It's a Don's Life (11 page)

How to order a coffee in American

6 July 2007

My trip to Mexico was another linguistic challenge. Pride coming before a fall, I thought that if I could read Spanish (...
well, Spanish books on Roman religion, at any rate), I could speak it too.

But it’s not just in foreign languages. A few months in the USA made me think that a lot of successful human communication,
even English to English, depends on knowing in advance what your interlocutor is likely to say back to you. It means knowing
the script in advance, in other words. Try to order a coffee in Los Angeles, and before you get a nice steaming latte, you
will have to have given a series of quickfire answers to a whole load of unexpected and quite un-British responses: ‘Regular?’,
‘Half-and half?’, ‘Long or short?’ More than once I was left as baffled as if the barista had been speaking a half-understood
GCSE language.

It made me wonder if there were two versions of English learning text books the world over – the UK, and the US version.

And what would one of those ‘at the coffee shop’ learning dialogues look like in each?

Waitress: What can I get you?

Mary: A chocolate muffin and a coffee.

Waitress: Black or white?

Mary: White, please.

Waitress: Be right with you.

Waitress: Hello, I’m Cindy and I’m your waitress for this afternoon. In addition to what you see on the menu, we have a special
of delicious wholemeal English scone and full cream. What can I get you?

Mary: A chocolate muffin and a coffee, please.

Waitress: Would you like the organic chocolate muffin, or the regular?

Mary: Organic, please.

Waitress: Our organic cocoa beans are from Guatemala. Is that all right for you?

Mary: Don’t you have anything from Africa?

Waitress: Not organic, I’m afraid.

Mary: OK, Guatemalan is fine.

Waitress: And the coffee? Latte, cappuccino, espresso ...?

Mary: Latte, please.

Waitress: Half and half?

Mary: No, I’d prefer no-fat, thanks.

Waitress: Long?

Mary: No, regular would be fine.

Waitress: That’ll be right with you, and if there’s anything else I can get you ...? Have a nice day.

I’m not claiming that one of these is better, more nuanced, brisker than the other. It’s just that I’m still not quite sure
I’ve mastered version 2.

Comments

One of the curious aspects of US descriptions of food items is the insistence on attaching the adjective form of the country
of origin to them: Albanian split peas, Bulgarian onions and so on. Your example of an exchange in the cafeteria (and my own
limited experience of eateries in Manhattan) makes me wonder if all Americans are subjected as children to a good sound drilling
in stasis theory (rhetoric): let’s thrash this out before we go any further.

ANTHONY ALCOCK

That’s nothing ... you should go to a Tim Horton’s in Canada where you will hear all sorts of people ordering anything from
an extra large double double (i.e. double sugar, double cream), which sort of makes sense, to an extra large regular (one
cream, one sugar), which doesn’t. Fortunately I am a denizen of Starbucks and they know my order (triple grande sugar free
vanilla non fat latte and a doppio espresso) so I don’t have to repeat it.

DAVID MEADOWS (ROGUECLASSICIST)

When I asked for a burger in a McDonalds in Manchester, it was presumably a corporate policy devised by an American which
prompted the young female assistant to ask, ‘Is that a meal?’ It was sheer grumpiness, my blissful ignorance of ‘McDonald
speak’, and memories of introductory philosophy tutorials 30 years ago discussing category error, etc., which prompted me
to reply ‘What an interesting question! It depends, I suppose, on what you mean by “a meal”.’ My reply was not appreciated,
and the subsequent exchange became rather heated. I now know that ‘Is that a meal?’ in that context means ‘Do you wish to
have a drink and French fries with that?’!

JAMES R

That’s odd. I asked for a hamper in Fortnum and Mason’s with no clue as to its contents and was told that a hamper meant ‘Do
you wish to have Christmas pudding and the finest Stilton with that?’ So much for the wrapping!

CHARLOTTE

A minor philological quibble: If Cindy said, ‘I’m your waitress for this afternoon,’ she certainly wasn’t speaking in standard
US idiom. To American ears, that sounds awkward. Typically a waitress uses the future tense and says, ‘I’ll be your waitress
...’

