõgl Krisztián: "Each and every piece of work of this collection shows the peculiarity and uniqueness o Irish English"; "Do business only with well known and reliable craftmen so as to avoid your home from collapsing two or three years later". Úz Márk wrote oppinion instead of opinion in his essay, "The Lyrics of a rap song".
Number of Paragraphs
As we can see from Table 7 most of the students have serious problems with coherence of the text, that is they are uncertain about the usage of paragraphs. For example, Csontos Zsuzsanna does not finish a thought started but goes to another different theme included in the same paragraph. Although the tutor emphasises by telling and showing the students the significance of coherence, most of the students do not apply the method suggested by teacher.
The infrequency of drawings in the portfolios is depressing for the writers. It is indicated in Table 1 that there was a sad face drawn in the fifth essay next to the comment correcting the most serious mistake. Due to this, the comment was adopted in the sixth writing. Smiling faces inspire students for writing again. Table 1 shows that the tutor drew a smiling face next to the fifth, sixth, and seventh essays. Dates indicated that there was only a few days difference between the writing of essays.
Conclusion
The evaluation of the six portfolios confirms some of my perceptions. According to the results of the research paper the system of using portfolios for improving academic writing of students studying English is essential and indispensable. Students have to write an enormous amount of essays during the five years spent in the university and writing is a fundamental basis of the realisation of the wish of everyone: the best mark for the essay ("5"). As Table 7 shows the frequency of mistakes is another factor contributing to the significance of teaching "Writing and Research Skills". There might have been some mistakes which have not been corrected, but this could have been because the teacher gave the opportunity for writers to revise the essay, and it would be the student who recognises his or her own mistake and not the tutor.
I hope that every student will find some pieces of useful information in my research paper instigating them to change their way of writing if necessary. In the process of making content analysis I had the opportunity to know other students from a different point of view and in addition to this my vocabulary expanded as well.
The success of the lectures depends both on the students and teachers; therefore lecturers have to pay considerable attention on the effectiveness of the teaching. Writers of the English Department are to submit many essays to the different courses where they have to fulfil certain requirements. The basis of the essays' style is academic writing therefore the fitness centre, the "Writing and Research Skills course", is very important for university students studying English.
In this research paper I intend to investigate a part of the training process applied by Horváth József, a tutor of the English Department at Janus Pannonius University: how beneficial the system of using portfolios for improving academic writing is. This is one of the major reasons for my choosing Content Analysis of at Least Five Portfolios from the options of themes offered by the tutor. The other was to demonstrate the most frequent mistakes made by students so that the writers could improve their style of writing, and the teacher could see how remunerative and practical his procedure is. By analysing the essays in each portfolio I wish to discover whether it would perform a function for other lecturers to adopt the method analysed, or whether there is a need for modification in the portfolio process.
Method
There were six portfolios at my disposal including mine as well: one from ANG 1601, three from ANG 1602, and two from ANG 1603- Ang 1601, ANG 1602, and ANG 1603 are the courses for improving academic writing at JPU. Altogether, I found 36 essays in the dedicated notebooks which I investigated according to content analysis.
Content analysis is an objective way of finding generalities, results and conclusions in research based on the system of classification which requires the researcher to read each work thoroughly; I read every portfolio three times. I categorized each essay according to ten aspects: did the essay have a title; was the title underlined; was there a date referring to the creation of the piece; was the comment of teacher positive; were the comments suggested by teacher accepted and adopted; mistakes corrected; mistakes not corrected; number of paragraphs in each essay; was there a smiling face ( :) ); was there a sad face ( :( ).
Having graded each essay according to the items, I compared the same aspects of each portfolio. Thus I was able to see whether there were any similarities or features allowing me to draw concrete conclusions. So my personal opinion does not influence the results of the research which is the proof for justifying the objectivity of content analysis.
Results and Discussion
The first step of my investigation, that is reading and filling blanks of tables, is presented in the following evaluation figures. If there is an "x" in the table it means that the essay had a title; the title was underlined; there was a date indicating the piece' s day of creation; the teacher gave positive comments on the essay; the student adopted the instructions; mistakes were corrected; one mistake was not corrected; there was a drawing.
Titles
In the comparison of the six tables it turned out that most of the students did not give a title- though they were asked to do so. The tutor, Horváth József, wrote the following advice to Úz Márk' s portfolio, who is a student in ANG 1601:
"I suggest you give a title to all your subsequent essays in this portfolio. This would be useful for you when you look for one, and me when I begin reading a new piece. And it would be useful to other students who may read the portfolio." The same was proposed to Harmath Virág, who is a student in ANG 1602: "P.S. And please remember to give a title to each of your writings in this portfolio." Altogether, there were two instructions that implied giving a title in the collections of writings. According to the tables showing the statistics, there were more notebooks without titles of essays than with titles.
Horváth indicated that the dating of writings is beneficial both for the teacher and the student or for other scholars reading (or analysing) the portfolios. Only two writers out of six dated and underlined the titles of the writings and the rest of the students did not follow the example. Not only did Úz and Harmath forget to date the essays, but they did not adopt the tutor' s first negative comment, that is the portfolio used as a source of communication was not successful in this respect, which suggests that a greater emphasis should have been put on the correction in order to make student realise the significance of the comment. Of course there were examples of asking the student for adopting the pieces of pieces of advice and for revision of the text as well.
Comments and correction
Juxtaposing the quantity of positive comments and the number of mistakes detected and corrected by teacher, I drew the conclusion that there were more corrections than positive comments. This means in general that there was a lot to be improved in the style of academic writing of the six students.
I found the following comments praising the style of essays: detailed introduction, coherent paragraph, good description, and adequate style. Horváth was thankful for giving source of the Three in One piece, for a personal account and for accepting pieces of pieces of advice. Comments about revisions seemed to be especially approving.
I collected all the mistakes found in the portfolios of the six students and made a list where I put them in order of frequency (see Table 7 below). There were various cases when the mistake corrected in the previous essay was repeated in the following one, which signifies lack of revision, but opposed to this the teaching was remunerative when considering the comment approving of review of essay. Horváth asked for simplification and clarification for more occasions and due to this in most of the instances students- such as Csontos Zsuzsanna who rewrote "How to Apply Make-up" or Makra Melinda, who simplified the "How a See-saw is made" essay- accomplished the task.
Analysing the portfolios, I found a few mistakes which were not corrected. Most of them were rather spelling mistakes, for example in the notebook of Schlõgl Krisztián: "Each and every piece of work of this collection shows the peculiarity and uniqueness o Irish English"; "Do business only with well known and reliable craftmen so as to avoid your home from collapsing two or three years later". Úz Márk wrote oppinion instead of opinion in his essay, "The Lyrics of a rap song".
Number of Paragraphs
As we can see from Table 7 most of the students have serious problems with coherence of the text, that is they are uncertain about the usage of paragraphs. For example, Csontos Zsuzsanna does not finish a thought started but goes to another different theme included in the same paragraph. Although the tutor emphasises by telling and showing the students the significance of coherence, most of the students do not apply the method suggested by teacher.
The infrequency of drawings in the portfolios is depressing for the writers. It is indicated in Table 1 that there was a sad face drawn in the fifth essay next to the comment correcting the most serious mistake. Due to this, the comment was adopted in the sixth writing. Smiling faces inspire students for writing again. Table 1 shows that the tutor drew a smiling face next to the fifth, sixth, and seventh essays. Dates indicated that there was only a few days difference between the writing of essays.
Conclusion
The evaluation of the six portfolios confirms some of my perceptions. According to the results of the research paper the system of using portfolios for improving academic writing of students studying English is essential and indispensable. Students have to write an enormous amount of essays during the five years spent in the university and writing is a fundamental basis of the realisation of the wish of everyone: the best mark for the essay ("5"). As Table 7 shows the frequency of mistakes is another factor contributing to the significance of teaching "Writing and Research Skills". There might have been some mistakes which have not been corrected, but this could have been because the teacher gave the opportunity for writers to revise the essay, and it would be the student who recognises his or her own mistake and not the tutor.
I hope that every student will find some pieces of useful information in my research paper instigating them to change their way of writing if necessary. In the process of making content analysis I had the opportunity to know other students from a different point of view and in addition to this my vocabulary expanded as well.
W 128 M
Introduction
The use of dictionaries is a basic requirement in learning a foreign language. Different dictionaries are helpful in solving such problems as finding the meaning of words, correcting grammatical mistakes, finding synonyms for words and finding the meaning of idioms. If students want to professionally acquire and maintain a language, they have to get in touch with these types of books. In this paper I will present the results of a survey on the use of dictionaries in the English Department of JPU.
Method
To get information about the dictionary use of students I compiled a one-page-long questionnaire which I gave to fourteen students on 4th May 1998. These students were all English majors at JPU and attended Horváth József’s “Writing and Research Skills” course. I asked them to fill out my questionnaire because I would have liked to know how other people of my age used their dictionaries in their studies. The questionnaire contained ten simple questions, of which the fourth and the tenth were multiple choice questions. Each of the other eight could be answered in a sentence.
The questions were:
1. Have you ever used a dictionary?
2. Which is your favourite dictionary? Why?
3. Do you use a monolingual or a bilingual dictionary?
4. What do you usually do when you find a word or expression that
you have never seen before?
a. I go and look its meaning up in a dictionary.
b. I try to guess what can it mean by using the context.
c. I just don’t care about its meaning. It’s enough if I
understand the other parts of the text.
d. I ask someone to tell me its meaning.
5. Do you think dictionaries help a lot in learning a foreign
language?
6. If you read a book in a foreign language do you look up all the
unknown words in a dictionary?
7. Would you like to use a dictionary software instead of a real one?
8. Do you think it would be easier to use such a software? Why?
9. Would you consult a dictionary if you did not know the correct
spelling of a word?
10. When did you use dictionaries the most frequently?
a. When I began to learn English.
b. When I was at intermediate level.
c. When I was at advanced level.
The answers given to these questions clearly reflect why, how, when and what types of dictionaries English majors usually use. (I enclosed the fourteen questionnaires to give the reader the chance to have a look at the answers.)
Results and Discussion
I compiled the questionnaire in a way that the answers would provide me with a complex picture of dictionary use at JPU. What I expected from the results of the analysis was to find relatively similar methods in dictionary use.
After having analysed the answers I realised that no huge differences occurred in them. Every student stated that a dictionary was an indispensable tool in learning and maintaining English language.
All the students answered yes to the first question, which means that they have already used dictionaries.
There were some differences in the answers to the second question. As the results show, the most popular dictionary among students was the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. Five students preferred this because they said it was up-to-date, easy to use and detailed. There were four students who preferred Országh because they used it in their earlier studies. They thought it was much comprehensible to know the Hungarian meaning of a word than to read an explanation of its meaning in English. The remaining five students’ favourite dictionaries were either Webster’s or Collins-Cobuild. They said these were the most detailed and useful ones.
The answers show that the majority of students use both monolingual and bilingual dictionaries. The reason lies in the fact that when using a monolingual dictionary one runs into difficulties in interpreting a word the bilingual one helps to surmount the problems. Two people used only a bilingual and one used only a monolingual dictionary.
I was surprised looking at the answers to the fourth question. The number of students who would have looked the meaning of a new word up in a dictionary was almost equal to those who would have tried to guess for its meaning by using the context. I thought the
majority would look a new word’s meaning up in a dictionary, though I also would try to guess what can it mean by using the context. Only one person said he or she would ask someone else about the meaning of it.
All the students reported that dictionaries help a lot in learning a foreign language. They are essential if someone wants to be a competent user of that language.
The same answer was given to the sixth question by everyone. They said they would not look up all the unknown words in a dictionary while reading a book in a foreign language. They would look for the meaning of the relevant words.
Three people said they would not even try to use dictionary software, either because they thought it would be more complicated or they would simply not be able to get used to a computerised dictionary. Those who answered yes thought it would be much quicker to look up the meaning of a word using such software. In fact it would really be faster than thumbing through a thousand-page-long dictionary mumbling the alphabet in your head all the time.
The answers given to the ninth question prove that students used their dictionaries for writing purposes as well. Thirteen of them consulted a dictionary when they did not know the exact spelling of a word. There was only one person who gave a negative answer.
The analysis of the answers to the last question shows us a clear picture of the frequency of the use of dictionaries among these fourteen students. The more competent speakers people become the less frequently they use dictionaries. The main reason for this is that as people get to a higher level in the acquisition of a foreign language their vocabulary widens. They also become more capable of guessing the meaning of words by using the context.
Conclusion
I have analysed and presented the results of a questionnaire which can be useful for students and teachers as well. Teachers can get information about the way their students use dictionaries in their studies. Students can apply the experiences of others in dictionary use. As the answers show, English majors at Janus Pannonius
University use dictionaries for several reasons. They use them to find the meaning of words they do not know, to find out the correct spelling of words, and to solve all problems which can come up while writing or reading in English.
My main finding was the advantages of using both monolingual and bilingual dictionaries.
Looking at the results of the research we can draw the conclusion that there will always be a need for dictionaries among university students, no matter how proficient speakers students will be.
The use of dictionaries is a basic requirement in learning a foreign language. Different dictionaries are helpful in solving such problems as finding the meaning of words, correcting grammatical mistakes, finding synonyms for words and finding the meaning of idioms. If students want to professionally acquire and maintain a language, they have to get in touch with these types of books. In this paper I will present the results of a survey on the use of dictionaries in the English Department of JPU.
Method
To get information about the dictionary use of students I compiled a one-page-long questionnaire which I gave to fourteen students on 4th May 1998. These students were all English majors at JPU and attended Horváth József’s “Writing and Research Skills” course. I asked them to fill out my questionnaire because I would have liked to know how other people of my age used their dictionaries in their studies. The questionnaire contained ten simple questions, of which the fourth and the tenth were multiple choice questions. Each of the other eight could be answered in a sentence.
The questions were:
1. Have you ever used a dictionary?
2. Which is your favourite dictionary? Why?
3. Do you use a monolingual or a bilingual dictionary?
4. What do you usually do when you find a word or expression that
you have never seen before?
a. I go and look its meaning up in a dictionary.
b. I try to guess what can it mean by using the context.
c. I just don’t care about its meaning. It’s enough if I
understand the other parts of the text.
d. I ask someone to tell me its meaning.
5. Do you think dictionaries help a lot in learning a foreign
language?
6. If you read a book in a foreign language do you look up all the
unknown words in a dictionary?
7. Would you like to use a dictionary software instead of a real one?
8. Do you think it would be easier to use such a software? Why?
9. Would you consult a dictionary if you did not know the correct
spelling of a word?
10. When did you use dictionaries the most frequently?
a. When I began to learn English.
b. When I was at intermediate level.
c. When I was at advanced level.
The answers given to these questions clearly reflect why, how, when and what types of dictionaries English majors usually use. (I enclosed the fourteen questionnaires to give the reader the chance to have a look at the answers.)
Results and Discussion
I compiled the questionnaire in a way that the answers would provide me with a complex picture of dictionary use at JPU. What I expected from the results of the analysis was to find relatively similar methods in dictionary use.
After having analysed the answers I realised that no huge differences occurred in them. Every student stated that a dictionary was an indispensable tool in learning and maintaining English language.
All the students answered yes to the first question, which means that they have already used dictionaries.
There were some differences in the answers to the second question. As the results show, the most popular dictionary among students was the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. Five students preferred this because they said it was up-to-date, easy to use and detailed. There were four students who preferred Országh because they used it in their earlier studies. They thought it was much comprehensible to know the Hungarian meaning of a word than to read an explanation of its meaning in English. The remaining five students’ favourite dictionaries were either Webster’s or Collins-Cobuild. They said these were the most detailed and useful ones.
The answers show that the majority of students use both monolingual and bilingual dictionaries. The reason lies in the fact that when using a monolingual dictionary one runs into difficulties in interpreting a word the bilingual one helps to surmount the problems. Two people used only a bilingual and one used only a monolingual dictionary.
I was surprised looking at the answers to the fourth question. The number of students who would have looked the meaning of a new word up in a dictionary was almost equal to those who would have tried to guess for its meaning by using the context. I thought the
majority would look a new word’s meaning up in a dictionary, though I also would try to guess what can it mean by using the context. Only one person said he or she would ask someone else about the meaning of it.
All the students reported that dictionaries help a lot in learning a foreign language. They are essential if someone wants to be a competent user of that language.
The same answer was given to the sixth question by everyone. They said they would not look up all the unknown words in a dictionary while reading a book in a foreign language. They would look for the meaning of the relevant words.
Three people said they would not even try to use dictionary software, either because they thought it would be more complicated or they would simply not be able to get used to a computerised dictionary. Those who answered yes thought it would be much quicker to look up the meaning of a word using such software. In fact it would really be faster than thumbing through a thousand-page-long dictionary mumbling the alphabet in your head all the time.
The answers given to the ninth question prove that students used their dictionaries for writing purposes as well. Thirteen of them consulted a dictionary when they did not know the exact spelling of a word. There was only one person who gave a negative answer.
