Job Discussion Forums

[johnslat]

Dear stillnoshepp,
Do you use any textbooks? If so, does the English you know agree with the textbooks you use?
Regards,
John

[MO39]

[Yossarian Lives]

Art

[rusmeister]

[stillnosheep]

[johnslat]

Dear stillnosheep,
Well, that's fortunate (I guess), although I always enjoyed it when I used British English books and could point out some of the differences between that and American English.
So, if your English agrees with the textbooks, I'd say your English must be mostly "standard."

[stillnosheep]

[stillnosheep]

[stillnosheep]

[rusmeister]

[stillnosheep]

The argument was not about whether English is the dominant international language but whether one (or a few) 'English(es)'' can in all situations be privileged as the correct English(es). Ultimately history will answer that one, and history is another tide that cannot be held back by any silly English cnut.

Many things that possess no objective core are taught and learnt. We learn to become proficient in all kinds of endeavours that are not based on objective rules. Instead of simply stating that teaching and communication are impossible if the thing taught/learnt does not have an objective core simply look at many forms of learning or communication and try to find that 'core'. In many cases no such objective core exists and any attempt to define what the objective core is will fail as no definition can ever serve to separate that which is to be included from that which is to be excluded.

There most certainly are not "three conditional forms around which mixes and variations are built" in the actually existing language! Go check out the various correlations of conditional expressions in one of the online corpuses. There is a whole landscape of conditional forms. Most sentences with conditional meaning, as English is currently spoken, do not take the classic form of one of the 'three conditionals'. Teachers and writers of student grammars have identified three common correlations and labelled them the 1 2 & 3 conditional to enable the teaching of simple rules for making conditional sentences at lower intermediate level. However the language is the original; the rules are derivative, not vice-versa!

There are only three conditional from which the mixes and variations are built in the grammar books. In the language a myriad forms exist of which teachers privilege three as the 1 2 & 3 conditional to allow the teaching of nice, simple but inaccurate and arguably ultimately misleading lessons at lower intermediate level.

[rusmeister]

If we change your phrase to: "whether a form of English can in most situations be seen as the dominant form of English", rather than "all situations" and "correct form" then perhaps we can talk.

First of all, I teach my students that English is one language (so we don't talk about different languages). If it were not, I could not enjoy British or other authors, TV, or what-have-you. To me, an American, it seems painfully obvious that British is dominant, American challenges it (but that weakly, outside of America, and the others are just not on the table by comparison. So even though I'm not British, I see little choice but to use British textbooks and admit British superiority in EFL teaching methods.

Having an objective core means being able to define it. if you cannot define a thing you cannot teach it. Plain and simple. Also, it is the broadening of definitions that tends to make concepts meaningless (like the current drive to broaden the definition of marriage, but that's another topic). If you do not draw lines, how can you teach? You need to teach rules, and explain that a person will meet exceptions throughout their lives. The rules give them an effective tool to correctly form a great deal of language correctly in a foreign language. In the case of conditionals, students can immediately form a large number of conditionals based on the three types and gradually learn other forms as they encounter them.

If you have a better tool, I'm interested - but you seem to be advocating the abolishing of such tools. Also, I have never proposed teaching the entire language to them myself - it's a given that there are great numbers of exceptions and variations, which the student will continue to learn - mostly without me, but you have to have an objective foundation.

I think studying a foreign language yourself is the best way to discover that. How many foreign languages have you studied or mastered?

[gaijinalways]

[rusmeister]

[gaijinalways]

I don't see that much of a difference in the textbooks I've seen. I currently use;

Interchange Intro, World Link Book 2, and Fifty-Fifty for my lower level classes.

I don't as much time to prepare as I'd like, but than I would have to consider making less money (to make more free time).