“Teacher my answer is correct why you marked it wrong?”, then I checked her answer and it’s wrong, so I responded, “Well, it can’t be correct because the correct answer is Message not Massage”, then she said, “Teacher only one letter is different, you should not mark it wrong…”
Well, I explained to my student that even though one word is wrong but the meaning is different and I did not teach my student about “massage” in my course Introduction to Operating System. I did not consider her answer and she felt really bad because of her carelessness.
What I learned from the incident is that during my lecture class I have to make it clear to my students about spelling and the meaning of the words and what are accepted or not. Especially words that may mean different if there are slight difference on the spelling.
It’s not just about teaching Computer Science courses or programming languages, but also I have to teach and explain about English language and vocabularies.
So I’m a Computer Science teacher and English teacher at the same time.
Teaching and Learning 