Even after more than thirty years of teaching English to international students, I sometimes have epiphanies about why students write poorly. One type of poor writing has increased as paper, "book" dictionaries have gone the way of the horse and buggy, to be replaced by the ubiquitous electronic translators found on almost every smart-phone. That pitfall consists of students inserting words, and sometimes whole sentences, that they obviously do not know how to use and cannot use correctly in speaking or spontaneous writing. The writings and conversations below will illustrate this phenomenon.
Here are reconstructions of poor writing by two young-adult, college-aspiring ESL students:
From a mid-beginning student: "My home town has many good things: parks, schools, nice people, also bad things not bustling."
From a high intermediate student: "My city has has flourishing, jobs, schools, and a good people. Nevertheless, prosperity.
Both students had been instructed to write comparison/contrast essays about their hometowns. Both got hold of their iPhones while they were writing. Both produced semi-intelligible sentences like the above two.
I sat down with the first student and said that I didn't understand the part about "bad things not bustling."
Me: I believe you found that word 'bustling" from your phone dictionary. Don't use the dictionary.
Student: But I don't know English!
Me: Tell me what you mean by "bad things not bustling."
Student: I mean, very small town, so no many jobs.
Me: See? You do know English. You told me in simple English what you meant, and I understood. Write that: that it's a very small town, so it does not have many jobs. I didn't understand when you pulled that word "bustling" out of your dictionary and put it in the essay.
Outcome: The student re-wrote it in the simple knew, language he already know, and it was both clear and adequately correct, for his level, something along the lines of "My hometown has many good things: parks, pools, and nice people. On the bad side, it is very small, so it has not many jobs."
On a different day I sat down with the intermediate student, who was from a different class, and told him that I didn't understand quite a bit of what he had written.
Me: What did you mean by "My city has flourishing."?
Student: It's mean growing, more and more jobs.
Me: Then write that your city is growing and has more and more jobs. And what about "Nevertheless, prosperity."
Student: You know, prosperity. More more things for buy, more money for buying things.
Me: Hmm, but first you said one good thing, that your city is growing and has more and more jobs; then you said another good thing: "prosperity," or that there are more things to buy and more money to buy them with. Why did you say "nevertheless"?
Student: Because last session teacher tell us to use more connectors: moreover, however, in addition, notwithstanding, nevertheless...
Me: Remember this rule: Don't use words before you know them.
Student: But last teacher give us list. She said in level 6 we need use higher vocabulary.
Me: Remember this, too. "Less is more. Lower is higher." That means that if you use "high" vocabulary that you don't yet know, your writing will sound lower, or less clear. Even if you're level six, it's better to use level 3 vocabulary clearly and correctly than to use level six or seven or higher vocabulary wrong. That's how two things get students in trouble: word lists and electronic dictionaries.
Student: What's wrong with electronic dictionaries?
Me: Two bad things usually happen with electronic dictionaries. One is the same as with the word lists: the students use a word that they don't really understand how to use--they've often never seen or heard it before--and they use it wrong. The other bad thing is that students will type in a phrase or sentence in their native language, and the dictionary spits out a whole phrase or sentence in native-like, perfectly correct English.
Student: Why is that bad?
Me: Because then the teacher reads the essay. At best, the essay reads like a pretty good essay written by a student who is still learning English. A really good level 6 student will write like a level 7 student but not like an American university professor. But then we teachers, reading the essay by a level 6 student, suddenly see a sentence that looks like it was written by an American professor, and we know, we KNOW that it isn't the student's English. And students only learn by using the English they know, having their errors corrected, listening to spoken English, and reading stories, books, and articles in English. By doing these things, they actually learn MORE English, and they will use the English that they learn this way more of less correctly. But when they plug in words from lists or sentences from their I-phone dictionaries, they will sound either wrong, or copied, or both; their grade will be lower, not higher, and their English will improve less, not more.
Student: Ah, okay.
This language-use phenomenon in ESL students calls to mind a memory from my junior high school days. My seventh grade English teacher, Mrs. Smith, was cautioning us children against uncritical use of dictionary definitions as our sole guide in using new words. She gave this example: A student had written, attempting to use a new word, "The dog is adjacent," meaning, "The dog is nearby." His dictionary had listed "nearby," "next to," "close" as synonyms for "adjacent," and he had fallen into the same trap that our students fall into: the naive belief that dictionary synonyms or translations can be plugged in as if they were alternates for the same word.
A moral of this story is that our teaching of vocabulary must necessarily be very context-rich: heavy on illustrative sentences. Conversely, it should be light on "definitions," the latter being highly unreliable except as guidelines, while our use of context gives students the tool of thinking, then remembering: "How have I heard/read this word used?" It is this tool that empowers students to use the learned vocabulary with at least a semblance of appropriateness and to begin to actually "know" it.
Postscript 1: Let it not be said that I am against all use of bilingual dictionaries, bilingual or otherwise, by all ESL students at all times. However, (1) paper dictionaries are usually preferable, since they make it much easier to look up just one lexical item, e.g., "arrive," or "factory," rather than a whole phrase, (2) their use should be closely controlled by the teacher, limited to looking a single word, without which the student can't understand something or express something. And it goes without saying that for final exams and other strict evaluations of what the students are able to do absolutely independently, no dictionaries should be permitted.
Postscript 2: The latter student had been assigned to me for extra tutoring because he had been, for two sessions, unable to pass the writing final and thus hadn't been able to pass the level. After the afore-mentioned four-week session of tutoring, he passed. I asked him about it. He said, "I did what you said. I wrote the English I knew, not the English I didn't know, and I passed. It worked.
