Job Discussion Forums

[dove]

I am a bit confused about the following sentences (I think they are correct, but half the class I was teaching tonight was not convinced).

Oranges are my favorite fruit.

Carrots are my favorite vegetable.

I think pandas are cute animals.


Half the class thought it should be "Oranges are my favorite fruits."

Then I thought maybe it should be "The orange is my favorite fruit." "The carrot is my favorite vegetable." "I think the panda is a cute animal."

What do you think? I really appreciate your help.

[fluffyhamster]

The problem is that some students are thinking of indefinite but assuredly identical oranges as all being each unique or something, rather than part of a set (i.e. thinking 'Oranges are my favorite fruits' instead of 'Oranges are my favorite* (type of**) fruit'), whilst others are going for the more formal, marked form*** of generic reference (i.e. 'The orange is my favorite fruit' - but it would be facetious to respond 'What orange', and I suppose we should be thankful that the students used 'my favorite fruit' and not ' ~ fruits' with 'The orange' at least), despite the fact that indefinite plurals do the job fine...provided of course that one can visualize them as a set (a set covering the surface of the world, like little protuberant blobs, is another visual option, perhaps: anywhere, everywhere, who cares which ones!).

[Note however that when we are talking of two or more types of fruit, we can have a final/head plural noun no problem: Oranges and apples are (my favorite) fruits. ('Oranges and apples are my fave types** of fruit' is also still an option, but one that's now a bit too wordy, and of less pedagogical value given that there is obviously two different fruits in this new context).]

When it comes to the panda example, the most obvious thing is that there is no 'my fave (type of)' lurking, and 'Pandas are cute animal' would be very strange (were they all blended into a bloody pulp by that Sichuan earthquake?! ).

So, 'favorite' does seem to imply "one" (or however many stated) and maybe cancels out any foregoing genericness, whereas pandas aren't usually blended together but all little "individual" balls of fun running around; and with fruits or vegetables generally we usually have a choice of keeping them whole or slicing and dicing them to "death". [Just out of interest, "Tomatoes are fruit" gets half the Google hits of "Tomatoes are fruits", at 21,300 to 44,900 respectively, but you might not want to reveal those facts and figures, that probably mainly native speakers have created and can live with, to non-native students who are looking for order and logicality wherever possible (and I think that it is possible to impose such order and logicality - there's space for a few examples under the rug, surely! ). And don't whatever you do mention that supermarkets probably have more signs saying 'Fruit' than 'Fruits', but only signs saying 'Vegetables' (?!'Vegetable')! "Fruit n' Veg" and all that! ].

Yeah, it might be an idea to try to avoid tricky stuff as much as possible. The following are just suggestions off the top of my head, though:

Oranges are my favorite fruit > I like oranges > I love oranges! (They're my favorite (fruit, obviously)!).

Carrots are my favorite vegetable - ditto.

I think pandas are cute animals > (I think) Pandas are cute (We really can leave out the super-obvious 'animals'...but maybe that is good input re. versus 'animal' - all learning opportunities, I suppose, even if it causes the teacher to tear their hair out and need to get a wig. One thing is for sure, that certain examples can mean "entering a world of pain", "create a rod for the teacher's back" etc, so once you're aware of what those examples might be, it might be best to avoid them if you (or more importantly your students) "don't have time" for 'em).

A couple of threads that might be of interest:
http://forums.eslcafe.com/teacher/viewtopic.php?t=7406
http://forums.eslcafe.com/teacher/viewtopic.php?t=5271
http://forums.eslcafe.com/teacher/viewtopic.php?t=2365

By the way, I've posted a link to this thread over on the TD Applied Linguistic forum, in a thread entitled 'Kung fu orange pandas!'(!): http://forums.eslcafe.com/teacher/viewtopic.php?t=9510 . I hope you don't mind.

*Note that 'my favorite' in this context ousts the 'a' of a more general statement: Oranges are a (type of) fruit.

