Teacher Discussion Forums

What in your opinion are the most egregious mistakes, oversimplifications and overcomplications in textbooks? Here are a few of my pet hates anyone want to add to them:

1. listing different criteria for the order of adjectives when the order is entirely governed by relative levels of abstraction.

2. The numbered conditionals especially specifying that you must use the simple tense and will/would instead of proximal vs remote modals.

3. "Unless" means "If not" (it doesn't.)

4. Lists of gerunds vs infinitives instead of teaching them on the basis of difference of meaning.

5. "Any" is used in questions. (Oh, and so can some when it's an offer)

6. Vertical layouts for contrasting structures. (If I want to compare things I want them side by side.)

7. Space too small for the answer.

8. Any talk of past modals used in the present.

9. The term "perfect" for "retrospective"

10. The failure to agree on continuous vs progressive.

11. Lists of "verbs which are not used in the continuous"

12. "Use a before consonants and an before vowels" and then comes the "exceptions": when 'h' is not sounded...

José

And a university. To be fair most books do emphasise that it sound not the spelling that counts, but if they don't... egregious mistake.

Yes, Andrew indeed most modern coursebooks emphasise sound over spelling, normally books that are for State Schools in here show the a/an usage as I described.

José

Aw, come on Andy, this sounds more like a list of trivial topics that continually animate the Dave's App.Ling community.

There are good reasons for creating textbooks full of simple "rules", and we have been over them a number of times. An 'egregious' mistake is a really bad mistake, not a slight distortion for educational purposes, or a slightly awkward layout.

4. Lists of gerunds vs infinitives instead of teaching them on the basis of difference of meaning.

I quite fail to understand you here. How can you have a difference in meaning when in most cases there is no alternative - the verb either takes the infinitive or the gerund or a that clause.
Or are you suggesting that there is some nebulous meta-meaning attached to which form the verb goes with?

Stephen wrote quoting me:

4. Lists of gerunds vs infinitives instead of teaching them on the basis of difference of meaning.

I quite fail to understand you here. How can you have a difference in meaning when in most cases there is no alternative - the verb either takes the infinitive or the gerund or a that clause.
Or are you suggesting that there is some nebulous meta-meaning attached to which form the verb goes with?

Verbs that take the gerund tend to connote termination or have a passive or introspective meaning.

Conversely, verbs that take the infinitive tend not to.

Relative to the gerund, the infinitive has a sense of purpose and a sense of direction, arising from the use of "to". As a result, the future is implied. The future is capable of being changed, it is as yet undecided, it is full of potential and it is ahead of us, we go towards the future. On the other hand, the gerund is more nounlike an as such is a fixed thing, like the past. Things set around the present are also folloed by the gerund indicating its relationship to the present participle.

Furthermore, we tend to be optimistic about the future, but disappointed with the past.

All this tends to equate with the concepts of yin and yang - gerunds being like yin, to+infinitive like yang (there is one big difference, though, yang is said to be more substantial. It's just a metaphore, take it or leave it.)

So yes, the choice is based on the meaning of the verb itself or the use to which it is being put. I've said it before and I'll say it again, give lists of verbs followed by gerunds and infinitives by all means, but get the students to work both ways - ask them what the fact of being followed be one form or the other tells you about the meaning of that verb.

Finally, I came across this:

Guide to Grammar and Writing
http://cctc.commnet.edu/grammar/verbs.htm#gerunds

Although a gerund and an infinitive will often have practically the same meaning ("Running in the park after dark can be dangerous" and "To run in the park after dark can be dangerous"), there can be a difference in meaning. Gerunds are used to describe an "actual, vivid, or fulfilled action" whereas infinitives are better used to describe "potential, hypothetical, or future events" (Frodesen & Eyring 297).

Bottom line, though, to keep it as simple as possible just ask how purposeful is the action.

There are a limited number of verbs where the meaning changes according to which you use, and you no doubt can somewhow find points in common between selected groups of verbs that take the infinitve.

However in most cases the form used appears arbitrary.

I personally consider giving students the list and telling them to learn it as the best way (obviously they will only ever learn it through practise and coming across the forms all the time).

I would actually put your approach in my list of ten worst practices.

Exactly. And apart, perhaps, from one or two gruff old goats, all the members of this forum make frequent hashes of deep semantic explanations. Claiming that the usual rules are egregious mistakes, and advocating such unreliable mental wanderings, is quite remarkable.

Some people seem to consistently underestimate the difficulty of absorbing new information. If the rule about using "an" with vowels is new to a student, that minimum of information is quite enough to be going on with.

There are a limited number of verbs where the meaning changes according to which you use, and you no doubt can somewhow find points in common between selected groups of verbs that take the infinitve.

