Speech Marks

11 Plus English - Preparation and Information

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DP (Bmth)

Speech Marks

Post by DP (Bmth) »

This is really basic, but I'd appreciate any comments. Looking at NFER English papers at the section where they have to spot mistakes in punctuation, I thought speech marks were " "? They seem to use ' ' which I thought were quotation marks. Has anyone else noticed this? Are we supposed to correct the ' ' marks and put '' " instead?

I can't seem to post under my name now I've registered. I keep getting "Sorry but this username has already been taken" Anyone else have this problem?
Dorset Parent
Posts: 37
Joined: Tue Oct 03, 2006 10:11 pm
Location: Bournemouth

Speech Marks

Post by Dorset Parent »

Problem solved - re-registered!
Guest

Post by Guest »

Very interesting question. My wife has been marking the English and I've been marking the Maths :lol:

She has been marking ' incorrect and " correct.

Any views??

Steve
A Suivre

'speech marks'

Post by A Suivre »

Anonymous wrote:Very interesting question. My wife has been marking the English and I've been marking the Maths :lol:

She has been marking ' incorrect and " correct.

Any views??

Steve
A reaction of total shock, I am afraid. :shock: Shocked if this is a general ruling which your wife is acting on (because it seems completely bizarre and arbitrary) and shocked if she is acting on her own initiative (because there should be no scope for marker differences in a test of this kind).

As to the issue itself, I should have thought it was clear (even from the few messages on this page) that there is no established consensual convention here. The choice of single and double inverted commas is very much a question of fashion and whim. Double ones seem to be going out of vogue at the moment, no doubt because of the trend towards clean 'uncluttered' scripts. At least one major publisher asks authors to use single quotes wherever possible, and double ones only for 'nested' quotations. And yet I am holding in my hand a book which uses precisely the opposite convention.

On a not totally dissimilar issue I was recently in contact with the DfES over the issue of crossing sevens, because in our school the children who cross their sevens are regularly reprimanded and reminded that they are 'not living in France'. I was advised that while there is no guidance on the teaching side of the equation, exam boards do accept crossed sevens. I would have thought (and hoped!) that exam boards would likewise accept variation in the choice of speech/quotation mark.
Guest

Post by Guest »

A reaction of total shock, I am afraid. Shocked if this is a general ruling which your wife is acting on (because it seems completely bizarre and arbitrary) and shocked if she is acting on her own initiative (because there should be no scope for marker differences in a test of this kind).
Dear A Suivre

I must say I'm quite surprised by your shock. I suspect the question was asked simply because the childs parents did not know the correct way of marking for inverted commas. Things change over time - I know things are very different from when I was at school. The whole point of this forum if to seek the views/opinions of other parents/tutors in the know. Not to be told off for getting it wrong!!!

Loulou
A Suivre

Speech marks

Post by A Suivre »

Dear Loulou
I would like to apologize - and explain. As I said, I don't even believe there is a 'right' in this case, so I could hardly tell anyone off for 'getting it wrong'. It seems, however, that I may have completely misunderstood the message to which I was replying. I took 'I am marking the Maths and my wife is marking the English' to refer to some involvement in official test paper marking. That's why I was shocked - by the idea that such a high-stakes test could be subject to such variation in marking. On reflection, I now rather suspect that this was simply a reference to the practice papers the writer's child was taking. Perhaps if you had read it the way I did, you would also have been shocked. So once again, I am sorry, it was just pure misunderstanding. I'll try and avoid any future ones as my daughter is also about to take the eleven-plus and like you, I also value the views of others.
Humbly, A suivre
loulou
Posts: 445
Joined: Sun Oct 29, 2006 11:05 am
Location: LONDON

Post by loulou »

Dear A Suivre

We all make mistakes and your apology is certainly gracious. Yes, I agree, I think I would have felt extremely shocked if I had interpreted Steves posting as that of an incompetent examiner. Likewise I am also making the assumption that Steve is infact a parent!! Thats the problem with our interpretation of the written word - easy to take just one slant on things. Previous postings in this forum have demonstated admirably how often we get our wires crossed when replying to issues raised, especially when the 11+/tutoring is an emotive issue with such high stakes . If we, as adults, make such easy mistakes in our interpretation of the written word imagine how hard it must be for our children - I feel so sorry for them.
A Suivre

Speech marks

Post by A Suivre »

Dear Loulou
Glad that we could overcome that communication difficulty and sorry for causing it. Yes, I do feel sorry for the kids. Sorry also to Steve for misreading your message (as I am sure I did). Anyway, moving on - or back - to the original question from A Dorset Parent ...

My daughter did an NFER practice paper today (from Letts), and it featured precisely the use of single quotes A DP described. This was the multiple-choice version of the paper, and from the answers provided in the pack, it was very clear that the use of single quotes was NOT intended to be erroneous.

I have no idea how safe it would be to extrapolate from this NFER practice paper to real tests. Do NFER set all 11+ tests these days?

A Suivre

(My daughter, it turns out, has also been taught this idea that speech marks are double and quotation marks are single. So my usual advice, 'when in doubt, stick to what you have learned at school', could be the worst possible advice in this case :( . Fortunately, the way that the test is presented meant that she knew there could only be one error in each fragment and there were enough other errors for her not to be misled into marking all the places where single quotes were used. It shouldn't be like this :? )
loulou
Posts: 445
Joined: Sun Oct 29, 2006 11:05 am
Location: LONDON

Post by loulou »

I have just spoken to my son about his understanding of speech/quotation marks. He is quite adament that speech is represented by double marks ie " " and quotes by single marks ie ' '.

I haven't got to the stage of looking at papers yet (son is only year 5) as we are concentrating on ensuring all basic maths/english/vocab is up to scratch. My interpretation of what has been posted so far by DP and A suivre seems to suggest that NFER papers don't follow this rule. Is that a correct assumption? If so were your children confused when tackling those questions? Obviously I don't want to stray from what my son is being taught at school for fear of confusing him, but when we come to tackle practice papers he needs to get the answer correct.

Any comment much appreciated, especially from the tutors that frequent this site.
Dorset Parent
Posts: 37
Joined: Tue Oct 03, 2006 10:11 pm
Location: Bournemouth

Speech Marks

Post by Dorset Parent »

I am the person who posted this question. I had given up looking at it as no-one responded for ages and I felt rather embaressed for asking the question. I am amazed to see responses!

I now realise why I was confused. Every NFER English Paper 11A - 11D uses ' ' for speech marks in the actual questions but when you come to look at the answers, they use " ". However the errors are not the speech marks themselves, but something else in that sentence. Eg Paper 11D Question 40 section c is written 'Yes' she breathed, The answer sheet gives c as the section to be corrected but reproduces it as "Yes!" she. So the error is in missing out the exclamation mark, nothing to do with the speech marks. You will find this in all the papers.

I wonder why they did this? It threw me when I first looked at it with my child. I ignore it now, but it still niggles. Do you think it is a typing error?
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