Did I Say That?

[mimmoore]

This week, I was reminded in two different classes that what I say (or what I think I say) and what students hear may be quite different.   Sometimes, such “mis-hearings” can give us a laugh—like the time I had a multilingual student in an ESL course begin a paragraph with the expression, “firstable.”  I noted that we would say, “first,” but the student repeated the expression in a later composition.  When I pointed out that “firstable” is not a recognized word, he was puzzled.

“But Professor Moore, you say it all the time.” 

“I most certainly do not.”

“Yes, you do.  You said it today in class: ‘Firstable, we need to understand why Alexie wrote this.’”

It was quite clear.  I was saying “First of all,” and he was hearing “firstable.”  We laughed, and he adjusted his notes.

Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com via Unsplash

This past week, in my corequisite writing class, another student was struggling to proofread and edit a draft of her literacy narrative.  I had asked the students to annotate some of their editorial choices; I wanted to understand more about their decision-making processes.  The student, who had several issues with end punctuation and run-on sentences, added several capital letters mid-sentence, but no periods.  In the annotation, she noted that she was starting a new idea, so capital letters were required. 

I thought back to an editing session I had led earlier:  she had not processed the discussion of periods, semicolons, clauses, or conjunctions, but she had heard that new ideas required would be signaled by a capital letter.   I could focus on all the things she did not hear—or I could focus on the fact that she was diligently applying what she did hear to her current assignment.   I applauded her work, and after a few quick examples in conference, she returned to her editing with a stronger conceptual base.

And in an introductory linguistics class, I was working through the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) inventory of English consonants and vowels, including the sound called a velar nasal (written as a [ŋ])—this is the sound you hear in words with an “ng.” 

I assigned some common words for students to transcribe for homework, including several with the velar nasal sound: penguin, linguistics, and finger.  Some students submitted rather odd transcriptions—their versions lacked an initial vowel and did not include a [g], which is clearly present in all of these words: they wrote [lŋwɪstɪks] instead of [lɪŋɡwɪstɪks].  I asked them what was going on.

“Where’s the vowel and the [g]?  Don’t you hear those sounds when you say the word?”

They were clearly perplexed. 

“Dr. Moore, you said the velar nasal was the same as an I-N-G.  So every time we have a word with an I-N-G, we replace that whole part of the word with the [ŋ], right?”

Again, my first thought was to wonder why they were so confused:  we were working through isolated consonants sounds one by one, so how could they have heard that one symbol would represent a vowel and two consonants?  

“Did I say that?” 

They nodded. 

I hesitated, and then I laughed.  “Well, that was not very clear, was it?  Let me try again.”

I have no doubts this group—who diligently take and share notes—will master phonetic analysis.

How have you been mis-heard by students?  I would love to hear your stories.