Job Discussion Forums

[nickpellatt]

Posted this here as it might be useful for newbies - and sensible, clear and concise replies may help to illustrate language awareness for newbies (and for me of course LOL)

Anyway - my question.

A friend has sent me a message today to ask why we cannot say 'I feel stressful', or 'I am stressful'. She is a new teacher and this question has been posed to her by a student.

I have looked at this a few times, and made many observations regarding collocations, but I cannot offer a clear answer or rule, that says we CANT use it like this.

Collocates (for newbies - this means words commonly used alongside it) are things like 'job/employment/occupation/activity/occasion and so forther. It also appears with 'verb to be' on a regular basis, but with the subject in that structure mainly being 'It'

It also tends to be a classifying adjective rather than an ephitet or describing adjective.

Is there a clear reason why we CANT say or use it like this ..... or is it that we can use it like this and still be correct .... just that its common collocates and usage lie elsewhere???

PS - Try and keep the answers simple guys and gals ... use the language learners dictionary rule of not using more complicated language to explain the word, than the word itself

[Glenski]

One doesn't need a list of collocations to check a dictionary.

Stressful = causing stress (as in a situation causing stress to an individual)

Stressed = a feeling of stress brought on by a person or situation

Your friend is feeling stressed.

The confusion probably lies in the literal interpretation of the suffix "ful", which in some cases does actually mean "full of". But it has other meanings, too, as just illustrated.

[nickpellatt]

Thank you. Haha, I now feel foolish to be honest ... but thats fine, I will leave the thread intact as it does illustrate language awareness and how it can be tricky. This illustrates the difference between knowing how to use something, and how to explain how or why its used.

Interestingly, my dictionary definition wasnt so helpful. It just said 'full of stress or tension'.

To summarise - Its an adjective describing cause rather than affect.

Much appreciated Dude! Would you believe I actually did a BNC corpus search on this word this morning ... talk about not seeing the wood for the trees!!

[fluffyhamster]

A lot depends on if you're cranking out sentences that are supposedly complete, versus only complete as far as the word in question:

I feel stressful.
I feel (that) stressful...situations are increasing?

[OK, that isn't the best example ever - it isn't really answering the "I'm..." question, and it's changed 'feel' to a more cognitive than physical meaning - but I would certainly be wary of saying that "something" (in this case, the chain 'I feel stressful' ("I feel stressful...")) isn't possible in English, because a student might interpret that the wrong way and be wary of the word(s) generally in future. We need to stress that a particular choice is wrong here (=in this, its present context); adding 'only' or 'at least' (depending on your intuition, which could be faulty) to 'here' should both probably "go without saying"].

I would say that 'stressful' is both an attributive (=coming before the noun) and predicative (=occuring after a linking verb) adjective (I think that 'predicative' especially is more useful than 'describing', and 'attributive' probably better than 'classifying'), but that 'stressed' is probably more predicative - it seems to be marked as such in learner dictionaries. (But personally, I wouldn't rule out e.g. 'A stressed(-out) teacher', at least in the world outside the classroom materials (and if so, that could well be due to having had to prepare those materials LOL)).

[nickpellatt]

Howdy Mr Hamster

Im studying a grammar course with the OU at the moment. The approach and terminology is the descriptive approach favoured by Halliday. I have recent been reading about describers and classifiers ... and was too quick to look to the terms and tools I have just been reading about when seeking an answer here.

Halliday would probably agree ... the course I am studying is about grammar as its actually used rather than any prescriptive approach ... Bearing that in mind I could envisage dialogue where 'stressful' may be used in a manner that could be described as incorrect.

I did feel foolish when Glenski replied ... But I can live with that LOL, I wanted to post it because the original question is very typical of the type posed in interviews or by students ... this thread has some interesting points for newbies to consider IMO. Im getting there slowly with grammar and language awareness ... Teaching it helps too!

The girl who asked me this question is actually teaching in China, and has been for about a year ... Its very easy for new teachers to not really know how to explain such questions to students.

Stressful - describes an action
Stressed - describes the feeling that this action causes

Simple, yet often hard to articulate

[fluffyhamster]

Howdy to you too, Nick! No need to feel foolish - nothing you'd said was absolutely wrong, and it's given us all something to ponder and possibly write about (and in the process learn more about - teacher's problems at least, if not the potential grammar involved); plus, even when people are 100% correct and reasonably succinct, they may still not express things in a way that absolutely everybody can understand, relate to and easily use straight off the bat! I know that I for one can write at sometimes epic length about things that others more capable could express better in just a phrase or two; that being said, sometimes things aren't exactly simple. Take a look for example at the following thread (which sort of compares some more traditional* to SFG labels in passing):
http://forums.eslcafe.com/teacher/viewtopic.php?t=9323

BTW, what OU course are you doing, Nick? Specifically, what books are you using? (Some of the OU's own set textbooks look pretty good!).

*'Traditional' is much more preferable to 'prescriptive' ("Im studying a grammar course with the OU at the moment. The approach and terminology is the descriptive approach favoured by Halliday...the course I am studying is about grammar as its actually used rather than any prescriptive approach"). I haven't read enough of SFG/SFL to know if all its terms are genuinely more descriptive, but I am sure that they are worth learning about and considering. There are some people though who unfortunately seem to have appropriated the label "functional grammar" a bit too freely and easily - the "authorities" at ETAQ, for example.
http://forums.eslcafe.com/teacher/viewtopic.php?t=8970 ).

[nickpellatt]

http://www3.open.ac.uk/courses/bin/p12.dll?C01E303

There is the link to my course ... Its the one to finish my BA. Im about 10 weeks into it, and waiting for the score back for my second assignment. Im finding it hard going, but not quite as tough as the discussion in the thread you posted! I thought it was a fairly simple sentence, but a bloody complicated discussion about it LOL

The main book used on my course is the Longman one listed in the course description...there are set OU books included too...most specific to the course.

There is another book that is quite technical in terms on content...i dont have it near me at the mo, but I will post its title later

[fluffyhamster]

That Longman grammar and accompanying workbook are certainly a good affordable compromise between traditional terminology and functional, fuller explanation, plus you also get provided in the grammar book with actual facts, figures and findings (all very interesting, and they provide an extra level of clarity and certainty, ultimately) from a sizeable corpus!

Heh, that discussion is slight overkill, sure, but then, English grammar is a bit more fiddly than say Chinese!

The problem with grammar terminology is that coming up with terms that others will fully "recognize" makes it all feel a bit like a test that few really want to always take (and possibly "fail" at, in those other's eyes at least). However, even when terms differ, a lot of the time people are obviously still talking about more or less the same points (how could they not be, when they both at least understand the meaning of the language sample underlying the superimposed metalanguage), and the most important thing is just that one become consistent with oneself about what terms one will use and favour (whilst of course making sure that they are broadly correct and fitting terms that other people can appreciate even if they don't quite want to use them themselves).