What the H is a sentence?

[metal56]

Returning to point zero, this is the kind of statement the vet (native-speaker) would deny the truth of:

When you write conversations, because you are writing how people speak, and people very seldom speak in complete sentences.

"What's going to happen to Boyde, now that Bill is dead?"
"Don't know."
"Do you care?"
"Nope. Don't know and don't care!"

http://webnz.co.nz/checkers/GramSentFrag.html

[metal56]

Advanced English Conversation Skills

Extract:

Conversational language is spoken language, and has its own linguistic features. Thus, accuracy also means using an appropriate language style. Some of the important features of conversational language are these:


Most of the words used are simple and nontechnical, e.g., want instead of desire .

A great number of idioms are used, e.g., call off instead of cancel .
A high proportion of hesitations and fillers are used, e.g., well, uh .
A large number of loosely coordinated clauses and short minor sentences are used, e.g., "Yes, I must worry about you. I m your mother. I know you went out with that high school dropout. I don't want you to get involved with him. He's no good."
Contracted verb forms are often used, e.g., I'm for I am .

http://exchanges.state.gov/forum/vols/vol32/no1/p49.htm

[Andrew Patterson]

The verb and other words aren't "missing" here, they are mearly understood.

[woodcutter]

I'm sorry to have made a hash of this thread by defending the vet on grounds he probably wouldn't recognize, and the vet is probably a silly billy, but since there is now a second thread for discussing sentence terminology, I'll carry on.....

FH seems to think that making students go through drills is not necessary because "they will be able to see where they can expand their sentences later". This is light years away from the point. The point is that replying "Yes" or "Yes, I do" is natural, but no more educational for the student than a nod of the head. Making a full sentence is a way to practice constructing language. Learning language in a classroom is generally an artificial business, absolutely unlike 1st language learning, and the fact that Spanish is learned five times faster than Korean by English speakers is iron-clad proof of it, at least for Indo-European tongues. Artificial exercises are to be embraced if they work. Whether they are dull is a matter of taste and ambition.

I do understand why Pinker compares language learning to the weaving of a web, he is trying to balance things up. However, Spiders do what they do with no input at all, and they do not weave the web dialect of their mummies. The analogy is absurd.

[LarryLatham]

You need to go back to your copy of The Language Instinct and read again the passages where Pinker compares human instinct for grammar to spider instinct for weaving webs. Nowhere does he say that learning a first language is like weaving webs. His point, and he was very careful to expressly limit what he said, is that universal grammar is a genetic instinct in human infants, in much the same sense that web weaving is a genetic instinct in spiders. Nobody has to teach either of them how to do it.

The analogy that you are trying to debunk is indeed absurd, but no one has made it except you.

Larry Latham

[fluffyhamster]

OK, here's what I said on that other thread in the Material Writing forum:

in answers to yes/no questions, it is far easier for natives to simply say yes or no, so why not students too, and students will get more than enough practice in pronouns and auxiliaries when they form sentences BEGINNING with those forms, for fulfilling OTHER, MORE NECESSARY, indeed indispensible functions that really NEED to use those forms - presuming that the materials contain a representative sample and proportion of such statements).

(There is a chapter in Jack Richards's excellent The Context of Language Teaching that examines the frequency of "full" answers to yes/no questions in real life vs. teaching materials, and which concludes learners are being made to do more work than is necessary for little discernible functional benefit).

I probably should have said something like 'exchanges' rather than 'sentences' and 'statements' there. Anyway, I don't think I can be any clearer, but just to drive the point firmly home, if a teacher says, 'Where are you going?', the 'be going' does not need or bear repeating by the student (as metal has shown: 'To Manchester'). I think we can assume the students will have every opportunity to e.g. inform, about their travel plans, without it always needing to be part of some teacher-led or monitored exchange in which the inform becomes a mechanical answer, rather than a moment in which the student shows initiative and even courage: 'I'm going to Manchester on Saturday' 'Really? Are you spending the whole weekend there, or just the Saturday?/Are you spending Sunday there, too?'...

So, in my classrooms, I have at least two types of exchange:

Where are you going? To Manchester...
.............. I'm going to Manchester. Really?...

in which the grammar that woodcutter would mechanically grind out is, I feel, more than adequately covered in two separate exchanges which could well be that much more memorable and effective (learning-wise) due to their functional clarity and efficiency. I can see the argument for "striking while the iron is hot", "killing two birds with one stone" etc but I suspect that such methods are not, in the final analysis, consistently including a wide range of vital functions, or breathing vitality into them should they appear (whether by accident or design, though it is unlikely to be the former!) in a lesson somewhere.