The analysis of the answers to the last question shows us a clear picture of the frequency of the use of dictionaries among these fourteen students. The more competent speakers people become the less frequently they use dictionaries. The main reason for this is that as people get to a higher level in the acquisition of a foreign language their vocabulary widens. They also become more capable of guessing the meaning of words by using the context.
Conclusion
I have analysed and presented the results of a questionnaire which can be useful for students and teachers as well. Teachers can get information about the way their students use dictionaries in their studies. Students can apply the experiences of others in dictionary use. As the answers show, English majors at Janus Pannonius
University use dictionaries for several reasons. They use them to find the meaning of words they do not know, to find out the correct spelling of words, and to solve all problems which can come up while writing or reading in English.
My main finding was the advantages of using both monolingual and bilingual dictionaries.
Looking at the results of the research we can draw the conclusion that there will always be a need for dictionaries among university students, no matter how proficient speakers students will be.
W 127 M
"My childhood is so far away... it's like I don't even remember being a child. I think it was someone else who was a child." (Bob Dylan)
When I was a child, I thought I would remain a child forever. I thought some people had been born to be adults, and others to be children. I could never answer the grown-ups' question, "What would you like to be when you grow up," because I could not really believe that I would ever grow up. I only wanted to be a good child for the sake of Santa Claus and nothing else. Now I am said to be a grown-up. Sometimes I can believe it, sometimes not. If it is true, I must have been reborn as an adult. And so, whether I believe or not, I will remain an adult forever.
Although it was several years ago, my childhood seems to be far away for me. I feel strange when I look at old photos of my early years, because somehow I believe that the small boy in the picture with big brown eyes, curly blond hair and a sincere smile on his plump-cheeked face was not me, but another person.
He had different thoughts and feelings than I have now. He lived in another world, which provided splendid surprises and great novelties for him every day, and abounded in magic and fabulous secrets arousing interest in the world. Curiosity made him highly imaginative. The tales he heard from the kindergarten-teacher and from his mother reading them out before sleep captured his imagination, and made him feel the presence of lovely fairies, kindly elves, vicious witches, good princes and princesses, and fair-minded kings around him.
He also felt magic in the wind, the rainbow, the snow, the stars and in butterflies, tiny colourful insects and old knotted trees. The ones he showed the greatest concern about appeared in his drawings made with great care, and formed the topics of long lasting talks with good friends. He did not know much about reality--which is usually quite a relative notion for a child--but knew a lot about love, gratitude, sincerity, and tales.
Sometimes, when grown-ups seem to be strange and unkindly, I would like to be that small boy again and to be as naive as he was at that time, and I would rather not know anything about their world, about money, interest, hatred, wars, lies, and violence.
When I was a child, I thought I would remain a child forever. I thought some people had been born to be adults, and others to be children. I could never answer the grown-ups' question, "What would you like to be when you grow up," because I could not really believe that I would ever grow up. I only wanted to be a good child for the sake of Santa Claus and nothing else. Now I am said to be a grown-up. Sometimes I can believe it, sometimes not. If it is true, I must have been reborn as an adult. And so, whether I believe or not, I will remain an adult forever.
Although it was several years ago, my childhood seems to be far away for me. I feel strange when I look at old photos of my early years, because somehow I believe that the small boy in the picture with big brown eyes, curly blond hair and a sincere smile on his plump-cheeked face was not me, but another person.
He had different thoughts and feelings than I have now. He lived in another world, which provided splendid surprises and great novelties for him every day, and abounded in magic and fabulous secrets arousing interest in the world. Curiosity made him highly imaginative. The tales he heard from the kindergarten-teacher and from his mother reading them out before sleep captured his imagination, and made him feel the presence of lovely fairies, kindly elves, vicious witches, good princes and princesses, and fair-minded kings around him.
He also felt magic in the wind, the rainbow, the snow, the stars and in butterflies, tiny colourful insects and old knotted trees. The ones he showed the greatest concern about appeared in his drawings made with great care, and formed the topics of long lasting talks with good friends. He did not know much about reality--which is usually quite a relative notion for a child--but knew a lot about love, gratitude, sincerity, and tales.
Sometimes, when grown-ups seem to be strange and unkindly, I would like to be that small boy again and to be as naive as he was at that time, and I would rather not know anything about their world, about money, interest, hatred, wars, lies, and violence.
W 126 M
Introduction
Most of the people is curious what happened on the first day of their life - above that they were born. Did happen something very significant on that day?
In my paper I would like to present the day when I began to live by the articles of a newspaper. Probably the reader would ask why I had chosen this topic, as my tutor, Mr. József Horváth, gave me several topics to choose from. The answer is simple: I knew little details about that day and it was a very determining one for me, so I wanted to learn more about it.
Let’s start searching, what happened on the 23rd November in 1978.
Method
To examine and to value the day I was born (November 23, 1978) I used the best known local newspaper called Dunántúli Napló - the predecessor of Új Dunántúli Napló. This issue was the 323rd copy of the XXXVth volume, and Ervin Mitzki was its chief editor.
The choice: first I used Dunántúli Napló because it gives information about the events of the world. Plus, it gives detailed information about the events of Pécs and its environs.
In the selected issue of that newspaper most of the articles were written about the previous day, so these were not the happenings and events of the day I was born. But, I’ve chosen the 23rd of November 1978 issue, because I found more personal the issue with my birthday date on its front-page than the one with the date after my birth. On the other hand, I found several articles about the 23rd of November.
I read through all the articles of the newspaper except the classified advertisements, and I made notes to easily process their contents.
Results and Discussion
I start with the weather forecast. The 23rd of November in 1978 was a rather cold Thursday, the temperature was 3 degrees centigrade below zero in the night and 2 or 3 degrees centigrade during the day; the sky was cloudy, and there was fog ("Idõjárás" 4).
The main events of that day and the previous one - based on the articles of Dunántúli Napló - were the following: the Political Conferring Corporation of Warsaw Pact countries was to began their session in Moscow. Hungary was to be represented by János Kádár, the party secretary ("Megkezdõdött a Varsói" 1).
Pál Losonczi, the chairman of the Presidential Council, made an official visit to the Csepel Iron and Metal Works ("Losonczi Pál látogatása" 1).
The autumnal planting of trees was to begin that day, but problems cropped up as the chairman of the warden's office made a statement to the journalist of Dunántúli Napló ("Õszi fásítás" 1).
The Hungarian - Czechoslovakian region development conference began on the 22nd of November ("Magyar - Csehszlovák" 2).
Fire prevention of Komló was suitable as the captain of the fire station told the journalist of Dunántúli Napló ("Megfelelõ a tûzvédelem" 2).
The national children's book week was announced. It was to be held from the 4th of December until the 8th of December ("Országos gyermekkönyvhét" 2).
The Mayor of Pécs and Eszék signed a cooperation agreement between the two cities for 10 years (Gejer 2).
"The snow can come!" - the snowploughs were on the alert ("Jöhet a hó!" 2).
Parliament of youth at the building industry - some of the workers made pledges to perform the home building programme (Török 3).
The chairman of the socialist brigades appealed to their members for coordinated work against alcoholism (Kurucz 3).
The 4th page contains the weather forecast, some public phone numbers, the surgery hours of hospitals and opening hours of pharmacies, date of weddings and exhibitions.
The 5th page contains the events of 24 hours ranked by cities ("24 óra" 5):
- Helsinki: conference about establishing a North-European nuclear-free zone leaded by Urho Kaleva Kekkonen;
- Moscow: Andrej Gromiko (member of the Soviet Political Committee) received Malcolm Toon (ambassador of the United States in Moscow);
- Washington: the dragging on of SALT-negotiations, new armament plans;
- Conakry: the name of the Guinean Republic was changed to Guinean Revolutionary People's Republic;
- Tuva: a Scythian golden statuette - presumably from the middle of the Ith millennium before Christ - was found by archaeologists in the South Siberian region, near Tuva;
- San José: the Sandinist National Liberation Movement launched an offensive against the Somoza regime;
- Lisboa: the new Prime Minister of Portugal took the oath;
- Havana: the 35th session of Council for Mutual Economic Aid began. The main subject was the use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes;
- Beograd: Ziaur Rahman, the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, arrived to the capital to confer with Joszip Broz Tito, the president of the Yugoslavian Republic;
- Oslo: Jimmy Carter, the president of the United States, announced that he would not be able to participate on the Nobel Peace Prize award;
- Bonn: on Tuesday two Dutch fighter aircraft, belonging to the unit of NATO, crashed during the touch down near an English base in West Germany. One of the two aircraftmen died in the accident;
- Berlin: new one and two mark coins were to be put into circulation;
- Teheran: heated debate milled about the program of general Gholam Reza Azhari's military cabinet.
The Central Committee of Communist Alliance of Youth (KISZ) held a meeting on Wednesday ("Ülést tartott" 5).
Yugoslavian national assembly was to arrive in Nógrád county to visit the county town, Salgótarján and some surrounding villages ("Jugoszláv nemzetgyûlési" 5).
The leadership of the Common Market and of the Council for Mutual Economic Aid held a meeting in Brussels ("KGST - Közös" 5).
The 6th page of Dunántúli Napló was the economical supplement ("Közgazdasági élet" 6), where two articles were about inflation. The first one dealt with the cause of inflation, as it was a new phenomenon at that time. The author of the article tried to describe in an easily intelligible way to the readers why they would have to pay more for the goods. The article said this is not a unique symptom of the Hungarian economy; other countries were also suffering from inflation (Petsching 6).
The second article in this field was about the national price conference held at Pécs ("Országos árkonferencia" 6).
The 7th page of the newspaper was for the classified ads ("Hirdetés" 7).
The last page of Dunántúli Napló is always reserved for sports events. It was the case in that issue, too ("Dunántúli Napló Sport" 8). I list here some of the events but I am not intended to be exhaustive, because some of the short news were programmes for the upcoming weekend.
In the UEFA Cup the Budapest Honvéd team beat the Ajax team. The Hungarian eleven scored 4 goals and got only one (the score of the game at the end of the first half: 0:0) ("UEFA Kupa" 8).
The PMSC team of Pécs played against the team of Szekszárd and won. The score at the end was 3:1 (2:0) ("Labdarúgó NB-s" 8).
In the UEFA qualifying matches the Hungarian team beat the Rumanian team. The visiting side got 3 goals (1:0) ("UEFA selejtezõ" 8).
The Salgótarjáni TC beat the Russian Olympic Representative Team with one goal (1:0) ("Rosszul lõttek" 8).
I compared the events of that day described in Dunántúli Napló with other days' events that I've read and lived in the course of my life and I found among the articles only one, which caught my attention: this was the sports news article on the last page about the success of Bp. Honvéd. The Hungarian team beat the nowadays so successful team, Ajax Amsterdam. Now, people would not believe that a Hungarian team won a game against a world-class football team. Those were the days of the Hungarian national soccer.
The other articles showed me that the day of my birth was quite an ordinary one. No one particularly significant event happened, which could have been published in any history coursebook or anybody would remember it for its great importance.
But, perhaps this is not the verity. Something could have happened which was not written in this newspaper. When this issue was released, it were the late seventies; it was the term of soft socialism in Hungary, when the press had been under the control of the government. Every article was submitted to the censor before being prepared for the press. If the leadership found something not worthy to know for the people, they simply cut it out and that time it was not released. Most of these events, which were tried to be cleared from people’s memory or not even let them become known by the people, were in connection with the dirty affairs of the Soviet government. The leadership could not allow itself that some facts leak out, because this could have undermined their well-established regime and their position.
For instance lots of nuclear weapon tests were kept in secret, because their harm to the human beings (Vajda). Those who suffered serious injuries by these experiments or only witnessed them were isolated from the other members of the society. Those who did dare speak their mind were liquidated or thrown into jail. The inhabitants had been terrorized for so many years that they became passive and they taught their children to behave the same way. These conditions were present in the countries of the Eastern block, directed by the Soviet Union, and in dictatorial regimes.
Conclusion
No matter which theory is the truth, my task was to analyze the day when I was born by the articles of Dunántúli Napló, released on that day. This is why I had to say that the day of my birth was a customary Thursday, nothing specially significant event happened.
To seek after the truth can be the task of another paper, which requires much more research among the works released after the change of regime, and dealing with the events of this day. Then, the author of that paper could answer the open question of my work.
Most of the people is curious what happened on the first day of their life - above that they were born. Did happen something very significant on that day?
In my paper I would like to present the day when I began to live by the articles of a newspaper. Probably the reader would ask why I had chosen this topic, as my tutor, Mr. József Horváth, gave me several topics to choose from. The answer is simple: I knew little details about that day and it was a very determining one for me, so I wanted to learn more about it.
Let’s start searching, what happened on the 23rd November in 1978.
Method
To examine and to value the day I was born (November 23, 1978) I used the best known local newspaper called Dunántúli Napló - the predecessor of Új Dunántúli Napló. This issue was the 323rd copy of the XXXVth volume, and Ervin Mitzki was its chief editor.
The choice: first I used Dunántúli Napló because it gives information about the events of the world. Plus, it gives detailed information about the events of Pécs and its environs.
In the selected issue of that newspaper most of the articles were written about the previous day, so these were not the happenings and events of the day I was born. But, I’ve chosen the 23rd of November 1978 issue, because I found more personal the issue with my birthday date on its front-page than the one with the date after my birth. On the other hand, I found several articles about the 23rd of November.
I read through all the articles of the newspaper except the classified advertisements, and I made notes to easily process their contents.
Results and Discussion
I start with the weather forecast. The 23rd of November in 1978 was a rather cold Thursday, the temperature was 3 degrees centigrade below zero in the night and 2 or 3 degrees centigrade during the day; the sky was cloudy, and there was fog ("Idõjárás" 4).
The main events of that day and the previous one - based on the articles of Dunántúli Napló - were the following: the Political Conferring Corporation of Warsaw Pact countries was to began their session in Moscow. Hungary was to be represented by János Kádár, the party secretary ("Megkezdõdött a Varsói" 1).
Pál Losonczi, the chairman of the Presidential Council, made an official visit to the Csepel Iron and Metal Works ("Losonczi Pál látogatása" 1).
The autumnal planting of trees was to begin that day, but problems cropped up as the chairman of the warden's office made a statement to the journalist of Dunántúli Napló ("Õszi fásítás" 1).
The Hungarian - Czechoslovakian region development conference began on the 22nd of November ("Magyar - Csehszlovák" 2).
Fire prevention of Komló was suitable as the captain of the fire station told the journalist of Dunántúli Napló ("Megfelelõ a tûzvédelem" 2).
The national children's book week was announced. It was to be held from the 4th of December until the 8th of December ("Országos gyermekkönyvhét" 2).
The Mayor of Pécs and Eszék signed a cooperation agreement between the two cities for 10 years (Gejer 2).
"The snow can come!" - the snowploughs were on the alert ("Jöhet a hó!" 2).
Parliament of youth at the building industry - some of the workers made pledges to perform the home building programme (Török 3).
The chairman of the socialist brigades appealed to their members for coordinated work against alcoholism (Kurucz 3).
The 4th page contains the weather forecast, some public phone numbers, the surgery hours of hospitals and opening hours of pharmacies, date of weddings and exhibitions.
The 5th page contains the events of 24 hours ranked by cities ("24 óra" 5):
- Helsinki: conference about establishing a North-European nuclear-free zone leaded by Urho Kaleva Kekkonen;
- Moscow: Andrej Gromiko (member of the Soviet Political Committee) received Malcolm Toon (ambassador of the United States in Moscow);
- Washington: the dragging on of SALT-negotiations, new armament plans;
- Conakry: the name of the Guinean Republic was changed to Guinean Revolutionary People's Republic;
- Tuva: a Scythian golden statuette - presumably from the middle of the Ith millennium before Christ - was found by archaeologists in the South Siberian region, near Tuva;
- San José: the Sandinist National Liberation Movement launched an offensive against the Somoza regime;
- Lisboa: the new Prime Minister of Portugal took the oath;
- Havana: the 35th session of Council for Mutual Economic Aid began. The main subject was the use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes;
- Beograd: Ziaur Rahman, the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, arrived to the capital to confer with Joszip Broz Tito, the president of the Yugoslavian Republic;
- Oslo: Jimmy Carter, the president of the United States, announced that he would not be able to participate on the Nobel Peace Prize award;
- Bonn: on Tuesday two Dutch fighter aircraft, belonging to the unit of NATO, crashed during the touch down near an English base in West Germany. One of the two aircraftmen died in the accident;
- Berlin: new one and two mark coins were to be put into circulation;
- Teheran: heated debate milled about the program of general Gholam Reza Azhari's military cabinet.
The Central Committee of Communist Alliance of Youth (KISZ) held a meeting on Wednesday ("Ülést tartott" 5).
Yugoslavian national assembly was to arrive in Nógrád county to visit the county town, Salgótarján and some surrounding villages ("Jugoszláv nemzetgyûlési" 5).
The leadership of the Common Market and of the Council for Mutual Economic Aid held a meeting in Brussels ("KGST - Közös" 5).
