Korean Job Discussion Forums

VirginIslander · Joined: 24 May 2006 Location: Busan

A Korean teacher recently had trouble explaining to her low-level students about the verb(s) in the following sentence. The students were told to locate the verb in the sentence.

"My favorite thing to do is eat fish"

First, how would you explain this to your Korean coworker. Second, how would you direct her in her explanation.

I had a disagreement with several coworkers. I said the verb in the sentence is "is." Then, I said "to do" is an infinitive used as an adjective and "eat fish" is an infinitive with an ommited "to."

I told my coworker to either tell the kids that all three are verbs (to difficult for the children to understand verbals) or tell them that anytime "to" proceeds a verb then the latter is not a verb.

Am I right?

elynnor · Joined: 08 Feb 2006

dodgybarnet · Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2006 7:50 am Post subject:

I couldn't decide between:

or

Ya-ta Boy · Joined: 16 Jan 2003 Location: Established in 1994

I think an easier way to go about it would be to elicit a bunch of responses from the students about what their favorite thing to do. Then show them that you need 'is' to express it in a sentence that follows the usual English pattern of SVO. Finally reinforce it with questions about favorite places to go, favorite games to play, favorite food to eat...and least favorite...

antoniothegreat · Joined: 28 Aug 2005 Location: Yangpyeong

i dont know the best way to help explane this, but you are right, the verb of that sentence is "is."

you can break the sentence down into three parts, the subject, the verb, and the predicate nominative.

here, your subject is "my favorite thing to do." the subject has a verb in it, i dont know the term for this, but "to do" is a verb inside the subject of the sentence.

next comes the verb "is"

lastly comes the predicate nominative (a predicate nominative is the subject restated, usually in the position of a object, example, he is John. He and John are the same. they are both the subject because they are the same thing)
the predicate nominative is "eat fish" again, "eat" is a verb as part of the PN, but it is not the main verb of the sentence.

my point, you are right...
"

gang ah jee · Joined: 14 Jan 2003 Location: city of paper

Explaining this to children will not help their English.

OiGirl · Joined: 23 Jan 2003 Location: Hoke-y-gun

ajuma · Joined: 18 Feb 2003 Location: Anywere but Seoul!!

Shouldn't it really be "My favorite thing to do is TO eat fish"? You could also say "My favorite thing to do is eatING fish."

BTW, I don't know why she's trying to explain that to low-level students. That's a pretty high grammatical structure! If they can't work out "I like to eat fish" and "I like eating fish" then there isn't much point in teaching more difficult grammar!

Privateer · Joined: 31 Aug 2005 Location: Easy Street.

Atassi · Joined: 14 Feb 2006 Location: 평택

gang ah jee wrote

46long · Joined: 23 Aug 2005

Can someone please explane gammar to me?

Qinella · Joined: 25 Feb 2005 Location: the crib

babtangee · Posted: Wed Oct 04, 2006 10:02 pm Post subject:

CBP · Joined: 15 May 2006 Location: Korea

Grammar is tricky stuff.

I agree that this might not be a grammatically correct sentence. Lower level students are learning present simple and continuous. So I wouldn't teach them this sentence. That said ...

Shorten the sentence so that you can more easily evaluate what's what. Remove "to do" and you get this: "My favorite thing is eat fish." It makes me want to ask, "Eat Fish? Is that a special kind of Korean fish? I know Salmon, Cod, and Halibut, but I've never heard of Eat Fish before."

Without "to do" the correct wording would be this: "My favorite thing is eating fish." It automatically jumps into that ongoing-time verb stuff. Looking at it this way brings attention to what now appears to be two present simple verbs side-by-side, which is not only difficult to explain but also probably incorrect.

But how to address "to do?" The sentence should read: "My favorite thing to do (on the weekend, during vacation breaks, at my aunt's house) is to (present simple)." Eliminate "fish" and other nouns and just focus on the action.

There's a lot to be said about this, and that would involve where you want the emphasis in the sentence, which would determine which verb form to use. But I'll leave it at that and hope the grammar experts can jump in.

tomato · Posted: Thu Oct 05, 2006 5:39 pm Post subject:

This same question has been asked on another thread:

http://www.eslcafe.com/forums/korea/viewtopic.php?t=64142&highlight=

Nobody on the other thread knew, but I hope it helps some.