Job Discussion Forums

[Stephen Jones]

the comment is not derogatory its factual. I have never met a non-native speaker who managed to get tag questions right all the time, or indeed even most of the time.

The statement doesn't mean students aren't capable of getting other things right, but I've given up hope of you ever being capable of making a logical deduction.

[moonraven]

One of the things I teach is LOGIC--which is why I recognize the lack of it.

Here in Mexico tag questions are easily asimilated by students, as they are--if anything--more common in Latin American Spanish than in English. Since you were trying to convince us on another thread of your great familiarity with latin American Spanish, you should have known that....

Perhaps the reason why you didn't is because, as I pointed out on the other thread, you have zero experience of Latin America.

[Guy Courchesne]

I was going to point that out too Moonraven...tag-ons are not so difficult to teach for them being common in Spanish. The one thing that does sometimes give students difficulty is to not use a double negative, like one might in Spanish.

[Ben Round de Bloc]

The students I teach usually get the concept of question tags quite easily. Even the intonation doesn't seem all that difficult for them. The most common tags they use in Spanish here are �No? and �Verdad?, and the different intonations for questioning and confirming are quite similar to those in English. Once they have the structural practice of using positive-with-negative and negative-with-positive verbs along with keeping both parts of the sentence in the same verb tense, they seem to handle question tags without too much difficulty.

[Stephen Jones]

I found my Spanish students would tend to stress the ending too much (maybe too long a pause).
Still it's better they use the tag question than "no?" all the time.

[moonraven]

I find it to be really sad that there are teachers on this forum who spend their time criticizing and looking down on their students.

The teachers themselves are far from perfect in their use of the language.

Those very students allow you to have an income.

[aisha]

I agree with moonraven! It saddens me to think that a teacher would think badly of their students. It's very difficult to learn a language and it's common sense to know that students are going to have trouble with some concepts. Mr. Jones, from what I have gathered from your posts, it seems to me as if you skip over the teaching of intonation in your classes, which is very unfair to your students! Teachers are supposed to encourage and help students progress, that should be our goal and our purpose, rather than criticize or dishearten them.

[fluffyhamster]

Well, I don't know if Stephen is necessarily thinking badly of his students - in fact, you could see his decision not to focus too much on a difficult if not impossible area (and do something else with the time e.g. continue using less difficult and "demanding" question structures instead) as simply being realistic and having their best interests at heart (I'm talking generally, about non-Spanish students here). Remember, the active readers he was addressing are for the most part native teachers, not non-natives or students, and if he'd been responding to something like 'Articles' or 'Present perfect - damn difficult!' with a dry 'Yes', doubtless we'd all be agreeing with him. Why is it that native-like aspects of structural variation and prosody are being deemed essential for production (it seems) by some teachers here?

I don't always agree with what Stephen says and often think he could say things a little less directly, but in this instance I don't see what is so outrageous about saying this is a very difficult area to teach well, and that the expectations we have in teaching it may be unfair with regard to that whole "Does the student need to sound like a native" issue. You may believe tags are an important area to teach, and think you have found the perfect method with which to teach it, but then a simple 'Ha, yes, Steve, I and probably most other teachers can see your point, but don't you think it would be worth trying something like this...because...' would be more in order. Going off the rails in totally the opposite direction hardly makes one sound like a caring liberal type vis-a-vis one's students and their ultimate needs (arguable either way, but productively-speaking the "non-native" viewpoint seems to have won out in the literature).

http://www.eslcafe.com/forums/teacher/viewtopic.php?t=1075
(If you do a search for 'Carter' (of ~ and McCarthy fame) you can also find over a dozen threads on the Teacher forums with language and issues related to teaching native-speaker norms).