similar conditionals

[metal56]

You, on the other hand, metal, start thread after thread, some with little obvious interest or utility, and if anyone dares question the ultimate import of what you're "saying", you then make post after post, point upon point (that's what I meant by (you) "ranting"), which makes it progressively harder for people to continue responding (the points may be "obviously" connected in your mind, but they might not be to the person you're aiming them at).

Get with it, Fluff. You give as good as you get. Stop whining.

<just doling out endless reams of exceptions for his students>

It is your view of exceptions which is revealing. did you read Lewis yet?
What exceptions? How the hell is anything beyong the main 4 conditional an exception? It is that kind of view which most debiltates students.
Just because you can't explain anything beyond the main 4 conditionals, doesn't mean you have to hide that fact by filling your students heads with the word "exception".

That is the sort of "junk" (I'd like you to tell me, actually, quite what the first one there means), the sort of mess that Carter and McCarthy (and you) might well throw at e.g. CAE going-on CPE EU students in cushy wow-my-students-can-understand-so

-much-I-don't-have-to-worry-about-ever-confusing-them classrooms.

Try speaking to, and not preaching to, your students awhile.

I suppose I can just about see the use in letting one's eyes (or ears) scan through it in trying to extract the general meaning, but it doesn't seem to be the sort of stuff that would exactly help students productively

If your aim is to provide your academy with a 100% CAE pass rate and allow them to clone more students next time round, ... . If not, you need to help them to be productive in the outside world in various native-speaker encounters.

Hmm, my examples sound like they were dragged from a textbook, do they? I was rather hoping they sounded a little more functional, that a context came more readily to mind (knock the 'if' off of 'If we arrived...' and 'If we can/could arrive...' to see what I'm driving at here - 'We modal arrive tomorrow - great eh!'). I'll try to improve upon them, then...not just in terms of quality but also quantity...

Do a search in the BNC, see how many you come up with.


I mean, I really am not in the business of ignoring evidence, and this is a totally different matter from "hiding exceptions": no course can ever hope to cover every possibility, and some examples really are, in the final analysis, more marginal than others. (See above implication that writing a textbook would involve hard decisions that some just might not be prepared to make). I accept that there are more than the four types of conditionals covered in many textbooks, and that the best way to deal with and account for the wider variety that exists is to "simply" analyze each clause independently.

Finally:

Isn't the "before" after "remarked" redundant? Tell us how to use the remote form to refer to past actions.

What do you mean by "real possibility"?

Those may be examples of bad writing, but I doubt if I'm the only one guilty of ever making these kind of "mistakes" - do they not have their role to play?

In influencing students? No.

If you expect others to live with and learn from your rubbish, you could at least try to do the same with regard to other people's.

I live with your type of "rubbish" every day because all my trainee teachers begin by spouting it.

[metal56]

Hmm, my examples sound like they were dragged from a textbook, do they? I was rather hoping they sounded a little more functional, that a context came more readily to mind (knock the 'if' off of 'If we arrived...' and 'If we can/could arrive...' to see what I'm driving at here - 'We modal arrive tomorrow - great eh!'). I'll try to improve upon them, then...not just in terms of quality but also quantity...

BNC result for "if we can arrive". Result was 1 appearance.

J3P this particular stage. Perhaps if we can arrive at some sort of specific amounts or some
0.08 seconds

In the BNC, there was a 0 appearance of "We'll arrive tommorow", both with and without the question mark.

Google: Results 1 - 34 of about 55 English pages for "we'll arrive tomorrow?".

(Not many there either.)

[lolwhites]

I don't know where anyone gets the idea that teaching EU students to pass the CAE is a cushy number. In my experience the students who've been learning the longest have the most useless baggage which they got from their former teachers (e.g. "my teacher back home told me there were 4 types of conditional") which they need to unlearn before they stand any chance of getting though the tests.

It might be a cushy number if they were taught real English in the first place.

[fluffyhamster]

I haven't really worked out how to fully use that BYU thingy yet (it would help if it had a full list of the tagset somewhere, and tips regarding maximum length and spacing between bracketing etc, so I could type a string straight into the search box)...while you're at it, metal, be a babe run things like

If we arrived tomorrow, that would be wonderful
If we arrive tomorrow, that would be wonderful
...though according to their original plan they ARRIVED/startED there next Wednesday

through it for me, okay? That way I could put what you're trying to tell me into some sort of perspective.

The point to me is not so much are they attested but are they logical/intuitively appealing? Some of the examples you've offered in the past have been neither attested nor intuitively appealing.

Ultimately, for many students, their choices in production will be governed if not limited by the logic they impose on the examples, rather than by any logic you might argue is inherent in the examples themselves (and I would argue there is often little apparent logic, which is precisely why there are so many schools of linguistics).

