Job Discussion Forums

[leeroy]

I can see it now...

Jae-Young: Teacher! I can say "I am come from Kolea. This is nice."?

Teacher: Shame on you Jae-Young. Firstly, the irony of your enquiry as to whether the grammatical integrity of an (incorrect) utterance was correct being incorrect is not lost on me. But let's not get bogged down with that...

Your usage of the pronoun "I", functioning as the subject of your clause (and, in fact, complete utterance) is (technically) sufficient. However, the following verb "to be", correctly conjugated in this form as "am" should be followed by a complement (usually in the form of an adjective (phrase)) - or, assuming it is operating as an auxiliary verb, by a present or past participle.

Instead, you have placed the transitive verb "to come" (in its bare infinitive form, I might add) - which is simply incorrect (though in some ebonic dialects this may be seen as acceptable). Despite this inconsistency, you continue with the prepositional phrase "from Korea" - to which allegiance to which verb (to be or to come) is unclear.

To add insult to injury, phonetically the approximant voiced palato-alveolar /r/ has been incorrectly represented as the lateral voiced alveolar /l/. What were you thinking?

Lastly, at a discourse level, you clearly have some work to do in regard to anaphoric referencing. The anaphor "this" is inappropriate in this context - as I'm sure the rest of the class know, "it" is better suited.

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Yeah, OK, so (inevitable mistakes aside) I've shown off, and you get the point. To what extent should grammatical (and wider linguistic) terminology be used in a class setting? Do all these funky words that we learn on DELTAs and MAs have any place in the classroom? And if not, where do they have a place? Solely within the world of academia?

I think most of us agree that basics like "verb", "noun", "subject", etc.. are pretty handy to know. But where is the line drawn between "metalanguage that helps with students" and "metalanguage that helps academics show off"?

Personally, I rarely go above "clause" in the classroom - but it all comes out when I'm trying to look clever in the staff room or chatting to my boss.

[latefordinner]

In my classrooms, I can't go any further than mingci (noun) and dongci (verb) without losing everyone. Even that loses a few of them. When working with the Chinese teachers, I can go as far as singular and plural, add-JECK-tive and add-verb. <duck> The sad thing is that when I had dinner the other night with some foreign teachers, even they didn't know what I was talking about when grammar came up. <sigh> Sorry Leeroy, I can't help you.

[scot47]

My impression is that the ones who prattle on in "metalanguage" are the very ones who have themselves been unable to acquire any level of competence in foreign languages.

Why is the field of TEFL so crowded with monolinguals ?

Is the study of "Linguistics" a substitute for the study of language and languages ?

[struelle]

[Roger]

When learners have a foundation to build on, a sufficiently large vocabulary to categorise and are familiar with sentence patterns, then metalanguage is a must. When is this the case?
Ask yourself: when can you discuss how your own language functions? Not before you have had some exposure to the written word.
For a L 2 learner, this comes somewhat earlier due to time constraints.
But I can't see how pushing students to practise a language they haven't sufficiently internalised without learning how it functions. That's why grammar and syntax play an overriding role.
No amount of oral practice can give them the exposure to the target language because they don't learn to correct themselves, which is essential in order to understand how the language works.

[guest of Japan]

Roger, I actually agree with you, but we may guage the level a little differently.

[sprightly]

i can cheat; my students are french, and most of these technical terms are nearly identical. i throw a little accent on the first time, and after that, they're fine! i try to use them only when necessary.

i never used it with kids; we played simon says to learn classroom instructions. (or, teacher says.)

with fluent students, yes, because they're getting into a level of language learning where they need to use this technical lanugage in order for me to explain why they have to use a certain word order or what have you.

i think that using simple language; like you said about hedging--this cuts down on the amount of time trying to get into activities, and opens up more time for the activity itself.

[FGT]

Where I work we have beginners' classes when, early on, we teach them "noun", "verb", "subject" etc through either example or translation or both. ( this is the same lesson when we do "what's your name?") then we continue to teach everything in English, teaching words/ phrases such as "preposition", "passive", "Present perfect continuous" etc as it becomes relevent because it provides a shorthand. Eg: "You've written the wrong preposition in this sentence", or "is it active or passive? If it's passive, how do we make the passive?" etc. I thought this was good until a student today asked me if something was "genitive" and I had to reply "I don't know, I hate words like genitive. When I learnt Latin I felt I was learning two foreign languages, not one."