Teacher Discussion Forums

Loikeet you are right. I didn't actually say it myself but -- now that you mention it-- that is a dropped consonant.

Ocean- of course it is possible to say, because it is said and the meaning is understood. What is proper English and what is used and understood are two things. Within our student's discourse communities they may have a need to know that. If you were teaching in Texas, I would definately suggest tea...

Well you have quoted Gattegno so I would assume you would be using more humanistic approaches in your teaching. I try to do anything that gets me out of the way; I go for a student centered classroom even when I teach writing. The more thinking and talking they do --so as the less I do-- the better ...

Doing what? In grad school I had 2 teachers who were British. Were you thinking college or were you thinkig adult education or what? America is pretty big on not discriminating, so I am sure you would be able to teach, but depending on the level of the students, getting a job might be a bit difficul...

It is common in America for AAE (African American English), which would probably be why ALi G is using it (Even though he isnt American). With the explosion in the rap culture it has affected many things, including my native English students. But they are aware that is is not "Academic English" and,...

I usually teach these in the context of grocery shopping. Have them build recipes or grocery lists. One thing I have tried to pin down is that oftentimes if it is a liquid (or minus form, or minute) it is a non-countable. Other than that --like most of the English lanugage-- it is a matter of memori...

Oh Stephen, what would we do without your negative attitude? Juan- Once again all over the world there are all sorts of Englishes. Where I am from --California-- we would not say it. Someone from the South might. As for the newspaper thing, I think we all know that newspapers are not grammatically p...

Is it possible to say: "Did you get the mail yet?" or "Did the mailman come yet?" ? I surely don't think so! It is amazing how ignorant people are to the world's Englishes, though we are all pretty sure based on our own what is correct or incorrect. Yes these would be a sentence we would use in Ame...

I am sure he would go and try to look one up somewhere. People like Stephen Jones give English speakers a bad name. English is undoubtedly one of --if not the-- most difficult languages to learn. I would hope that everyone here, minus obviously Stephen, would understand the complexities of it as ESL...

are you just looking for the lexical differences? BEcause there are also pronunciation differences (i.e. glottal stops being used more frequently, and the aspiration of consonants dependading on vowels etc)?

I tried to do this but also could not fit in any verb forms beause of your extra determiners and other non-native like structures.

What do you need it for? we might be able to help better if we knew the context for this.

In America we would require here.

British Eng is different (we would never say something like "did do" either) so it may work there, but not here.

I dont ever use ought, it is very informal and seems to be dying-- at least in American English. I dont know where Andrew is from, but I have never heard his sentance being used.

I am getting my CSUS (Sacramento, CA). Though it is not prestigious, I do think it is a good school. This is definately the hardest thing I have ever done, I was not prepared for the load of work --its not the complexity as much as the sheer amount-- that has been dumped on me. Good Luck where ever ...

THough I dont think I can come up with a topic for your research, I just wanted to say that I agree Stephen was being a jackass. I would also like to mention (Stephen) that even though we might all be employed in a discourse community that generally uses Academic English, this is the internet which ...