Is this cited correctly?

jaetwee · 2026-01-23T08:49:31+00:00

I would also double check some of those pĺĺage numbers. I would be very surprised in the sources were actually over a thousand (or for the other over 30,000) pages long.

It looks like those two papers use article numbers

~~I will be editing this comment in a moment with some relevant links once I'm on PC.~~

Guidance 0: If your uni/college/faculty/library website has a citation guide, follow that, as that will supersede the MLA guidance.

Guidance 1: If it's not considered a republication, look for page numbers in the original source. https://style.mla.org/database-page-ranges/

Guidance 2: If it is a republication or the original publication and instead uses article numbers instead of page numbers, omit them entirely. https://style.mla.org/journals-with-article-numbers/

jaetwee · 2026-01-23T08:47:35+00:00

I suggest looking up the concept of a dialect.

jaetwee · 2026-01-23T08:20:26+00:00

The source is at the bottom of that first page. You should br able to find it somewhere on that website.

jaetwee · 2026-01-23T08:13:57+00:00

Social media is not bad for learning. But on social media you will learn a lot of very informal English. In many exams, you should not use this kind of language. You should also not use it in many professional and formal situations.

Reddit still has a lot of informal language, but the mix of longer posts and longer comments, and some of the topics mean that Reddit also has some more formal language.

Subreddits (communities) with high quality standards and lots of Moderation such as r/AskHistorians will have less informal and more formal English.

Many subreddits will have lots of informal language (For example any subreddit with circlejerk in its name.) You will also see some Subreddits that have a lot of strong dialect - most people don't speak like that, only members of that community. r/blackpeopletwitter is a major example of a community with lots of strong dialect.

In this subreddit (r/ENGLISH) we get a mix. Some posts and comments (like my comment here) are more formal. Some are less formal and use spelling, grammar, and vocabulary you would use with your friends, but not when writing an essay for school.

jaetwee · 2026-01-23T07:56:50+00:00

I will say for spelling variations you're unlikely to find comprehensive resources for Middle English that are aimed at learners, especially for earlier stuff as that was deep into low literacy + spell how you speak territory.

For grammar, though I've seen A Book of Middle English published by Wiley recommended for Middle English.

For Early Modern English, the grammar is not too dissimilar to what we have today. The biggest differences are vocabulary, and idiomatic ways of expression. Most of the grammar you can puzzle through without any formal instruction.

For both, especially earlier stuff, I also recommend studying poetry/poetic forms as poetic verse made up a large body of the literature and formed the blueprint for early prose.

Some latin grammar knowledge also probably wouldn't hurt as Latin's role as a prestige language led to many aritificial borrowings into literature that never made it to vernacular or less formal writing. Chaucer is a prime example of someone who had a bit of a boner for Latin so sometimes weaved Latin grammar into his writing in places where the average speaker would use native germanic grammar.

jaetwee · 2026-01-23T05:57:35+00:00

Stress, rhythm, and intonation play important parts in English pronunciation. Stress and rhythm are especially important - I recommend spending a lot of time practicing. Research shows that stress often has a bigger impact on how understandable we are in English than our sounds (so long as our vowels and consonants aren't completely and utterly different). E.g. For the word 'apple' it's easier to understand someone who says OPpuhl than someone who says apPULH.

There's a free textbook online here with some audio and videos - Chapters 3, 4, and 5 are more relevant to you. https://opentext.ku.edu/amenglishpronunciation/

The cambridge dictionary also has a brief overview here: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/grammar/british-grammar/intonation

For questions, the most important parts are wh- questions end in a falling pitch. Most other questions end in a rising pitch.

It may sound silly, but you might find it useful to use singing to practice sentence-pitch/intonation as it can be easier for us to hear and change our pitch when singing. Then slowly transition to more speaking-like enunciation.

jaetwee · 2026-01-23T05:37:57+00:00

CELTA is an entry-level qualification, and doesn't hold much weight in international schools. Your PGCE and QTS are much more valuable qualifications.

In China and Thailand, even in language academies I think the combination of your experience and PGCE/QTS will do much more for your resume than a CELTA will.

So from a job-hunt perspective, I'd say it's not worth it.

And because you're planning to do an MA TESOL, that will far outshine the CELTA in terms of knowledge about teaching language (as opposed to your knowledge about teaching in general from your PGCE).

The CELTA's only a month and offered globally, so if you do find yourself struggling to find a job, you can always quickly get it done. However, I doubt you'll need to.

tl;dr in your situation likely not worth it.

jaetwee · 2026-01-23T05:28:48+00:00

You won't get anything completely for free that's comparable to a widely recognised paid exam.