**There is a translation for 'type of' in Japanese. I guess it would be categorzed as a type of "measure word", somewhat akin to the (less ubiquitous) class of partitives/partitive nouns in English. The notion of a hidden partitive could be useful to speakers of languages that use partitives but not articles or plural suffixes; the countability then appears in the partitive rather than in the final noun of the noun phrase: a piece of coal; two pieces of coal; *two piece of coals/*two pieces of coals. But like I said above, there is a risk of an unwelcome wordiness creeping in with using this, and of it becoming a crutch.

***The "definite, singular" generic reference option and its respective ratios would be of more relevance to those having to write in English e.g. scientists, than for people having casual spoken conversations. Again, see the first of the linked threads above, and if you're interested in reading more about generic reference and the like, try looking firstly in Leech's Glossary - http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=KsJXpwPPgvcC&printsec=frontcover#PPA46,M1 - then in G.Lock's Functional English Grammar (previewable on Google Book Search), or Celce-Murcia & Larsen-Freeman's The Grammar Book (unfortunately not previewable on GBS).

[dove]

Thank you for your reply, FH. Your scholarship is impressive.

In some ways, I like when these conundrums come up in class. They inspire me to think about the language from a learner's point of view. I know they can open a can of worms in the classroom and cause everything to get a bit sidetracked. But I always tell my students I will research their questions and give them a better explanation in the next class. I also encourage them to do a bit of their own research--I'm sure there are loads of Japanese forums where niggling points of English grammar are debated and analyzed.... And I tell them to think about the poor Japanese teacher who has to explain "wa" and "ga" to Japanese language learners.

[fluffyhamster]

Heh, thanks Dove. (I don't know about impressive though - I'm usually just trying to throw out a few sources and terms that I've not quite finished grappling with yet myself!).

Can I ask where the examples are from? I'm guessing a textbook, given their ultimate similarity to one another.

Anyway, I'm just going to go back now and edit one or two points in my earlier post, in order to make it read a bit better.

[Conor_Ire]

Man!! I've just finished a class were i wanted to pull my hair out!!!


There is/are a lot of people????

The book says ''are'' but i said ''is'' and I have many reasons for saying ''is''.

The problem is , I just confused everyone including the japanese teacher and i ended up apologising.

It's a bit embarissing as I think some students might start to doubt me!!

[fluffyhamster]

It's perfectly natural to want to use 'There's', and lots of people (native speakers) do so in their speech - it's obviously harder to contract There + are:

There're (=Th'error..re..re..re...like a car starting!).

But obviously it is better that learner master the "proper" way to say things, especially when it comes to forming questions (Is there...? vs Are there...?), and if their tests ask for There is... vs There are... generally (which doubtless their tests do!).

[dove]

Yes, it can be confusing when teaching spoken English vs grammatical English.

The examples in my original post were my own....they were from an error correction task I was giving in a writing class (maybe I should rethink giving such a task in the future!).

Anyway, for the follow-up class I want to go over the grammar point again by giving lots of example sentences.

Could I just confirm if you think these sentences are correct?

I think pandas are cute animals.

I think pandas are a cute animal.

I think pandas are a cute kind of animal.

I think apples are a delicious fruit. (Note: "I think apples are delicious fruits" is not common, right? Grammatically correct, but not common in spoken English).

I think apples are a delicious fruit.

I think apples are a delicious kind of fruit.

I think potatoes are a delicious vegetable. (Again: "I think potatoes are delicious vegetables" is not common....but again grammatically OK.)

I think potatoes are a delicious kind of vegetable.

I think roses are a beautiful flower. (Now here, for some reason, "I think roses are beautiful flowers" sounds OK, not as awkward as "I think potatoes are delicious vegetables." Is that just me?

I think roses are a beautiful kind of flower.

Pandas are my favorite animal. (NOT "Pandas are my favorite animals")

Pandas are my favorite kind of animal.

Apples are my favorite fruit. (Again, not "Apples are my favorite fruits."

Apples are my favorite kind of fruit.

Potatoes are my favorite vegetable. (Not "Potatoes are my favorite vegetables."

Potatoes are my favorite kind of vegetable.

Roses are my favorite flower. (Not "Roses are my favorite flowers")

Roses are my favorite kind of flower.
~~~~~~~~~~~
I just want to make a handout with example sentences and be done with it. I hope to avoid long explanations.

What do you think?

Again, I really appreciate your help (FH and anyone who cares to chime in).