Job Discussion Forums

[spiral78]

[Sashadroogie]

[gaijinalways]

spiral78 posted

[fluffyhamster]

The problem Sasha with congratulating the trainee on just about learning only the names for tenses (and there are really just two, 'present' and 'past') is that it sooner or later leads to the inevitable "What tense is this modal?"-type questions that betray a fundamental lack of overall understanding about the language (more or less ~ system) one is professing to be a teacher of. It would be better then IMHO to give students a functional label that will hold across the spectrum of usages than just a formal/form-based label that one has to remember doesn't always functionally apply. And there is nothing particularly theoretical-linguisticy about this - it probably ought to be Applied Linguistics meat-and-potatoes fare, but for some strange reason isn't (bums on seats and money rolling in, I guess - that, or the insitutional inertia of the training establishment, if not the would-be laziness and resistance of many trainers). The opposite of 'remote' would I guess be 'non-remote'. All that one would then need to do is decide quite what to call all non-finite phrases (calling them clauses doesn't seem to have caught on much in ELT, which is probably just as well - see first footnote below), seeing how 'finite' is a bit of a vague term that I have no particular desire to inflict on anyone (not that I think I could explain it adequately!).*

Talking of finites just then has reminded me of how teachers can complete certs without apparently ever meeting let alone establishing precisely what a clause might be (and I'd like to stress again how this is not necessarily their fault). So I think there is DEFINITELY something wrong with the basic training in ELT**, if teachers can be working teaching between their cert and whatever further level of qualification without even being aware of anything so basic and potentially useful. (One might question the value of the term 'clause', and/or want to replace it with something more transparent, but that is obviously an entirely different matter from being totally unaware of the term in the first place and what it is trying to represent). http://forums.eslcafe.com/teacher/viewtopic.php?p=40930#40930

Ever heard of theory-culling, Spiral? The value of in-depth reading often depends on how much the area interests you personally rather than its having any absolute value in and of itself, and even on the most catholic course, there will be some so-called "options" that will still be boring yucky stinkers to wade through. So I guess we are all "well-read" before and after courses, but at least before courses we can exercise some choice (which is therefore hardly ever completely 'random reading', once we've devloped a taste for what we like, for what "clicks" with us as individual reader-reserachers). And the danger of a lot of very focussed reading is that it could well be quite cut off from other areas*** (though a lot will depend of course on the research traditions and sympathies at any particular university...not that the average prospective MA applicant seems to be aware of those traditions (but maybe some of them simply can't afford to study at what would be their preferred institute, and are thus casting their net wider in search of just any old piece of paper...I mean, this is ELT and ELT wages at the base that we're talking about, with little employer support for post-cert qualifications. And what is one man's MA or conversely pile of beer cans may be another's pile of books anyway)).

And there is nothing, really nothing, to stop any working~minimally-experienced non-illiterate teacher from at least chipping away at any of that list of things that people might write MA papers on. Dissertations, hmm, I've noticed that some (IIRC for a PhD no less) have been on things like, no joking, songs in ELT (Condensed read: "Hmm, started being used in ELT once the technology became portable enough...sometimes useful, given the repetitious nature of most songs, for increasing exposure to certain structures and/or getting a sense of stress patterns, but as a rule, used and overused by mostly newbie teachers"). As for evaluating coursebooks, a lot of that is intuitive even for a newbie (I remember for example opting as a complete newb teacher for Swan & Walter, as opposed to Abs & Freebrain or Sores & Sores, nice that I was given any choice eh...meaning, that for many teachers, they can be as perceptive and discerning as they like but will nevertheless still have to make do with some often pretty poor management decisions).


*I guess 'subjectless dependent, or participial or infinitive or indeed verbless, phrase' will do LOL (I quite like subjectless/not itself containing any explicit subject though, in that the presence of a subject is what creates a clause and thus a more lexicalized/non-infinitive/non-participial, or modal/invariable, [first] verb, as seen most clearly in present tense subject-verb agreement). "Absolute clauses" however (see following definition from Chalker & Weiner's Oxford Dictionary of English Grammar) are a bit of a grey area, but are probably rare and "peripheral" enough to the main/non-dependent clause that they needn't preoccupy the trainee or student too long. (Absolute clause: 'A non-finite or verbless clause containing its own subject, separated from the rest of the sentence by a comma, or by commas or dashes, and not introduced by a subordinator: The fight to board the train - the women crushed against the doors, the children clutching their mothers - repeated itself at the next station; The place empty once more, I settled down for the night'. Note the 'with its own subject' - that is, the content of the absolute clause applies to that subject rather than, as would be the case with subjectless phrases, a/the subject in another clause; compare then the second of C&W's examples with Empty once more, I settled down for the night).

**I hesitate to say wrong with the preceding secondary schooling though, at least in relation to 'grammar', because I'm not convinced that much if any of that really needs to be taught much below the age of 16.

