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- 1. ELRS Group 2 A study into how well-recognised common student colloquialisms are to native English speakers and international students
- 2. Results we wanted to generate: What common colloquialisms were used by students Whether all native English students were familiar with these common colloquialisms What colloquialisms international students struggled to understand Whether or not the growing use of colloquialisms, slang words and abbreviations are difficult for international students to master
- 3. Meetings Weekly basis One hour Quiet area Group discussion Minutes Follow-up to meetings Posted on blog Tasks
- 4. New method for us to learn as a group Individual and group use What did we post on our blog? Development of blog posts Technical development What did we use it for?
- 5. We began with the idea of focussing on Mandarin Chinese to form the basis of our investigation, with a view to concentrate on phonetic and grammatical constraints facing Chinese students when learning English. In order to uncover these issues, we decided that sending a questionnaire that we would later create, to a selection of Chinese students studying at the University, would highlight sufficient problems for us to analyse and understand.
- 6. After much reflection and advice from Alison regarding our original proposal, certain issues came to light, which meant that perhaps this research proposal was too ambitious for us in the time that we had available. Issues included: the amount of competency Chinese students would already have in English Language, studying at a predominantly English speaking University, and the sheer logistics of interviewing large samples of people, thus transcribing the results.
- 7. After many meetings, we agreed to take our investigation in a different direction. Ultimately, we chose to concentrate on colloquialisms used within the English Language, between both native English speakers and international students. With the final research question reading: ‘Compare the familiarity of English colloquialisms between native English speakers and students who have learnt English as a second language, at the University of Birmingham.' We believed that this topic would play to our strengths more, and we felt more confident in tackling this investigation. This led to a more thorough and accurate investigation.
- 8. Sealey, A. (2010) Researching English Language: a resource book for students. London: Routledge www.urban dictionary.com Nordquist, Richard ‘Colloquialism’ [online], http://grammar.about.com/od/c/g/colloquialismter m.htm [Accessed 22 October 2012] Barford, Vanessa (2009) ‘Mind Your Slanguage’ [online],http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8388545.stm [Accessed 22 October 2012] Arua E. Arua, Modupe M. Alimi ‘The Creation of Students' Academic Slang Expressions in the University of Botswana’ [online], http://www.linguistik- online.de/40_09/aruaAlimi.pdf [Accessed 22 October 2012] http://rsel2012.blogspot.co.uk/ https://sites.google.com/site/researchingenglishlanguage/
- 9. This resource has been extremely useful for bridging the gap between last year’s Independent Study module and this much bigger project. Helped us chose a topic Showed us how to write a research proposal Highlighted the importance of reading around our topic Made us realise that we wanted to collect out data through a questionnaire
- 10. www.urban dictionary.com Gave us a better knowledge about the words we were analysing Good source because it is interactive and constantly being updated by people who use the words
- 11. Nordquist, Richard ‘Colloquialism’ [online], http://grammar.about.com/od/c/g /colloquialismterm.htm [Accessed 22 October 2012] Barford, Vanessa (2009) ‘Mind Your Slanguage’ [online],http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazi ne/8388545.stm [Accessed 22 October 2012]
- 12. The questions were written, with it in mind that we needed to discover several things It would illuminated some words which we may not have thought of due to not being familiar with the region’s slang As some of these results were quite obscure we put them in a multiple choice format Our ‘presearch’ had a feedback question on so we could doctor our final questionnaire to be as clear as possible
