How long

Metamorfose · Post by **Metamorfose** » Wed Jul 27, 2005 4:00 pm

Yesterday I was in a one-to-one class doing some written execises, as the student finished we started reading the dialogue; the exercises asks to form basic structures with the Present Perfect, after a while he came up with:

(1) How long is she living there?

I told him that what the exercise expected is how long has she lived there?, but my mind simply went blank and I couldn't tell him whether such a structure is acceptable or not. Can you help me please?

José

stromfi · Post by **stromfi** » Wed Jul 27, 2005 10:20 pm

Relax Jose. You got it right.

Stromfi

LarryLatham · Post by **LarryLatham** » Thu Jul 28, 2005 7:45 am

Well, maybe a little more help will make things clearer.

It seems as if your student was thinking about a period of time not only in terms of the "How long...", but also with his verb form. That's perfectly acceptable. He might (note please, that I wasn't there, so I don't know) have been trying for: "How long has she been living there." Of course, your sentence, Jose, is also quite correct as far as grammar goes, but I suspect that your uncertainty stems from your realization that yours and his (the one he might have been shooting for, but narrowly missed) don't have quite identical meanings. You are to be commended for realizing this. Correcting students is tricky business, as teachers often unhelpfully correct students by wrongly assuming intentions that weren't there to begin with. Such corrections leave students in confusion.

Larry Latham

lolwhites · Post by **lolwhites** » Wed Aug 03, 2005 4:59 pm

Normally I would take How long is she living here to mean "How long, in total, does she plan to live here?".

LarryLatham · Post by **LarryLatham** » Wed Aug 03, 2005 7:35 pm

lolwhites wrote:Normally I would take How long is she living here to mean "How long, in total, does she plan to live here?".

But...if the sentence comes from an intermediate student of English, then, I'm sure you'll agree, it might be quite a leap from "How long is she living there?" to your recasting. In other words, the way you take it may not be what was intended. Useful correction must take that into account. The aware teacher will ask the student: "Did you mean to say, 'How long will she be living there?', or 'How long has she lived there?'."

Larry Latham

lolwhites · Post by **lolwhites** » Wed Aug 03, 2005 7:50 pm

From an intermediate student, particularly one who speakes a Romance language, I agree that the proper interpretation is probably How long has she been living here?. However, How long is she living here? could mean the total time, not just from this point forward, so actually the answer to your question could be "Neither".

Let me put it another way:
(1)I've lived/been studying here for 5 years = I came 5 year ago and am still here now.
(2)I'm going to live/will study here for 5 years = I plan to be here until 2010
(3)I study/am studying here for 5 years = It's a 5-year course which I may or may not be part the way through; you don't know without the context.

In other words, in the case of (3), I could have started my course 2 years ago and have 3 years to go.

LarryLatham · Post by **LarryLatham** » Wed Aug 03, 2005 9:40 pm

lolwhites wrote:Let me put it another way:
(1)I've lived/been studying here for 5 years = I came 5 year ago and am still here now.
(2)I'm going to live/will study here for 5 years = I plan to be here until 2010
(3)I study/am studying here for 5 years = It's a 5-year course which I may or may not be part the way through; you don't know without the context.

Any of these could be the student's intent, so if a teacher is going to correct him, she needs to find out which intention the student has, so she can offer the right correction. If she makes an assumption about what the student means to say, and if that assumption turns out to be wrong, her correction will leave the student confused.

Larry Latham

lolwhites · Post by **lolwhites** » Thu Aug 04, 2005 10:48 am

In other words, it's another example of why so often the answer to the question "Is this sentence correct?" is "It depends what you're trying to say".

It really annoys those students who want it to be black and white but hey, that's the way it is.

Metamorfose · Post by **Metamorfose** » Fri Aug 05, 2005 11:37 am

Correcting students is tricky business, as teachers often unhelpfully correct students by wrongly assuming intentions that weren't there to begin with. Such corrections leave students in confusion.

I totally agree with you, that's why I ask you when I'm cornered by some tricky piece of language, sometimes just to escape we say 'Ít's wrong, the exercise demands the Perfect here' just for the other day the same student comes up with an example extracted from the BBC or CNN telling you 'are they wrong then?'

And again I was told that How long is she living here? was simply wrong, you have destroyed another myth.

José