Job Discussion Forums

[leeroy]

A little while ago I was observing a class, as part of a peer-swap-observation thing that my school was doing.

It so happened that the guy I was observing was an experienced CELTA trainer - he knew his stuff and his lesson was cool. The aim was past modals ("must have", "might have", etc...).

Interestingly, he initially presented the target language (orally) in its contracted form;

"It must've been the other one!"
"He can't-ve put it there!"
"She might've gone somewhere else..."

This was drilled and practised repeatedly with the /ev/ sound for "have" (assuming here that the /e/ is in fact a schwa). Almost as an afterthought, he quickly checked that the students realised that /ev/ was a contraction of "have" and left it at that.

I would have done it the other way around - almost instinctively I had always presented the "full form" first, then brushed over the contracted form later - pretty much irrespective of the grammar point.

I brought this up in feedback later; predictably he explained that as native speakers it is fairly rare that we explicitly enounce auxiliary verbs. A big problem with students is that they over-enunciate themselves.

So, a simple question, leaving aside religion, b.reasts and foot size for now

Teach contraction first (then check full form afterwards), or vice versa?

[Stephen Jones]

Teaching contraction first is the method that became othordox in the late sixties.

As you said, the students will over-enunciate left to themselves, so try to couter it by giving them the natural form.

Remember also that as long as you get the rythm of an English sentence right most native speakers will understand you even if you commit grammatical inaccuracies, and the reasons for using the spoken form before introducing the written form becomes overwhelming.

[denise]

I would teach the full form first, so as to avoid any over-generalization problems. For example: on a billboard yesterday, I saw something that said, "you've to have dreams of being millionaire..." The contraction there just kinda makes me cringe.

d

[lagerlout2006]

What about hafta and coulda? Some books actually suggest this.....I hafta go to work now....

I coulda beena contenda..

[arioch36]

Definitely, I feel it is best to present the full form first. As someone said, I guess it was a wave at the time. New Concept English books, which are big in CHina, overemhasize contractions horribly. The students don't even know the full form.

Ex. What colour's Jim's shirt. etc, etc.

Never ...What colour is Jim's shirt. (Which I think is actually more appropriate, emphasizing IS.

Talking of Brit/Yank speech again, is it more of a British thing to say

What color's Jim's shirt, or a "60's" thing.

[yaramaz]

Here in Turkey, even the Turkish English teachers over use and seriously misuse the word 'wanna' (which, btw, I hate even when used correctly-- if you could ever say that 'wanna' can be used correctly!). For example, I often get emails or phone messages from highly educated English majors reading, 'I wanna to go to the cafe after school. U wanna to go with me?'



'Wanna' is a contraction of 'want to' . I want to (NAY, wanna!) scream, but obiously SOMEBODY taught a large number of Turks to say this. Probably the same idiot who told them to say 'Yes Please!' when you say their name.

[Mike_2003]

Not a contraction as such, but one problem I encounter a lot is the "a" being permanently fixed to "have/has". I often hear such expressions as "I have a two brothers" or "He has a many friends" and the like.

I think this illustrates a problem of over-drilling some forms to the point where the student is hardly aware of the grammatical implications of what he/she is saying. I find it very hard to break habits like this in students who have being using it for several years uncorrected.

Also, I tend to feel that it's not so important to force the students to adopt the contractions. Obviously they need to be well aware of them so as to be able to pick up on them in conversation, but we are not training them to be spies, just to be able to communicate through the medium of English with other people around the world, mostly for business. Most of my students are dealing with other non-native businessmen/women and teaching them to speak too quickly with too many contractions could possibly have a detrimental effect on their ability to communicate with their international business partners. Therefore I don't waste too much of THEIR valuable time on these issues. It's important not to lose sight of what your students' needs are.

SO, in answer to the OP's question, for the majority of my students I teach the full grammatical version first, and then in practice introduce them to the way it sounds when spoken. Whether the end up saying "must've" or "must have" is largely irrelevant for most of them.

Mike

[Dr.J]

sorry, thought this was a pregnancy thread.


Anyway, British people DO say 'wanna' and 'gonna' just like Americans, they just don't place as much stress on them in the sentence. I do object to their being written, however, unless in transciption.

[bayabule]

[Capergirl]

[Capergirl]

P.S. It drives me nuts when people write/type "could of", "had of", etc. These are the so-called "native speakers of English", not students!

[leeroy]

Hey Caper,

Yeah, I get what you mean about that second sentence thing.

I would always write "He can't have", but phonetically it would go like

/hi: ka:nt 'v/ ('=schwa)

When speaking, do you really fully emphasize the full "can't have"?

Although I've never heard it explicitly, I would assume that there is a rule somewhere saying that when writing you can't contract two verbs next to eachother (like "can't've").

[Stephen Jones]

[johnslat]

Dear Capergirl,

Well, in spoken English, it's not uncommon to hear, "can't've" or "couldn't've. But using "can't have" as a modal expressing impossibility in the second example is fine, depending, of course, upon the context

e.g. "She didn't wave; she can't have seen me."


http://www.sousacea.com/gerunds%20and%20infinitives8.htm

Regards,
John

[Capergirl]