Oh, and this, too. Unless you accidentally left out the indefinite article in the phrase ‘delicious wholemeal English scone’
(or forgot to pluralise ‘scones’), that utterance, too, is completely unidiomatic. We would speak of ‘a scone,’ ‘the scone,’
or ‘scones,’ but never just ‘scone.’ Is the word ‘scone’ used as a plural in the UK, the same way we here in Arkansas say,
for example, that we’re ‘hunting possum’?

K. D. C. JONES

Now that we’re quibbling, I’d take it a bit further: our American Cindy, if she works in a shop that sells organic products,
would most likely use gender-neutral pc speech and say: ‘I’ll be your server today.’

EILEEN

OLIVER NICHOLSON

What is Big Brother doing in Durham cathedral?

27 July 2007

I have just got back from overnighting in Durham. I had a gig talking to a splendid Summer School – 100 schoolkids and adults
giving up a week of their vacation to learn Latin and Greek (and some heroic teachers giving up a week of theirs to teach
them).

Shamefully, I hadn’t been to Durham ever before. The somewhat grumpy taxi driver who picked me up at the station didn’t really
see why I was bothering.

After all, he opined, Durham was just like Cambridge – only smaller.

He was wrong, of course. They might both be overrun with students (‘posh’ students, as he put it). But Durham’s got the cathedral
... which is where I headed in the half hour I had before supper yesterday.

I didn’t have a guidebook with me. But one of the advantages of being married to an art historian is that you always have
the equivalent of your Pevsner at the end of the mobile phone. So I quickly found out that I should be looking at the ribbed
vaulting and the Treasury.

I haven’t plodded round many English cathedrals for years (though I have now discovered that the East Coast Main Line gives
you a fantastic ringside view not just of Durham, but of Ely, Doncaster and York, too). When I do set foot on consecrated
ground these days, it’s much more likely to be in Italy or Greece – and for no more holy purpose than to see the Caravaggio
in the third chapel on the left. That said, for anyone (believer or not) brought up in the traditions of mainstream Anglicanism,
there remains something comfortingly familiar about the whole thing. I walked in at what was obviously the Second Lesson of
Evensong – Peter had just denied Jesus again and the cock was about to crow. It was a script I already knew.

But as I looked round, the place turned out to be ‘familiar’ in a much more surprising, more institutional and more disconcerting
way. And much less like the cathedrals I remember. For a start, they had obviously got caught up in disability legislation
– so every possible set of steps was kitted out with a ramp (I accept that when I come to be in a wheelchair I may be grateful
for all these ramps – but I hope that even then I will prefer to have the building left in peace and a couple of burly guys
to give me a lift).

Then I found that they had latched on to the idea of the mug-shot photo gallery at the way in, just like every university
department in the land. For some reason the Bishop himself wasn’t included in this (was he too grand?), but everyone else
it seemed, was there – from the Dean and Chapter, down to the vergers and the Development Director (so it really WAS like
a university ...)

But the final straw of familiarity for me was the CCTV (‘CCTV operates in this cathedral’ ran the notices, just as they do
in college). What, I wondered, was Big Brother trying to spot? Someone nicking the candlesticks? Inappropriate behaviour in
the Lady Chapel? Or was it the religious police, homing in on those not joining in with the hymns or saying the Creed with
enough conviction?

Give me back some of the mystery, I thought.

Comments

At least the Father Smith has not been replaced with a device enabling its simulation by digital reconstruction, though such
equipment is useful for practice purposes.

