Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Vicissitude]

Student asks, "where did you went last night?"

Teacher, what do you say to your student? Obviously it's incorrect. Keep in mind the student wants to know why and they need an explanation based on English grammar rules.

Here are some other examples:

Student answers, "I gone to movie."
Student replies, "I go to movie too."

What do you say to your students to explain why these sentences are incorrect without giving them the answers or trying to get them to make the correction on their own?

Most of us just correct our students (or elicit a correct answer), but we don't give very good reasons why that are based on grammar rules. This causes students to get confused. So I'm looking for people who really know what they are talking about to describe how they would explain to their students why these sentences are incorrect.

[aek541]

When explaining the question "did plus verb?" I usually explain it as simple as possible. I have really young students. I usually tell them that there can only be one past verb in the sentence. In this case, "where is the past verb class?" Did teacher! "that's right. Now if did is past...can the second verb also be past?" No teacher. "Okay then....lets try it again."

Something like that.

[lichtarbeiter]

[Vicissitude]

Those are really good explanations for the first example. What about the other two examples?

[Hanson]

I'm all for helping out fellow teachers, but is this a put-on? Remember everyone, Vic is evil.

[aek541]

Go- present tense----express as an action that you usually do....

Use with words like everyday, sometimes, usually, on Fridays

Gone- past participle----have to use with a helping verb.

ex: to be + gone / to have + gone

went: action is finished----you are not doing this any more.


Concept questions:

How many times are you doing the action?
Do you go now?
Did you finish going?
Does it have a helping verb?


I don't know how much english your students know but you can make it as difficult or simple an explanation.

Is that about right guys?

[faster]

Yeah, this is pretty unbelievable. I'm also all for helping other teachers, but I'm starting to think there should be at least a rudimentary grammar exam for prospective teachers. This is like a piano teacher asking about the difference between the black keys and the white ones.

[nicholas_chiasson]

I'm going to make an observation, I hope it will make me famous. Where I taught English in the US, one of the teachers was named Ken. Ken was a EBD Ph.d in Linguistics. He spoke Spainish and French, and some turkish. Anyhow he invented "Ken's Maxim"
-"The ideal grammar explanation is the one the students understand, NOT the one that is most technical and correct."
-If a student asked him with "Why does English do X" he would say
"because it does."
-If a English Teacher asked him, his reply usually went on for half-an-hour. So in other words, if the reasons for the grammatical concept is too complex for low level students to understand it, then DON'T EXPLAIN THE CONCEPT.
-Also Go is an irregular verb...its past tense and its participle are NOT the same. Don't forget the participle. English has them, but they are usually the same. Russian has 4 participles. English one. Gone is a participle, it is used with perfect tenses.
-Have you gone to see the new film? Yes I went.(a Present Perfect question answered with the simple past. At will, if speaker B is pedantic he could reply.) Yes I have gone to see it. (this is rare but NOT impossible, an educated non-native speaker often answers questions using the tense of the question.)
this is not going to make your students happy, so I'll let someone do "making grammar fun!"

[MissSeoul]

grammar

= headache

[Vicissitude]

[Vicissitude]

[moosehead]

[Vicissitude]

[nicholas_chiasson]

-Youre the teacher. If YOU don't understand why...YOU can;t explain it. If you do understand why, then why are you asking for help?

[Vicissitude]