False Friends and Instruction Words in a Transport Notice
Reading Comprehension practice in a Jamaican school uses a short authentic-style notice: 'Aviso a los usuarios del transporte escolar: A partir del lunes 6 de mayo, el autobús de las 7:15 saldrá a las 7:30. Los estudiantes que ya compraron un boleto para las 7:15 deben cambiarlo en la oficina antes del viernes. No se aceptarán boletos antiguos después del lunes.' Question 4 asks: 'Según el aviso, ¿qué debe hacer un estudiante que tiene un boleto para las 7:15?' Options: (a) llegar a las 7:15, (b) cambiar el boleto en la oficina, (c) comprar un boleto nuevo, (d) esperar hasta el lunes. Student Devon chooses (a). When asked why, he says, 'Because the bus used to leave at 7:15 and the notice says 7:15.' He ignores 'a partir del lunes' and 'deben cambiarlo'. The teacher must decide whether this is a vocabulary problem, a careless reading problem, or a test-strategy problem, and how to intervene without just giving the answer.
1. Diagnose Devon's error: what exactly did he misread, and which words in the text carry the decisive information?
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Devon did not fail on vocabulary: he understands 'boleto' and 'autobús'. He anchored on the familiar number '7:15' and treated it as the answer, ignoring the instruction that follows it. The decisive words are 'a partir del lunes' (the change starts Monday), 'deben cambiarlo' (the required action is to exchange it) and 'antes del viernes' (the deadline). The text does not ask students to arrive at 7:15; it says that time is the old departure time. This is primarily a test-strategy error: surface matching of a number instead of processing the sentence's command. The teacher should name that habit rather than re-teach 'boleto'. A quick check is to ask Devon to underline the verb that tells the student what to do; if he underlines 'cambiarlo', the problem is attention, not knowledge.
2. How would you coach Devon to answer this type of question in future? Give a concrete procedure.
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Use a four-step procedure. First, read the question stem and underline the action word: '¿qué debe hacer?' Second, identify the person or situation: 'un estudiante que tiene un boleto para las 7:15'. Third, scan for that phrase in the text and read the whole sentence around it, not just the number. Fourth, match the question's action word to the text's verb: 'debe hacer' matches 'deben cambiarlo'. Then eliminate options by asking what each one would require in the text. Option (a) would require an instruction to arrive at 7:15; it is not there. Option (c) would require 'comprar', but the text says 'cambiar'. Option (d) confuses the start date with an instruction to wait. The aim is to make Devon's reasoning visible so he stops choosing the option that repeats a word from the text.
3. Write a distractor analysis for options (c) and (d).
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Option (c), 'comprar un boleto nuevo', is plausible because transport changes often force passengers to buy new tickets. It tempts students who see 'boleto' and assume a purchase is needed, but the text says 'cambiarlo', which means exchange the existing ticket, not buy another. Option (d), 'esperar hasta el lunes', is plausible because 'a partir del lunes' appears in the notice. It tempts students who confuse a date when the new schedule begins with an instruction to wait. In fact, students must act 'antes del viernes', before Monday. A good distractor analysis should state both why the option is attractive and which exact phrase rules it out. That helps Devon see that wrong options are often built from real words in the text, not from nowhere.