Job Discussion Forums

[lajzar]

[jud]

Oh my, my,

Step out of the house for 2 hours and look what happens.

I understood that the original poster wanted an explanation for himself, as sometimes we teachers need, no?

In any case, I also don't believe in long-winded explanations.

I would never teach "such as" or "quite a" to low-level learners, and if they asked, I'd say it means "very good" and leave it at that.

For higher level learners, I introduce such as and quite a as quantifiers to emphasize something. And then give an example.

Stop,

Thanks,

Good night

[Dr.J]

I watched a very good film.

= I watched a film. The film was particularly good.

I watched quite a good film.

= I watched a film. The film was good. The level of goodness was particularly high.

That's how I'd explain it!

That, and lots of other examples. Linguistic rules are projected onto language rather than the other way around, so you have to have enough raw data in your head before you can start understanding rules.

[arioch36]

I'll stand with the old man Scot on this one. We often say it because we say it, not for any logical reasons. Unlike JRR Tolkien, who created languages with rules, english did not evolve based on rules. True, there are many patterns. Why? just because, not because anyone sat down and made any rules.

graduate students who study linguistics (and who do not really teach english) love to come up with complicated rules that are created entirely in their mind. There IS NO REASON that one says "quite a" but "very a" the truth is after the fact some linguist who does not teach english, but needs to write a thesis paper, tries to produce artificial rules, and then tries to mash the english language to fit her new hypothesis. And usually fails, because there are so many exceptions to the rule.


BTW, where I am from, no one says "quite a". We say that was a quite good meal. Using the pronciple that the simplest explaination tends to be true, it would seem that this should be "correct english" and quite a to be incorrect.

I would be very interested in Dduck showing the etmyology about these phrases

[mjed9]

Actually I have to disagree. If you have studied linguistics (and I point out now that I haven't) you would know that there are two schools of thought regarding grammar.

Descriptive and Perscriptive

Descriptive grammarians plot out the rules of our language and there IS a rule for every instance of grammar, no matter how colloquial or high level it is.

This is the main point about language. With a definable and ultimately finite set of rules we can create an infinite set of sentences.

On the other hand, perscriptive grammarians try to re-write our grammar system. The most famous one being a man called Lowth who in 1762 re-wrote a lot of English based on old Latin for the use of the middle classes. Changes he made which are now considered a natural part of our grammar include

> stopping the use of double negatives
> making no distinction between singular and plural you
> using Pronouns in comparatives forms

Prior to his re-write it was acceptable English used by all the classes to say such things as

You don't have none
You was wrong about that
She is fatter than me (instead of "she is fatter than I")

In no way I am a language purist (nor a geek - although I have to admit that linguistics fascinates me on an amateur level), so I cannot comment on an individual's teaching style. It depends on what you believe will yield the greatest result from the point of the student - as per schmooj's previous message, nothing more.

[once again]

I fail to how asking "why" in relation to a language is any way useless.
If a student says "I go to the shop yesterday" I will tell him that he should have said "I went to the shop yesterday". If he asks WHY I will tell him that "went " is one of the ways used to denote the action of "going" in the past. If he asks me WHY that is I will tell him that that is one of the ways that English denotes a past action. If he tells me that in his language the verb will remain the same and the past is denoted with a "time tag" I will tell him that English does it in a different way. If he asks why English does it in a different way I will tell him that languages developed in different ways. If he asks WHY, I will tell him that because long long ago people did not travel so much and they did not meet many other people so their languages developed in their own ways.
If he says why are their "rules" I will tell him that the "rules" are conventions that people follow so that they can understand each other.
I feel this is far better than saying.."Just because it does"..as this will neither help the student understand the mistake nor learn how to use a correct form in the future.

[scot47]

Of course teachers use prsecriptive rules in their teaching . We teach students that the correct form is "I went yesterday" and not "*I goed yesterday". If we feel it worthwhile we might say that for complete past time we often use the Past Simple.

My point though is that 30 examples would be of more use to our student than a rule.

[once again]

Good point. Of course examples are what hammer the "rule" home and help it to become internalised, and some aspects are best taught by teaching discreet formations and structures. But do we just give thirty examples of "went" being used to denote a completed action of "going". and then do we then give thirty examples of "saw" being used to denote a past action of "seeing" and then do we..and on and on for every single verb? Isn't it much easier to say that there are different parts of a verb that can be used in differerent circumstances, and if you want to indicate a completed action (you can go however deeply you want into your definition of what a completed action is) we use the relevant "part" of the verb. I would call this teaching a "rule" . The "rules" are there for the most part to provide patterns that the students can follow and thus enable them to generate sentences that they have not seen before. Independent generation of "new" utterences is what we recognise as language competence. And then if the student asks WHY I will refer him/her to my other post.