DR VENABLES PRELLER

Durham Cathedral may or may not be the resting place of St Cuthbert. He had been the bishop of Lindisfarne, which is now a
ruin. There were many miracles attributed to the Bishop Cuthbert before his death in 687. He was buried in the cathedral of
Lindisfarne. Eleven years later, the coffin was opened and St Cuthbert was reported to have been incorrupt. The coffin was
removed several times due to invading Norse, and other warring factions. It was finally placed on September 4, 999 in the
church which would become the Norman Durham cathedral. William the Conqueror requested to view the body in 1069. The local
bishop refused. In 1104, several local bishops disputed the condition of the saint’s body. The coffin was opened and the body
was reported to be in perfect condition. Henry VIII sent several doctors to destroy the body in 1537. When they opened the
coffin, they found the body incorrupt. The coffin was filled with gold and gems. In the process one of the legs was broken.
The doctors could not bring themselves to destroy the body. Benedictine monks re-buried the relic in 1542. The grave was opened
in 1827, where the remains had skeletised. The mass vestments which were placed on the corpse in 1104 were still recognisable.
There is a legend that the Benedictines secreted the body to a safe place after the incident with Henry VIII, and eventually
lost track of where it was. Or, perhaps the skeleton is St Cuthbert, who remained incorrupt for 850 years. Plenty of reason
for both mystery and CCTV.

TONY FRANCIS

OLIVER NICHOLSON

If you had turned up half an hour before dinner in your wheelchair, though, the burly men would probably have gone home and
you would have not got to see the cathedral at all, mystery or no mystery.

KATHARINE EDGAR

Marvelous article, marvelous comments, God bless England!

MATTHEW KLUK

Are A levels (still) dumbing down?

16 August 2007

As if to make it very clear that the answer to that question was a resounding ‘no’, the QCA (the Qualifications and Curriculum
Authority) took out a full-page advert in some of today’s papers. It congratulated all those students getting their results
and quoted some of the questions they had had to answer.

The question that was read out on the morning news – from Psychology A level – was ‘Describe and evaluate the contributions
of the Psychodynamic Approach and the Cognitive Approach to society’. Cor, we were meant to think, that’s hard.

It was, of course, something of a hostage to fortune. For a start, it may look gobsmackingly arcane to you and me, but turn
to the A level board’s specification for that paper and it is exactly what the students should have prepared themselves for:

Students, it says clearly in the syllabus, should be able to distinguish ‘between approaches/perspectives in psychology, including
... the psychodynamic approach, the cognitive approach and the physiological approach’.

So it wasn’t exactly a wild card.

Next, it was just one part of a 90 minute paper, which – bearing in mind the time taken reading the paper and making your
choice of options – would be answered in something like 20 minutes, which hardly gives time for much intellectual nuance.
And, according to the examiners’ reports, also published today, it wasn’t even all that well done.

Here’s some of what they had to say:

‘Both approaches should have been considered, but some candidates only focused on one of them, which limited the marks available.
The question asked for contributions to society, therefore theoretical contributions were only appropriate if they led to
practical outcomes, e.g. theory of psychoanalysis and therapeutic techniques. Many candidates gave large amounts of irrelevant
detail in this essay, for example, lengthy descriptions and evaluations of research studies to support applications, where
only the identification and findings were needed.’ And so on.

This isn’t of course exactly what is meant by dumbing down. And in fact the strictures of these examiners may point in the
opposite direction. The problem is not whether the kids are working hard (of course they are – and probably very much harder
than we used to). It’s the ‘tick box’ element to the marking that is the killer, and the sense that there is a range of points
which have to be included to get the top marks – rather than the open-ended essay-style intellectual exploration.

I know of at least one A level examiner who has given up because he was forced to mark down candidates who wrote really intelligently
about a subject but didn’t give the points that were demanded by his ‘marking criteria’.

When they get to university the hangover of this is still horribly apparent. Students will press you to say what kind of class
you think their essay would be given. If you respond ‘a 2.1’, their next question is likely to be, ‘So what have I left out
that would get me a first.’ As if getting a first was simply about fulfilling all the assessment criteria.

But tub-thumping about standards is a bit of a thoughtless response to all this. The sad thing is that the tick-box style
of marking is an almost inevitable consequence of the very proper attempt to democratise A levels. It’s all very well thinking
that the open-ended intellectual essay style is what should be rewarded. But what do you do if you go to a school where they
don’t know the rules for that genre? Isn’t it reasonable for you to expect to be told what you would need to do to get an
A?

