Today I was unexpectedly pulled into an emotional grammar tug-of-war!
I was sitting in the department, wasting time, and in comes one of my colleagues crying. She lets off a string of Russian, of which I understood the words “you,” “ask,” and “may I take a book.” I freaked out for about 5 seconds because I thought she was mad at me for taking one of her books or something and I couldn’t figure out why she was so upset. Once she repeated herself, I realized that she was trying to ask me if she was correct in saying that there is a grammatical difference between “may” and “can.” My colleague marked the sentence the sentence “Can I take the book?” wrong on a student’s test and the student started going off on her in class, saying that she didn’t know English.
I told her that it’s okay in conversational speech, but in terms of grammar it is incorrect to use “can” instead of “may.” We all do it, but technically it’s not right. After she calmed down, I offered to go with her to the class and explain the rule to the student. It seemed like she needed to be backed up by a native speaker because this student wouldn’t let it die. So, we marched together into a class of 30 students staring at us, which was pretty intimidating. I explained to the very irritated girl that gramatically “can” indicates ability to do something, whereas “may” indicates a request for permission. (Somewhat ridiculously, I demonstrated this by running in place to show that physically I “can” run, but that’s not the same as saying that I “may” run.) Well, as we native speakers tend to have the last word on this issue, the girl pretty much had to accept defeat after that and her grade on the test stayed the same.
The whole exchange was pretty interesting to me, although of course rather upsetting. Generally, I think it’s a little silly to teach students to always say “may,” but on a grammar test, I think you have to mark it wrong. There is a particular mistake in Armenian that people always make in speech (using the subjunctive after “to want” instead of the infinitive), but I would never have cursed out my dear Armenian teacher Siranoush for marking that wrong on a test. After all, it is wrong, even if everyone says it. You can use bad grammar all you want in speech, but on a grammar test you have to follow the rules. That’s the point of a grammar test. Following annoying rules.
Let’s see, in other news, one of the Moldovan IREX fellows who studied in the U.S. gave us a lecture on assessment. It was interesting, because she was all about multiple choice, matching, and true/false questions instead of essays. At first I was turned off by this, but I saw her logic after a while. First of all, if you are testing a student on their knowledge of a particular subject in English, it does make more sense to use multiple choice tests. Students who don’t write particularly well in English may still know the material after all, and it’s unfair to test them constantly on their writing skills if the test is ostensibly on another topic (for example, psychology).
What I found most interesting was the defensive posture that teachers need to take when writing tests. The IREX fellow kept talking about having questions that you can “prove” are correct. She constantly stressed objective answers over subjective answers. Teachers obviously must not get much support from administration on their grading if CYA is one of the main goals in test-writing.
Finally, I have to say that navigating social rules is more confusing than it seems at first! One of my students told me yesterday that I am in danger of causing scandal by socializing with male students! Apparently, socializing means spending any time outside of class with them whatsoever. I mean, really. On the one hand, I find this quite amusing because I hardly ever do anything scandalous ever. On the other hand, I’m not exactly thrilled to have moved to Junior High Land.
The problem is having various definitions of what it means to “do my job.” As Fulbrighters, we are asked to go out of our way to help people learn English outside of class and generally be nice and helpful. So, it seems silly to only help out other ladies. (“I’d like to help you on the TOEFL, but unfortunately you happen to be of the opposite gender. Better luck next time.”) BUT, if I am causing scandal, that could probably hurt my capacity to do my job. Obviously, it is bad to lose people’s respect. Hrm.
To complicate things, it seems that people have different definitions of what all of these social rules mean. And some people entirely ignore the rules. And, by the way, there are three different ethnic groups here with (presumably) different rules. I think by the end of this whole affair in Moldova I will have an unofficial minor in Moldovan/Gagauzian/Turkish Anthropology.
As you can see, it was a very eventful day. I guess I’m going out to the disco tonight with the other teachers. Today is Students’ Day, and they invited us, I guess. It should be fun getting down with colleagues two or three times my age.