The 6th page of Dunántúli Napló was the economical supplement ("Közgazdasági élet" 6), where two articles were about inflation. The first one dealt with the cause of inflation, as it was a new phenomenon at that time. The author of the article tried to describe in an easily intelligible way to the readers why they would have to pay more for the goods. The article said this is not a unique symptom of the Hungarian economy; other countries were also suffering from inflation (Petsching 6).
The second article in this field was about the national price conference held at Pécs ("Országos árkonferencia" 6).
The 7th page of the newspaper was for the classified ads ("Hirdetés" 7).
The last page of Dunántúli Napló is always reserved for sports events. It was the case in that issue, too ("Dunántúli Napló Sport" 8). I list here some of the events but I am not intended to be exhaustive, because some of the short news were programmes for the upcoming weekend.
In the UEFA Cup the Budapest Honvéd team beat the Ajax team. The Hungarian eleven scored 4 goals and got only one (the score of the game at the end of the first half: 0:0) ("UEFA Kupa" 8).
The PMSC team of Pécs played against the team of Szekszárd and won. The score at the end was 3:1 (2:0) ("Labdarúgó NB-s" 8).
In the UEFA qualifying matches the Hungarian team beat the Rumanian team. The visiting side got 3 goals (1:0) ("UEFA selejtezõ" 8).
The Salgótarjáni TC beat the Russian Olympic Representative Team with one goal (1:0) ("Rosszul lõttek" 8).
I compared the events of that day described in Dunántúli Napló with other days' events that I've read and lived in the course of my life and I found among the articles only one, which caught my attention: this was the sports news article on the last page about the success of Bp. Honvéd. The Hungarian team beat the nowadays so successful team, Ajax Amsterdam. Now, people would not believe that a Hungarian team won a game against a world-class football team. Those were the days of the Hungarian national soccer.
The other articles showed me that the day of my birth was quite an ordinary one. No one particularly significant event happened, which could have been published in any history coursebook or anybody would remember it for its great importance.
But, perhaps this is not the verity. Something could have happened which was not written in this newspaper. When this issue was released, it were the late seventies; it was the term of soft socialism in Hungary, when the press had been under the control of the government. Every article was submitted to the censor before being prepared for the press. If the leadership found something not worthy to know for the people, they simply cut it out and that time it was not released. Most of these events, which were tried to be cleared from people’s memory or not even let them become known by the people, were in connection with the dirty affairs of the Soviet government. The leadership could not allow itself that some facts leak out, because this could have undermined their well-established regime and their position.
For instance lots of nuclear weapon tests were kept in secret, because their harm to the human beings (Vajda). Those who suffered serious injuries by these experiments or only witnessed them were isolated from the other members of the society. Those who did dare speak their mind were liquidated or thrown into jail. The inhabitants had been terrorized for so many years that they became passive and they taught their children to behave the same way. These conditions were present in the countries of the Eastern block, directed by the Soviet Union, and in dictatorial regimes.
Conclusion
No matter which theory is the truth, my task was to analyze the day when I was born by the articles of Dunántúli Napló, released on that day. This is why I had to say that the day of my birth was a customary Thursday, nothing specially significant event happened.
To seek after the truth can be the task of another paper, which requires much more research among the works released after the change of regime, and dealing with the events of this day. Then, the author of that paper could answer the open question of my work.
W 125 M
The media is: "newspapers and broadcasting, by which information is conveyed to the general public" (Oxford Paperback Dictionary, 1987). These means of telecommunication are the providers of up-to-date information and because of this their existence is of great importance.
Newspapers' role -as a provider- has been strongly influenced by the continuous development of technology. As a result of the exploration of radio waves, a new provider has emerged taking over some subjects of newspaper such as current news and weather report. It has also offered new dimensions of telecommunication: the live broadcasting of music and sport events, as well as interviews with famous personages (scientists, politicians etc.). Although this form of spreading information was more comfortable and practical - great number of people could not read- it still did not satisfy the general public.
The reason why radio could not entirely take over the role of newspaper is the lack of visual effects. Because people are likely to lead an easy life, the next achievement of idle human intelligence possessed the combination of visual and audio effects. Television is probably the most adequate device that humanity ever invented, which is the main reason for its rapid, global and popular extension.
During the Cold War, in the USA the government began the elaboration of a decentralised computer network that can freely send, receive and forward information among its own specialised machinery. First it served for defence and strategy, but later researches continued for its use in peace as well. In 1963, in UCLA the first non-military network was introduced, which was followed by other universities. In the beginning only information in text could be used, but 1993 the new version could send audio and visual information as well.
Thanks to Bill Gates, nowadays people are capable of managing their lives from their home using their personal computers, which means that the role of newspapers and broadcasting is slowly decreasing. Bill Gates offers a solution for getting all the information one needs from any corner of the world in a considerably short time. With the Internet one can read all the leading papers and magazines; listen to radio channels (for example: Petofi and Kossuth in Australia); watch different programmes (videoclips, live concerts, conferences: the last KFT gig in BS or a videoclip from David Bowie's latest album, which is only available on the Net); one can write letters as well saving huge amount on postal expenditures; the Net is also on-line library offering all sorts of writings from Tarzan to the Bible, what is more one can even confess his sins to a priest of his own choice; there are different kinds of games to entertain children; managing bank account and shopping; there are other subjects including arts, business, economics, politics, education, health, sciences and cultures.
The advantages of the Internet change people's life radically and this change will have probably a devastating impacts on the former forms of the media. People need time to get used to it, as they had to get used to radio and television. Until then, they have to get the MONEY for having the Internet in their own homes and not just in the University!
Newspapers' role -as a provider- has been strongly influenced by the continuous development of technology. As a result of the exploration of radio waves, a new provider has emerged taking over some subjects of newspaper such as current news and weather report. It has also offered new dimensions of telecommunication: the live broadcasting of music and sport events, as well as interviews with famous personages (scientists, politicians etc.). Although this form of spreading information was more comfortable and practical - great number of people could not read- it still did not satisfy the general public.
The reason why radio could not entirely take over the role of newspaper is the lack of visual effects. Because people are likely to lead an easy life, the next achievement of idle human intelligence possessed the combination of visual and audio effects. Television is probably the most adequate device that humanity ever invented, which is the main reason for its rapid, global and popular extension.
During the Cold War, in the USA the government began the elaboration of a decentralised computer network that can freely send, receive and forward information among its own specialised machinery. First it served for defence and strategy, but later researches continued for its use in peace as well. In 1963, in UCLA the first non-military network was introduced, which was followed by other universities. In the beginning only information in text could be used, but 1993 the new version could send audio and visual information as well.
Thanks to Bill Gates, nowadays people are capable of managing their lives from their home using their personal computers, which means that the role of newspapers and broadcasting is slowly decreasing. Bill Gates offers a solution for getting all the information one needs from any corner of the world in a considerably short time. With the Internet one can read all the leading papers and magazines; listen to radio channels (for example: Petofi and Kossuth in Australia); watch different programmes (videoclips, live concerts, conferences: the last KFT gig in BS or a videoclip from David Bowie's latest album, which is only available on the Net); one can write letters as well saving huge amount on postal expenditures; the Net is also on-line library offering all sorts of writings from Tarzan to the Bible, what is more one can even confess his sins to a priest of his own choice; there are different kinds of games to entertain children; managing bank account and shopping; there are other subjects including arts, business, economics, politics, education, health, sciences and cultures.
The advantages of the Internet change people's life radically and this change will have probably a devastating impacts on the former forms of the media. People need time to get used to it, as they had to get used to radio and television. Until then, they have to get the MONEY for having the Internet in their own homes and not just in the University!
W 124 M
In this research paper I concentrated my analysis on the conclusions of miniature essays. I chose this topic because with miniature essays the author can express more feelings, internal, mental events. I did not strive to analyze the miniature essays themselves, but I focused on the conclusions. I examined how the ending connected to the text, so I searched for cohesion. I also audited, that how the end compared to the title of the essays. The conclusion of the miniature essays contained mostly one sentence, sometimes two, but they had often more information than the text itself.
Methods
The conclusion, as one of the basic elements of the text, "does what its name suggest" (Horváth- Nikolov- Turner, p. 22). It concludes the whole text, refers to its information. In many cases we read only the end of the text to know what it is all about, which rises the significance of the conclusion.
Discussion
The conclusion, as one of the basic elements of the text, "does what its name suggest" (Horváth- Nikolov- Turner, p. 22). It concludes the whole text, refers to its information. In many cases we read only the end of the text to know what it is all about, which rises the significance of the conclusion.
The conclusions of the miniature essays belong to more difficult texts. These sentences win their sense after reading the whole text. Students wrote these "mini" essays about concrete, specific feelings, so their endings describe the whole essay with one referring word, like "black" (Földesi).
This word, "black" ended the last sentence of my favorite essay. Földesi Virág wrote this and she titled it "Drowned." Three sentences made up the whole conclusion: "I gave up the fight. Water filled up my chest. Everything went black." (Földesi). The last sentence connects close to the title and it rules the whole text. The word "drowned" and the last sentence relate to each other real close. The last word cut a process that had begun with falling into the water and ended with dying because the lack of oxygen.
This last sentence tells us extra information as well. We cannot find any personal pronouns in it: "Everything went black." (Földesi). It may be a statement, while the other part of the text is a process: how the heroine died into the water, what she felt while fighting for air. In the last sentence, in the conclusion her soul gave up the fight too.
Another miniature essay, the one of Tánczos Balázs, who titled his writing "Dream" resembles Földesi essay, because Tánczos wrote about a process too. He described a dream, and his conclusion, the last two sentences told us that he woke up: "Light breeze, twitter of birds, morning sunshine. I have escaped." (Tánczos).The atmosphere, the content of the text does not fit this ending. The distance between the text and the conclusion seems too wide for me, Because the dream Tánczos wrote about looks too dark, too frightening- he dreamt that he got lost in the space far away from the Earth. Then a fissure, a big jumping followed, and he wrote that he woke up. I did not feel coherent the relationship between the title and the conclusion as well. The waking as an event follows dreaming, and I could imagine them as a close unit, but not the way that Tánczos did. I found the essay itself perfect, just as the conclusion, but the two together did not fit together for me.
I found Billege Virág's essay, „Pécs by Night" a special one, and I found its specialty in the conclusion. The task (to write a 100-words-essay about a specific feeling), the essay, the conclusion create a special unity. The text tells us what Pécs looks like in the evening from a higher point, from a hill, or from somewhere else, we do not know exactly. The conclusion, the last two sentences, "When I admire the stars. I always wish I could fly. It could be a wonderful feeling." (Billege) enlighten us, that the sight of the city evokes feelings in the author. In this context the conclusion gets in closer connection with the text and the title.
The essay of Hajdú Anett, the "Shocking Rays" was one of the essays which I found models. In the text she wrote about a feeling, and the conclusion, "Amazement of the new and fear from the unfamiliar." (Hajdú) summarizes the feeling of meeting a ray. The cohesion and coherence with the other part of the text looks close and it really ends the story, it produces, completes a unit.
Bacskay Katalin wrote the last but one essay I would like to analyze, she titled it "Friday Night Rituals." The conclusion of this writing separates a little bit from the others, it begins with a question, which refers back to the whole text: "Why should they?" (Bacskay). This question summarizes the message of the former sentences in three words. This question drives the mind of the reader back to the beginning first, to think about the content. The following sentence, the last one has two roles, but these roles relate to each other. "There's nothing more thrilling than watching their favorite soap opera." (Bacskay), first closes the text with answering the question of the first part. On the other hand it makes the theme of the text final with the last word, "soap-opera," and cuts the line of the text.
The conclusion of the essay of Hatta Diána, "My favorite Object" is the last one I analyzed, but I liked this ending the best. I found it easy to quote as well: "It's a mug." (Hatta). This conclusion is really what it should be: it summarizes the story and finishes with the result of the stated description (Horváth- Nikolov- Turner). In this essay I found some similarities with Bacskay's essay. Both essays' conclusions give an answer or act as a result of the statement of the first part of the text. In the essay of Hatta we do not really know what her favorite object was, but we know how it looked like. And then in the conclusion, which is in close relation with the text (and the title) the author enlightens us, gives an answer: „It is a mug." (Hatta), I consider it a perfect ending.
My experiences showed me, that the task of ending a miniature essay is more difficult than to write a conclusion of a longer essay or a research paper. Authors have to reduce the conclusion of the hundred-word-essay to the smallest unit. In this small extension the author has a hard task to make the conclusion coherent and cohesive. In my research I also realized, that shorter conclusions of miniature essays are more profitable: one or a pair of words can express much more feelings or other contents than a chain of long sentences.
Methods
The conclusion, as one of the basic elements of the text, "does what its name suggest" (Horváth- Nikolov- Turner, p. 22). It concludes the whole text, refers to its information. In many cases we read only the end of the text to know what it is all about, which rises the significance of the conclusion.
Discussion
The conclusion, as one of the basic elements of the text, "does what its name suggest" (Horváth- Nikolov- Turner, p. 22). It concludes the whole text, refers to its information. In many cases we read only the end of the text to know what it is all about, which rises the significance of the conclusion.
The conclusions of the miniature essays belong to more difficult texts. These sentences win their sense after reading the whole text. Students wrote these "mini" essays about concrete, specific feelings, so their endings describe the whole essay with one referring word, like "black" (Földesi).
This word, "black" ended the last sentence of my favorite essay. Földesi Virág wrote this and she titled it "Drowned." Three sentences made up the whole conclusion: "I gave up the fight. Water filled up my chest. Everything went black." (Földesi). The last sentence connects close to the title and it rules the whole text. The word "drowned" and the last sentence relate to each other real close. The last word cut a process that had begun with falling into the water and ended with dying because the lack of oxygen.
This last sentence tells us extra information as well. We cannot find any personal pronouns in it: "Everything went black." (Földesi). It may be a statement, while the other part of the text is a process: how the heroine died into the water, what she felt while fighting for air. In the last sentence, in the conclusion her soul gave up the fight too.
Another miniature essay, the one of Tánczos Balázs, who titled his writing "Dream" resembles Földesi essay, because Tánczos wrote about a process too. He described a dream, and his conclusion, the last two sentences told us that he woke up: "Light breeze, twitter of birds, morning sunshine. I have escaped." (Tánczos).The atmosphere, the content of the text does not fit this ending. The distance between the text and the conclusion seems too wide for me, Because the dream Tánczos wrote about looks too dark, too frightening- he dreamt that he got lost in the space far away from the Earth. Then a fissure, a big jumping followed, and he wrote that he woke up. I did not feel coherent the relationship between the title and the conclusion as well. The waking as an event follows dreaming, and I could imagine them as a close unit, but not the way that Tánczos did. I found the essay itself perfect, just as the conclusion, but the two together did not fit together for me.
I found Billege Virág's essay, „Pécs by Night" a special one, and I found its specialty in the conclusion. The task (to write a 100-words-essay about a specific feeling), the essay, the conclusion create a special unity. The text tells us what Pécs looks like in the evening from a higher point, from a hill, or from somewhere else, we do not know exactly. The conclusion, the last two sentences, "When I admire the stars. I always wish I could fly. It could be a wonderful feeling." (Billege) enlighten us, that the sight of the city evokes feelings in the author. In this context the conclusion gets in closer connection with the text and the title.
The essay of Hajdú Anett, the "Shocking Rays" was one of the essays which I found models. In the text she wrote about a feeling, and the conclusion, "Amazement of the new and fear from the unfamiliar." (Hajdú) summarizes the feeling of meeting a ray. The cohesion and coherence with the other part of the text looks close and it really ends the story, it produces, completes a unit.
Bacskay Katalin wrote the last but one essay I would like to analyze, she titled it "Friday Night Rituals." The conclusion of this writing separates a little bit from the others, it begins with a question, which refers back to the whole text: "Why should they?" (Bacskay). This question summarizes the message of the former sentences in three words. This question drives the mind of the reader back to the beginning first, to think about the content. The following sentence, the last one has two roles, but these roles relate to each other. "There's nothing more thrilling than watching their favorite soap opera." (Bacskay), first closes the text with answering the question of the first part. On the other hand it makes the theme of the text final with the last word, "soap-opera," and cuts the line of the text.
The conclusion of the essay of Hatta Diána, "My favorite Object" is the last one I analyzed, but I liked this ending the best. I found it easy to quote as well: "It's a mug." (Hatta). This conclusion is really what it should be: it summarizes the story and finishes with the result of the stated description (Horváth- Nikolov- Turner). In this essay I found some similarities with Bacskay's essay. Both essays' conclusions give an answer or act as a result of the statement of the first part of the text. In the essay of Hatta we do not really know what her favorite object was, but we know how it looked like. And then in the conclusion, which is in close relation with the text (and the title) the author enlightens us, gives an answer: „It is a mug." (Hatta), I consider it a perfect ending.
My experiences showed me, that the task of ending a miniature essay is more difficult than to write a conclusion of a longer essay or a research paper. Authors have to reduce the conclusion of the hundred-word-essay to the smallest unit. In this small extension the author has a hard task to make the conclusion coherent and cohesive. In my research I also realized, that shorter conclusions of miniature essays are more profitable: one or a pair of words can express much more feelings or other contents than a chain of long sentences.
