Letters to the Editor SpecGram Vol CLVIII, No 3 Contents Ready! Fire! Aim!—A New Approach to Military Combat Using Language Science—François Achille Bazaine
Things You Didn’t Know You Didn’t Know
(because they aren’t actually true)
Book VII


gathered at great personal risk of
psycholinguistic harm from actual student tests

by Madalena Cruz-Ferreira

This seventh collection of students’ pearls of wisdom, laboriously digitised from hand-written test answers, demonstrates once again how students new to the study of language speculate about grammar after having imperfectly absorbed what their teachers think they have taught them.

Test question

Suppose you are in a food market and you overhear a conversation between a customer and a stall-holder behind you. The customer says:

I’ll take these chillies and that bunch of carrots right there.
Given that your back is turned to the speaker, explain why the bolded words make it difficult for you to understand exactly which vegetables the customer chose. (You may want to discuss several of the underlined words together.)

Answers

More to come...

Letters to the Editor
Ready! Fire! Aim!—A New Approach to Military Combat Using Language Science—François Achille Bazaine
SpecGram Vol CLVIII, No 3 Contents