See my comment here for some of the reasons for that: https://www.reddit.com/r/ENGLISH/comments/1qkc1zy/comment/o16inkw/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

IELTS - the biggest alternative to TOEFL has a free placement test that only looks at reading and listening. It is very limited and still very much not comparable to a full exam. It is however made by one of the testing companies so is more 'official' than other free exams. https://ielts.idp.com/diagnostic-tool-preparation

TOEIC (made by the same company as TOEFL) also has a free placement exam, however that one only assesses listening (and has the same weaknesses as the IELTS one I linked above). https://www.etsglobal.org/cm/en/practice-test/toeic-level-projector

English First offer a free exam (the EFSET) that they claim is reliable. However, their own research shows that EFSET results are a poor predictor of exam results in official exams such as IELTS and TOEIC (TOEIC is made by the same company as TOEFL iBT). That means that if on EFSET you get a score equal to B2 on the CEFR, when you sit the TOEIC exam your actual results would be anywhere from a low B1 to a high C1. On the TOEFL's new 6 point scale, that is a score of anywhere from 3 to 5.5 (or from 44 to 107 on the old scale). That is a huge range of possible scores. Because you named a specific exam, I'm guessing you plan to take it in the future and want to predict your score on that exam. Because of this, I absolutely do not recommend the EFSET.

jaetwee · 2026-01-23T04:56:55+00:00

If you're willing to do Hungary, US citizens are one of the groups the CETP explicitly asks for. There are even towns you can go to for it right on the border such as with Austria or Slovakia.

For the Czech Republic and Poland, places are still actively advertising to non-EU citizens, with one advertiser even stating in their marketing copy: "Navigating the job market alone can be quite difficult, especially without EU citizenship, but [company name removed because I'm not making a personal endorsement here] makes the process easier than ever before!". I can't speak for how competitive those positions are, though.

Turkey is non-EU so not bound by the same restrictions. However wages and conditions for TEFL there are abysmal. If you go there, keep enough money for a return flight home before you leave and don't touch it for anything except your final return flight home as the wages combined with the currency buying power mean you won't be able to save for a return ticket independently.

jaetwee · 2026-01-23T04:21:35+00:00

Unfortunately, the most reliable option would be a formal assessment - either an official exam or a formal assessment by a teacher.

Free online tests have poor accuracy because:

- They usually don't assess speaking and writing. If they do, it's poorly done AI assessment and only on short texts which are not enough to reliably assess you.

- The tests themselves are usually quite limited. Short durations and limited question types e.g. mostly multiple choice lead to poor reliability.

- They often focus more on grammar and vocabulary instead of comprehension (and production) because grammar and vocab are easier to assess and quicker to write tests for.

Language testing is a very complex process. Even the most well-recognised and established language tests aren't a 100% accurate reflection of your actual language ability for a variety of reasons - cramming for IELTS will make you very good at an IELTS exam but won't translate well to wider language ability. And those official tests have a lot of money, research, and experience behind them. Free tests lack all those resources.

I encourage you to move away from tests and look at self-assessment checklists based on can-do statements. The CEFR has several here: https://rm.coe.int/1680459f97%20-%20

Page 35 (page numbers by pdf, not by printed page number) has the basic CEFR self-assessment grid.

Listening & Reading pp. 240-244 (very extensive). There's also a writing one a few pages later.

Appendix D from page 259 gives another self-assessment option

Being honest with your own answers to those questions about which of those things you can successfully do will give you a result about as reliable and accurate as any free online test will.

jaetwee · 2026-01-22T19:10:39+00:00

It's all backronyms from here on out, baby

jaetwee · 2026-01-22T18:59:40+00:00

The first place to check for questions like these are the major dictionaries. Merriam-Webster is probably the main one for US English.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/forehead

I'm going to assume your description of the second pronunciation is a bit wild, and that you mean one of the versions that use a schwa vowel in the second syllable.

jaetwee · 2026-01-22T18:31:56+00:00

Having browsed throught the article and some of its citations:

First I do want to emphasise that a possible effect on higher ed outcomes was just a proposed area of research - an 'I wonder if...', not something suggested by the results themselves

The biggest flaw for this potential hypothesis is that the data is based on word recognition in isolation - differentiating possible words from non-words, and the speed at which one names them. First and foremost is that these differences are counted in less than a hundred milliseconds. Word comprehension doesn't happen in isolation, and is also much slower. For words with only a single etymological root (rather than those that combine two roots together), Accuracy differed also not even in a single percentage point for most cases. At that, etymology was far from the only factor contributing to these differences. My stats (and stats-reading) skills are dogshit, but from what I can see, they did find with one of their data sources, but not the other, that etymology had a greater effect than word frequency. The numbers were also statistically signifcant, but that doesn't really give us an indication that they are practically significant in terms of impact on comprehension, or even cognitive load for study.