The flip side of the "vital genuine communication" (that will hone students for real-world encounters and usage) argument, is of course, the one as espoused by Pimsleur (which I agree with in outline): Before Dr. Pimsleur created his teaching method, language courses were based instead on the principle of repetition. Teachers drummed words into the students' minds over and over, as if the mind were a record whose grooves wore deeper with repetition. However, neurophysiologists tell us that, on the contrary, simple and unchallenging repetition has a hypnotic, even dulling effect on the learning process. Eventually, the words being repeated will lose their meaning.
http://www.simonsays.com/content/featur ... ure_id=422

It is worth noting that in the illustrative exchange on the above webpage ('Are you going to the movies today?' 'No, I went yesterday'), the reply is based on 'information given previously', presumably something along the lines of: Hey, I went to the movies yesterday (and saw...) (an inform rather than just a simple answer). Anyway, regardless of what the course did or didn't cover prior to the this exchange, the 'to the movies' has thankfully been ellipted from the answer. All this is making good pedagogical sense, right? Say only as much as is necessary; try to spread the grammar out naturally over the course in a variety of form-meaning-functions, anticipating and then subtly fulfilling needs as they "arise"...in contrast to which, we have the "woodcutter method" of disregarding natural discourse patterns, lumping grammar into a messy lump and desperately trying to cover the bases hopefully without irritating the students too much.

OK OK maybe I'm taking this too seriously, but I'm not the only one...and besides, if we don't pay attention to even the most "obvious" of the supposedly "small" matters, why bother teaching (that is, thinking we are doing OK and could always do better)?

I'm not sure if Spanish is always learned 5 times faster than Korean by all English speakers, but that surely has more to do with the relative familiarity of Spanish compared to Korean for such learners; and it might also be due to the fact that if Korean is anything like Japanese, there are reams of ever more polite forms of grammar that has helped spawn a whole TKF/SL industry (which is probably in its infancy, and sees no need as of yet to alter its methods). That is, I am wary enough of "communicative" teaching in the west, but am even more wary of it as imported into Asia!

Lastly, 'Artificial exercises are to be embraced if they work'. I doubt if artificial exercises ever can work, or don't you see the contradiction or tension inherant in 'artificial' (not to mention 'exercises') vis-a-vis 'work'. 'Learning to swim on dry land', anyone? Do your students ever really get their feet wet, woody, or do they sink more often than stay afloat, let alone swim as well as they could?

[lolwhites]

Artificial exercises are to be embraced if they work.

What do you mean by an exercise "working"? If you deem an exercise to have worked because the students can make isolated sentences in a given tense or write Yes, I am in the space next to the question Are you a student?______________, then, indeed, you may deem the artificial exercise to have "worked" and consequently "embrace" it.

It's not that I never give students exercises like this but I find it more beneficial to explore more possibilities than the answer the writer was thinking of. In the example about, I would accept not just Yes, I am but Yes or That's right. In fact, as I teach in the UK, my students often come up with precisely those kinds of answers as that's what they hear all around them. It's the 10-year veterans who come here to "perfect" their English who are astonished to find we don't always give Yes I am type answers.

[fluffyhamster]

Some refined tasty icing for my stodgy, indigestible cake there, lolwhites, thanks! Or should I say, more fuel for the fire? Hmm, it's getting nice and warm in here now...

[fluffyhamster]

Basically, pedagogical planning and intervention can be made for the right reasons, and for the wrong reasons. Even if we disagree as to the what constitute the right reasons for intervening in the ways we do (or don't), one thing is certain: no course will ever be long or complete enough to account for every feature of natural language, but natural language, where it is allowed to appear, will surely count for something, certainly more than unnatural language imposed in its place.

[lolwhites]

...natural language, where it is allowed to appear, will surely count for something, certainly more than unnatural language imposed in its place

Hear, hear, fluff! May I change your bottle & rodent pellets?

[lolwhites]

Just thought of another possible answer to Are you a student - I am, yes

When was the last time you saw that in a book?

[fluffyhamster]

Let's not get carried away with the possibilities opening up before us! The main point is that 'Yes' is a sufficient and necessary (functionally) answer as far as replies go, whereas 'Yes (of course) I'm a student(!?)' could make the answerer sound either like they are trapped in a "language" classroom, or irritated, or both.

[LarryLatham]

Well done, FH and LOL! Fresh food for you both. Waiter....!

