Teacher Discussion Forums

Daer Shun

I only wish we could be using the Past Simple instead of the Present Simple to describe your annoying habit of filling this forum with balderdash!

Daer Shun

I only wish we could be using the Past Simple instead of the Present Simple to describe your annoying habit of filling this forum with balderdash!

Stephen Jones,

An academic linguist insists the Simple Present, however. I just follow him. What else can I do? I have to post something if he challenges me to stay.

All the tenses works as a whole. Each of them is not isolated. If you cannot explain one tense, don't cheat me into the belief you can explain the others. Simple Present expresses habit? Balderdash!!

Now all tenses point to the same thing: we cannot explain English tense. You may see the problems linked to Simple Present and Simple Past around here. Actually, however, the most difficult one is known to everyone: Present Perfect.

Present Perfect is so difficult that even a scholar, Tregidgo, has to admit "How far have we got with the present perfect?", in an ELT Journal, which was published by Oxford University Press in association with The British Council. Can such comment, balderdash as you regarded, be published in the academic journal without agreement of experienced editors? Can a student understand what cannot be understood by scholars? Who is this student, may I ask?

As English tense has come to this, can't people see the way to explain tenses is wrong, from the very beginning? I agree it is tragic for teachers to have passed the balderdash to students, and later defend for it. As the balderdash is commonly spread and accepted, the truth is now balderdash in turn.

In the following web page, there is a comment that can be reckoned as the updated version of Tregidgo's article:
www.developingteachers.com/articles_tch ... _s arn.htm
The web page is within a website for developing teachers. It must be there reminding these teachers that the tense is a torture, advising them not to push yourself too hard. Ironically, the author thought at first he had mastered the tense and owned the knowledge enough to teach developing teachers: "Budapest, 1992. I thought the lesson was fine, until Agnes threw down her pens, wailing, 'I'll never understand the present perfect!'" He is now kicking at the tense.

Wailing! How many teachers and students have wailed at the tense? The real hindrance is, however, many confused grammar writers, now teachers, still claim that their explanations are clear and good ones. They never try to reach for reality and study about it. They just collect and copy examples from another old grammar books, and claim new money from students.

Grammar writers cannot tell the difference between Simple Past and Present Perfect, so they start to lie: "Present Perfect doesn't stay with past time expression." To make their falsehood look like fact, they hide away any past time expressions for Present Perfect: in the past, before, in the past few years, etc. I may focus on this later on. Remind me if I forget.

What else a teacher can do but repeat the lie to our students? Or someone here claims he or she knows how to explain Present Perfect? Balderdash!!

I also wish the whole thing is in Simple Past. But the academic atmosphere didn't let me.

Xui

Good morning all.

Studying Spanish grammar did not contribute significantly to my becoming fluent in speaking the language. As a language teacher, reading through several Spanish grammar books and taking note of the grammar did allow me to place a foundation under the real work I was undertaking, not that of explaining the system of rules that "govern" the construction of an utterance in Spanish but rather the chaining together of sounds that would not only help me to communicate my thoughts to others but would help me to understand what thoughts were being communicated to me.

Explaining in generalizations the "rules" of English grammar serves the same purpose. Among my students who study grammar in the public schools I have few who are able to apply those rules to their speaking. Yet, having the foundation of some grammar study, they have a common place from which to take off when I am helping them chain sounds. That 3rd person present "s" is always there and when a student does not place it I can happily repeat "third person singular in the present always carries an "s"" and they (not always happily) repeat the sentence sticking it on. Then they make a question and the "s" is on the "does" and yet they leave it on the verb and I have to refer them to that other foundational rule that the verb reverts to its "base" or "root" form when using "do" or "does" or "did" in a question. These simple structural mores are simply a foundation for practice, once the student has acquired the habit of spitting that "s" out in its place, I have no need to repeat the "rule", nor have they the need to remember it. I will never put on an exam a question like "In the third person singular in the present, what is the letter that is always placed, like a suffix, on the root form of the verb in affirmations?" I expect them to recognize the norm but not to remember it. Foundations usually are, and should be, buried under the house we are building.

Gross generalizations about the use of verb tenses, then, are also simply foundational material. Some may be stronger than others, but such rules as "present simple for habit, custom and truths" are not meant to be placed above and over the learning of their usage. As I am explaining that "birds sing" or "the sun rises in the east", I am also explaining that "I know the answer" or "I see your point" as opposed to "I am knowing the answer" or "I am seeing your point". Until the student becomes fluent enough to have interchange with native speakers, where observation of the native speech presents not only the variety but also the consistency of certain uses, the awareness of certain norms gives them something to lean on. They must make mistakes, for if they did not, they would have nothing to correct, they will have learned to speak English.

