----- Original Message ----- From: "Janette Segal" <janjon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Subject: RE: Intelligence or English Hi David I must say it is quite a pleasure to engage in these intellectual debates in our native language! {if I had to do this in Hebrew it would be a different story} I taught EFL in university for over 10 years to students who didn't get enough points in their psychometric in English- so they needed to have extra courses in English. In my view, the goal and the materials used in these university EFL classes were excellent. Students - often of four and five points Bagrut- were given lengthy academic articles in English to read -the focus was on teaching them skills- how to quickly understand -main idea-supporting details- global reading of a text- as well as close reading of a test-in which they were given a few paragraphs{ about five} from the article and they were asked also main idea-supporting ideas. Students needed also to be aware of sequencing, comparing and contrasting ideas. The final test met these objectives. The lucky teacher knew exactly what to teach- how to teach it and the test {written by some of the teachers} was never a surprise. The students were taught skills that were very beneficial for their university courses- they became more confident readers of English. So can we learn something from all this? - The delight of writing and reading intelligent mail? Perhaps sadly nothing else. Best Janette David Hyatt wrote: >Hi Janette, >Your point is well taken. But this is why for those whose ambition is > to understand soap operas and pop songs, the three and four point > bagrut is appropriate. But for those who want to get to college level > English, it's just not going to cut it. I recently saw the tests they > give at one of > our universities for beginning, middle and higher level English--they > would > blow you away. All of them are way, way beyond the level of the G test. > The highest level, which all BA students must pass, is about 3 pages of > extremely sophisticated language--far beyond Time magazine--with tough > reading comp questions to boot. See the New York Times editorials and > book > reviews to get a sense. > And believe me, I'm all for the 3 point test. For those kids it's needed > and challenging. Not everyone needs to head off to univeristy. On the > contrary. ----------------------------------------------- ** Etni homepage - http://www.etni.org or - http://www.etni.org.il ** ** for help - ask@xxxxxxxx ** ** to post to this list - etni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx ** -----------------------------------------------