Woodcutter, as I said before, I am impressed by the passion with which you express your ideas here on this thread. You seem to believe in your argument very strongly. But there's too much weight against you to ignore now, and you might want to revisit your source materials (I know you are well read) to see whether they really confirm what you have been saying here. And let us know what you find!

Larry Latham

[woodcutter]

Well, I know you all tune out when I mention the Callan method, but if you recall it uses this kind of unnatural sentence extending and virtually nothing else. So I have seen with my own eyes that it can sometimes work, and work quickly, so of course I am not going to be told that it can't work due to the laws of nature. A Callan school is in effect a giant experiment on this subject, whereas in my opinion the experiments of ESL researchers are often paltry and inadequate.

What diffeerence does it make if Spanish is closer to English unless we are channeling pretty much everything through our L1.

More a little later...........

[fluffyhamster]

Woodcutter, I once asked you if the books used by your method school were any good, and you said they were. Now I am having my doubts...
http://www.eslcafe.com/forums/teacher/v ... php?t=1644

Of course, I doubt if your books were anyting like as bad as Think in English (stuff not far off of, 'Is it better to cut butter with a knife, or with a spoon?'), but I have to assume that, in not presenting or encouraging natural English (well, English as natural as it can be under classroom conditions), they would still constrain me as a teacher, and I would certainly have to start wondering, wow, if my bosses and the manual and textbook writers couldn't get something as simple as answers to yes/no questions right, what else have they not bothered checking up on? How are discoursally complex yet essential-noy-t0-make-a-total-hash-of forms (such as Present Perfect, Present Perfect Progressive, Passives, the list could go on and on) covered? How is the lexicogrammar, of which there is lots, accurately presented and conveyed?

Nobody is saying that the Callan method, at least as far as basic grammar goes, doesn't work, I myself have said (on that Material Writing forum thread) that it won't take much for a motivated student to work out what is what and reduce their long answers right down to "grunty" levels. But we can't assume that every student does this (that is, becomes aware of what is and isn't naturally necessary), and if it is, we all seem to be agreeing, such a "small" point, why do you seem to be assuming that other methods don't work equally as well, that everybody needs to make mountains out of molehills for the student's English to generally improve, woody?

I myself would've thought that by not exagerrating the difficulties where there are none, and actually pressing ahead to where there are genuine difficulties in the language (and in any language!) would be the way to genuinely improve the student's English; that is, students of whichever method would exhibit little difference as far as their mastery of answering yes/no questions were concerned, if the criteria for marking were natural. How does Callan deal with the challenges involved in e.g. EAP? Does it not bother looking at genuine texts? Or is it only a method school, for getting students to a certain point and no further?

I recall also being recently taken to task for not "seriously" looking at the "relative" merits of differing methods on another thread, so I have to now ask, can a method that doesn't bother looking at the most basic patterns of natural discourse be making an auspicious start? Wouldn't everything it does proceed on a somewhat shaky basis? Or do its larger successes (whatever they might be) outweigh and mask its apparent failings? (I suspect that there is simply not the attention to detail - which should involve subtracting detail as well as adding, when whichever is most appropriate - to be found anywhere, and that other methods probably do a better job of dealing with the more complex language points at least).

The challenge, as I see it, for methodology is to be genuinely inventive and creative through a thorough examination of real English. As I pointed out above (and this is something you still don't seem to have grasped, woody), what is so earth-shattering about giving students 100% meaningful practice of the grammar of "full" sentences-as-informs-rather than answers, and, in another context, 100% meaningful practice of the grammar of yes/no questions (with only very short answers)? I imagine this approach to be covering all the grammar more than adequately (in enough depth, clearly, enjoyably, memorably, you name it), and, more importantly (and I can't stress this enough), making time to go on to address genuine difficulties; not a moment is wasted with silliness like "OK, I understood you perfectly, but please answer using a full sentence".

I just find it strange, woody, that for someone who doesn't seem to suffer fools gladly and pours scorn on silliness in teaching, you think this kind of silliness is acceptable. There is ultimately no difference to me between talking about lightbulbs and making "full" answers vis-a-vis real English, but I would prefer to do the former than the latter anyday, because I can see even a glimmering of a reason for "wasting" time in that way (although I still do not accept that it is a good or valuable topic, and doubt if it can ever be introduced subtly into a classroom "conversation"); when it comes to saying something not just bizarre but totally unnatural, however, I have never, and will never, compromize or be told what to say to my students.