W 123 M
Introduction
At the English Department of Janus Pannonius University I and other 22 English major students chose a course in the first semester of 1997/1998. This course, under the code ANG 5131, is Language Testing conducted by Szabó Gábor. I chose this course because I have always been interested in both making and taking English languages tests of any kind since I started learning English. This seminar threw light on the fact that test making is far more complicated and difficult than I thought. Test makers have to take several aspects into account: how the test should look like, on what level the test should be designed, what they want to test- which field of candidates’ language knowledge, or even how they should avoid ambiguous, too easy or too difficult test questions etc..
As a part of the requirements for completing the course successfully we were asked to make an English language test (see Gertner & Schlögl, 1997); to design and pilot it with a group of students. Each of the students in this course had to choose a partner with whom they would do this task. Gertner Brigitta, another 1st year student, and I decided to work on this project together.
This research paper will report the preparations for administering the test and the evaluation and analysis of the test results we got after receiving the completed test papers back. In this paper I will show the whole process of piloting a language test from the point where the first draft of the test is ready. Besides, I will represent the analysis and evaluation of the test we administered in a highschool, trying to point out some facts in connection with the knowledge of these students; their strengths and weaknesses in different fields.
Method
In the first part of the research paper I will describe the steps we had taken before giving the test to the students; why we consulted Horváth József, how we revised certain parts of the test with the help of his comments. I will also write about how we administered this test; where, when and how- who were the test-takers and whom we asked to help us in this process.
The second part is the evaluation and analysis of the test according to the results we got. I will make both an overall and item analysis of the test by using methods and terms present in test analysis. At the end of the test I will give you a concise evaluation of the test according to the scores the students received. I will also enclose the whole test paper with this research paper(see Appendix page 12-14).
Results and Discussion
Prepiloting, Revising and Piloting
In this section I will briefly summarise what happened between making the first draft of the test and administering it.
After Gertner Brigitta and I had completed the construction of the test we gave it to Horváth, an English teacher at JPU English Department, and asked him to look through this test and point out those test items he thought to be inappropriate.
In Part 1/A the fourth item ”He was ill ……… the flu for almost a month.“ was replaced with “The match resulted …….. a goaless draw yesterday.” because Horváth found it unsuitable. In Part 1/B we did not have to alter anything; each item seemed correct and appropriate. In Part 2 three items out of the ten were replaced and three more were altered.
Instead of “Sorry to …….. you, but would you be so kind as to give me a pen?
a. tease b. bother
c. disrupt d. disturb“
item #1 was put into the test.
Instead of “The ………. of his death are not clear, at all.
a. conditions b. circumstances
c. reasons d. details“
item #3 was put into the test.
Instead of “According to the police no sign of ……….entry has been found in the house yet.”
a. forced b. compelled
c. broken d. illegal“
item #10 was put into the test.
In item #5 we used apostrophes instead of dashes, in item #8 we omitted “to you” at the end of the sentence in order to avoid clutter, and in item #9 we replaced option-b “replace” with “concord” because, according to Horváth, it would have been another option, too. Part 3 remained the same; we did not need to change anything.
After we had revised the test this way I typed it into the computer and, with the help of Gertner, edited it. Before printing the document we took a final look at the test paper whether correct and explicit in every respect.
Meanwhile, we decided to pilot this test, if possible, in the 4.A class of Jurisich Miklós Kísérleti Gimnázium in Kõszeg. We chose this class partly because they were supposed to be on the same level in English knowledge which we wanted to test and because I know the English teacher, Varga Katalin, who has been teaching them and I could ask her to pilot our test with them. The administration of the test took place on the 26th of November, 1997 in this highschool with the help of their teacher. Thirteen students took the test from the group, which have been studying English in more lessons than other classes in this school.
Test Analysis
In this test the maximum point was 45; 1 point for each item in Part 1/A and in Part 2, 2 points for each item in Part 1/B, and 0,5 point in Part 3. The students reached the following results: 21 22 22,5 23 23,5 24 24,5 25 26,5 27 35,5 36 37. .
Overall Analysis
In this part of the paper I will give a general review of the test results using some methods and terms known in testing practice.
The mean, the average of the students’ scores: 26,8 points.
The mode, the score that most students got: cannot be determined- everyone reached different points.
The median, the midpoint of the scores: 24,5 points.
Standard deviation, average deviation from the mean: 4,42.
Part 1/A
Average score: 5 points out of 10
The highest score: 9 points
The lowest score: 2 points
Part 1/B
Average score: 7 points out of 10
The highest score: 9 points
The lowest score: 5 points
Part 2
Average points: 6,5 points out of 10
The highest score: 9 points
The lowest score: 4 points
Part 3
Average point: 8 points out of 15
The highest score: 12 points
The lowest score: 4 points
Item Analysis
Here I will represent and discuss the results from item to item and point out facts about which item; how they worked in this test paper. I focus on those items that were too easy or too difficult for this group of students, and on those which came out with a surprising result
Part 1/A. In this section of the test the students had to fill in the missing prepositions in the sentences. The ratio of the correct and wrong answers was quite mixed (see Figure 1).
Though we had thought that the first item would be quite easy, it turned out that almost none of the students knew it; they usually wrote “on” instead of “in” in the expression ”in charge of something”. In item #3, to my surprise, no one put “with”, which would have been the most obvious choice if we take the meaning of the verb ”boast”. In item #5 almost everyone chose “out” for the solution, though it was “in” or “into”. In items #9 and #10 we can see a huge contrast; in question #9 everyone knew the right answer, which was “out of”. This means that this item was too easy for this group. But in question #10 no one knew the answer; testees usually wrote “for” and “of” instead of “about”, which means that together with the question #1 these two items were unknown for these students.
The remaining seven items were appropriate for this purpose as the items were really able to select those who knew them and those who did not.
Figure 1: Number of right and wrong answers in Part 1/A.
Part 1/B. In this part the students were asked to paraphrase five simple sentences by completing the sentences given below them. This was the easiest task for them; they were supposed to learn more grammar in this school than, for instance, expressions or words. The first item was very easy for them since they all knew it properly. In the second sentence 7 out of the 13 students knew the right structure; the rest used simple past instead of the required form of the past perfect. In question #3 most of the student got only the half of the points because they put the pronoun “it” in the sentence, which was incorrect there; four 4 of them knew it, and one student wrote a totally incorrect version. Question #4 was an other easy sentence paraphrasing task; 11 put the right construction, one solved the problem partly, and one person did not know the answer at all. The last bit was the most problematic in this exercise as only 6 out of 13 were able to paraphrase the sentence. Quite surprisingly, mainly those could answer this item who got the lowest point in the whole test.
Part 2 was a multiple choice test with 10 items. Students had to choose one option out of the four in each question. For a detailed list of results in this section see Figure 2.
In item #1 who did not know the right answer chose “brend” instead of “brand”, which means that they all had something in their mind about this word but were not sure of the spelling. Question #2, #3 and #5 were not suitable for measuring these students’ knowledge because everyone chose the right answer. Item #4 brought a contradictory result; though 10 knew what to choose, the best two did not know the proper solution. In question #6 only 3 students put the good solution; almost everyone took the word “outview” instead of “lookout”, which is a non-existing word, but worked perfectly as a distracter. Items #7 and #8 were solved by 4 students only, but together with questions #9 and #10, they were known for the best three students.
Figure 2: Number of right and wrong answers in Part 2.
Part 3. The task was gap filling. The test takers had to fill in the missing words or use other words which also fit in the context. There were 30 gaps; for each good answer the students got 0,5 points.
There were only 4 gaps that all testees were able to complete in any way (for details see Figure 3). Another 6 remained unfilled or were completed incorrectly. For questions #13, #21 and #30 only the best three put acceptable answers. In item #10, though 11 out of the 13 students know the solution, the second best did not know any correct answer.
There are four cases in which, though almost everyone knew one of the possible answers, they chose an other word instead of the words appeared in the real text. In gap #1 instead of “whether” all wrote “if”, which is also correct; in gap #6 ”sleeping” instead of “accommodation”; in gap #10 “easily” was “replaced” by well, while in the 23rd gap “continue” by “finish”, which also fits in the text.
Figure 3: Number of right and wrong answers in Part 3.
Evaluation of students
According to the results the 13 students achieved we can divide the group into two main groups. In the first group there were three students who reached 35,5 36 and 37 points, which really stand out from the rest; the next score a student got is only 27 points. These students were sure to know far more. The majority got scores between 22 and 25, which shows us that this test was a little bit difficult for them.
Conclusion
In this research paper I have shown first the preparations for piloting an English language test; how a raw test is prepiloted, revised and administered. In the second part I have given both an overall analysis of the test and the analysis of each and every item from different points of view. I hope this paper helps anyone who reads it get closer to the field of test constructing and analysing; what problems can arise, and what kind of parallels can be drawn between several phenomena.
At the English Department of Janus Pannonius University I and other 22 English major students chose a course in the first semester of 1997/1998. This course, under the code ANG 5131, is Language Testing conducted by Szabó Gábor. I chose this course because I have always been interested in both making and taking English languages tests of any kind since I started learning English. This seminar threw light on the fact that test making is far more complicated and difficult than I thought. Test makers have to take several aspects into account: how the test should look like, on what level the test should be designed, what they want to test- which field of candidates’ language knowledge, or even how they should avoid ambiguous, too easy or too difficult test questions etc..
As a part of the requirements for completing the course successfully we were asked to make an English language test (see Gertner & Schlögl, 1997); to design and pilot it with a group of students. Each of the students in this course had to choose a partner with whom they would do this task. Gertner Brigitta, another 1st year student, and I decided to work on this project together.
This research paper will report the preparations for administering the test and the evaluation and analysis of the test results we got after receiving the completed test papers back. In this paper I will show the whole process of piloting a language test from the point where the first draft of the test is ready. Besides, I will represent the analysis and evaluation of the test we administered in a highschool, trying to point out some facts in connection with the knowledge of these students; their strengths and weaknesses in different fields.
Method
In the first part of the research paper I will describe the steps we had taken before giving the test to the students; why we consulted Horváth József, how we revised certain parts of the test with the help of his comments. I will also write about how we administered this test; where, when and how- who were the test-takers and whom we asked to help us in this process.
The second part is the evaluation and analysis of the test according to the results we got. I will make both an overall and item analysis of the test by using methods and terms present in test analysis. At the end of the test I will give you a concise evaluation of the test according to the scores the students received. I will also enclose the whole test paper with this research paper(see Appendix page 12-14).
Results and Discussion
Prepiloting, Revising and Piloting
In this section I will briefly summarise what happened between making the first draft of the test and administering it.
After Gertner Brigitta and I had completed the construction of the test we gave it to Horváth, an English teacher at JPU English Department, and asked him to look through this test and point out those test items he thought to be inappropriate.
In Part 1/A the fourth item ”He was ill ……… the flu for almost a month.“ was replaced with “The match resulted …….. a goaless draw yesterday.” because Horváth found it unsuitable. In Part 1/B we did not have to alter anything; each item seemed correct and appropriate. In Part 2 three items out of the ten were replaced and three more were altered.
Instead of “Sorry to …….. you, but would you be so kind as to give me a pen?
a. tease b. bother
c. disrupt d. disturb“
item #1 was put into the test.
Instead of “The ………. of his death are not clear, at all.
a. conditions b. circumstances
c. reasons d. details“
item #3 was put into the test.
Instead of “According to the police no sign of ……….entry has been found in the house yet.”
a. forced b. compelled
c. broken d. illegal“
item #10 was put into the test.
In item #5 we used apostrophes instead of dashes, in item #8 we omitted “to you” at the end of the sentence in order to avoid clutter, and in item #9 we replaced option-b “replace” with “concord” because, according to Horváth, it would have been another option, too. Part 3 remained the same; we did not need to change anything.
After we had revised the test this way I typed it into the computer and, with the help of Gertner, edited it. Before printing the document we took a final look at the test paper whether correct and explicit in every respect.
Meanwhile, we decided to pilot this test, if possible, in the 4.A class of Jurisich Miklós Kísérleti Gimnázium in Kõszeg. We chose this class partly because they were supposed to be on the same level in English knowledge which we wanted to test and because I know the English teacher, Varga Katalin, who has been teaching them and I could ask her to pilot our test with them. The administration of the test took place on the 26th of November, 1997 in this highschool with the help of their teacher. Thirteen students took the test from the group, which have been studying English in more lessons than other classes in this school.
Test Analysis
In this test the maximum point was 45; 1 point for each item in Part 1/A and in Part 2, 2 points for each item in Part 1/B, and 0,5 point in Part 3. The students reached the following results: 21 22 22,5 23 23,5 24 24,5 25 26,5 27 35,5 36 37. .
Overall Analysis
In this part of the paper I will give a general review of the test results using some methods and terms known in testing practice.
The mean, the average of the students’ scores: 26,8 points.
The mode, the score that most students got: cannot be determined- everyone reached different points.
The median, the midpoint of the scores: 24,5 points.
Standard deviation, average deviation from the mean: 4,42.
Part 1/A
Average score: 5 points out of 10
The highest score: 9 points
The lowest score: 2 points
Part 1/B
Average score: 7 points out of 10
The highest score: 9 points
The lowest score: 5 points
Part 2
Average points: 6,5 points out of 10
The highest score: 9 points
The lowest score: 4 points
Part 3
Average point: 8 points out of 15
The highest score: 12 points
The lowest score: 4 points
Item Analysis
Here I will represent and discuss the results from item to item and point out facts about which item; how they worked in this test paper. I focus on those items that were too easy or too difficult for this group of students, and on those which came out with a surprising result
Part 1/A. In this section of the test the students had to fill in the missing prepositions in the sentences. The ratio of the correct and wrong answers was quite mixed (see Figure 1).
Though we had thought that the first item would be quite easy, it turned out that almost none of the students knew it; they usually wrote “on” instead of “in” in the expression ”in charge of something”. In item #3, to my surprise, no one put “with”, which would have been the most obvious choice if we take the meaning of the verb ”boast”. In item #5 almost everyone chose “out” for the solution, though it was “in” or “into”. In items #9 and #10 we can see a huge contrast; in question #9 everyone knew the right answer, which was “out of”. This means that this item was too easy for this group. But in question #10 no one knew the answer; testees usually wrote “for” and “of” instead of “about”, which means that together with the question #1 these two items were unknown for these students.
The remaining seven items were appropriate for this purpose as the items were really able to select those who knew them and those who did not.
Figure 1: Number of right and wrong answers in Part 1/A.
Part 1/B. In this part the students were asked to paraphrase five simple sentences by completing the sentences given below them. This was the easiest task for them; they were supposed to learn more grammar in this school than, for instance, expressions or words. The first item was very easy for them since they all knew it properly. In the second sentence 7 out of the 13 students knew the right structure; the rest used simple past instead of the required form of the past perfect. In question #3 most of the student got only the half of the points because they put the pronoun “it” in the sentence, which was incorrect there; four 4 of them knew it, and one student wrote a totally incorrect version. Question #4 was an other easy sentence paraphrasing task; 11 put the right construction, one solved the problem partly, and one person did not know the answer at all. The last bit was the most problematic in this exercise as only 6 out of 13 were able to paraphrase the sentence. Quite surprisingly, mainly those could answer this item who got the lowest point in the whole test.
Part 2 was a multiple choice test with 10 items. Students had to choose one option out of the four in each question. For a detailed list of results in this section see Figure 2.
In item #1 who did not know the right answer chose “brend” instead of “brand”, which means that they all had something in their mind about this word but were not sure of the spelling. Question #2, #3 and #5 were not suitable for measuring these students’ knowledge because everyone chose the right answer. Item #4 brought a contradictory result; though 10 knew what to choose, the best two did not know the proper solution. In question #6 only 3 students put the good solution; almost everyone took the word “outview” instead of “lookout”, which is a non-existing word, but worked perfectly as a distracter. Items #7 and #8 were solved by 4 students only, but together with questions #9 and #10, they were known for the best three students.
Figure 2: Number of right and wrong answers in Part 2.
Part 3. The task was gap filling. The test takers had to fill in the missing words or use other words which also fit in the context. There were 30 gaps; for each good answer the students got 0,5 points.
There were only 4 gaps that all testees were able to complete in any way (for details see Figure 3). Another 6 remained unfilled or were completed incorrectly. For questions #13, #21 and #30 only the best three put acceptable answers. In item #10, though 11 out of the 13 students know the solution, the second best did not know any correct answer.
There are four cases in which, though almost everyone knew one of the possible answers, they chose an other word instead of the words appeared in the real text. In gap #1 instead of “whether” all wrote “if”, which is also correct; in gap #6 ”sleeping” instead of “accommodation”; in gap #10 “easily” was “replaced” by well, while in the 23rd gap “continue” by “finish”, which also fits in the text.
Figure 3: Number of right and wrong answers in Part 3.
Evaluation of students
According to the results the 13 students achieved we can divide the group into two main groups. In the first group there were three students who reached 35,5 36 and 37 points, which really stand out from the rest; the next score a student got is only 27 points. These students were sure to know far more. The majority got scores between 22 and 25, which shows us that this test was a little bit difficult for them.
