Job Discussion Forums

[gaijinalways]

I did a recent picture description exercise with students and was surprised at the number of mistakes in some of the sentences.

Typical were:

Absence of articles In one (picture) there is a keyhole on the door....

Confusion about subject-verb conjugation, especially mixing plurals and singulars

The telephone dials are different colors.

Misuse of negation

There is a keyhole in one (picture) and there is not.
There is a mouse hole in one (picture) and there is none.

I think these were the most common ones I observed in the homework papers I corrected. I would prefer to try and focus on them with perhaps directed essays and possibly short speaking exercises.

Any suggestions on how to focus on the errors within the context of these subjects; family trends, errands, and neighborhoods (these are the subjects coming up in the textbook)?

[naturegirl321]

It's because it's been ingrained in their little minds.

1. Write their mistakes on the board. A couple of sentences at the beginning of the class, and they have to spot them.

2. Or make up questions and have them answer them aloud. When they make a misktae, notify them with a signal, like a stop sign. Then have other students do the stop sign thing.

3. Do a game. For example: I go to school. Make them change it into the past positive, past negative, and past questions. Each kids has a paper and has 30 seconds to write an answer. oNe point for correct answer. Play in teams.

4. Play Jeopardy with mistakes, short FIB, etc.

Essay? Ugh. That sounds like punishment for the teacher. YOu could easily relate things to the context, just change the sentence. It's probably because they're thinking a bit in their native language. Just a few ideas. HOpe they help.

[gaijinalways]

[TheLongWayHome]

[Kootvela]

Well, the locative (there is/there are) is a tricky thing in general. In their L1 they might have a completely different way to say it, so they stick to what they feel safer to be with. I would suggest revision lessons with introducing the key grammar problem areas again from the scratch.

[johnslat]

Dear Kootvela,
I recall a locative case in Latin, but I don't think we can say there's one in English:

"locative case
(grammar): case used to indicate place, or the place where, or wherein. It corresponds roughly to the English prepositions "in", "on", "at", and "by". Languages that use the locative case include Belarusian, Croatian, Czech, Dyirbal, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Quechua, Russian, Sanskrit, Serbian, and Swahili.


http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/locative_case

"For indicating a location the locative case of a noun is used. If the English language had similar declension of nouns then the nouns following the prepositions "in" and "at" would be in the locative case.The presence of the preceding preposition is obligatory when the noun is in the locative case."


http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:olVGjMS8vWAJ:www.englishforums.com/English/AboutTheMeaningOfWhere/2/zlphk/Post.htm+the+locative+case+in+English&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=5&gl=us

And I'm not sure why or how "there is/there are" would relate to it. In my experience, the main difficulty with "there is/there are" constructions is subject/verb agreement since the subject has to be found in an unfamiliar place - following the verb.
"There is/there are" constructions often express quantities rather than location.

Regards,
John

[gaijinalways]

[Kootvela]

[johnslat]

Dear Kootvela,

"I don't really trust online websites quotes when people google them up to support their cause."

Well, given the constraints of communicating here (I mean, I can't show you the books), do you have any suggestions as to how I could "support" my "cause" other than quoting web sites?
Or, to turn it around a bit, could you quote me some web sites that "support" your "cause?"

Hey, I definitely could be wrong about this. I'd just like to find out for sure whether I am or not.
By the way, I'm a teacher with 31 years of experience.

Regards,
John

P.S, Despite your dislike/distrust of on-line references, you might want to take a look at this one, which, I think, describes the case (pun intended) quite well.
A sample:

"Modern English is an analytic language. It primarily makes meaning by word order. To show that a word is in the nominative case, (i.e., the word functions as the subject of a clause), modern English speakers put that word in front of a verb. To show that a word is in the accusative case (functioning as a direct objective), modern English speakers put that word after the verb. For instance,

The teacher (nominative) graded the tests (accusative/direct object).

Word order thus becomes very important in analytic languages.

However, Anglo-Saxon (Old English), Latin, Greek, and many other languages are or were synthetic. These languages require that the case or function of each word be visibly marked through inflections or declensions.