[J-Pop]

[dmb]

To continue a conversation in the canteen today can anynoe give/explain dangling participles or dangling quantifiers. are they acceptable in all circumstances except academic writing?

[arioch36]

Which comes first, the grammar or the rule?

I really can't agree that there is a rule for all grammar points. I can't even begin to imagine how large such a book would be, and how convoluted it would become trying to explain every variation. There are many explainations that are developed after the fact. The most common and widely accepted become "the rule" of the day, the current standard. Then people start speaking a little diferent, it becomes widespread, and we have to write new rules

The "rules" tell us what we can not do, but do not explain why we do something. Grammar changes from year to year. Well, at least from decade to decade. English is a mongrel language of many origins, all with different "rules". Are the rules today the same as 300 years ago? As different styles of english grammar deveop, the "rules" change ( when the academic grammarians publish their papers)

You can be a Chomsky type of person looking for "universal rules". Then you find this exception and that exception, and have to think up a new "rule" (explaination)But for teaching, the rules are a gimmik; sometimes worthwhile, sometimes not.

I teach my students that a noun plus "ly" becomes a adjective, and an adjective plus "ly" becomes an adverb. Is this a rule? No, it's a gimmik, usually effective because it's usually true. (And I tell them that)
A good gimmik covers a lot of situations and is easy to understand, and thus might be worthwhile to teach. But to call it a rule?

[johnslat]

Regarding "grammar rules":
Never say never - there are ALWAYS "exceptions to the rules". Language ain't math.
Regards,
John
P.S. I agree with arioch36 (although I'm a little confused by "noun plus 'ly' = adjective"; can't think of too many common examples) - "gimmicks" may be our best tools - different "gimmicks" at different levels. We "reveal" the info by stages, half-truth, by half-truth.
Regards,
John

[dduck]

[once again]

Arioch, I am not sure many would disagree with your assertion that the rules are not set in stone and change with new and widely accepted usage patterns. As far as I am concerned, the usage comes first, we look at the patterns as they are used by the majority of speakers and hence are the convention, and then tell students what the conventions are. I figure my job as a teacher is to help students along to a point where their language patterns and usage are as close to the conventions used by most speakers as they can get. That way they have a better chance of being understood! Surely if language is about communication, then language should be about the best communication possible. The best level of communication comes when there is the least amount of "unconventional" usage out there. Try as I might, I can't get most people to understand my "unconventional" usage of Cantonese, no matter how much I may possit that languages are living breathing things and everyone around me following the accepted Cantonese conventions should just get used to it and understand me perfectly. My wife can understand me perfectly, but that is because she has spent a long time working out which "conventions" I am using, and we have also developed our own. Sweet I know! But alas, I am having a little difficulty convincing other people of my "unconventional" usage way forward towards the best communication possible, mostly I assume, because they do not understand a word I say!

The simple answer to rules not telling us why we do something is..by following the rules more people will understand us. Why do we say " I have seen a message on a board?" Because if we say it that way more people will understand our intended meaning than if we say "I on board, seen a message have I?"

On the point of exceptions to rules, well of course there are! They are there because the "rules" have been developed after the usage patterns have become apparent. In some cases the usage patterns have developed differently. It doesn't mean overall "rules" cannot be identified. Personally, my spelling is so poor that I wish there were no spelling conventions that I was supposed to follow! Then I could just hit the keyboard randomly and the letters would be understood by everyone as being an accurate written represention of what I intended to communicate.

Following the conventions is the best way to be understood by the greatest number of people, which is afterall what any language is about. (unless of course the language is designed to keep exclusivity, but that is a whole other argument!)

[once again]

On the dangling participle point, it is convention that the subject of the participle clause/phrase (call it what you will) that preceeds the comma, should also be the subject of the following clause (or vice versa).
Hence "Looking out of the window, I saw the boats were beautiful"
The subject of "looking out of the window" and "saw the boats" is I.
It is considered "dangling" if the subjects differ. "Looking out of the window, the boats looked beautiful." By strict convention it would seem that the boats were the ones looking out of the window. Now in this case the meaning is pretty obvious as boats generally don't spend much time looking out of the window, although they do often look beautiful! But in some cases it can be confusing. "Looking out of the window, I saw that the men looked handsome". Here it is clear that "I" was looking out of the window. We could rephrase the sentence to "Looking out of the window, the men looked handsome". Here, by following the strict convention, it means that the men were looking out of the window. It could also possibly mean that the men looked handsome BECAUSE they were looking out the window or they looked handsome as they were doing it! If the writers intended point is that of the first sentence, then here we have confusion.

I guess in the light of my other comments I must say that following the convention is best because it avoids confusion and leads to more widely understood "communication"!