Conclusion
In this research paper I have shown first the preparations for piloting an English language test; how a raw test is prepiloted, revised and administered. In the second part I have given both an overall analysis of the test and the analysis of each and every item from different points of view. I hope this paper helps anyone who reads it get closer to the field of test constructing and analysing; what problems can arise, and what kind of parallels can be drawn between several phenomena.
W 122 M
Introduction
When someone has thoughts or opinions that they think are worth sharing with the public, from the wide range of ways offered by our modern world to do it they, with a high probability, will choose writing. This method of conveying ideas has been present for centuries and is still the most popular technique. Writing gives an opportunity for expressing deep emotions as well as scientific facts to a range of readers from a general audience to a very specific group of experts and a well-organised, clear and effective piece of written work has influence and value. Writing also has a great advantage compared with, for example, speech : a written piece can be stored for, practically, an infinitely long period of time. This means that authors have the possibility to mould it as long as, and rethink it as many times as, they feel like and allow only the very final version, with which they are completely satisfied, to be released. They have the chance to revise the text. The aim of this paper is to clarify the notion and importance of revision and suggest some effective techniques.
Method
Revision has several forms and ways, almost as many as writers themselves. The common feature is the aim of the activity, which is not only the correction of the product but also the improvement of its content and, often, form. Today schools and publishers offer a wide range of courses and books dealing with this issue. This work is mainly based on my personal experience of attending a Writing and Research Skills course at Janus Pannonius University (JPU) of Pécs, Hungary during the spring semester of 1996-7 and coming across themes, topics, tasks and recommended reading materials related to revision. Among the supporting readings the one I found the most useful was Hubbard (1988 177-88).
Results and Discussion
Re-reading a finished work can help the author to identify several types of problems that otherwise would remain unrevealed. Hubbard calls this procedure "proofreading" :
"The very last changes you make in a piece of writing before it goes to its audience are generated within proofreading. The term comes from printing, where a 'proof' or test copy is made from the metal type before a print run starts. This test copy is used to make minor corrections at the last minute." 1
Once the "print" is set it is complicated and expensive to make corrections. Proofreading is the last check before the product is released.
The main point of re-reading is to spot inconsistence or incoherence in the text. Writing is usually a long process and so it is very difficult for the writers to look at their work as a whole. The main reason of this is that the creation of individual parts like introduction, conclusion or the insertion of citations are usually temporally separated from each other. But readers, since reading is much faster than writing, are going to have an impression of the piece as a whole and so spot the above mentioned errors more easily.
Reading through again might unveil, first of all, grammatical mistakes and bad sentence or paragraph structuring. If proofread their product, they practically take the part of their would-be audience, try to see it from their point of view.
"Being consistent throughout a long piece of writing is not easy, and if you are the writer you might find it almost impossible, for example, to use a technical term in the same way through ten pages or always to remember what you have assumed an audience knows about your subject. But other people can follow terms and assumptions much more easily because their memories are not clouded by their intentions." 2
Errors in consistence are not only stylistically disturbing but also distract the readers' attention from the essence or completely confuse them. They create an air of carelessness and leave a bad impression. If writers discover these, it will be possible for them to correct, and so improve the quality of their work. Another dangerous type of errors is the error of style. Wrongly chosen style (for example, using foul language or slang in a scientific essay or using foreign words in a children's cartoon) might also make the readers unwilling to continue reading.
While re-reading, authors may find that the work is not about the intended topic. They might find that they have been following wrong traces or their statements and claims are not clear enough for the readers to understand, or are not sufficiently supported. Sometimes the entire writing needs to be rethought, re-structured and perhaps even rewritten.
The major difficulty revising writers face is that they cannot get rid of their consciousness of their own intentions and thoughts. They can read again their product, but in vain, because, once they know what it should be about, they are probably going to see what they want to see without noticing errors.
"Revision literally means re-seeing, but the ways we re-see are the ways we see." 3
A sub-type of revision is to help to solve this problem, and it is tape-recording and playing back a finished work.
One specific task we, the students attending the above mentioned writing course at JPU, got was to tape-record one of our essays. It proved to be very useful from different aspects. First of all, playing the tape back helped us to hear our text from the point of view of an outsider and so get over the problem of "seeing what we want to see". The other advantage of recording and playing back was that it gave an even clearer review of errors of structure and coherence on the sentence, paragraph and text levels.
Conclusion
Apart from tape-recording and playing back there are, of course, several other, equally effective ways of revision. For instance, Hubbard mentions reading backwards (sentence by sentence) or reading imitating other persons' voices or using foreign accent.
"If you are working alone, read your revised and edited piece backwards, one sentence at a time. [...] Or read it in a strange accent, John Wayne, or Pee Wee Herman, or someone from another country." 4
Whichever method a writer selects the major goal remains the same : spot and correct errors of grammar, consistence or style.
"All these techniques [methods of revision] have the aim of making your writing seem strange to you [and so help to judge it more objectively]." 5
One should not save time by leaving out revision, however useless it sometimes may seem. If authors have time to compose they will probably have the time to rethink their ideas and look through their work again. It often takes just a few minutes' revising to find a tiny little slip that can ruin the work of, perhaps, weeks or months.
When someone has thoughts or opinions that they think are worth sharing with the public, from the wide range of ways offered by our modern world to do it they, with a high probability, will choose writing. This method of conveying ideas has been present for centuries and is still the most popular technique. Writing gives an opportunity for expressing deep emotions as well as scientific facts to a range of readers from a general audience to a very specific group of experts and a well-organised, clear and effective piece of written work has influence and value. Writing also has a great advantage compared with, for example, speech : a written piece can be stored for, practically, an infinitely long period of time. This means that authors have the possibility to mould it as long as, and rethink it as many times as, they feel like and allow only the very final version, with which they are completely satisfied, to be released. They have the chance to revise the text. The aim of this paper is to clarify the notion and importance of revision and suggest some effective techniques.
Method
Revision has several forms and ways, almost as many as writers themselves. The common feature is the aim of the activity, which is not only the correction of the product but also the improvement of its content and, often, form. Today schools and publishers offer a wide range of courses and books dealing with this issue. This work is mainly based on my personal experience of attending a Writing and Research Skills course at Janus Pannonius University (JPU) of Pécs, Hungary during the spring semester of 1996-7 and coming across themes, topics, tasks and recommended reading materials related to revision. Among the supporting readings the one I found the most useful was Hubbard (1988 177-88).
Results and Discussion
Re-reading a finished work can help the author to identify several types of problems that otherwise would remain unrevealed. Hubbard calls this procedure "proofreading" :
"The very last changes you make in a piece of writing before it goes to its audience are generated within proofreading. The term comes from printing, where a 'proof' or test copy is made from the metal type before a print run starts. This test copy is used to make minor corrections at the last minute." 1
Once the "print" is set it is complicated and expensive to make corrections. Proofreading is the last check before the product is released.
The main point of re-reading is to spot inconsistence or incoherence in the text. Writing is usually a long process and so it is very difficult for the writers to look at their work as a whole. The main reason of this is that the creation of individual parts like introduction, conclusion or the insertion of citations are usually temporally separated from each other. But readers, since reading is much faster than writing, are going to have an impression of the piece as a whole and so spot the above mentioned errors more easily.
Reading through again might unveil, first of all, grammatical mistakes and bad sentence or paragraph structuring. If proofread their product, they practically take the part of their would-be audience, try to see it from their point of view.
"Being consistent throughout a long piece of writing is not easy, and if you are the writer you might find it almost impossible, for example, to use a technical term in the same way through ten pages or always to remember what you have assumed an audience knows about your subject. But other people can follow terms and assumptions much more easily because their memories are not clouded by their intentions." 2
Errors in consistence are not only stylistically disturbing but also distract the readers' attention from the essence or completely confuse them. They create an air of carelessness and leave a bad impression. If writers discover these, it will be possible for them to correct, and so improve the quality of their work. Another dangerous type of errors is the error of style. Wrongly chosen style (for example, using foul language or slang in a scientific essay or using foreign words in a children's cartoon) might also make the readers unwilling to continue reading.
While re-reading, authors may find that the work is not about the intended topic. They might find that they have been following wrong traces or their statements and claims are not clear enough for the readers to understand, or are not sufficiently supported. Sometimes the entire writing needs to be rethought, re-structured and perhaps even rewritten.
The major difficulty revising writers face is that they cannot get rid of their consciousness of their own intentions and thoughts. They can read again their product, but in vain, because, once they know what it should be about, they are probably going to see what they want to see without noticing errors.
"Revision literally means re-seeing, but the ways we re-see are the ways we see." 3
A sub-type of revision is to help to solve this problem, and it is tape-recording and playing back a finished work.
One specific task we, the students attending the above mentioned writing course at JPU, got was to tape-record one of our essays. It proved to be very useful from different aspects. First of all, playing the tape back helped us to hear our text from the point of view of an outsider and so get over the problem of "seeing what we want to see". The other advantage of recording and playing back was that it gave an even clearer review of errors of structure and coherence on the sentence, paragraph and text levels.
Conclusion
Apart from tape-recording and playing back there are, of course, several other, equally effective ways of revision. For instance, Hubbard mentions reading backwards (sentence by sentence) or reading imitating other persons' voices or using foreign accent.
"If you are working alone, read your revised and edited piece backwards, one sentence at a time. [...] Or read it in a strange accent, John Wayne, or Pee Wee Herman, or someone from another country." 4
Whichever method a writer selects the major goal remains the same : spot and correct errors of grammar, consistence or style.
"All these techniques [methods of revision] have the aim of making your writing seem strange to you [and so help to judge it more objectively]." 5
One should not save time by leaving out revision, however useless it sometimes may seem. If authors have time to compose they will probably have the time to rethink their ideas and look through their work again. It often takes just a few minutes' revising to find a tiny little slip that can ruin the work of, perhaps, weeks or months.
W 121 M
Introduction
As an English major student of Janus Pannonius University of Pécs I attended Horváth József’s Writing and research skills class. In this course the students aim to improve their abilities of writing essays and research papers. They collect and edit their essays in a portfolio at the middle of the semester. Besides making my own I have read some of the portfolios of my classmates as well as works from former classes. The question I would like to discuss with the help of one of the writers is what was the process that lead to the finished collection.
Method
The collection I chose was Portfooliyo written by Baditz Mihály, first year English major of JPU. This portfolio contains five essays of various length. They are based on personal experience or ideas, so the collection itself provides an authentic insight to the life of Mihály
Generally, a student’s essay collection hides some interesting and exciting information about the person who worked on it. In the case of personal essays like the ones I read in Portfooliyo this secret is even more greater. However, I wanted to explore further elements which I think cannot be disclosed by the very reading of the writings. To put the subject in different new light I decided to meet the author and ask my questions. I made two interviews with Baditz Mihály (November 20, and December 2, 1998) and I read the portfolio (which was finished by November 13). between the meetings. Mihály came to my apartment in Pécs where we had the conversations. He did not receive any questions in advance as most of my questions were formed during the interviews. I asked the first questions only with a general knowledge about the circumstances and without knowing either the essays or the evaluation of Horváth József’s. During the interviews I made hand-written notes. After reading the collection and the evaluation we had another conversation. Both interviews helped a great deal understanding the process of making Portfooliyo.
Results and Discussion
First I asked questions about the method of writing and working with the finished pieces. The general process was the same for all of Mihály’s writings. He typed on his computer without a sketch or former plan. Word processing and using the automatic spelling correction option was more common than handwriting. “Bogus”, in a different way from all the other essays had an ending paragraph before the first part.
After this we discussed the question of choosing the topic for an essay. All five writings in his collection discuss personal topics. The reason for this as Mihály said was that he knew these things the best (“My table from my point of view”) or these things happened to him (“My arrival”, about his first day in London), so the ideas were obvious. He said that he did not find it hard to express his personal experiences or to describe the environment he lives in. He found the idea that another person might feel similar or saw the same situations motivating. He thought that the reader of these essays might experience a strong connection towards him as the writer because of this. ”Often we as the readers have the sense that we are in a casual conversation with the essayist who is just now, with us, thinking through his or her ideas. But do not be deceived. To create the sense of casual intimacy may take much planning and revising, for the good writer knows that few people want to read random and carelessly organized thoughts.” (Seyler 26.) I think Mihály sometimes managed to make the reader feel like being in a “conversation” with him what for me he reached with “Studying”. This essay I loved the best not only for this but because Mihály discussed a problem (wasting the time instead of concentrating on the hard work of studying) which is one of my biggest problems, too. He used a personal and clear voice quoting typical thoughts during the time wasted.
After finishing an essay the works themselves remained unchanged except “My table from my point of view”, which had a first title: My room. The reason for the change was that Mihály started the essay with the description of his table and did not continue with the rest of the room.
Working with a personal computer’s word processor Mihály used the automatic spell–check. Finishing the editing work he read through the collection before printing and corrected remaining grammar errors in the text.
After the first interview I read the collection and the attached evaluation by Horváth József’s. He mentioned his favorites (“Bogus” as “an excellent bad essay” and “My table from my point of view”), and also gave some tips for revising, an evaluation of language and other remarks on the portfolio.
Longer than two weeks after finishing his portfolio I asked Mihály for a second meeting. In this second interview I decided to discuss the questions of finishing and changing the collection.
Talking about the portfolio as an organic whole Mihály said that the essay “Have you ever...” does not fit to the collection totally. The reason for this, as he stated, was that he did not really feel like managing to make the reader conscious of the experience that inspired the essay.
To the question whether he thought the portfolio was full and finished when it was submitted he answered that he did not feel the need for finishing it at all. The essays can exist together or apart, the portfolio does not have to be complete.
We discussed the problem of selecting the proper pieces for a following collection . Mihály would not select now for a new portfolio, the same way he did when making the first one. That time he liked those five the most, for another collection he might pick some other essays in a random way.
As a finishing we discussed his thoughts and remarks on writing in general. He said that since starting the course his whole relation to writing changed. First he felt that he was forced to write and did not find any pleasure in that. After a number of essays he realized that he liked what he was doing, and since that time he has been sitting down to write regularly.
Conclusion
The two conversations with Mihály helped me not only to understand the essays in his portfolio but to evaluate them for myself and for this research. I felt interesting to experience how this student prepared his collection, which I think I introduced well enough as a process.
Some questions could be cleared only by investigating other students’ work in writing and collecting their essays. I experienced a number of interesting phenomena during this research and preparing my collection too. One of these is the evaluation given by the tutor, Horváth József. The official evaluation is not a real part of the portfolio still I tried to handle it together with the writings it was referring to. After finishing the portfolio, beginner writers appreciate a formal and clear evaluation of their work. For example Mihály found this critique rather encouraging and motivating to continue writing even after finishing the course.
As an English major student of Janus Pannonius University of Pécs I attended Horváth József’s Writing and research skills class. In this course the students aim to improve their abilities of writing essays and research papers. They collect and edit their essays in a portfolio at the middle of the semester. Besides making my own I have read some of the portfolios of my classmates as well as works from former classes. The question I would like to discuss with the help of one of the writers is what was the process that lead to the finished collection.
Method
The collection I chose was Portfooliyo written by Baditz Mihály, first year English major of JPU. This portfolio contains five essays of various length. They are based on personal experience or ideas, so the collection itself provides an authentic insight to the life of Mihály
Generally, a student’s essay collection hides some interesting and exciting information about the person who worked on it. In the case of personal essays like the ones I read in Portfooliyo this secret is even more greater. However, I wanted to explore further elements which I think cannot be disclosed by the very reading of the writings. To put the subject in different new light I decided to meet the author and ask my questions. I made two interviews with Baditz Mihály (November 20, and December 2, 1998) and I read the portfolio (which was finished by November 13). between the meetings. Mihály came to my apartment in Pécs where we had the conversations. He did not receive any questions in advance as most of my questions were formed during the interviews. I asked the first questions only with a general knowledge about the circumstances and without knowing either the essays or the evaluation of Horváth József’s. During the interviews I made hand-written notes. After reading the collection and the evaluation we had another conversation. Both interviews helped a great deal understanding the process of making Portfooliyo.
Results and Discussion
First I asked questions about the method of writing and working with the finished pieces. The general process was the same for all of Mihály’s writings. He typed on his computer without a sketch or former plan. Word processing and using the automatic spelling correction option was more common than handwriting. “Bogus”, in a different way from all the other essays had an ending paragraph before the first part.
After this we discussed the question of choosing the topic for an essay. All five writings in his collection discuss personal topics. The reason for this as Mihály said was that he knew these things the best (“My table from my point of view”) or these things happened to him (“My arrival”, about his first day in London), so the ideas were obvious. He said that he did not find it hard to express his personal experiences or to describe the environment he lives in. He found the idea that another person might feel similar or saw the same situations motivating. He thought that the reader of these essays might experience a strong connection towards him as the writer because of this. ”Often we as the readers have the sense that we are in a casual conversation with the essayist who is just now, with us, thinking through his or her ideas. But do not be deceived. To create the sense of casual intimacy may take much planning and revising, for the good writer knows that few people want to read random and carelessly organized thoughts.” (Seyler 26.) I think Mihály sometimes managed to make the reader feel like being in a “conversation” with him what for me he reached with “Studying”. This essay I loved the best not only for this but because Mihály discussed a problem (wasting the time instead of concentrating on the hard work of studying) which is one of my biggest problems, too. He used a personal and clear voice quoting typical thoughts during the time wasted.