- 13. QUESTION 1: -Most popular words circled were 'Smashed', 'Hammered' and 'Wasted' - Un-circled words were 'battered', 'intoxicated' and 'tipsy' QUESTION 2: -Most popular words suggested as words we could have included in the question above were 'Messy' and 'Pissed' -Other suggestions included 'mortal', 'trollied', 'car parked', 'twatted', 'rat-arsed' and 'para' QUESTION 3:- Most popular word for describing drinking before going out to a club was 'pre-drinks' followed by 'pre's' - other sugegstions were 'pre-lash' and 'prinks' QUESTION 4:- Words students said they had learnt since being at the University of Birmingham include 'Terrored', 'Allow', 'Hypeting', 'Haps', 'Amazeballs' and 'parr' QUESTION 5:- Sentence examples using the word 'bare' included: - i'm bare cold -He got bare annoyed -Got bare work to do -Chatting bare breeze QUESTION 6:- Sentence examples using the word 'Sick' included: - Thats so sick -I feel very sick -Those are sick shoes - Went out last night, it was so sick QUESTION 7:- Words used to describe somebody who is good at something were 'top quality', 'Class', 'Don', 'Beast' and 'Pro' - Most popular word suggested was 'Boss' QUESTION 8:- Words suggested to replace the word money were 'dosh', 'papers', 'pennies' and 'quid' - The most popuar term suggested was 'Dollar', followed by 'cash', 'moulas', 'dough' and 'wonga' QUESTION 9:- Words used to describe someone ugly included 'Hideous', 'Meff', 'Sket', 'Fugly', 'Dirt', 'Grenade', 'Nasty', 'Butterz', 'Filth', 'Cruttas' and 'Dog' -The Most popular suggestions were 'Dirty', 'Minger' and 'Munter' QUESTION 10:- Words used to describe someone with a good body included 'Bangin', 'Lush', 'Peng', 'A Tank', 'Tidy', 'Stacked', 'Racked', 'Ripped', 'Wedge', 'King Prawn' and 'Sexy' - Most popular words were 'Fit' and 'Hench'. QUESTION 11:- Words that people shorten are as follows: -Totally=totes - Laugh out loud=LOL - Amazing= Amaze -Amazing= Amazeballs -Obviously= Obvs -Ridiculous= Ridic -Selly Oak=Selly -Fab and Fresh= Fab -Because= Cause - Sorry= Soz QUESTION 12:- Suggestions to improve our questionnaire: - Questions need to be less vague more specific -Repitition of a similar structure for questions when the format of questions should vary - Also, we needed to consider whether or not our questions and phrasing could be deemed offensive to other cultures.
- 14. -QUESTIONS KEPT: Have you learnt any new words since coming to UOB from your peers? Give an example sentence using the word ‘bare’ Give an example sentence using the word ‘sick’ What would you call someone who is good at something? List some words for money List some words for ugly What would you call someone with a good body? Do you shorten any particular words? NEW QUESTIONS: Is English your first language? What words or word would you use to say you were relaxed or are relaxing? What term would you use to collectively describe your group of friends? What is your opinion on slang words? Do they confuse or enhance spoken language for you personally? Who do you use colloquialisms/slang words with in conversation? Which of these words used to describe people are negative and which ones are positive?
- 15. We sent out a few pilot versions of our questionnaire to make sure it could be understood and was accessible to everyone Our pilot questionnaire seemed to work well Therefore, we distributed the same questions through email for our final questionnaire
- 18. • Two of the International students answered this question with ‘sexy’ and one answered with ‘fit’ • ‘Fit’ is the word used by both groups of people • ‘Hench’ and ‘peng’ are words only used by Native English speakers
- 19. We could have sent out our questionnaire much earlier We could have publicised our questionnaire more in order to get more results We also felt that we could have narrowed the questions down We could have made our questionnaire easier and quicker to fill out
- 20. Our results and analysis show that international students are not as familiar with University slang words and colloquialisms as native English speakers Some international students used the words in different contexts However some words were understood by both groups of people
- 21. Rose Ecclesfield Lizzie Hubbard Hannah Mason Josh Roy Becky Stevens Yasmin Zahran
Hinweis der Redaktion
- There were a number of results we wanted to generate from this research project. To begin with, we needed to determine some common colloquialisms used by students at the university. These were gathered using a student questionnaire that we sent out beforehand to assist with the compilation of our final set of questions. From our final questionnaire, we wanted to discover if the majority of native English students were familiar with the colloquialisms we collected, or if some were not commonly known. We also wanted to see whether international students struggled to understand the colloquial meaning of some words, or if they understood them as well as the native English students. We felt that in our current university environment, abbreviations, colloquialisms and slang words are used and change so often in everyday speech that it must be difficult for international students to familiarise themselves with the full extent of such vocabulary. We hope that the results of our research will reflect whether or not foreign students have trouble understanding some language used by native English university students.