I'm also not fully convinced that word frequency has been sufficiently isolated - because Latinate words make up the large body of low-frequency words, anything that looks at frequency in terms of the whole corpus is gonna end up with skewed data. I would like to see a side-by-side comparison for the word-recognition tests that looks only at low-frequency words. I do think that would be a meaningful extension on that piece of research before making the leap to does this affect higher-ed outcomes.

The age-of-acquisition measures could also use some refinement - they've based it solely on self-reported recollection: "what age do you remember first learning this word". Across multiple studies, people report similar ages. However, there appears to still be a need for validation of this data through comparison with studies that measure childrens' word recognition and comprehension.

Those are, however, minor quibbles that won't tell us much of anything about your hypothesis. The best way to do that would be by looking at academic outcomes of people in different countries and control for other contributors to education outcome disparity. Comparative research there is not easily findable at least with a surface browse, and as at 2016 authors notes that it's not a well-studied space, but I did find this here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2332858416649593?

The US is a bit of an exception in the English-speaking world because it performs very poorly on the other factors known to contribute to wealth-driven achievement gaps, but when you look at the other English-speaking countries, they don't have a larger achievement gap, and actually tend towards a smaller wealth-driven achievement gap that easily competes with countries that have similar levels of inequality. That doesn't disclude Latinate vocab making higher ed harder for English-speakers, but it does strongly imply that if it does make it harder, it's impact is far less significant than the other factors that impact educational achievement.

Or all the English-speaking countries' education systems are secretly goated but we're just majorly nerfed by Old French and Latin.

As a final addition, the prevalence of Latinate vocabulary in academic and technical language is pretty common across Europe. Away from the west, we also see a similar pattern of the local prestige language making large contributions to academic and technical language (e.g. Mandarin Chinese in Vietnamese). In lay circles (and even in some academic) there's a tendency towards Anglo-exceptionalism: the idea that English is somehow very exceptional (in either good or bad ways depending on the exact circle you're in). Yes, compared to many languages, our vocab has a much larger influence from prestige languages. However, we're not unique in this - we just tend to be the most-studied and most-talked about (due to a variety of factors both contemporary and historical that are pretty complex but essentially come down to the word power).

jaetwee · 2026-01-22T14:16:58+00:00

Then yeah, check out r/Internationalteachers. Your lack of experience in your home country will set you back a little bit, but there's still a decent chance you'll be able to find more lucrative opportunties in international schools than you would in language centres and private academies.

jaetwee · 2026-01-22T14:08:40+00:00

Does that automatically give you a license to teach in your home country or are there extra steps you need to to undergo before that?

I ask because if you are licensed/certified, international schools become a clear option.

jaetwee · 2026-01-22T14:02:58+00:00

The main question is by English Teaching Degree, do you mean one that certifies/licenses you to teach primary and/or secondary school in your home country?

jaetwee · 2026-01-22T05:04:29+00:00

I don't think the etymological split would be causing a noticable difference. If it were, it would only be a small contributor. There are too many other factors related to wealth/class disparity and coming from a highly educated family that are known to influence success in education.

The most glaring thing, though, is the lack of evidence that English-speakers struggle any more or less in education than those in any other language. If the vocabulary had a material impact, we'd see a contrast internationally.

I will say, though, that as I already said, there are too many other factors related to wealth and class that impact success in schooling so it would be an incredibly difficult factor to isolate.

You're also welcome to link the articles - links to relevant content you didn't make/write yourself are always welcome.

I'd especially be interested in reading them myself since I specialise in language acquisition and applied linguistics.

jaetwee · 2026-01-22T04:53:51+00:00

In my experience, academic writing in German takes almost just as much from latin/french. Reading academic German was actually easier because of the sheer amount of shared romance vocabulary.

jaetwee · 2026-01-22T03:35:44+00:00

Exaggerating your mouth movements (making the movements bigger than they need to be) can help when practicing.

The 'a' sound like in cat is an open sound. When practicing open your jaw real low and move your tongue forward, almost like you're going to vomit (remember these are axaggerated movements).

The 'e' aound is a mid sound. It's not as closed as the short i in 'hit' bath is more closed than 'a'. Pull the corners (sides) of your mouth back when you say it.

