Teacher Discussion Forums

A Canadian teacher mentioned yesterday that he "didn't see that movie yet", and enraged my Korean wife, who found this both illogical and wrong. That's what they told her in a London classroom I think.

How about to you North Americans? Wrong? OK in speech but not in an exam? Fine and dandy? Illogical?

woodcutter wrote:A Canadian teacher mentioned yesterday that he "didn't see that movie yet", and enraged my Korean wife, who found this both illogical and wrong. That's what they told her in a London classroom I think.

How about to you North Americans? Wrong? OK in speech but not in an exam? Fine and dandy? Illogical?

I think spoken American English has been swinging more towards that use. I'm sure I do it myself. Maybe I didn't do it here yet, but I'm sure I will . I tell my students to use the present perfect on a TOEFL test but not to sweat it otherwise. I hear it a lot.

Although it may not be acceptable to your wife (I don't know why she'd be so judgemental about a native speaker's English ) and although it might conflict to what a textbook might say, I'd say that the structure "I haven't [action] yet." is almost standard compared to the much older structures such as "I have yet to [action]."

Your explanation regarding her London classroom is possibility for her reaction. In N.Am it's completely normal. Wrong? No. OK in speech but not in an exam? Speech, yes. Exam ? Subjective. Fine and dandy? Absolutely. Illogical? I'm a little insulted that she'd suggest so, but I'll just say no. I'm not that pissed off yet.

Well, my home town is full of native speakers who say things like "It be right fine today" and "she do work hard, she do" and I'm not sure I would bank on all of them being able to get a better TOEFL score than my other half.

In British classrooms I think that "the past simple tense is for things which are complete - the present perfect for those that still have some kind of relevance to the current situation" is a common explanation.

So the phrase does seem to defy the logic of such an explanation. Is it therefore a bad explanation?

Good morning all!

On an exam one is expected to give standard responses to standard answers. There might exist a standard question about this "unstandard" use of "yet" with the simple past and the answer might be "acceptable in some US speakers, usually not used in UK" (don't take my word for that one, just made it up for the example).

The explanation woodcutter gives (complete / relevance to current) is concise and useful. It should go hand in hand with that other explanation that says that language is a living beast that is in our hands to use and abuse. I don't use "yet" in simple past, but that may be because I repeat that first explanation constantly and then do exercises with my students (and I mean do, in that for every sentence they produce aloud, I've said two, the original sentence and the repetition of their manipulation of the structure) and I only speak ESL when I speak English anymore.

In any case this seems to be a situation of learning a rule and sticking to it and non-natives may be safer doing this until they have a lot of self-confidence in their English. Only a mother would correct her non-native child or a grade-school English teacher his/her young keep, or a perfectionist his/her interlocutor. Non-natives ought to be open to corrections in everyday conversation, but maybe should only correct natives if there is an advance agreement for such. And naturally, if a non-native makes such a subtle mistake, it would probably be considered a mistake by a native, not a regional variety of use.

peace,
revel.

revel wrote:Non-natives ought to be open to corrections in everyday conversation, but maybe should only correct natives if there is an advance agreement for such.

Quite by coincidence, the other day I was recalling just such an instance of a non-native speaker correcting a native speaker.

This big Danish(?) karate fighter, Sven Ole Thorson (probably his biggest role in movies to date was as the gladiator with the tigers in "Gladiator") had been telling his interviewer (Terry O'Neill, a guy who should be in more movies but for some strange reason isn't!) about the tough training he and other members of the Danish national team had had under an unforgiving Japanese master.

O'Neill went on to say something along the lines of, "So, despite the tough training you'd received, you managed to go on to win the European championships...", prompting Thorsen to head-butt in with, "Eh? Surely you mean BECAUSE OF our training?!", at which point O'Neill shouted, "Oh, trying to teach me English now, eh?" and proceeded to teach the non-native upstart the meaning of "berserk".

I am much more interested in this kind of misunderstanding or even "mistake", because it is so much more subtle and interesting than hoary old grammar points and reveals differing interpretations of the whole discourse, not just one limited part of it.

OK then Dunc, just to please you, let's change the subject to native speakers making mistakes.

My high school was streamed. The bottom sets, full of people who got low scores on tests similar to TOEFL, tended to speak with a local accent and use local grammar. We were all told from the day we entered school that "she do work hard, she do" and such like were wrong. The more academic children, I believe, filtered such things out of their speech due to this, reading, and the BBC. The less academic did not. So I think you might say a situation arose where those using non-standard grammar would tend to be the less intelligent, and within the whole community such forms were regarded as a "mistake", at least in any kind of formal context. If I used local forms I dont think I could of "made it" (ha ha) as an English teacher - students would turn their nose up.

