The BilBea Learning Journey

The use of non-verbal tests of intelligence in an attempt to avoid cultural bias has led to growing controversy, and there is a growing body of evidence to suggest that non-verbal tests may be more culturally biased than language tests.

I could see that happening due to written language itself. Written English is far more formal, grammar-based and mistakes and errors show up far more quickly than noticing mistakes in spoken. In spoken English, even native speakers don’t use grammar so much. In fact, a couple of native speakers can have an entire conversation which is not grammatically correct, but still get the feeling and meaning perfectly clearly.

So if this happens for native speakers, then non-native speakers can get a lot more meaning out without the tester noticing every single error. Occasionally some “errors in speech” become sayings, such as “long time, no see” which originated from a Chinese speech pattern when using spoken English which was directly translated from Chinese.