However in most cases the form used appears arbitrary.

I personally consider giving students the list and telling them to learn it as the best way (obviously they will only ever learn it through practise and coming across the forms all the time).

Exactly. And apart, perhaps, from one or two gruff old goats, all the members of this forum make frequent hashes of deep semantic explanations. Claiming that the usual rules are egregious mistakes, and advocating such unreliable mental wanderings, is quite remarkable.

I would actually put your approach in my list of ten worst practices.
Ouch! OK, Steven and Woodcutter, it seems there are three main possibilities here:
1. my approach is just plain wrong - please provide verbs that don't fit my scheme;
2. my approach, although factually true, is more complicated than learning lists; and
3. my approach is a sensible one.

Of course any of these could be qualified.

As far as -ing form vs to + Base Form, a few simple examples can highlight the difference without needing to resort to tortured explanations:
A: Why does the teacher always make us read?
B: He likes reading
Not to mention the example I keep giving about the wheelchair-using Bolshoi ballet fan who likes dancing. I agree that it's probably best to save this sort of stuff for later - show them a pattern and, when you think they're ready, go into the semantics behind it but I wouldn't hit them over the head with it straight away.

Having said that, some oversimplifications are just so plain wrong that I can't see why we shouldn't do away with them altogether. The some/any distinction discussed below petered out with the assertion that some is concrete, any is not. This isn't more complicated than positive/negative/interrogative, though it is less superficial. However, since elementary students are no less intelligent than advanced students (they just haven't learned English for as long), there's no reason why they can't get their heads around it. In fact, since so many students start learning English in their own countries, with teachers who know their L1, there's no reason why most of them couldn't have it explained to them clearly in L1.

I don;t doubt for a moment that Woody and SJ go to great pains to explain to their students that the grammar section in the back of Headway is not the whole story, and that the students will have to modify these "rules" later on. Judging by the number of times I hear "but my teacher said..." and "which of these two (correct but out of context) sentences is better?", that approach would still appear to be the exception rather than the rule.

As far as -ing form vs to + Base Form, a few simple examples can highlight the difference without needing to resort to tortured explanations:

Exactly and in guided practice at lower levels, I mearly prompt with, "How purposeful is it?" and that usually works or if it doesn't, it gives them an insight into the meaning of the verb.
This is how I do it. A question might read.

"Do you fancy __________ (go for) a drink?"

If the student has difficulty, I would prompt like this:
Teacher: Is it purposeful?
Student: Yes.
Teacher: Not really. Try this:
Do you want ___________ (go for) a drink?
Is that purposeful?
Student: Yes.
Teacher (deliberately exagerating): OK, we could say, do you want to go for a drink?
But it's just a drink, it doesn't give you meaning in your life, the world won't end, it's just a leisure activity. You might answer, "Mmm, yeah, I haven't got anything better to do." There's not a lot of purpose involved. You can say "want" but most people use "fancy" otherwise it's too purposeful.
"want" is very purposeful, "fancy" isn't.
So back to the question...The answer is...
Student: Do you fancy going for a drink?
Teacher: Correct! Well done.

And it works.

There are good reasons for creating textbooks full of simple "rules", and we have been over them a number of times.

I don't think anyone here is arguing that there's no need to simplify. The title of the thread is "oversimplifications" i.e. those rules which may be simple but distort what is really going on to the point of not being of any real use and/or creating more problems in the future than they purport to solve now. The debate here is about where we draw the line.

Andrew Patterson wrote:

As far as -ing form vs to + Base Form, a few simple examples can highlight the difference without needing to resort to tortured explanations:

Exactly and in guided practice at lower levels, I mearly prompt with, "How purposeful is it?" and that usually works or if it doesn't, it gives them an insight into the meaning of the verb.
This is how I do it. A question might read.

"Do you fancy __________ (go for) a drink?"

If the student has difficulty, I would prompt like this:
Teacher: Is it purposeful?
Student: Yes.
Teacher: Not really. Try this:
Do you want ___________ (go for) a drink?
Is that purposeful?
Student: Yes.
Teacher (deliberately exagerating): OK, we could say, do you want to go for a drink?
But it's just a drink, it doesn't give you meaning in your life, the world won't end, it's just a leisure activity. You might answer, "Mmm, yeah, I haven't got anything better to do." There's not a lot of purpose involved. You can say "want" but most people use "fancy" otherwise it's too purposeful.
"want" is very purposeful, "fancy" isn't.
So back to the question...The answer is...
Student: Do you fancy going for a drink?
Teacher: Correct! Well done.

And it works.

Only problem is here in the U.S., we'd say, "Do you want to go for a drink?" I haven't heard "Do you fancy...." in forever.