Teacher Discussion Forums

I'm trying to get a firmer grasp on present perfect explanations. And I think maybe I've been staring at this sentence for too long! So please help if you can.

The sentence, from from a student:

"I've been to Italy for three months."

My viewpoint is that:

-I've been to Italy. -- is fine. talking about an experience. No specific time.

-I was in Italy for three months. -- She's no longer in Italy, she's referring to a specific time period that's finished (those three months), so that is why the past simple should be used.

-She COULD have said, "I've been in Italy for three months." if she means to communicate that she's still in Italy.

I fear my mind is playing tricks on me though...Does "I've been to Italy for three months" sound wrong to you, too?

OR maybe it could work because of the "past event has present result" or the use for something that happened very recently....help I'm getting dizzy!

The only context I can think of where that sentence would make sense would be if the person saying it had just returned from 3 months in Italy, and therefore the stay is still foremost in her mind. Is that what your student is trying to say?

Rather than dredging grammar books trying to find a rule she's breaking, I suggest you ask what situation she is referring to and tell here what she should say and why.

Thanks lolwhites, I think you may have hit the nail on the head.

What caused the problem was she was randomly thinking of an example sentence in the past perfect (we were talking about the 'duration' aspect, such as "I've been married for three years. (it's still true)" In her sentence , it's doesn't work in that context because the three months is OVER, right? And I think what further confused it is we had just talked about "I've been to France. (period!) -- speaking about life experiences. Further, I think it may have been in her mind that "for and since" always signify that you use the present perfect.

Anyway, so yes, if she JUST came back from Italy and it's foremost in her mind, then she might say it and it would be appropriate.

Thanks...

This is one of those things that led me to abandon overt teaching of grammatical structures (a la Betty Azar) years ago, namely, that the students never had an actual context in mind and were thus endlessly generating pointless sentences whose grammatical assessment was inevitably ambiguous. It became an endless game of "well now if..." that the students themselves weren't interested in playing with me. They were just generating a string of English words in accordance with some often half-remembered or "mongrel" format.

BTW, Brazil in his 1995 book "A Grammar of Speech" argues along the lines that grammatical "correctness" can only be evaluated as a function of the probability of being able to think of a context in which a certain utterance COULD be said. In this sense even something like "I is going." might be consider well-formed in the following (sequential) context:

A: But really! Who IS going to go to a party like that?
B: I is going for one!

I agree, it's a difficult issue for me because in the particular country where I live, the students DEMAND grammar rules. And the school's policy is: give the customer what they want. In the official teacher-training we were told not to give explicit grammar explanations/rules, but soon after that we were instructed by "the boss" TO give grammar rules since the students want it! So...I do make an effort to give some guidelines...which as I've seen all too many times is a slippery slope! I'm new to teaching this so I'll have to take some time to figure out a differnet approach.

It can be very frustrating to teach students who want black and white explanations. I try to wean students off this kind of thing by talking about the meaning rather than what is "allowed". For example, when a students says "Is such-and-such-a sentence correct?" I'll ask "To mean what?". I'm reluctant to just say "Yes" because I know from bitter experience that the student will probably go on to say or write it in the wrong context, or when they clearly mean something else, and when they get corrected they'll say "But you told me it was correct!!"

If that's too radical for your students, try thinking of a context where the phrase might be correct (your example is a particularly good one) and say "If you mean.... than yes, it's correct."