Teacher Discussion Forums

Given:

(1)I was born at 2 o'clock in the morning on Sunday in April in the year 1958, on a farm at a small village called Sta. Cruz in the state of Goiás, in Brazil.

I know this sentence is strange, but I'd like your help to sort things out.

a- Is it always obliged to follow the order <location> then <time> in sentences like this? Eg: I was born in <somewhere> in <some time>.

b- As one is talking about the place they were born, isn't better to use 'in a small village called...' than 'at a small village called...'?

c- I guess there's too much information going on in the sentence, how could I rearrange it without throwing away some or any information?

José

In answer to your questions:

a - No.

b - In isn't better, it's just another possibility. I know learners often want to be told there's one best way to say things, but this misses the point. The question that leads to some insight isn't "Which is better?" but "Why are they both possible?"

c - I don't think there's too much information; the right punctuation makes it perfectly clear. Why rearrange? If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

a - No.

Incredible..the more I know the more I simply don't know.

b - In isn't better, it's just another possibility. I know learners often want to be told there's one best way to say things, but this misses the point. The question that leads to some insight isn't "Which is better?" but "Why are they both possible?"

That's the point Iolwhites, what arguments I can have to say that 'at' is also possible? Are there any major implications in choosing one over the other or for a native speaker it has not much difference?

José

Wow, people say "at a small village?" I've never heard or read "at" + a village, city, town, etc., except maybe as the site of a battle or something. People really say that? Like Metamorfose said, the more I know the more I simply don't know.

Basically, you can think of a village as a place that surrounds/encloses you , hence you can be in it, or you can think of it as a point on a map, so you can also be at it. Therefore, both are possible. The same principle applies to buildings, cities etc.

The student who once asked me Do you say in the station or at the station? Which is correct? Which is better? was asking the wrong questions.

What does correct or better mean then, lol? Is it not........

Said very often by all native speakers = correct
Said more often = correcter!


It depends on context, and mentioning the map thing might be worthwhile, but in most contexts "in" is much more common (perhaps, therefore, we find it in that slippery to grasp "neutral" context).

Therefore I don't see anything wrong with the question. Both correct, "in" better. I live at smallville - sounds odd. I can't think of a situation where "in" sounds odd. "In" is the student's friend!

I live at smallville - sounds odd.

Not to me it doesn't. The problem with the question is it really means "Is there a form I can use all the time without making a mistake?" or "I have no real interest in developing a sensitivity towards language, I want it to be black and white". Yet these are the same students who, with no hint of irony, say they came to the UK to "improve" their English!

I don't think the students who ask Which is correct/better? mean Which is more frequent?. And even if they did, there comes a time, when one learns a language, when in order to improve one has to think about what things actually mean rather than whether they are "right" or "wrong".

Good afternoon all.

For me, in if I am living there, at if the town is a specific point in space. But maybe that's because that's how I've been teaching the basic differences between those two little words for over twenty years now. Maybe I'm just practicing what I preach.

I'm with lolwhites on the "correctness" issue. Am getting a bit of flack from adult pre-intermediate students about "some" and "any" and their necessity to have a clear "always" type of rule in order to be able to use these two words. Though there is often a choice to be made between the boy cat and the girl cat (we don't say black and white, too opposite, rather we say gato for one of the choices and gata for the other) neither is always correct and getting around that interference in students is often a prime objective of a class. Stop, I say, trying to understand this code by filtering it through your L1 codebreaker. It just doesn't always work out the way you want it to and the message is "lost in translation".

peace,
revel.

Not to me it doesn't. The problem with the question is it really means "Is there a form I can use all the time without making a mistake?" or "I have no real interest in developing a sensitivity towards language, I want it to be black and white". Yet these are the same students who, with no hint of irony, say they came to the UK to "improve" their English!

We have this awareness, I believe all language teachers should have, but unfortunately some (many,most...you name it!) students don't have this sensitivity towards languages, so they perceive their language learning more or less the way they perceive the way they learn mathematics, chemistry or physics for instance and yet we should respect this for we aren't sentivity in their fileds, but at the same time our task is to make them see things beyond the black and white core.

I don't think the students who ask Which is correct/better? mean Which is more frequent?. And even if they did, there comes a time, when one learns a language, when in order to improve one has to think about what things actually mean rather than whether they are "right" or "wrong".

Iol, do you remember that fantastic teacher I talked about which tells their students to use 'when' with simple tenses?

That's a case when one learns it so well that becomes a teacher of it and yet has no awareness of the things! Or they are just plain idiot

José

You are being unduly harsh on students. Since knowing which preposition to use is tough, they quite sensibly want to find a general rule to apply in that situation and perhaps learn the subtleties at a later date.

ie maybe they have a sense of the step-by-step way in which we learn.

"On" is probably correct in some dialect, somewhere, since it contains a certain logic. Is "on" correct? Is that a bad question?