English is a Tough Language to Learn!

All BYU-Hawaii online courses are in English and all students must be proficient in English to be successful. To help students who are not proficient in English, BYU-Hawaii has a large English as an International Language (EIL) program. This program accepts students at varying English levels and gives them the language skills they need to excel in university courses (byuh.edu/tech-requirements).

Learning to speak, read and write in a second (or more) language is a challenge for many of the students who come from all over the world to be educated here at BYUH. Several of our sister missionaries have the opportunity to work with these students through the EIL program as tutors in grammar and speech. Sister Brenda Jeppson has spent the last fourteen months of her mission in the Center for Academic Success as a wonderful resource for students as she has lovingly and patiently helped them is they struggle to communicate effectively in the complex and sometimes confusing English language.

Sister Jeppson:

Now that the semester is over, and I won’t be proofreading anymore papers, it’s time to put together all the little—and very funny—mistakes the students made in their writing.  I’m sure if the EIL and the English teachers kept the misused words and phrases, a sizeable book could be made!  But these are just a few of what our incredible students have said as they press forward in their education.

ü  Asked about the internet: “We’ve been asked to give our feelings and opinions on internment.”

ü  While proofreading: ”I’m trying really hard to avoid run-over sentences.”

ü  “. . .but this assumption can be like a red light.”

ü  “The worst thing is the intoxicated waste that is dumped in the sea.”

ü  “This may probably be the wrong choice.”

ü  “I needed help, so I asked an elderly man in his late 40s.”

ü  Students were writing about drought and how to save water. One suggestion came from a girl who was talking about emptying an ice tray, and she said, “When you drop one or two, you should pick up the ice tubes and put them to a planet.”

ü  “. . . she was stabled.”  He meant stabbed.

ü  “. . .the government and other organisms.”

ü  “The whole family were sick, so the home teachers came and gave them a small massage and a priesthood blessing.”

ü  “This solution has many benefits and backdraws.”

ü  “. . .until they can researchedly prove that they. . . “

ü  In the accounting world, the people who work for the company are called accounters.”

ü  “After he had calmed her fears, he reinsured her.”  (for how much this time?)

ü  In a very sophisticated research paper (on the wars in Iraq) this Pilipino student described the people after a small victory, “They were way happy.”

ü  On an application, “I’m a soft more.”

ü  The student knows the noun minimum, but he needs the verb. Because he’s a good student and applies what he has learned about prefixes and suffixes, he produces minify instead of minimize.

You know, we find these little errors amusing, but looking at what is behind them, we see students who work hard to achieve excellence. They are thinking, applying and synthesizing what they learn, and they work hard to put some extraordinary thoughts into English.