Job Discussion Forums

[Roger]

Good post, kev in Hangzhou; unfortunately, our students hardly compare to students in most other countries. We can seldom discuss grammar with them because they don't understand terms such as "article", "definite", "indefinitew", "infinitive", let alone "relative clause". Your examples showed to me a problem that I wasn't aware of before I came to China, but am very well aware of now: the students need to be ordered around like little sheep that can never rely on their imagination to come up with the idea that blanks in a test such as yours must be filled in.
Our students are not taught English but drilled and trained at it in a communitarian, collectivist manner that erases any notion of taking personal initiative and understand things from their context.

[thelmadatter]

kev and juststeven- yes they should have learned the "basics" before they get to us. The problem is that they don't. They are passed along by people who don't care about teaching, are cajoled by the student, parents and/or administraton into passing the student or by teachers who are more interested in spreading their politics than teaching the subject. If we try to bring them up to speed in the basics, we are reactionary or oppressive or trying to "dumb down" the course. If we try to teach the level we are supposed to, we are "unsympathetic" to student needs. Lose-lose situation, unless you can thumb your nose at the critics.

The problem is that in many schools "discipline" and "accountability" are dirty words. And the students know it.

[purna]

Thelma....
One more thing to add to what HPD said. In this sentence,
John was late, which is why the boss fired him, the relative pronoun (which) here refers to the entire idea of the main clause; you can clearly see that it doesn't refer to any particular noun antecedent. In this situation, it is considered extra information as it merely comments on the main clause, so the need for (,which ). I think some advanced ESL grammar books call this a topic comment structure. In Azar's Using and Understanding English Grammar, she says that it is mostly a spoken structure and not considered appropriate in formal writing.
You can also remind your students that if the adjective clause requires commas, the relative pronoun (that ) cannot be used to introduce the clause. Of course this helps only if they realize they are using a relative clause. BTW: in class , I just call them adjective clauses; it makes their function clearer to the students and doesn't bog the students down with terminology.

Purna

[High Plains Drifter]

Hi Purna,

I'm aware of Betty Azar's comment that this structure is not considered appropriate writing. Even though I consider her books the bibles of English grammar, and even though I admire her greatly for being one of the few people ever to have figured out a way to make some real money in the ESL field, I think she's wrong on this point. Would you consider this appropriate in spoken speech? I would. Then how can it not be apppropriate when it is written?

HPD

[purna]

HPD,
Hi. I enjoyed your response. I teach at San Jose State University in California and one of the biggest problems with students' writing is that they write the way they speak. I'm talking about students who are native speakers, and there are literally thousands of students on all CSU campuses who cannot write in a clear academically acceptable style. I work with ESL students who are trying to get into graduate school in the States and we definitely teach them formal wriiting styles and formal grammar. I believe I wrote that azar says it's not acceptable in "formal writing." Of course, There are many situations that this structure would be acceptable and she also notes that. In short, I do believe that there are spoken structures that are not acceptable in formal written English and that students should not use in academic courses.

Purna

[High Plains Drifter]

Hi Purna,

Are we talking about style or grammatical correctness? I agree that there are many spoken structures, which, though grammatically correct, are inappropriate in formal writing, but I don�t agree that this is one of them. I find nothing about it to be in any way inappropriate in formal writing.

Can it be, and I know this borders on heresy, that Azar didn�t see that this is as a type of relative clause and therefore assumed it must be ungrammatical and therefore inappropriate for writing that definitely should be grammatical?

Having nothing better to do in my dreary, pathetic life, I plugged �, which is why� (quotation marks included) into the New York Time online archive search. The New York Times, which, one presumes, adheres to a high standard of grammatical appropriateness, deemed this structure appropriate enough to use no less than 2,175 times since 1996 (as far back as the online archive goes).

But, alas, the New York Times is an American newspaper, and therefore suspect. Perhaps topic comment structures are just another American barbarism. Since the English invented the English language, whatever they say and write must always be correct. And how much more correct can you get than the London Times? My investigation determined that the London Times has used this structure 42 times in the last seven days alone. Not wanting to pay for a subscription, I couldn�t go back any further than that, but by extrapolation, we arrive at an astonishing estimate of 20,328 uses in the same time period covered by my New York Times search!

What conclusion can we draw from this? That there are a lot of grammatical old spouses' tales, and this one of them.

HPD

[High Plains Drifter]

[purna]

HPD,
I bow in your general direction and to your tenacity...good research.

Purna

[High Plains Drifter]

Thanks Purna, but be careful where you're bowing. If you bow in my direction from California, you might accidentally convert to a new religion.

[thelmadatter]

Thanks for all the interesting, well-thought-out responses. I enjoyed reading them.

I agree that it is a major problem that students come into university writing the same way that they speak. IMHO, that is because the education system has let them down. They had never been taught that there are several styles (or registers) of expression, and what is appropriate in one situation is not appropriate in another. Some of it is a reaction against the "good English" "bad English" dichotomy of traditional grammar/composition teaching. While I agree that it is unwise to label a student's English expression "bad," it is also wrong NOT to teach him/her the language style that will help him/her enter the business/professional/academic world and limit his/her opportunities.

--- proud "bidialectal" speaker of "Joisey" and standard English

[purna]

HPD,
I lived in Buraimi in Oman for a year and often went to Al-Ain to shop and hide. Very clever that you picked up on my implication, but no chance of conversion here although I love the language and did name my eldest daughter Jamila. I still have dreams of returning to your part of the world, but I'd better dream fast as my biological clock seems to be ticking more rapidly these days.

Purna