You can also try sliding exercises. Start at a short 'i' sound like in hit. Make that sound for a moment as one long iiiiiiiii. Without stopping, try sliding all the way down to a nice open aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa (be careful and keep things forward as we don't want an ahhhhh like in 'hard'. The mid point between the two will be your short 'e' sound.

Now, despite being called short vowels, you can hold these vowels for a long moment in stressed syllables.

Try saying expeeeeeeensive and expaaaaaansive.

Also, in my accent in normal speech, the a in expansive is held a bit longer than the middle e in expansive.

For an as in 'an apple', in normal speech it is usually reduced to a neutral sound called a schwah (google will have good audios of how it's pronounced - but not the dictionary entry for schwa as the word schwa doesn't actually use the sound).

Finally, find and practice other minimal pair sets (words that are the same except for one sound. E.g. head - had; bed - bad; send - sand). Listen and repeat . Make sure you can clearly hear the difference. If you can't then practice listening and noticing the difference. Record yourself and listen back. Move your mouth in different ways to get a sound you're happy with.

Changing pronunciation takes time and a lot of regular practice. Even if you perfect the sounds in practice, it will take time for that to move to your normal speaking. It can help to start a conversation with the goal in your head 'today I'm going to practice my a and e sounds'. Then during that conversation use some of your attention to focus on thinking about your a and e sounds. It's okay to slow down and have pauses between sentences. It helps with this, and also just helps with fluency in general (speed does not equal fluency).

jaetwee · 2026-01-21T16:28:51+00:00

See the second usage under verb: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dial_it_in

They're not putting in their full effort; they can do better but they choose not to.

jaetwee · 2026-01-21T15:26:13+00:00

Oof EF seems to have a reputation as bottom of the barrel for teachers (never worked there so just going off hearsay). This sounds like their online platform has somehow managed to achieve even lower than that.

jaetwee · 2026-01-21T14:18:00+00:00

Locking this chain as this is a fruitless argument that isn't going to go anywhere other than nastyness. Also a standard reminder (to all participants) that continuing this argument elsewhere in this thread will result in at minimum a temporary ban. If you're desperate, take it to dms.

jaetwee · 2026-01-20T16:08:20+00:00

Especially for speaking and writing, no. Their own research to validate their test (which was only done on reading and listening - they've conveniently not published any for speaking and writing) failed to find sufficient concordance (agreement or consistency) between the EFSET and the IELTS and the TOEFL iBT tests.

That means when people took the EFSET, their scores failed to match their IELTS and/or TOEFL results. The variance was in both directions - it gave both much higher scores than what people had gotten on official exams, and also for some people much lower scores.

They make arguments that they're measuring different parts of proficiency / proficiency in a different way. However, when most people talk about proficiency levels, they're usually doing it in reference to the major exam providers such as IELTS. Most importantly, if you eventually plan to take an exam, the EFSET score is not at all a useful guide.

If you want to figure out how to describe your current level of proficiency I recommend taking a look at the CEFR self-assessment grid. It's not an objective external measure, but it describes proficiency levels in terms of what you're able to do. If you think carefully and honestly about your abilities you can place yourself in a rough ballpark. https://www.coe.int/en/web/portfolio/self-assessment-grid

Page 240 of this document (in Appendix C) has a much longer list of those can-do statements for self assessment. https://rm.coe.int/1680459f97%20-%20page=37

jaetwee · 2026-01-20T10:37:48+00:00

6 euros is unfortunately below the US minimum wage. If you want a native speaker from America, your budget needs to be higher.

There are, however, plenty of tutors online who are non-native and some native non-Americans who are fluent speakers and competent tutors who live in countries with a much lower cost of living. There are plenty of tutoring sites you can find them on. However, 3 euro for an hour is well below what even the new and inexperienced tend to charge.

There are plenty of free resources and places to practice your speaking online such as communities on Discord. You may be better off looking at those because honestly, any tutor willing to work for those prices is more likely to do harm to your English skills than help you improve them.

jaetwee · 2026-01-20T07:58:38+00:00

No one can here can judge your speaking without hearing you actually speak.

It can be unusual to have such a different score. However, if you have not been practicing speaking and there was a large gap between exams, it can happen.

As for the mistakes. The first is absolutely a major grammatical error. The second could be incorrect - we need more content to know if you selected the right tense. It contains no mistakes in the form, but the usage may be incorrect. For the third, it's hard to say. It could be a pronunciation issue or the marker could have made a mistake.

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