After finishing an essay the works themselves remained unchanged except “My table from my point of view”, which had a first title: My room. The reason for the change was that Mihály started the essay with the description of his table and did not continue with the rest of the room.
Working with a personal computer’s word processor Mihály used the automatic spell–check. Finishing the editing work he read through the collection before printing and corrected remaining grammar errors in the text.
After the first interview I read the collection and the attached evaluation by Horváth József’s. He mentioned his favorites (“Bogus” as “an excellent bad essay” and “My table from my point of view”), and also gave some tips for revising, an evaluation of language and other remarks on the portfolio.
Longer than two weeks after finishing his portfolio I asked Mihály for a second meeting. In this second interview I decided to discuss the questions of finishing and changing the collection.
Talking about the portfolio as an organic whole Mihály said that the essay “Have you ever...” does not fit to the collection totally. The reason for this, as he stated, was that he did not really feel like managing to make the reader conscious of the experience that inspired the essay.
To the question whether he thought the portfolio was full and finished when it was submitted he answered that he did not feel the need for finishing it at all. The essays can exist together or apart, the portfolio does not have to be complete.
We discussed the problem of selecting the proper pieces for a following collection . Mihály would not select now for a new portfolio, the same way he did when making the first one. That time he liked those five the most, for another collection he might pick some other essays in a random way.
As a finishing we discussed his thoughts and remarks on writing in general. He said that since starting the course his whole relation to writing changed. First he felt that he was forced to write and did not find any pleasure in that. After a number of essays he realized that he liked what he was doing, and since that time he has been sitting down to write regularly.
Conclusion
The two conversations with Mihály helped me not only to understand the essays in his portfolio but to evaluate them for myself and for this research. I felt interesting to experience how this student prepared his collection, which I think I introduced well enough as a process.
Some questions could be cleared only by investigating other students’ work in writing and collecting their essays. I experienced a number of interesting phenomena during this research and preparing my collection too. One of these is the evaluation given by the tutor, Horváth József. The official evaluation is not a real part of the portfolio still I tried to handle it together with the writings it was referring to. After finishing the portfolio, beginner writers appreciate a formal and clear evaluation of their work. For example Mihály found this critique rather encouraging and motivating to continue writing even after finishing the course.
W 120 M
Introduction
In this paper my aim is to compare two Hungarian daily newspaper issues--Népszabadság (People’s Liberty) and Esti Hírlap (Evening Herald)--from the mid-70’s with a view to how they presented foreign policy events that occurred on the day I was born, April 16, 1976. I am going to make a comparison between the style of the two papers and argue that Esti Hírlap, though considered to be a serious publication, in fact, was very much like what we might call a tabloid today.
Although, as Paul Underwood notes, “in the Hungarian context, the Western distinctions of elite, popular and yellow journals are meaningless”, as “all papers are serious publications, emphasising political, economic and cultural news” (1982, p. 462), still we can clearly differentiate between the two newspapers in what events they had chosen to report on and how much space they devoted to single news. Népszabadság was--and still is--the “largest and most important Hungarian paper”, which was at those times the “party’s principle organ, setting the tone for the rest of the press” (1982, p. 462). It boasted with a circulation of around 810,000 in 1976. The third most important daily was Esti Hírlap, with a circulation of about 251,000, the only evening paper of the country, sponsored by the capital’s Party Committee. Népszabadság ran 12 pages, while Esti Hírlap 8 pages. Both published six days a week, “printing on Sundays but skipping Mondays” (1982, p. 462). Both papers cost 80 fillérs at that time, which price was apparently kept artificially low.
The Method
The two papers were aimed at different audiences as it is clear both from taking a look at the headlines and at their content as well. My method was systematically comparing the headlines and the contents of the foreign affairs news stories in the two dailies presented on their front pages. I was interested in the extent to which these papers could be regarded as biased, so I have made an attempt to provide some background to the prejudices on behalf of the press, free or partially free. After having compared the contents of the front pages of the two papers I translated the articles in question then collated the styles of them taking into consideration such features as highlighting certain sentences and the wording of the events.
Results and Discussion
In spite of recent developments, as the government had chosen to soften the restrictions on the freedom of press, journalists chose events to publish, and published their articles with a certain bias, of course, in order to avoid hurting the interests of the socialist regime and its way of thinking. On the other hand, even in countries with the most possible freedom of press given, there exists a kind of bias in every piece of printed or broadcast media, thus the idea of press without prejudices and ideologies to follow is almost nonsense. As Fowler explains it in his work, “what events are reported is not a reflection of the intrinsic importance of those events, but reveals the operation of a complex and artificial set of criteria for selection” (1991, p. 2). Each happening in the world is subject to this kind of selection: “they are not intrinsically newsworthy, but only become ‘news’ when selected for inclusion in news reports. The vast majority of events are not mentioned, and so selection immediately gives us a partial view of the world” (1991, p. 11). Not only selection influences what gets in the news thus enhancing the possibility of certain biases but also “transformation, differential treatment in presentation according to numerous political, economic and social factors” (1991, p. 11).
Although the events described in the two newspapers in question were highly distorted to be favourable to fit the Party’s interests, it is parallel to what is going on in the media all over the world. As Fowler concludes, “the world of the Press is not the real world, but a world skewed and judged (1991, p. 222)”. Not only in the Communist world could--and in some places, still can--be seen news as a product, as the author expresses, but it is a general phenomenon wherever media exist. Moreover, this product is “produced by an industry, shaped by the bureaucratic and economic structure of that industry, by the relations between the media and other industries and, most importantly, by relations with government and with other political organisations” (1991, p. 222).
We might get a picture of the audience addressed of the two newspapers if we compare their contents. On the twelve pages of Népszabadság 25 foreign affairs news stories were published, while in Esti Hírlap 17. Furthermore, the stories in Népszabadság tended to be elaborated on, as opposed to Esti Hírlap, where only a few short sentences were devoted to them. As for home politics the number of articles was 17:3 in Népszabadság and Esti Hírlap, respectively. However, the latter paper covered more human-interest, miscellaneous soft news items, the number in their case was 13:25, further strengthening the tabloid character of the evening paper. Also, the number of articles concerning opinions, that is editorials and readers’ letters was higher in Esti Hírlap as the 1:10 figure shows. This fact is worth considering if we take into account that editorials and opinions are organic parts of a newspaper, as they “have an important symbolic function, seeming to partition off the ‘opinion’ component of the paper, implicitly supporting the claim that other sections, by contrast, are pure ‘fact’ or ‘report’” (1991, p. 222). In Esti Hírlap a whole page devoted to readers’ opinions and four more editorials were in the paper concerning various topics (a critique of a TV programme, one expressing discontent over technical books’ supply in the country, a critical essay on some US legal affair concerning a person’s acquittal in a dubious court case and an account on Easter memories of the author), whereas in Népszabadság there was only one such article, an open letter to the authorities about the problems of a Budapest council house--from which, however, we had better not draw any long-term conclusion, as it is possible that on another day of the week Népszabadság as well gave space to this kind of articles.
Comparing the content of the front pages of the two dailies anew tend to be underlying the differences between their style. There was only one news item published in both papers--it appeared among the headlines of the dailies, namely one concerning severe fighting going on in Lebanon, under the same title: “Súlyos harcok Libanonban”. The contents of the two articles differed in some aspects, though the amount of space given to the topic was roughly the same in the two papers. These differences might well stemmed from Esti Hírlap’s later deadline owing to its being an evening paper. For instance, Esti Hírlap reported 108 casualties, whereas Népszabadság 74. A characteristic of Esti Hírlap was that some sentences were printed in bold in order to underscore some essential points in the texts. In this article four sentences were highlighted this way: “In Beirut the adversaries were having severe gunfight deploying trench mortars, machine guns and heavy artillery”; “the right wing is deliberately striving to sharpen the military situation”; “in Damascus Syrian president Hafes Assad received the Palestinian delegation led by Yasser Arafat, head of the PLO’s executive committee”; “during the six-hour discussion the common Palestinian-Syrian point of view was outlined”, while in Népszabadság no such highlighting can be detected, only one clause is printed in italics, namely the one describing the number of the casualties and the wounded. The other paper’s using such techniques to attract attention might again hint at why it was regarded as a ‘quasi-tabloid’ even in those times.
On its front page Népszabadság had more articles on foreign policy matters, none of which is mentioned in the other daily. These were as follows: “Spanish Patriots Court-martialed”--in this article members of separatist terrorist organisation ETA are described, quite typically, as freedom fighters put on display trials; “The Declaration of the Cambodian National Assembly”--a short description of the Communist country’s proceeding on the policy of independence, peace and neutrality, at the same time strengthening and developing solidarity and friendship toward all revolutionary movements and peace-loving countries and people of the world, as reported by the Soviet news agency TASS; “Laos Has Taken the Initial Steps on the Way of Social Progress”--another TASS report about a Communist leader addressing his people invite them to strengthen further the national unity and mobilise the revolutionary forces in order to restore and develop national economy; “Schmidt on the Necessity of Détente Policy”--this one was by the Bonn correspondent of the daily, about the West-German chancellor’s making his point of view about the détente unmistakably clear. Interestingly enough, all articles on the first page were complete ones as opposed to today’s fashion, according to which many articles only hint at the essence of the topic and the whole discussed in detail inside the paper.
The leading headline of Esti Hírlap, apart from the one about the Lebanon crisis, was reporting that the 15th Congress of the Czechoslovak Communist Party had been over and had elected Gustav Hushak as secretary general. (The same topic was discussed at length on the third page of Népszabadság.) Another lengthy article, titled “Deng is set upon anew”, reported by Endre Aczél, discusses that Deng Xiaoping had been considered to be a rebel by many in China. It is notable that the article had a slightly ironic, definitely critic tone when describing the petty delays going on within the Chinese Communist Party. There was an article about a cabinet crisis in Italy as well, indicating that the postponing of the crisis in the Italian government could only be an ‘Easter present’ for the Italians, as the crisis could not be avoided. To the remaining three foreign policy news only a few short sentences were devoted in Esti Hírlap. One of them described East Germany’s achievements in shipbuilding and export, another was about French antifascists’ organising a commemorative celebration on May 8, Victory Day. The last one was a propaganda news item about the US House of Representatives conceding that a multitude of firearms had disappeared from the Pentagon’s alleged store-rooms, which reportedly had got in the hands of drug dealers and other criminals.
Conclusion
Features in Esti Hírlap, like its including several scoops underline the fact that its editors aspired to have their paper full of sensations--in Népszabadság the aim was to report more serious events as objectively as it was allowed. In the former paper more space was devoted to soft news, which in the latter played only secondary role. We might conclude after having compared the two dailies that even though all publications were deemed to be serious ones in the Communist era in Hungary, at least one exception existed, and this was Esti Hírlap, with its more colourful, sensation-centred style and shorter, more concise articles and numerous photographs.
In this paper my aim is to compare two Hungarian daily newspaper issues--Népszabadság (People’s Liberty) and Esti Hírlap (Evening Herald)--from the mid-70’s with a view to how they presented foreign policy events that occurred on the day I was born, April 16, 1976. I am going to make a comparison between the style of the two papers and argue that Esti Hírlap, though considered to be a serious publication, in fact, was very much like what we might call a tabloid today.
Although, as Paul Underwood notes, “in the Hungarian context, the Western distinctions of elite, popular and yellow journals are meaningless”, as “all papers are serious publications, emphasising political, economic and cultural news” (1982, p. 462), still we can clearly differentiate between the two newspapers in what events they had chosen to report on and how much space they devoted to single news. Népszabadság was--and still is--the “largest and most important Hungarian paper”, which was at those times the “party’s principle organ, setting the tone for the rest of the press” (1982, p. 462). It boasted with a circulation of around 810,000 in 1976. The third most important daily was Esti Hírlap, with a circulation of about 251,000, the only evening paper of the country, sponsored by the capital’s Party Committee. Népszabadság ran 12 pages, while Esti Hírlap 8 pages. Both published six days a week, “printing on Sundays but skipping Mondays” (1982, p. 462). Both papers cost 80 fillérs at that time, which price was apparently kept artificially low.
The Method
The two papers were aimed at different audiences as it is clear both from taking a look at the headlines and at their content as well. My method was systematically comparing the headlines and the contents of the foreign affairs news stories in the two dailies presented on their front pages. I was interested in the extent to which these papers could be regarded as biased, so I have made an attempt to provide some background to the prejudices on behalf of the press, free or partially free. After having compared the contents of the front pages of the two papers I translated the articles in question then collated the styles of them taking into consideration such features as highlighting certain sentences and the wording of the events.
Results and Discussion
In spite of recent developments, as the government had chosen to soften the restrictions on the freedom of press, journalists chose events to publish, and published their articles with a certain bias, of course, in order to avoid hurting the interests of the socialist regime and its way of thinking. On the other hand, even in countries with the most possible freedom of press given, there exists a kind of bias in every piece of printed or broadcast media, thus the idea of press without prejudices and ideologies to follow is almost nonsense. As Fowler explains it in his work, “what events are reported is not a reflection of the intrinsic importance of those events, but reveals the operation of a complex and artificial set of criteria for selection” (1991, p. 2). Each happening in the world is subject to this kind of selection: “they are not intrinsically newsworthy, but only become ‘news’ when selected for inclusion in news reports. The vast majority of events are not mentioned, and so selection immediately gives us a partial view of the world” (1991, p. 11). Not only selection influences what gets in the news thus enhancing the possibility of certain biases but also “transformation, differential treatment in presentation according to numerous political, economic and social factors” (1991, p. 11).
Although the events described in the two newspapers in question were highly distorted to be favourable to fit the Party’s interests, it is parallel to what is going on in the media all over the world. As Fowler concludes, “the world of the Press is not the real world, but a world skewed and judged (1991, p. 222)”. Not only in the Communist world could--and in some places, still can--be seen news as a product, as the author expresses, but it is a general phenomenon wherever media exist. Moreover, this product is “produced by an industry, shaped by the bureaucratic and economic structure of that industry, by the relations between the media and other industries and, most importantly, by relations with government and with other political organisations” (1991, p. 222).
We might get a picture of the audience addressed of the two newspapers if we compare their contents. On the twelve pages of Népszabadság 25 foreign affairs news stories were published, while in Esti Hírlap 17. Furthermore, the stories in Népszabadság tended to be elaborated on, as opposed to Esti Hírlap, where only a few short sentences were devoted to them. As for home politics the number of articles was 17:3 in Népszabadság and Esti Hírlap, respectively. However, the latter paper covered more human-interest, miscellaneous soft news items, the number in their case was 13:25, further strengthening the tabloid character of the evening paper. Also, the number of articles concerning opinions, that is editorials and readers’ letters was higher in Esti Hírlap as the 1:10 figure shows. This fact is worth considering if we take into account that editorials and opinions are organic parts of a newspaper, as they “have an important symbolic function, seeming to partition off the ‘opinion’ component of the paper, implicitly supporting the claim that other sections, by contrast, are pure ‘fact’ or ‘report’” (1991, p. 222). In Esti Hírlap a whole page devoted to readers’ opinions and four more editorials were in the paper concerning various topics (a critique of a TV programme, one expressing discontent over technical books’ supply in the country, a critical essay on some US legal affair concerning a person’s acquittal in a dubious court case and an account on Easter memories of the author), whereas in Népszabadság there was only one such article, an open letter to the authorities about the problems of a Budapest council house--from which, however, we had better not draw any long-term conclusion, as it is possible that on another day of the week Népszabadság as well gave space to this kind of articles.
Comparing the content of the front pages of the two dailies anew tend to be underlying the differences between their style. There was only one news item published in both papers--it appeared among the headlines of the dailies, namely one concerning severe fighting going on in Lebanon, under the same title: “Súlyos harcok Libanonban”. The contents of the two articles differed in some aspects, though the amount of space given to the topic was roughly the same in the two papers. These differences might well stemmed from Esti Hírlap’s later deadline owing to its being an evening paper. For instance, Esti Hírlap reported 108 casualties, whereas Népszabadság 74. A characteristic of Esti Hírlap was that some sentences were printed in bold in order to underscore some essential points in the texts. In this article four sentences were highlighted this way: “In Beirut the adversaries were having severe gunfight deploying trench mortars, machine guns and heavy artillery”; “the right wing is deliberately striving to sharpen the military situation”; “in Damascus Syrian president Hafes Assad received the Palestinian delegation led by Yasser Arafat, head of the PLO’s executive committee”; “during the six-hour discussion the common Palestinian-Syrian point of view was outlined”, while in Népszabadság no such highlighting can be detected, only one clause is printed in italics, namely the one describing the number of the casualties and the wounded. The other paper’s using such techniques to attract attention might again hint at why it was regarded as a ‘quasi-tabloid’ even in those times.