***See for example the debate that "raged" in SLA between Firth & Wagner and all those who replied to them in the pages of the MLJ, most of which has been handily and usefully reprinted in Seidlhofer's Controversies in Applied Linguistics (unfortunately now only available in snippet view on Google Books, so we'll probably have to make do with just the final article, here: http://newcastle.academia.edu/AlanFirth/Papers/228988/SLA_Property_No_Trespassing._Response_to_Firth_and_Wagner_97_Responses_MLJ_1998 ). Remembering that debate has reminded me that I must get round to reading the sixth and final chapter ('SLA: Breaking the Siege' LOL!) of Long's Problems in SLA (but I should really start reading the whole book more closely - have only dipped into it so far): http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Kfk9Qvj_ArAC&

[spiral78]

[Sashadroogie]

Dear Fluffy

I can't remember if you've said that you are a CELTA trainer or not, but please, let me tell you from my own teacher-training experience that the most basic aim is simple to get newbies to be able to hold down a class for a relatively competent lesson. Dealing with grammar abstractions is not the aim of the course. These are not linguistics courses. 4 weeks is simply not enough to pack in all you say is lacking from such entry-level courses. Any CELTA trainer will probably tell you the same thing, i.e. that fresh trainees are supposed to receive even more guidance on their first job than they got on the course. Their DOS is the one who should train them further. The point of the CELTA is to make them trainable. Their DOS can deal with the 'what tense is this modal' and 'what's an intransigent verb?'

Re tenses, there being only two etc. I can personally vouch for the difficulty this would cause trainees. Aspect? Wha' tha'? Never going to click with trainees who are under enough pressure just with figuring out what the terminology is in the course books. In a very similar vein , try teaching Beginner level English language learners that there are only two tenses in English, and all the rest are aspects, and see how far they get...

Largely similar lack of response as with CELTA trainees...

[Mr. Kalgukshi]

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[fluffyhamster]

[johnslat]

Dear fluffyhamster,

I have to wonder - when one is teaching ESL/EFL - if telling students that there are only two tenses helps much, if at all.

There are really only two things that students need to know about a tense:

1. how to make (say/write) it


2. when to use it (admittedly the harder of the two)

and since all 12 tenses/aspects/whatever are used differently (and all 24 are made differently,) I suspect that saying there are only two might be a little confusing for most students.

Regards,
John

[fluffyhamster]

But why stop at 12 or 24 or whatever that number is meant to be, John? As Stephen Jones once remarked, why aren't other modals called the future tense, and why don't we call 'can' the potentative tense, 'must' the obligatory tense, or 'should' the advisable tense, etc.
http://forums.eslcafe.com/teacher/viewtopic.php?t=4131

Anyway, I'll leave it for others to think about and decide if essentially just 'remote' versus 'non-remote' ( ~ form-meaning) would be more, or less, confusing than the current "descriptive" apparatus.

[johnslat]

Dear fluffyhamster,

" . . . why aren't other modals called the future tense, and why don't we call 'can' the potentative tense, 'must' the obligatory tense, or 'should' the advisable tense, etc."

Fine by me - although I think 24 are really enough. But you do seem to have sidestepped my main point - that those 24 are all made differently and 12 of them are (generally) used differently (I'm not even mentioning the times when time as tense are distinct, as is the present unreal, using the present continuous with future words to show future time, etc.)

Linguistically speaking, saying there are two tenses is fine - but we're not teaching linguistics to most of our students (and many of the ones that we ARE teaching linguistics to won't be teaching it to their students.)

Regards,
John
Regards,
John

[fluffyhamster]

I should've really just said "Occam's razor" - 24/12 versus just 2 (although of course, one would need to say quite what the other bits and bobs were following the remote versus non-remote first form in any complex verb phrase - but we learn/use/teach stuff like participle and base form or infinitive already, so no debate there!).

Hmm, 'Present unreal', I guess you mean in conditionals (a pretty descriptive piece of terminology for once!), where there is a great big 'If' heading one of the clauses?

[johnslat]

Dear fluffyhamster,

But Occam's Razor is much too dull when all those tebses they need to learn are made and 12 are used differently.

OK, class there are only two tenses; however there are 24 different ways to make them and (at least) 12 different ways to use those two.

YIKES

"I guess you mean in conditionals (a pretty descriptive piece of terminology for once!), where there is a great big 'If' heading one of the clauses?


Yup, and where the past tense is used but the real meaning is in the present.

"If I had a million dollars . . . ."

Regards,
John

[fluffyhamster]

Well, there aren't many languages (unless we're talking about Inuit or whatever) that we everday westerners are familiar with where all the meaning can be packed into a "one-word" verb, so it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise that there will be other bits in many verb phrases (oops, I am using a meaning of 'verb phrase' that includes only one verb - I guess I should say ['verb' versus] 'verb phrase' in the sense that any trainee would understand the term LOL).