So I think that it might also be viewed as a "mistake" to use a colloquial form when addressing a Korean while employed as a teacher, even outside class.

I think some of you, and especially woodcutter's wife, are being too hard on this Canadian teacher. His construction exhibits a subtle, elegant sort of logic as oftentimes colloquial expressions do. It is so common in regular spoken language (around here, anyway) that it took me a couple of moments to see that there was anything at all to criticize it for.

We must all remember, I believe, that we (teachers, textbook authors, and pundits) are not the arbiters of "correct" English, much as we sometimes like to think so. People who use it every day are. Don't forget that much of the language we now all accept as "correct form" would have been blasted by English teachers in Shakespeare's day.

Woodcutter, ask your wife if ancient Korean is the same as modern Korean, and how does she think it got from there to here!!!

Larry Latham

This particular structure, it would seem, is so common it couldn't be called colloquial. But don't you see what I mean? We are forced to avoid local or seemingly uneducated constructions as teachers. And this one seems like that to my wife, not unreasonably, because I for one don't know how to teach the present perfect if this is perfect, standard English.

That's Shuntang's thing isn't it? That the present perfect is unteachable?

woodcutter wrote:This particular structure, it would seem, is so common it couldn't be called colloquial. But don't you see what I mean? We are forced to avoid local or seemingly uneducated constructions as teachers. And this one seems like that to my wife, not unreasonably, because I for one don't know how to teach the present perfect if this is perfect, standard English.

That's Shuntang's thing isn't it? That the present perfect is unteachable?

Every school is different, I suppose, and every teacher too. In my classroom, regardless of whatever the institution might impose, I taught the 'standard' forms, all right, simply because I knew that's what students would encounter on exams. But should something like this come up in discussion or as a question from a student, I'd tell it like it is: This is a perfectly acceptable construction for everyday use amongst English speakers. And it makes perfect sense. I imagine that's what most teachers do.

Shuntang? Never could I understand what it was that was his thing!

Larry Latham

I am much more interested in this kind of misunderstanding or even "mistake", because it is so much more subtle and interesting than hoary old grammar points and reveals differing interpretations of the whole discourse, not just one limited part of it.

An absolutely brilliant example.

Despite your extreme training, you still went on to win.)
(Despite your horribly nasty master, you still went on to win.)


Nice irony.

I guess O'Neill was trying to indirectly say something to Thorsen (as if he needed to!) along the lines of, "Yeah, some of those Japanese sensei can be real b*stards, it's a wonder anyone is left in any shape to fight and win competitions, eh!", and his use of "despite the tough training..." was meant to signal this.

Thorsen however wasn't able to pick up on the nuance in time (maybe karate-ka are more apt to take a somewhat "adversarial" stance than automatically see or accept conversational partners as simply striving to find and emphasize common ground in an effort to maintain and build solidarity?).

Anyway I hope I didn't give the impression that these two guys have nothing but the greatest respect for each other, and are in fact great friends! I wish I could remember how the interview proceeded after that - probably there was a quick change of subject after they'd had a good laugh about it all!

As an English speaker from South America (I am Anglo-Argentine), it is absolutely clear to me that "I didn't see that picture yet" is North American usage and sounds "wrong" to the British ear, and that "I haven't seen that film yet" is British and sounds rather "bookish" to the American ear!
I wonder what Australians, New Zealanders and South Africans have to say about it!

Good morning all!

Trying not to get excited, I will simply point out that the current population of the United States of America is near or beyond 280 million souls, not all of them speaking the same language. I think the population of the UK rounds 45 or 50 million. The number of uses of English could be as many as the mouths speaking it or maybe only half, or maybe only the number of variations in each neighborhood, etc.

So, when a fellow teacher complains because certain books we have been using teach American English (and his only example, which he has repeated, evidently his pet peeve, is that the book teaches "sidewalk" instead of "pavement"), I just shut up, since I don't like those books either, mostly because they just don't suit either my style of teaching nor the interests of my students.

Experience has shown me that students do not instantly learn anything I have taught them in class, but rather need a lot of repeated exposure to such things. If "I haven't seen .... yet" appears more often than "I didn't see .... yet" then I suppose they would stick to the former and maybe even forget the latter totally. There is little danger in being exposed from time to time to rarities in English, though those rarities often simply seem rare because they don't fit into the objectives of the grammar sylabis.

Well, as much as in another thread I defended the generalization, it has been the "American vs British" generalization here that rocked my boat! ("Speak like an Englishman and they think you're Jesus Christ." B. Brecht) Sorry about that, hope I've kept my calm evident.

peace,
revel.