On its front page Népszabadság had more articles on foreign policy matters, none of which is mentioned in the other daily. These were as follows: “Spanish Patriots Court-martialed”--in this article members of separatist terrorist organisation ETA are described, quite typically, as freedom fighters put on display trials; “The Declaration of the Cambodian National Assembly”--a short description of the Communist country’s proceeding on the policy of independence, peace and neutrality, at the same time strengthening and developing solidarity and friendship toward all revolutionary movements and peace-loving countries and people of the world, as reported by the Soviet news agency TASS; “Laos Has Taken the Initial Steps on the Way of Social Progress”--another TASS report about a Communist leader addressing his people invite them to strengthen further the national unity and mobilise the revolutionary forces in order to restore and develop national economy; “Schmidt on the Necessity of Détente Policy”--this one was by the Bonn correspondent of the daily, about the West-German chancellor’s making his point of view about the détente unmistakably clear. Interestingly enough, all articles on the first page were complete ones as opposed to today’s fashion, according to which many articles only hint at the essence of the topic and the whole discussed in detail inside the paper.
The leading headline of Esti Hírlap, apart from the one about the Lebanon crisis, was reporting that the 15th Congress of the Czechoslovak Communist Party had been over and had elected Gustav Hushak as secretary general. (The same topic was discussed at length on the third page of Népszabadság.) Another lengthy article, titled “Deng is set upon anew”, reported by Endre Aczél, discusses that Deng Xiaoping had been considered to be a rebel by many in China. It is notable that the article had a slightly ironic, definitely critic tone when describing the petty delays going on within the Chinese Communist Party. There was an article about a cabinet crisis in Italy as well, indicating that the postponing of the crisis in the Italian government could only be an ‘Easter present’ for the Italians, as the crisis could not be avoided. To the remaining three foreign policy news only a few short sentences were devoted in Esti Hírlap. One of them described East Germany’s achievements in shipbuilding and export, another was about French antifascists’ organising a commemorative celebration on May 8, Victory Day. The last one was a propaganda news item about the US House of Representatives conceding that a multitude of firearms had disappeared from the Pentagon’s alleged store-rooms, which reportedly had got in the hands of drug dealers and other criminals.
Conclusion
Features in Esti Hírlap, like its including several scoops underline the fact that its editors aspired to have their paper full of sensations--in Népszabadság the aim was to report more serious events as objectively as it was allowed. In the former paper more space was devoted to soft news, which in the latter played only secondary role. We might conclude after having compared the two dailies that even though all publications were deemed to be serious ones in the Communist era in Hungary, at least one exception existed, and this was Esti Hírlap, with its more colourful, sensation-centred style and shorter, more concise articles and numerous photographs.
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Everyone has tried travel photography who went for a holiday with a camera. However this activity as a profession involves more than taking some snapshots of relatives in front of famous buildings. When you are abroad you probably there for relaxing, enjoying yourself. Nevertheless at the same time you would like to become acquainted with the given country as much as possible. But you are too busy with lying on the beach, having sightseeing tours, dancing in a discotheque. There is no time for exploring countryside, discovering hidden places, experimenting certain things. There comes the expert and produces colourful brochures, exciting guidebooks, fascinating magazine articles.
You might envy this man who has nothing else to do but to travel all over the world and taking pictures. It looks as if he has been on holiday for ever. What is more, he is paid for it. Meanwhile he has an interesting job, gets to know foreign people and cultures, wanders exotic locations. Once an Amazon rain-forest, another time The Arctic. Beautiful landscapes, breathtaking sceneries, unique experiences, adventures with the locals are all part of his life. Moreover he is well-known through his published pictures. But these are just the bright side of travel photography.
The dark side is less obvious, not so spectacular. To be on the road can be a dangerous and lonely task. To get those photos about earthquakes, floods, wars takes more persistence than an ordinary tourist can have. Our photographer has to face unexpected situations, solve them without help often in hostile circumstances. Most of the time he can not relay on anybody but himself. He is the hero of our age who informs us what is going on in distant places while we are sitting in a comfortable armchair. And when you are away for months you can not lead a normal family life either - if you are lucky enough to have a family at home to wait for you. Marriages, human relations break up, they are sacrificed for a good shot. Is it worth ?
Yes, it is. If you feel vocation to this profession you will not count the days when you are coming back. The only aim is to fulfil the assignment, no matter what price you have to pay for it. Yes, you have to be obsessed. When you are on the field you shut out everything from your mind. Family, friends, home are forgotten, you are only with the “here and now”. It is not an eight to five job what you can forget for the day when you get home. Even when you are not abroad you are busy with organising the finished material and the preparation of the next task. After all it is part of your life.
You can not quid it for a minute, let alone forever.
You might envy this man who has nothing else to do but to travel all over the world and taking pictures. It looks as if he has been on holiday for ever. What is more, he is paid for it. Meanwhile he has an interesting job, gets to know foreign people and cultures, wanders exotic locations. Once an Amazon rain-forest, another time The Arctic. Beautiful landscapes, breathtaking sceneries, unique experiences, adventures with the locals are all part of his life. Moreover he is well-known through his published pictures. But these are just the bright side of travel photography.
The dark side is less obvious, not so spectacular. To be on the road can be a dangerous and lonely task. To get those photos about earthquakes, floods, wars takes more persistence than an ordinary tourist can have. Our photographer has to face unexpected situations, solve them without help often in hostile circumstances. Most of the time he can not relay on anybody but himself. He is the hero of our age who informs us what is going on in distant places while we are sitting in a comfortable armchair. And when you are away for months you can not lead a normal family life either - if you are lucky enough to have a family at home to wait for you. Marriages, human relations break up, they are sacrificed for a good shot. Is it worth ?
Yes, it is. If you feel vocation to this profession you will not count the days when you are coming back. The only aim is to fulfil the assignment, no matter what price you have to pay for it. Yes, you have to be obsessed. When you are on the field you shut out everything from your mind. Family, friends, home are forgotten, you are only with the “here and now”. It is not an eight to five job what you can forget for the day when you get home. Even when you are not abroad you are busy with organising the finished material and the preparation of the next task. After all it is part of your life.
You can not quid it for a minute, let alone forever.
W 118 M
Writing a text well is hard work. One has to pay attention to many rules of various sorts. Rules about the genre of the text, about how it should look overall, correct spelling or grammar. This module within the word processor is there to help one in writing an error free and easily readable text. How the module does this and how successful it is in doing so, is what I will present in this paper.
Method
To show how grammar check works and to examine it further I ran the module on two documents. Both of them are research papers written on introductions and for the Writing and Research Skills seminar in the 1997 spring semester. For the anonymity of the authors I will refer to them as Male and Female. These texts have been already evaluated and they are the final versions.
For the tests I ran I used the Grammar Check module of Word 7.0. Since I do not have much experience with the program I set it to use apply every single rule it knows both for grammar and style (Figure 1). This makes 19 grammar rules and 26 stylistic ones. For a list of these rules see Appendix 1.
Figure 1 The settings
Results and Discussion
The program has found numerous words or phrases it considered had errors in both documents. Altogether 14 types of errors were indicated (11 types in Male’s and 14 types in Female’s) (see appendix 2). The most warnings were given about passive structures (37 times) and about very long sentences (21 times) (figure 2 and 3). Using long sentences in a text can significantly lower its readability as well as using many passive structures. These may be complicated and hard to understand for the reader, so their number should be kept low by using active structures and shorter sentences.
Figure 2 Passive structures
Figure 3 A very long sentence
The next big group of errors was considering word choice. Wordy expressions, stock phrases, phrases that the module considered too long or/and suggested a shorter version instead. These mistakes also only affect the readability of the text and they are grammatically correct as they are. These are stylistic errors (figures 4-6)
Figure 4 Informal usage
Figure 5 Nonstandard modifier
Figure 6 Stock phrase
Sentences in which stylistic errors are detected by the grammar check program are grammatically correct usually. The difference these errors mean lies in the readability of the text. As a general rule in can be stated the shorter and simpler a sentence, phrase or even a word is the easier it is to understand what is meant by it. With long clumsy sentences, many passive structures and Latin origin words a writing may seem to have been written by a more intelligent person but much less people will read it for the same reason. Therefore it is highly advisable to revise and see if the structure the module found can be simplified in any way.
Detecting stylistic errors the module rarely makes a mistake. However when it comes to real grammatical rules the flaws of the program start surfacing. Out of the 14 grammatical mistakes (not counting the pronoun errors) the module claimed to have found only 5 were real mistakes. In the rest of the cases the program failed to notice an important word, or that the word in question was a part of a phrase and other such malfunctions occurred. These mistakes of the grammar check module come from the programming flaws and, mainly, from the complexity of the language. It is impossible to create a perfect grammar check program without artificial intelligence that can tell the program what is meant by the sentence or word and what to do with it.
The four types of grammatical errors found by the module are pronoun errors, run-on sentences, clause errors and subject-verb agreement. With the pronoun errors the module had no problem since that is mainly a word choice type of problem too. In the other cases however it made several mistakes, in 2/3 of the cases in fact, making one click on the ignore icon one too often.
Figure 7 Supposed clause error
In the clause error given in figure 7 the program failed to see that the missing clause is in the previous sentence. The module has no capability to look at the sentence as a part of the whole, therefore it can make such mistakes much too often.
Figure 8 Supposed subject-verb agreement error
In figure 8 also the program failed to see that the word ‘test’ is not in the meaning the module expects to be in.
Figure 9 Supposed run-on sentence error
At the end of a check the program than gives a table with figures about word count, averages and readability statistics (figure 10). These statistics show the percentage of passive structures in the text and the reading ease scores by different methods. The percentage of passives should be under 40% and if over revision and use of active structures is recommended.
Figure 10 Text statistics
Conclusion
Despite of all of the grammar check modules flaws, it is worth using it. It can be good for revising oneself before submitting a paper of any kind. However it should not be relied upon as a final reviser. For it can not know your thoughts and correct by them. The program is best suited for home use where requirements are only basic, but it would not stand for an editor.
Appendix 1 - Rules applied
Grammatical:
Agreement with here or there
Clause errors
Commonly confused words
Double negatives
Format errors
Informal usage
Jargon words
Mass vs. Count; A vs. An
Nonstandard expressions
Nonstandard modifiers
Noun phrase consistency
Passive verb usage
Pronoun errors
Punctuation errors
Repetitive expressions
Subject-word agreement
System messages
Verbal group consistency
Word usage
Stylistic:
Check quoted text
Archaic expressions
Clichés
Contractions
Gender-specific expressions
Homonyms
Inappropriate prepositions
Informal expressions
Jargon expressions
Misspelled expressions
Misspelled foreign expressions
Misused words
Multiple negation
Open vs. Closed spelling
Overused phrases
Possible word confusions
Pretentious words
Redundant expressions
Sexist expressions
Stock phrases
Ungrammatical expressions
Vague quantifiers
Weak modifiers
Wordy expressions I
Wordy expressions II
Appendix 2 - Search results:
(Hits: number of times error type occurred altogether, Mistakes: program could not apply the rule properly [ percent of accuracy])
Male:
Hits Mistakes [Accuracy]
Confused words 4 4 [0 %]
Passive 20 - [100 %]
Long sentence 8 - [100 %]
Subject-word agreement 4 3 [25 %]
Pronoun errors 13 - [100 %]
Wordy expressions 3 - [100 %]
Clause errors 2 2 [0 %]
Informal usage 3 1 [66 %]
Pretentious words 1 - [100 %]
Weak modifier 1 - [100 %]
Redundant expression 1 - [100 %]
Female:
Hits Mistakes [Accuracy]
Passive structures 17 - [100 %]
Wordy expressions 11 2 [81 %]
Long sentences 13 - [100 %]
Run-on sentence 2 1 [50 %]
Vague quantifier 1 - [100 %]
Pretentious words 3 - [100 %]
Clause errors 2 1 [50 %]
Subject word agreement 3 2 [33 %]
Stock phrase 1 - [100 %]
Confused words 6 6 [0 %]
Weak modifier 2 - [100 %]
Redundant expression 1 - [100 %]
Method
To show how grammar check works and to examine it further I ran the module on two documents. Both of them are research papers written on introductions and for the Writing and Research Skills seminar in the 1997 spring semester. For the anonymity of the authors I will refer to them as Male and Female. These texts have been already evaluated and they are the final versions.
For the tests I ran I used the Grammar Check module of Word 7.0. Since I do not have much experience with the program I set it to use apply every single rule it knows both for grammar and style (Figure 1). This makes 19 grammar rules and 26 stylistic ones. For a list of these rules see Appendix 1.
Figure 1 The settings
Results and Discussion
The program has found numerous words or phrases it considered had errors in both documents. Altogether 14 types of errors were indicated (11 types in Male’s and 14 types in Female’s) (see appendix 2). The most warnings were given about passive structures (37 times) and about very long sentences (21 times) (figure 2 and 3). Using long sentences in a text can significantly lower its readability as well as using many passive structures. These may be complicated and hard to understand for the reader, so their number should be kept low by using active structures and shorter sentences.
Figure 2 Passive structures
Figure 3 A very long sentence
The next big group of errors was considering word choice. Wordy expressions, stock phrases, phrases that the module considered too long or/and suggested a shorter version instead. These mistakes also only affect the readability of the text and they are grammatically correct as they are. These are stylistic errors (figures 4-6)
Figure 4 Informal usage
Figure 5 Nonstandard modifier
Figure 6 Stock phrase
Sentences in which stylistic errors are detected by the grammar check program are grammatically correct usually. The difference these errors mean lies in the readability of the text. As a general rule in can be stated the shorter and simpler a sentence, phrase or even a word is the easier it is to understand what is meant by it. With long clumsy sentences, many passive structures and Latin origin words a writing may seem to have been written by a more intelligent person but much less people will read it for the same reason. Therefore it is highly advisable to revise and see if the structure the module found can be simplified in any way.
Detecting stylistic errors the module rarely makes a mistake. However when it comes to real grammatical rules the flaws of the program start surfacing. Out of the 14 grammatical mistakes (not counting the pronoun errors) the module claimed to have found only 5 were real mistakes. In the rest of the cases the program failed to notice an important word, or that the word in question was a part of a phrase and other such malfunctions occurred. These mistakes of the grammar check module come from the programming flaws and, mainly, from the complexity of the language. It is impossible to create a perfect grammar check program without artificial intelligence that can tell the program what is meant by the sentence or word and what to do with it.
The four types of grammatical errors found by the module are pronoun errors, run-on sentences, clause errors and subject-verb agreement. With the pronoun errors the module had no problem since that is mainly a word choice type of problem too. In the other cases however it made several mistakes, in 2/3 of the cases in fact, making one click on the ignore icon one too often.
Figure 7 Supposed clause error
In the clause error given in figure 7 the program failed to see that the missing clause is in the previous sentence. The module has no capability to look at the sentence as a part of the whole, therefore it can make such mistakes much too often.
Figure 8 Supposed subject-verb agreement error
In figure 8 also the program failed to see that the word ‘test’ is not in the meaning the module expects to be in.
Figure 9 Supposed run-on sentence error
At the end of a check the program than gives a table with figures about word count, averages and readability statistics (figure 10). These statistics show the percentage of passive structures in the text and the reading ease scores by different methods. The percentage of passives should be under 40% and if over revision and use of active structures is recommended.
Figure 10 Text statistics
Conclusion
Despite of all of the grammar check modules flaws, it is worth using it. It can be good for revising oneself before submitting a paper of any kind. However it should not be relied upon as a final reviser. For it can not know your thoughts and correct by them. The program is best suited for home use where requirements are only basic, but it would not stand for an editor.
Appendix 1 - Rules applied
Grammatical:
Agreement with here or there
Clause errors
Commonly confused words
Double negatives
Format errors
Informal usage
Jargon words
Mass vs. Count; A vs. An
Nonstandard expressions
Nonstandard modifiers
Noun phrase consistency
Passive verb usage
Pronoun errors
Punctuation errors
Repetitive expressions
Subject-word agreement
System messages
Verbal group consistency
Word usage
Stylistic:
Check quoted text
Archaic expressions
Clichés
Contractions
Gender-specific expressions
Homonyms
Inappropriate prepositions
Informal expressions
Jargon expressions
Misspelled expressions
Misspelled foreign expressions
Misused words
Multiple negation
Open vs. Closed spelling
Overused phrases
Possible word confusions
Pretentious words
Redundant expressions
Sexist expressions
Stock phrases
Ungrammatical expressions
Vague quantifiers
Weak modifiers
Wordy expressions I
Wordy expressions II
Appendix 2 - Search results:
(Hits: number of times error type occurred altogether, Mistakes: program could not apply the rule properly [ percent of accuracy])
Male:
Hits Mistakes [Accuracy]
Confused words 4 4 [0 %]
Passive 20 - [100 %]
Long sentence 8 - [100 %]
Subject-word agreement 4 3 [25 %]
Pronoun errors 13 - [100 %]
Wordy expressions 3 - [100 %]
Clause errors 2 2 [0 %]
Informal usage 3 1 [66 %]
Pretentious words 1 - [100 %]
Weak modifier 1 - [100 %]
Redundant expression 1 - [100 %]
Female:
Hits Mistakes [Accuracy]
Passive structures 17 - [100 %]
Wordy expressions 11 2 [81 %]
Long sentences 13 - [100 %]
Run-on sentence 2 1 [50 %]
Vague quantifier 1 - [100 %]
Pretentious words 3 - [100 %]
Clause errors 2 1 [50 %]
Subject word agreement 3 2 [33 %]
Stock phrase 1 - [100 %]
Confused words 6 6 [0 %]
Weak modifier 2 - [100 %]
Redundant expression 1 - [100 %]
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Introduction
Accuracy is essential for every language learner and teacher. Even at the beginnings of language learning, there is always a huge amount of emphasis put on accuracy. The principle of most language tests and exams is to measure the learner's knowledge of accuracy. To be accurate in a foreign language is important for learners at all levels of proficiency and especially crucial for the academic users of the language. English majors are considered to be academic users, because the English language is a tool for them to obtain a wide range of academic knowledge in various fields in connection with the language itself, and the culture in which English is developed and used. Their level of competence is different, but it should meet a certain standard to enable them to perform accurately in the productive skills, like reading and writing.