In synthetic languages, word order does not matter. Synthetic languages primarily show case by inflecting words (i.e., changing the form of the words in pre-established patterns called inflections. Often this takes the form of some special ending added to the word or its stem. Such special endings are often called declensions by teachers of Latin, Greek, or Old English. Most synthetic Indo-European languages make use of the following cases:

(Then six cases are described, followed by this)

"More rarely, some Indo-European languages like Sanksrit, Old Norse or Anglo-Saxon may use these cases as well:

"Locative Case: Words in this case function to show location; for instance, "Joe went home." The word home would be in the locative case in a synthetic language. Many synthetic languages simply use the dative case here."

So, I see it as described above - a difference between synthetic languages and analytic languages. But analytic languages, such as English, primarily use word order, rather than case.


Could it be that the professors were saying that your examples in English correspond to the locative case in synthetic languages?

http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/declensions.html

[Kootvela]

Dear John,

How about using books about English grammar? That should help. Time conrtsaints is nothing when it is about accuracy.
I've got here one theoretical grammar of English book that says:
'There is/there are in English are used to tell that somebody or something exists in a certain location'.
I take it as the locative case.
I could quote it, alas, it is in Lithuanian, so you would not make much use of it anyway, I suppose

[johnslat]

Dear Kootvela,
It might be difficult for me to use books about English grammar to support my case (I just can't resist that pun) that the locative isn't IN English grammar. I mean, why would an English grammar book talk about something that's not in English grammar? I probably wouldn't find anything in such books about the ablative, dative or genitive cases, either.

It's hard to prove a negative.

Let me try this one:

"Everywhere except in the oldest Indo-Iranian languages the original eight Indo-European cases have suffered reduction. Proto-Germanic had only six cases, the functions of ablative (place from which) and locative (place in which) being taken over by constructions of preposition plus the dative case. In Modern English these are reduced to two cases in nouns, a general case that does duty for the vocative, nominative, dative, and accusative (�Henry, did Bill give John the letter?�) and a possessive case continuing the old genitive (�Bill's letter�)"

http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-74564/Indo-European-languages#603328.hook

or this:

"To say that something is in something, Lithuanians do not use a preposition like in English. Instead, we have a new case for that purpose: the locative case or vietininkas.

Here is how the locative case looks:

rusas (a Russian): ruse (in a Russian).
lietuvis (a Lithuanian): lietuvyje (in a Lithuanian).
kambarys (a room): kambaryje (in a room).
televizorius (a TV): televizoriuje (in a TV).
Amerika: Amerikoje (in America).
kėdė (a chair): kėdėje (in a chair)."

http://www.debeselis.net/lesson65.php

Regards,
John

[MO39]

Dear johnslat,

You've taken the words right out of my mouth (and saved me the trouble of typing them on my keyboard). Apart from the two cases (sorry for the unintended pun) you mention, English nouns don't have cases. It's true that back in the Dark Ages of writing English grammar books, attempts were made to force English into the patterns of Latin grammar, hence, the use of words like "locative", "dative"and so on to explain English grammatical categories and concepts. In reality, while the idea of "locative" exists in modern English, we do not decline nouns to express this idea bur rather use prepositions to express the idea of location. Perhaps the author of the grammar books that kootvela has used in her university studies were trying to force English into Lithuanian grammar categories.

Cheers,

MO

[johnslat]

Dear MO39,

I think it may be a case (tee-hee - stop me before I do it again) of the difference between:

1. 'There is a book on the table.' This is LIKE the locative case in Lithuanian.

as opposed to

2. 'There is a book on the table.' This is the locative case in English.

Regards,
John

[MO39]

Dear John,

What can I say? You are the master of both clarity and obfuscation!

Cheers,

Marsha

[johnslat]

Dear MO39,
Well - I DO have a Master's. Which recalls what I used to say to my Saudi students who kept calling me Dr. John. When I'd protest that I didn't have a Ph.D. (i.e. that I wasn't a "Fudd"), they'd ask, "What we call you then?"
To which I'd reply, "Well, I do have a Master's degree, so why not call me "Master?"
Regards,
John