Job Discussion Forums

[adaruby]

[fluffyhamster]

I don't think anyone's enthusiastically engaged with the Yagoda articles that Johnslat posted, actually. My own view (as I stated in my first post) is that these sorts of articles are more to reassure somewhat neurotic native-speaker writers than to (trivially) inform foreign learners and EFL teachers. But while we're on the topic of the subjunctive, its finer usages can in fact be troublesome and may require a bit of thought and digging:
http://forums.eslcafe.com/job/viewtopic.php?t=81453

I agree with Lewis though (he devotes only half a page to it towards the end of TEV, in a chapter entitled 'Some additional problems') that instances of the subjunctive are probably best treated as non-generative fixed expressions/lexical phrases.

[johnslat]

Dear adaruby,

If I were you, I wouldn't be so quick to summarily dismiss the subjunctive.

Regards,
John

[sager]

[adaruby]

[Agamemnon]

Can someone explain to me how this statement of fact implies I feel that there is no room for grammar!

Amazing how many so-called "English language teachers" live and die by grammar rules, yet their learners have no or only very limited communication skills!

It has been my experience over a considerable length of time in the Republic of Turkey to have observed a great number of learners who are very skillful with the use of grammar. The standard cloze test presents them with no problems, yet when asked to perform a simple exchange of personal information oral exercise, they very quickly run out of things to say.
"English language teachers" who are not native speakers learnt the language through the grammar rules and plenty of rote learning but very little time is spent on allowing the learners to use the language, especially outside the classroom.
Ironically, the average native speaker of English would not know the difference between a noun or a verb, let alone the active/passive and certainly not the subjunctive, yet communication on any level is evident.
I have met a great number of people who can engage on a wide level of topics and have had virtually zero grammar formal or informal. So how is that possible?
They acquired their skill in exactly the same way we did, they listened and then used what they had remembered, sound familiar?

[MuscatGary]

[johnslat]

Dear Agamemnon,

"Amazing how many so-called "English language teachers" live and die by grammar rules, yet their learners have no or only very limited communication skills!"


Could this be called a "hasty generalization?"

"(also known as: argument from small numbers, statistics of small numbers, insufficient statistics, unrepresentative sample [form of], argument by generalization, faulty generalization, hasty conclusion [form of], inductive generalization, insufficient sample, lonely fact fallacy, over generality, over generalization)

Description: Drawing a conclusion based on a small sample size, rather than looking at statistics that are much more in line with the typical or average situation."

Rather like this:

It has been my experience over a considerable length of time (35 years) in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, and multiple locations in the US how some so-called "English language teachers" are ignorant of a lot of English grammar and tend to dismiss it as non-essential. And it has been my experience, upon getting these learners as students that while their oral communication is often fairly fluent, their accuracy is usually sorely deficient, and their reading and writing skills are generally poor.

Grammar is not - or at least should not - be taught in isolation.

https://sites.google.com/site/kifleeamingenglishedu/teaching-grammar-in-context

http://www.open.ac.uk/courses/modules/e303

I assume, then, that although you do not "live and die" by grammar rules, you do teach grammar in context, right?

Regards,
John

[Sashadroogie]

[Agamemnon]

Dear John Slat

We seem to be at cross purposes here, on the one hand you refer to my 20 plus years of living and working and teaching grammar and language to literally thousands of learners and the observations that I have made as mere "generalizations based on insufficent data, evidence, etc, etc, etc, etc, blah, blah, blah, and as a result they are irrelevant, and no I don't think you are being pedantic or patronizing or belittling towards my perspective.
On the other hand your vast experience of being " a real teacher who teaches grammar in context"(yeah me too, vocabulary in the same way funningly enough) means we all must bow down to your point of view.
Well sorry buster, thats not gonna happen, as long as there zealots like you expounding the overwhelming superority value of knowing the present perfect tense before the simple present has been mastered there will be types like me around to pick up the mess that leaves.
Getting them back to basics, for too long I have stood up in front of university students with more than 12 years of language learning under their belts who are aware of grammar rules yet cannot even engage with each other on a basic level. So who's fault is that? not mine, I just met them, that is the mess I have to sort out.
Typical first encounter:
"Hello Ahmet, Whats your full name?"
Ahmet. "Ne"!
Get the drift?

[johnslat]

Dear Agamemnon,

You're a hoot!! Why, for a minute there, I almost took you seriously. But then, I realized it was a parody of an over-the-top rant.

Good one.

Regards,
John

[fluffyhamster]

The problem with this thread is that there are obviously various assumptions about grammar motivating posts, but that these assumptions haven't been made explicit.

So, what is grammar? (I know that's often the most boring part of any book purporting to explain grammar, so I'll try to make the following a bit racier). Some who've posted appear to think that it is among other things mostly any or all of the following:

Prescriptive rules peddled by pedantic writers, often ultimately to impressionable schoolchildren by teachers who should know better

Whatever a completely untrained and unthinking teacher might literally read-lecture from any old book

The overegged floppy omlettes that often pass for cordon bleurgh "presentational" teaching during certifiable TP

Whatever the lone textbook being used insists it is

Whatever some superior insists it is

A load of explicit rules derived from any or all of the above, that a student must learn to become fluent or at least pass some exam

In contrast, grammar to me is whatever I can glean from descriptive grammars plural then fashion into formally less-explicit but hopefully sharper shape functionally. My overriding concern is to arrive at useful functions and examples (contexts), even though I may appear to be quite formally-focussed in a lot of my posts here on Dave's (but then I'm usually having to explain no small amount of terminology to newbies, for the purposes of orientation more than anything. I usually get to the functional point eventually though!).

So I never understand how grammar is for many apparently almost the bathwater to throw out with the baby.* Or perhaps they simply mean that they approach it in ways similar to mine or Johnslat's (if so, it would help if they could say so rather than simply deriding 'grammar' as of more hindrance than potential help). But obviously there are certain classes of grammar that are more immediately plunderable, ultimately more end example than form/structure-focussed, than others - the lexicogrammars from COBUILD, for example. Again, at least I am pointing this out.

Edit: Ah, I see there has been a "clarifying" post or two since.

*BTW, regarding the "Let's simply learn like young children do", yes, people can certainly try that (outside of language classes) and some do indeed succeed (generally by long-term sink-or-swim immersion), but most enrol in classes to - or so they hope - get more concentrated, focussed and hopefully effective dollops or doses, and presumably because their access to genuine immersion is limited. I'm sceptical as to how effective the average EFL school class is, but the belief nevertheless persists that one can learn more from them than not, and that teaching oneself whether from books or wholly informally is "too slow" in comparison.

[johnslat]

Can anyone help me out here? I can't find this quote anywhere on the thread:

. . . " a real teacher who teaches grammar in context" . . .

I'm probably overlooking it.

Regards,
John

[fluffyhamster]

I can see where Agamemnon's read between the lines to produce that "quote", John. I'm more puzzled by this one actually:

[johnslat]

Dear fluffyhamster,

So, could I say the "quote" about context is being taken out of context?

No, I guess not since it apparently was never in context.

Regards,
John