Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2007

Short /i/ is seldom <i> in western romance and thence english, but that
won't necessarily work for learned words.

[@'li:gl]?

Or that British phoneticians are so focused on vowel length that they
completely overlook consonant length.

Ouch. With you, the rough and tumble of the playground always has to go
that tiny little bit too far, doesn't it?

Obviously it's all relative; my rubbishy was most people's unattainably
brilliant. I won't deny it's been downhill since then, ending up in
internet discussion groups attracting apparently motiveless swipes from
humourless North American professors.

I had tutors who preferred the essays in the night before, so that the
hour would be spent on discussion. I had other tutors who preferred the
essay to be read aloud in tutorial.

The differences are pretty important.

The definition of 'tutorial' at Oxford allows for up to three students
at a time; in any case where there is more than one student, reading
the essay aloud is the only practical way to ensure that everybody is
involved in the discussion.

However, the most important difference, from a student's perspective,
is time: when my history tutor wanted the essay in a day before, I had
only six days to write each essay; if I had the option of reading it in
tutorial, I had a full seven to work on it. Makes a big difference - in
my busiest term, I wrote 20 essays, prepared 16 prose compositions, and
had 16 (prepared) reading classes, in eight weeks. One less day to
write an essay can mean quite a lot to the final product (some of my
friends), or to sleep/health patterns (me).

Now, you ask what the point is. Have you had the benefit of learning
under both methods (tutorials vs classes/seminars)? The difference is
profound. One of my Sanskrit tutors preferred to have large classes -
about eight of us at a time, for a two hour (scheduled) session. Two or
three essays were read in each session. This was, in comparison with
proper tutorials, a nightmare: it meant that the discussion in any
given class was essentially limited to the people reading, with
everybody else acting as an observer, despite our tutor's best efforts
to involve everyone. The atmosphere in a tutorial - even with as many
as three students - is completely different: everybody contributes,
everybody is involved. The learning is much deeper. Also, with fewer
students, everybody's essay (at least) gets attention from the tutor,
if not during the tutorial, then at least in written form, which isn't
possible in large classes.

I would never have thought to hear an argument that less individual
attention could be beneficial to learning!

No such luck: the 'u' is short in Latin.

People at Oxford do get third class degrees, or just a basic pass; some
even fail. It's not Harvard, where every undergrad gets a shiny plastic
'A'.

Neeraj Mathur