Read Lewis and go away and think about it.

Duncan Powrie · Post by **Duncan Powrie** » Wed Oct 20, 2004 1:14 am

This is getting like a brawl in a western saloon. Who started it?

I never feel I'm right about anything WC, and I should direct you to some comments I made regarding "Persusasion Gambits Needed", on that or some similarly titled thread.

Hmm, as for implementing Lewis's ideas about grammar, to be honest, I haven't had successes or faliures, metal, because as I said, there isn't much to implement! There is much to think about, of course, but until a major textbook is produced, organized by those principles, "remoteness" will remain an undercurrent at best, alluded to on a more or less ad-hoc basis only by those teachers familiar with it.

Ultimately I am more of a lexis and "discourse" guy, so I don't know how much I will ever use Lewis's terms in preference to my implicit, rather than explicit use of the existing grammatical terms that are in (or form the basis and backbone of) the textbooks I am often asked/expected/forced to use.

I only mince when my knickers have got well and truly twisted and rucked up nastily into my asscrack. At the moment, as far as I am aware, they are still nestling comfortably against my doobries as I continue to dice and SLICE ooh careful metal blade my onions.

"...slicing, slicing, watch out, slicing, watch your...FINGER!.....Look, Nosferatu, blood! Blood!!"

woodcutter · Post by **woodcutter** » Wed Oct 20, 2004 6:11 am

The key to making sense of this behavior is an understanding of remoteness as primarily conceptual and not merely temporal; temporal distance becomes one possible, even preferred, realization of the broader phenomenon of conceptual distance

In plainer speech, this merely says that we must realize that the remoteness is not always in time (though that is the most common kind of remoteness).

We already gathered that. Did we need to hear it again expressed in this manner?

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Wed Oct 20, 2004 7:57 am

Duncan Powrie wrote:
Ultimately I am more of a lexis and "discourse" guy, so I don't know how much I will ever use Lewis's terms in preference to my implicit, rather than explicit use of the existing grammatical terms that are in (or form the basis and backbone of) the textbooks I am often asked/expected/forced to use.

I suppose you are not "forced" to use these:

http://www.ltpwebsite.com/teachersgrammar.htm

http://www.ltpwebsite.com/innovations.htm

Duncan Powrie · Post by **Duncan Powrie** » Wed Oct 20, 2004 4:34 pm

Close's book, along with Lewis and Hill's "Practical Techniques", were among the first EFL books that I ever bought, not on the recommendation of the CTEFLA course that I was about to do, but because I felt that LTP was a good publisher (compared to what I had browsed through that morning in the bookstore on Gower Street). I must admit, I didn't bring it with me to Japan, and I could do with reading it again...but still, it is not a coursebook, much less a comprehensive reference grammar.

As for the "Innovations" title, I saw that on that website at least a year ago. I notice that it is for students who are at least at intermediate if not upper-intermediate level, who want to learn spoken English especially; certainly, the spoken texts look quite long and challengingly authentic. The thrust of the book overall seems to be phrasal/lexical/lexicogrammatical.

Anyway, whatever its advantages or disadvantages, it is not exactly being snapped up by language schools here in Japan at least, and I don't know if I myself would really want to push to see the sea change.

Have LTP produced a series of books, from beginner upwards, though? I suppose you could throw together several books they've published over the years, by different authors and for different purposes, and claim that they broadly reflect and trace a line through Lewis's grammatical theories, but that's not the same thing as a proper, dedicated course.

I suppose that if I really wanted to get serious about teaching stuff that "makes sense", I might hunt down copies of the COBUILD English Course (it was going out of print when I began training), but I am sure a lot of that too would be "tough going" (studying other people's lives in excruciating detail, wading through extensive authentic tapescripts etc).

JuanTwoThree · Post by **JuanTwoThree** » Wed Oct 20, 2004 9:39 pm

I was wondering if you wouldn't mind agreeing that there might perhaps be a small though smug satisfaction in having started a three page thread not mostly consisting of its starter's multiple postings nor of its starter being told to bulgar off in no uncertain terms.

Rather stupidly driving along and thinking about "polite English" instead of worrying about speed-freak long-distance lorry-drivers, it occurred to me how right WC was and that in an arm-wrestling contest between Everything We Have Always Held Dear and shovelling in as much smarminess as possible then EWHAHD is the clear loser.

"If Sir would like to accompany me, I will show him to his table"

I don't know about "sufficient truths". That's a conditional we've kept quiet about. A mixed-up conditional?

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Thu Oct 21, 2004 3:45 am

<Anyway, whatever its advantages or disadvantages, it is not exactly being snapped up by language schools here in Japan at least, and I don't know if I myself would really want to push to see the sea change. >

That's no surprise. Check out the collaboartion game between bigger publishers and Japanese academies.

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Thu Oct 21, 2004 3:48 am

Have LTP produced a series of books, from beginner upwards, though?

No, but why stand on ceremony? Just get hold of a copy of Innovations and use it to create similar material for all levels. There are also many business English coursebooks that are lexical based.

woodcutter · Post by **woodcutter** » Thu Oct 21, 2004 7:45 am

Did I miss something here? Did the Lewisites get the better of this little debate? Did they win the star prize - a chance to order a crate of your favourite text books?

Let's recap - We asked for a simple (teachable please!) definition of remoteness, and Metal tried to gobbledigook his way out of it.

I showed that we do not need to employ past forms in order to be very polite.

(By the way Juan, I'm sorry I attributed your wisdom to Duncan)

JuanTwoThree · Post by **JuanTwoThree** » Thu Oct 21, 2004 8:55 am

There's a sort of lite remote, an oversimplification of Lewis perhaps, in any kind of explanation of so-called Type 2 conditionals that isn't "here you use the past simple because I'm bigger than you".

I realise I've banged on about this too much already but perhaps it's easier with Spanish and other languages that have a subjunctive or something similar.

Students who speak these languages seem prepared to accept that one of have/has/having/had needs to serve for whatever they say in L1 for "If I had a million euros" . It's not too difficult to rule out "has" and "having" and it's the next step to rule out "have". Which needs some kind of Lewis-informed justification, however watered-down.

A student asked me once why English didn't have yet another auxiliary verb ( he'd got his head round "will" "would" "may" and "might" by then) to get us out of this jam. Maybe "If I were to have" is something like that.

Duncan Powrie · Post by **Duncan Powrie** » Thu Oct 21, 2004 5:38 pm

woodcutter wrote:(By the way Juan, I'm sorry I attributed your wisdom to Duncan)

Yeah, I thought what WC had said was a bit odd, but when you generally don't get many compliments, you don't automatically refuse those that do come your way!

woodcutter · Post by **woodcutter** » Fri Oct 22, 2004 7:03 am

I sometimes fail to see the point of cross-language comparison. We can't ever agree about English, for goodness sake. Why should we be able to perform a sharp analysis of an L2,3,4.....?

JuanTwoThree · Post by **JuanTwoThree** » Fri Oct 22, 2004 10:32 am

"I sometimes fail to see the point of cross-language comparison" you say and I couldn't agree more. It'd be impossible anyway in most classes in English speaking countries.

It's also terribly dangerous to say after too short a time in the country "It's the same in .......ish".

But in my case all my students are Spanish speakers and my Spanish is finally good enough to say when something is similar. It's by no means how to teach a problematic structure but it can be a reassurance to some students.