Perhaps even more pressing is the question of the examiners themselves. In the old days, when A levels were a minority option,
you had a small group of experienced (and, no doubt, underpaid but devoted) examiners. You might trust them to make reasonably
independent judgements about a kid’s essay (and, in any case, the numbers were small enough for them to be checked up on).
Our recent mad fixation with formal assessment has more than quadrupled the numbers of examiners that are needed – the demand
being such that in some subjects trainee teachers are used to mark the most important tests in a child’s career. So, of course,
we have to generate firm rules and fixed criteria, simply to train and police the examiners.

The real question isn’t whether we are dumbing down. It’s what on earth we think all this examining is for. If it’s for choosing
the brightest, it’s a blunt, time-consuming and inefficient instrument indeed. But maybe that’s not its point – and we should
be thinking of quite different ways to do that.

Comments

JANEY

Janey’s response ... assumes that there is an either–or option to solving the problem: either daring/adventurous/special or
conventional/conscientious.

Climbing Everest or taking tea with the Dalai Lama (‘as Dalley said to me last week ...’) can be done by anyone with access
to the preconditions. What conditions and stamps the underprivileged masses is their lack of access to the preconditions for
getting good exam results – regardless of how the exams are set and assessed ...

In a crappy society, you get a crappy educational system. In a contradictory society, you get elements of good among the bad.
Mary is desperately trying to separate the pearls from the turds in her work. But she’s stuck in the cesspool, so to speak.

XJY

Blimey, you would think blogging was an exam judging by some of these scripts. Janey’s point is valid, and Xjy’s criticism
of it doesn’t stand up. ‘Interesting’ is often used as a codeword for ‘conforming to the marker’s gross prejudices’. The student
should be given a clear idea of the rules, but this rarely happens. Being told something of the content doesn’t make it easier.
If I publish a specification for an exam in flute-playing which says ‘Candidates must be able to demonstrate shit hot flute
playing skills’ and the 2-hour exam paper, with one question, says ‘Play the flute brilliantly for 2 hours’, that’s still
quite hard ... I’ll probably get a C minus now for poor structure & insubordination.

Foska simply cannot understand Prof. Beard’s (far from unique) impatience with students’ desire to be told, on being given
a 2:1 grade, ‘So what have I left out that would get me a first?’ Compare cricket: this English game is alleged to be rife
with covert ideological normalisations of abnormal hierarchical arrangements, and yet the rules are clear. If a player hits
the ball over the boundary rope, he scores four. Nobody thinks him an ingrate or cheapskate if he asks how it would be possible
to get more; he would be clearly informed that he has to hit the ball over the boundary without it touching the ground, and
he will get six. Foska cannot see how that diminishes either the game or the pedagogical experience.

Or to put it another way: if I fail a driving test I want to know why.

SW FOSKA

I take Foska’s point. But – having failed my driving test more than once – I think that the reasons for failure were more
complicated than those given. The sheet I was given may well have marked the three point turn, but the real reason was that
I just couldn’t drive How do you put that on a tick box?

MARY

How would you have felt if, upon failing, you had asked what the matter was and received the response, ‘Well, you just can’t
drive.’ Where on earth do you go from there? It’s vague, unhelpful and essentially just a cop-out. Perhaps he only ticked
the ‘three-point-turn’ box, but at least that gives you SOME idea of what to work on.

You may be applauded for condemning the ‘tick-box’ system that prevents talented (not ‘gifted’, the word is a misnomer) students
from achieving top grades or forces lesser students into an unhelpful tick-the-boxes-and-get-the-marks mindset, but don’t
ever criticise a student for asking how they could have scored higher. Answer them!! Is there a reason they didn’t get top
marks? Necessarily there is, so explain it to them.

Getting a first IS simply about ‘fulfilling all the assessment criteria’. They might not be as simple or as obvious as ‘mention
Thucydides’, but undeniably they exist – if only in the mind of the individual examiner. Explaining to a 2.1 student how they
can work toward a 1st is at the heart of the educational process, and if you can’t do that then I would offer that the whole
thing is a waste of time.

RUPERT

JENNY