Unrealistic expectations
Life's too short to worry about errors
I suppose you could argue this is a bit of a cop-out but I feel many of my students have unrealistic expectations as to how fluent they will become in English. As a Scott Thornbury fan, I tend to emphasize communicative ability over error correction; however, my students have been schooled in France where error minimalisation is the goal -(reminds me of the Blaise talk where the AI minimises error to get the result-https://www.ted.com/talks/blaise_aguera_y_arcas_how_computers_are_learning_to_be_creative)
Anyway, what we’re going to do here is look at 2 French men working in the United States and see if they’re still making errors, and if so, which ones impede communication. And should they take time out from their work to minimise these errors or is life just too short?
What are the key areas- is it lack of vocabulary, lack of grammar, performance errors (as opposed to knowledge errors) or pronunciation?
And if it’s pronunciation, (and it is), is it “accent” or stress or incorrect vowel choice?
Another side note here- many of my students, all of my students have problems with the word “law”, pronouncing it as “low”. And yet they can all say the word “door”, so it’s not a vowel production problem, it’s a perception error (again, see Blaise).
And the strange throat gargle they make with “caught”, “bought” and “taught” is also perception, they can all say “short” without any problem at all.
(I should add here that my aim is not to ridicule my students- I have the same problem with “tu” and “tout” and my pronunciation of the French r leaves a lot to be desired, derided and to the imagination.)
So, with no further ado and no further introduction, here’s the video, and my approximate time stamps and corrections.
(so far, to 11 mins)
.55 the noise (not an error, just interesting)
is 1.10 qu form
2.45 If I understand well- straight translation, If I follow you, What you’re saying is, What you mean is, So..,
2.50 several team (no plural)
3.15 services, stress on final syllable
announcements
3.25 net new product- neat new product?
3.30 surfaces or services
3.50 what are rules
3.55 codex not code X
3.58 coding agent not codding agent (the agent makes fish)
5.10 with the venue
10.30 Surfaces or services again
7.10 Shipping a ton sounds like something a bit ruder ( and a medical problem here)