- MEETINGSWe decided to meet on a weekly basis at a set time for an hour. This worked out as just enough time: it was not an inconvenience, all issues and points could be covered comfortably and it took place in a quiet area for discussion. Meetings quickly gained a social aspect, the group got to know each other well within a few meetings, making it much easier for us to comfortably work together and communicate over the blog and Facebook.MINUTESWe felt it was very important to record minutes at every meeting and post these on our blog afterwards as a way of following up our discussion.We posted the minutes on our blog as it was useful to have somewhere where we could check what was said during the meeting and make sure we were doing our assigned tasks for the following meeting the next week. A brief summary of points covered, tasks for the following meeting, and deadlines were also covered in the minutes as they acted as a point of reference.
- The blog was equally important for both individual and group use and it was a new method for us all to learn.On our blog, we posted meeting minutes, Research, Pilot questionnaire and research questionnaire analysis/results, Research proposal, Ethical Issues, Bibliography.The development of our blog…Our initial posts as a group were mainly meeting minutes, but then we realised the blog was a great way to communicate with each other and grasp our research project by sharing information and developing ideas. Everyone was added as authors and followed the blog updates via email so everyone could contribute and benefit from the blog. It was used as a way of us communicating with our module tutor and we would often receive feedback via the blog, helping us to develop our ideas and refine our research project when needed. It allowed us to keep track of the project’s progress. We all became comfortable with the idea of posting individual blogs, and it became a useful resource to have alongside our meetings and Facebook conversation.
- Our first immediate thought before we had even discussed the topic of our investigation was that we wanted to do a study that involved students on campus, as we believed this would generate the most reliable data. Ultimately, the data we collected for our final investigation mirrored our initial data collection idea, in that we collected our data from students on campus. In regards to our topic selection, we firstly chose to base our investigation on Mandarin Chinese with the research question of: What are the most challenging elements of both English phonology and grammar that face Mandarin Chinese international students at the University of Birmingham? The initial interest of Mandarin Chinese grew from it being close to English in terms of it fast becoming a global language if China is to continue to grow as a huge economical influence, and we were particularly keen to find out any particular phonetic and grammatical problems or constraints facing Chinese students when learning English. For this study, we concluded that a questionnaire we would send to Chinese students studying at the University would enlighten us in uncovering any recurring problems; in turn enabling us to understand the reasons behind any difficulties highlighted.
- Alison raised the point that in order for Chinese students to study at the University of Birmingham, there is a required amount of competency in the English Language. Therefore, the grammatical areas we were keen to look at may not yield good results, in terms of our analysis of issues raised. Focussing on phonology was discussed, although if we did this, it would have involved interviewing students face-to-face, as opposed to sending out a questionnaire. We decided that the logistics of interviewing a large sample of people and then doing transcriptions would be a huge task and perhaps too ambitious for us; we would be better spending more time on analysis.
- After much thought, we agreed that we would be best to rethink our original topic choice completely. Playing to our strengths, ultimately we decided to concentrate on slang used within the English Language, between both native English speakers and international students. Within a University environment, this would be especially interesting. finding out if certain words used in the English language (and more specifically by students at the University of Birmingham) are recognised and understood as widely by international students as they are by native English speakers was a particularly intriguing subject area for us as a group
- This resource has been extremely useful for bridging the gap between last year’s Independent Study module and this much bigger project.
- This website was a fantastic source for us to check the meanings of the words we were analysing. And since it is an interactive website it is constantly being updated by people who use the words, perhaps making it more current than the Oxford English Dictionary.
- - ‘Presearch’ – Is a term we coined to cover the research we undertook prior to our final questionnaire. - We decided to do this preliminary research so we could acquire data that would benefit our final results- The questions were written, with it in mind that we needed to discover several things.- It would illuminate some colloquial words which we may not have thought of due to not being familiar with the region’s slang.- As some of these results were quite obscure we put them in a multiple choice format for the final questionnaire as a way of seeing if all the participants knew what they meant, or if they could even guess that they were associated with the concept of describing someone as ‘ugly’ without being that blunt.- Our ‘presearch’ had a feedback question on so we could aim to make a final questionnaire to be as clear as possible, especially as some of the participants were intended to not speak English as their first language. - One other aspect we discovered was that recovering the data for our questionnaire was quite cumbersome when in the form of physical documents, so we decided it would be a better idea to create it online, making it easy to fill in for the participants and (for our benefit) a more efficient way of gaining the data.