The inference that there is some conspiracy among those who write English grammars sounds like a "UFO abduction" story to me. Getting Bush into the White House another four years involves conspiracy. Building nuclear weapons in Iran involves conspiracy. Learning English from a generally accepted and rightly challenged grammar does not seem to involve conspiracy. It might involve discussion among people who deal with it on a daily basis, the more hands in the dough, the more the dough is kneaded and the more the question rises.

I don't know if it is bait, but Shun's sloppy use of the verb tense has me saying "Until you demonstrate, through your use of verbs in your writing, that you can correctly use the verb in English, something you have not done, then you should get out of the theoretical grammar arena and at least get a patient ESL teacher to correct and teach you the use of the verb in writing." And, I would add, "It is not only your verb usage that needs some overseeing, but many other areas of your grammar are weak. Though your ideas might be available to the reader, English writers are expected to write clearly, concisely and in an organized fashion, following basic rules as to spelling, punctuation, organization, etc....things that go way beyond the generalizations made in ESL grammar books and enter in the tomes written on style. Get your hands on The Elements of Style and apply some of those rules." and, finally, as has been said so often and so many ways "stop telling us that we are wrong until you clear up your own wrongness."


peace,
revel.

Xui wrote:Grammar writers cannot tell the difference between Simple Past and Present Perfect, so they start to lie: "Present Perfect doesn't stay with past time expression."

Well, I truly doubt that any 'grammar writer' ever wrote such an unintelligible and unidiomatic rule as the one in blue above.

I'm in agreement with other posters here: How can Xui pass judgment on grammarians' statements about tense when he so clearly doesn't understand English grammar himself?

Richard wrote:

Xui wrote:Grammar writers cannot tell the difference between Simple Past and Present Perfect, so they start to lie: "Present Perfect doesn't stay with past time expression."

Well, I truly doubt that any 'grammar writer' ever wrote such an unintelligible and unidiomatic rule as the one in blue above.

I just repeated the rule according to a grammar.

Do you think the below one is good enough?
"You cannot use adjuncts which place the action at a definite time in the past with the Present Perfect."

Or how do you say why it is ungrammatical:
Ex: *I have seen him yesterday.

Xui

WHY is "I have seen him yesterday" ungrammatical?

Put simply, because people don't say it, because it would't make any sense within the wider system of consistent choices operating within the language; that is what ungrammatical means.

The rule you claim is to be found in grammars ("Present Perfect doesn't stay with past time expression.") is, as Richard has pointed out, one of your unintelligible inventions, Shun.

If you are going to quote from grammars, try to actually quote what they say, word for word. You did quote from the COBUILD Grammar before (on the "How far have we got with the Prsent Perfect?" thread), and I made some comments there about how you seem to have misunderstood a rule which the COBUILD writers worded far more carefully than yours (particularly in their use of "DEFINITE time in the past").

Duncan Powrie wrote:WHY is "I have seen him yesterday" ungrammatical?

Put simply, because people don't say it, because it would't make any sense within the wider system of consistent choices operating within the language; that is what ungrammatical means.

The rule you claim is to be found in grammars ("Present Perfect doesn't stay with past time expression.") is, as Richard has pointed out, one of your inventions, Shun.

If you are going to quote from grammars, try to actually quote what they say, word for word. You did quote from the COBUILD Grammar before (I can't remember on which thread exactly), and I made some comments there about how you seem to have misunderstood the rule they worded carefully (one of the keys to fully understanding it was their use of the word "definite", I recall).

No one has said what you said here, either.

Xui wrote:No one has said what you said here, either.

Sorry Shun, you're not making any sense at all now. You're not even funny. It's pathetic - really.

Duncan Powrie wrote:

Xui wrote:No one has said what you said here, either.

Sorry Shun, you're not making any sense at all now. You're not even funny. It's pathetic - really.

So yours is funny!!

the present is not perfect in either life or language. however, in language the best way to teach is in a way the most speakers of that language will easily understand. is the main purpose of language to have people understand what is meant?

coffeedecafe wrote: the present is not perfect in either life or language.

Can you tell the difference?

Sorry Shun, you're not making any sense at all now. You're not even funny. It's pathetic - really.

Duncan, are you sugesting that Xiu might in reality be Mr Tang?