"Since language development for English majors is among the top priorities in the first two years at JPU, constant monitoring of performance is regarded as a necessity"(Szabó, 1996 p.77). That is why a proficiency test for first-year students was created to monitor their knowledge of the English language in order to filter out those who could presumably not continue their studies at the English department because of the lack of knowledge. There is an obstacle for those who do not pass the proficiency test that they cannot earn their grades for the language practice course in the second semester. As a result of this, they have to repeat it in the next spring semester. Of course, there is a chance for those who failed one of the parts of the proficiency exam to resit the part in which they failed.
The assessment of the 1996 proficiency tests clearly showed that the biggest problem in essay writing was accuracy. The lowest marks appeared in the category of accuracy in the essay writing part of the proficiency exam. In most cases, this was the decisive element for those who were on the edge of failing this part of the proficiency exam. Students had problems with focusing as well, but they could have passed the exam, if they had not achieved such low marks in accuracy. Even the analysis of the works of those who had the highest scores by writing excellent essays pointed out that these students had some problems with accuracy, too. The average mark in the category of accuracy was 7.2, considering the best essays, which is quite low in comparison with the other categories. The average mark was above eight in other categories and nearly nine in the category of essay organisation, taking the best ten essays into consideration. As the correctors took every essay into account, the average mark in accuracy appeared to be 5.645, which was just 0.445 over the pass mark. (For an extended analysis, see Horváth 1996.)
Method
These figures imply that it is worth taking a closer look at this problem by making a survey among the teachers of the English department about the students' accuracy. I undertook to survey teachers' views on this and on other related issues that cause debates among the teachers of the English department and generate discussions among the students, as well. My questions ranged from the effectiveness of the proficiency exam to the possible ways of preserving and improving students' knowledge of English. I thought the best method of gathering information would be the use of a tape recorder to record all the information I was provided with by the teachers. I also collected some reasons why students had problems with their accuracy even in their fourth or fifth year at the university. The rest of this paper is dedicated to present the different ideas teachers had on the issues concerning students' accuracy.
Results and Discussion
The opinions were different on the reasons why students had problems with their accuracy and I wanted to relate this question to the entrance exam, which is not easy at all and proved to be effective somehow. "The low marks in accuracy in the essay writing task showed the disadvantages of teaching English from a very early age. On the one hand it is good, because children can achieve fluency in speech, but on the other hand they lack writing competence. At university level, when students do not get into the university for the first time, mainly girls go abroad to work as au-pairs or to work on ocean liners. It is beneficial for improving their oral competence, but after having achieved native-like oral fluency, it is almost impossible to discipline themselves to improve their written correctness, as well"( Andy C. Rouse 04/24/1997). There are some other factors that influence students' accuracy. "Students do not read and write as regularly as they should do. This also can be the secondary school's fault by putting too much emphasis on communicative skills"(Dr. Martsa Sándor 04/22/1997). Students may feel that their knowledge becomes weaker after their first or second year at the university, and this can be originated from the credit system. They can learn a wide range of subjects even in the first year, and there is little time devoted to language practice. Referring to the effectiveness of the entrance exam some teachers pointed out that it was useful, but the written part needed some improvement, because it is only a test. "The problem is that tests cannot really measure writing competence"(Fodor Mónika 23/04/1997). Teachers mainly agreed that improving language skills was not exclusively the teacher's task, it was also the student's responsibility to practise as much as possible.
It is noticeable that students in the upper years of their studies still have problems with their accuracy. "This can go to such extremes that some theses contain so many mistakes that they cannot be accepted"(Szabó Gábor 23/04/1997). Talking of theses, the problem might be that "students try to produce too complex sentences, and when they get into writing long, complex sentences they forget that sometimes a short, simple sentence is the right stylistic thing to do"(Andy C. Rouse 24/04/1997). There is a small number of people whose English is relatively poor at the final complex exam, but such cases are rare at JPU. The problem might stem from the fact that students have to concentrate on so many different theoretical subjects in the fourth or fifth year that it has a harmful effect on their accuracy. Specialisation around the third year might be a possible solution.
The tendency that the longer one is an English major the worse one's knowledge of English gets "is an old, but a lovely cliché and something that students have always said"(Andy C. Rouse 24/04/1997). There is no firm evidence about this, because there are no statistics about the language development of students in the upper years. Fifth-year students should have a proficiency exam, as well. The truth of the matter is that their knowledge of English increases, but they have fewer opportunities to use their new level of English. The language practice programme ends after the fourth semester and afterwards it is high time for self-development. "Even a language practice course cannot make everybody speak there are always some people who remain silent"(Szabó Gábor 23/04/1997). The accuracy component of the essays is not measured in the upper years, the marks only reflect the content of the essays. Financial problems always restrict the number of teachers that the department can employ, thus seminars are overcrowded and do not provide equal opportunities for students to communicate. "A whole lot depends on the students, too. Students should find opportunities to speak, but the best way for improving one's English is reading"(Szamosi Gertrúd 23/04/1997). Teachers experience that students do not read the required readings for their courses and "sometimes reading two short books for a course is a huge effort for some of them"(Lugossy Réka 23/04/1997). There are some students who do not even take the time to read readings that are only ten or twenty pages long. Sitting in seminars and earning credits are not enough to prevent regression.
It is a typical phenomenon among the students of the English department that their theoretical knowledge is good, but they cannot apply that knowledge in their writings. It is also proven by the assessment of the proficiency exam that in the Grammar and Usage part students did well, but there were a lot of accuracy problems in their essays. "Practice makes perfect" is an old proverb, and it is true in connection with languages, too. The students' productive performance is the question of practice and students should be aware of this. "Students must find time and take the effort to practise on their own. It is not the university's task to provide practice for everybody"(Szamosi Gertrúd 23/04/1997). English is a tool at the university and theoretical subjects cannot be put aside. "University is not a language course, its aims are far beyond that"(Dr. Martsa Sándor 22/04/1997).
Students at the proficiency exam achieved better marks in categories like essay organisation and paragraph organisation than in accuracy, in spite of the fact that these stylistic procedures were newer to them than the language use. This can be explained by simple and natural features that everybody has. "People tend to concentrate harder on newly acquired knowledge than on things that they think are very good at"(Lugossy Réka 23/04/1997). There may not have been enough time to revise their essays. Focus and paragraph organisation are theoretically discussed at first at the university, but in practice students have already encountered with these problems in their primary school years. The conclusion can be drawn that essay writing stylistically speaking is not new to students, at all. Accuracy and the knowledge of English is a completely different category and can be treated as a mechanical application of rules studied. Style is a kind of innate quality and it is a part of everybody. "Writing is a visual sign that you put on paper to demonstrate the movements your body makes when you are speaking"(Andy C. Rouse 24/04/1997).
Conclusion
The development and maintenance of the knowledge of the English language must be done wholeheartedly by all English majors. I can only offer some suggestions made by the teachers to summarise the ideas teachers have on the improvement of the students' accuracy. Practice is crucial; if you do not practice your English day by day it will fall apart. Both the students' and the teachers' task to improve language skills, but the major problem is that students do not pay attention to the maintenance of their knowledge. They should get more feedback, but it is mostly their responsibility to keep the importance of language development in their mind. The English department is a place where students can have access to many areas of the academic sciences but only with the help of English. Advanced language practice is a good idea, but language practice should not be to the detriment of theoretical subjects. "The first complex exam at the English department should be modified, because of its complexity"(Lugossy Réka 23/04/1997). Students are examined in language practice together with phonology, morphology and syntax. Students should be motivated and involved in the seminars by the teacher who provides them with relevant input. Reading is good for everything, and students should seek for the company of native speakers. Students should be active in seminars and should take the effort of practising their English besides the compulsory seminars and lectures, as well.
Accuracy is essential for every language learner and teacher. Even at the beginnings of language learning, there is always a huge amount of emphasis put on accuracy. The principle of most language tests and exams is to measure the learner's knowledge of accuracy. To be accurate in a foreign language is important for learners at all levels of proficiency and especially crucial for the academic users of the language. English majors are considered to be academic users, because the English language is a tool for them to obtain a wide range of academic knowledge in various fields in connection with the language itself, and the culture in which English is developed and used. Their level of competence is different, but it should meet a certain standard to enable them to perform accurately in the productive skills, like reading and writing.
"Since language development for English majors is among the top priorities in the first two years at JPU, constant monitoring of performance is regarded as a necessity"(Szabó, 1996 p.77). That is why a proficiency test for first-year students was created to monitor their knowledge of the English language in order to filter out those who could presumably not continue their studies at the English department because of the lack of knowledge. There is an obstacle for those who do not pass the proficiency test that they cannot earn their grades for the language practice course in the second semester. As a result of this, they have to repeat it in the next spring semester. Of course, there is a chance for those who failed one of the parts of the proficiency exam to resit the part in which they failed.
The assessment of the 1996 proficiency tests clearly showed that the biggest problem in essay writing was accuracy. The lowest marks appeared in the category of accuracy in the essay writing part of the proficiency exam. In most cases, this was the decisive element for those who were on the edge of failing this part of the proficiency exam. Students had problems with focusing as well, but they could have passed the exam, if they had not achieved such low marks in accuracy. Even the analysis of the works of those who had the highest scores by writing excellent essays pointed out that these students had some problems with accuracy, too. The average mark in the category of accuracy was 7.2, considering the best essays, which is quite low in comparison with the other categories. The average mark was above eight in other categories and nearly nine in the category of essay organisation, taking the best ten essays into consideration. As the correctors took every essay into account, the average mark in accuracy appeared to be 5.645, which was just 0.445 over the pass mark. (For an extended analysis, see Horváth 1996.)
Method
These figures imply that it is worth taking a closer look at this problem by making a survey among the teachers of the English department about the students' accuracy. I undertook to survey teachers' views on this and on other related issues that cause debates among the teachers of the English department and generate discussions among the students, as well. My questions ranged from the effectiveness of the proficiency exam to the possible ways of preserving and improving students' knowledge of English. I thought the best method of gathering information would be the use of a tape recorder to record all the information I was provided with by the teachers. I also collected some reasons why students had problems with their accuracy even in their fourth or fifth year at the university. The rest of this paper is dedicated to present the different ideas teachers had on the issues concerning students' accuracy.
Results and Discussion
The opinions were different on the reasons why students had problems with their accuracy and I wanted to relate this question to the entrance exam, which is not easy at all and proved to be effective somehow. "The low marks in accuracy in the essay writing task showed the disadvantages of teaching English from a very early age. On the one hand it is good, because children can achieve fluency in speech, but on the other hand they lack writing competence. At university level, when students do not get into the university for the first time, mainly girls go abroad to work as au-pairs or to work on ocean liners. It is beneficial for improving their oral competence, but after having achieved native-like oral fluency, it is almost impossible to discipline themselves to improve their written correctness, as well"( Andy C. Rouse 04/24/1997). There are some other factors that influence students' accuracy. "Students do not read and write as regularly as they should do. This also can be the secondary school's fault by putting too much emphasis on communicative skills"(Dr. Martsa Sándor 04/22/1997). Students may feel that their knowledge becomes weaker after their first or second year at the university, and this can be originated from the credit system. They can learn a wide range of subjects even in the first year, and there is little time devoted to language practice. Referring to the effectiveness of the entrance exam some teachers pointed out that it was useful, but the written part needed some improvement, because it is only a test. "The problem is that tests cannot really measure writing competence"(Fodor Mónika 23/04/1997). Teachers mainly agreed that improving language skills was not exclusively the teacher's task, it was also the student's responsibility to practise as much as possible.
It is noticeable that students in the upper years of their studies still have problems with their accuracy. "This can go to such extremes that some theses contain so many mistakes that they cannot be accepted"(Szabó Gábor 23/04/1997). Talking of theses, the problem might be that "students try to produce too complex sentences, and when they get into writing long, complex sentences they forget that sometimes a short, simple sentence is the right stylistic thing to do"(Andy C. Rouse 24/04/1997). There is a small number of people whose English is relatively poor at the final complex exam, but such cases are rare at JPU. The problem might stem from the fact that students have to concentrate on so many different theoretical subjects in the fourth or fifth year that it has a harmful effect on their accuracy. Specialisation around the third year might be a possible solution.
The tendency that the longer one is an English major the worse one's knowledge of English gets "is an old, but a lovely cliché and something that students have always said"(Andy C. Rouse 24/04/1997). There is no firm evidence about this, because there are no statistics about the language development of students in the upper years. Fifth-year students should have a proficiency exam, as well. The truth of the matter is that their knowledge of English increases, but they have fewer opportunities to use their new level of English. The language practice programme ends after the fourth semester and afterwards it is high time for self-development. "Even a language practice course cannot make everybody speak there are always some people who remain silent"(Szabó Gábor 23/04/1997). The accuracy component of the essays is not measured in the upper years, the marks only reflect the content of the essays. Financial problems always restrict the number of teachers that the department can employ, thus seminars are overcrowded and do not provide equal opportunities for students to communicate. "A whole lot depends on the students, too. Students should find opportunities to speak, but the best way for improving one's English is reading"(Szamosi Gertrúd 23/04/1997). Teachers experience that students do not read the required readings for their courses and "sometimes reading two short books for a course is a huge effort for some of them"(Lugossy Réka 23/04/1997). There are some students who do not even take the time to read readings that are only ten or twenty pages long. Sitting in seminars and earning credits are not enough to prevent regression.
It is a typical phenomenon among the students of the English department that their theoretical knowledge is good, but they cannot apply that knowledge in their writings. It is also proven by the assessment of the proficiency exam that in the Grammar and Usage part students did well, but there were a lot of accuracy problems in their essays. "Practice makes perfect" is an old proverb, and it is true in connection with languages, too. The students' productive performance is the question of practice and students should be aware of this. "Students must find time and take the effort to practise on their own. It is not the university's task to provide practice for everybody"(Szamosi Gertrúd 23/04/1997). English is a tool at the university and theoretical subjects cannot be put aside. "University is not a language course, its aims are far beyond that"(Dr. Martsa Sándor 22/04/1997).
Students at the proficiency exam achieved better marks in categories like essay organisation and paragraph organisation than in accuracy, in spite of the fact that these stylistic procedures were newer to them than the language use. This can be explained by simple and natural features that everybody has. "People tend to concentrate harder on newly acquired knowledge than on things that they think are very good at"(Lugossy Réka 23/04/1997). There may not have been enough time to revise their essays. Focus and paragraph organisation are theoretically discussed at first at the university, but in practice students have already encountered with these problems in their primary school years. The conclusion can be drawn that essay writing stylistically speaking is not new to students, at all. Accuracy and the knowledge of English is a completely different category and can be treated as a mechanical application of rules studied. Style is a kind of innate quality and it is a part of everybody. "Writing is a visual sign that you put on paper to demonstrate the movements your body makes when you are speaking"(Andy C. Rouse 24/04/1997).
Conclusion
The development and maintenance of the knowledge of the English language must be done wholeheartedly by all English majors. I can only offer some suggestions made by the teachers to summarise the ideas teachers have on the improvement of the students' accuracy. Practice is crucial; if you do not practice your English day by day it will fall apart. Both the students' and the teachers' task to improve language skills, but the major problem is that students do not pay attention to the maintenance of their knowledge. They should get more feedback, but it is mostly their responsibility to keep the importance of language development in their mind. The English department is a place where students can have access to many areas of the academic sciences but only with the help of English. Advanced language practice is a good idea, but language practice should not be to the detriment of theoretical subjects. "The first complex exam at the English department should be modified, because of its complexity"(Lugossy Réka 23/04/1997). Students are examined in language practice together with phonology, morphology and syntax. Students should be motivated and involved in the seminars by the teacher who provides them with relevant input. Reading is good for everything, and students should seek for the company of native speakers. Students should be active in seminars and should take the effort of practising their English besides the compulsory seminars and lectures, as well.
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