- -When distributing the pre-search questionnaires each member of our group gave them to 4 different people.-To choose our words for the questions which involved multiple answers for the participants to select from, we used a combination of our own knowledge of certain colloquialisms andwords we had heard our friends and peers using, an online website called Urban Dictionary and also words we had heard used on certain television programmes recently.- We also chose to ask questions related to what we felt was the stereotypical, current University Culture so that the topics and language we were asking them about would be familiar to the students taking part- The results revealed the most popular words from the lists we provided the participants with which then enabled us to make our official questionnaire options and questions more specific and supported by our own research.-The results also helped us to eliminate words in the lists as they were not circled by any of the participants.- We also deliberately asked our participants to list any words they feel are used to describe the scenarios or topics that we did not mention in the lists in order to provide us with additional words to consider including in our questionnaire that we may not have originally considered or heard of. - The last question we decided to use to conclude the pre-search questionnaire was one asking the participants to suggest improvements to the format or wording of our questionnaire. The results from this question greatly assisted us in our creation of the official questionnaire as issues were raised which we had not considered. For example, as we would be sending our questionnaire to international students it was important for us to take into consideration the fact that people may hold religious or cultural views concerning activities such as drinking alcohol and may therefore find the questions difficult to answer or possibly offensive and assuming if not considered and re-phrased appropriately. – A participant also suggested that we varied the format of our questions to make the questionnaire more interesting which we also took into consideration when creating our official questionnaire.
- When settling on suitable questions for our official survey we decided to re-use some of the pre-search questions that proved to be most popular and provide us with the most interesting and varied results. When choosing our new questionnaire questions we realised that more detail and sensitivity needed to be taken in terms of the content and phrasing of our questions.Due to the nature of our research project we would be dealing with participants of different racial, cultural, religious and ethnic backgrounds. We therefore decided to take off certain questions from the presearch survey, such as the question asking people to list alcohol consuming colloquialisms, as we felt this question may offend certain people of a different religious background and therefore affect the rest of their answers and attitude towards the survey.We therefore ensured that the questions on the official survey were tentative, featuring neutral topics relatable to everyday life and people from all different backgrounds. We also included questions in the official questionnaire which required the participant to express their own opinion rather than select from the list we provided etc. We did this as we found as a result of our pre-search that some of their answers would have been more useful and interesting has there been option for the participants to explain themselves and also help us to gain an overview on the general opinion of whether or not slang words corrupt or enhance the language. We also collaborated two questions from pre-search into one as we found that some of the words used to describe peoples different attributes overlapped and we therefore wanted to find out what the general opinion of these overlapped words was and whether these words were positive or negative as we found certain words were suggested in both manners.
- Clearly more Native English speakers answered our questionnaire. Perhaps this is because it was more accessible to them.
- ‘Mates’ appears to be a colloquialism used by both International and Native English speakers, perhaps because it is a word often used on television.
- To begin with, we could have sent out our questionnaire much earlier - then we would have had more results to analyse, which may have created a clearer conclusion. Although our results highlight that non-native English speakers do struggle with understanding the meanings of colloquialisms, some more data would have produced a more definite conclusion. Getting people to confirm that they would fill in the questionnaire before we sent it may have avoided this problem too.We also felt that we could have narrowed the questions down so the survey was quicker to fill in and the answers easier to analyse. A lot of our questions were quite open, which made it more difficult to determine the results as accurately as the ones where we provided the possible answers.
- Our results and analysis show that international students aren't as familiar with university slang words and colloquialisms as native English speakers. This fulfilled our hypothesis and confirmed some of the reading we had done. Of course, there were a number of elements of this research project that we could have improved on, but we were pleased that the results conformed to our expectations