I should have said 'just doling out endless reams of examples for his students' (I was intending to alter that, but forgot to go back to it). Anyway, I think 'exceptions' can stand if it is seen as meaning something like 'Hey everybody, I know you're all anxious to get going, before we all leave for today, there's just one more thing I forgot to mention...'

Regarding more basic versus more advanced students, my point was only that more advanced students will probably be more able to handle masses of examples, some of which might appear to contradict whatever provisional hypotheses they'd formed (or been forming) in their minds regarding which forms are likely to appear in any one conditional sentence's clauses; certainly, they will be more able to argue about "what makes sense" and accept (even if they don't ultimately really understand) a teacher telling them 'There aren't four conditionals, you know squat, and this is just how English is, so get used to it you r*tards and stop trying to tell me otherwise'. Obvious enough stuff, really - the teacher wins the argument hands down every time, and I'm not actually "whining" about that in itself.

All I'm saying is, if you approach the conditionals from totally the opposite direction - meaning/context (into specific forms), it is much more likely that students will fall back upon what they "know" and produce common garden varieties of conditionals, than spruce things up with a fancy remote form here, an unexpected and kind of wierd trimming there.

If metal could show us some specific activities where ESL students from a variety of L1s consistently arrive at the same English forms (forms which aren't anticipated in courses usally but are nevertheless needed for those pragmatic reasons he alludes to), then obviously, I'd be interested...but it really does seem as if he is just having quite high-level informal and ad-hoc discussions with his more able students than teaching them essential, need-to-know facts and structures from a polished and replicable course.

As I said before, however, nobody is under an obligation here to write the next big new "revolutionary" textbook, but it does get rather "tiring" hearing 'teachers should know about this, and be doing that' when there are no practical guidelines or activities on offer with which anyone could try implementing the suggested approach and thereby evaluate it...or are the implications so plain that only a fool would not instantly know what to do?

Well, many teachers aren't exactly fools, and they will obviously resent any implication that they are (this is why unambitious training programmes are so maddening). They are just people trying their best with inadequate materials and training, and just because they don't usually have the time to do their own research and write better material from it (presuming they'd be allowed to use it) doesn't necessarily mean they are mentally inadequate or unresourceful people absolutely.

[lolwhites]

Well, many teachers aren't exactly fools, and they will obviously resent any implication that they are (this is why unambitious training programmes are so maddening). They are just people trying their best with inadequate materials and training, and just because they don't usually have the time to do their own research and write better material from it (presuming they'd be allowed to use it) doesn't necessarily mean they are mentally inadequate or unresourceful people absolutely.

I couldn't agree more, Fluff. The problem, at least in mainland Europe, which is the area I'm familiar with, is that the two commonest species of English teacher are:

1) The local breed - this is the teacher who passed a series of competitive exams to get into the state secondary system. As a consequence, they are left feeling that they have "made it" and never want to do another course again. With no desire for any professional updating they spend the next 30 years drumming "grammar" (actually verb forms) into students to get them through a school exam. When their students come to the UK to "perfect" their English they are often shocked to find themselves placed in the Pre-Intemediate class and spend the next few weeks pointing to the grammar section in the back of their coursebook and saying "I know the Future Perfect Continuous please I go up Intermediate [sic]" in a barely comprehensible accent. The smarter ones go to a higher group where they spend their time arguing that "my teacher said there were four conditionals and will is the Future Tense..."

2) The graduate - Fresh out of uni and the CELTA course, this breed goes abroad to spread the good news. Unfortunately their awareness of structure and meaning is based entirely on the crass overgeneralisations in the back of the Headway books. The more enterprising will try to make sense of Thompson and Martinet but have trouble explaining it to anyone whose level of English is not already at least FCE standard...

I used to fall into the second camp myself so before I get lynched for condemning an entire profession (which I belong to) let me say that it's the materials and training which are inadequate. It takes a year to train to be a schoolteacher in the UK (if you alrady have a degree) so a one month course is bound to only scratch the surface. If you want to drive a London taxi you need to demonstrate detailed knowledge of London's geography (which can take months or years to learn), yet EFL teachers are sent out into the world with one month's basic training and expected to pick up the rest as they go along.

It would at least be a step in the right direction if teachers were encouraged to say to their students "what you are learning is a generalisation which will help you gt by in English but you'll have to wait until you are a higher level before you can understand exactly how it works."

[fluffyhamster]

I suppose that what I'm saying is, I doubt if many of the examples that you present strike that many teachers as being absolutely essential (oh no, was that another cliche?!) for a learner to know in order to attain a very satisfactory level in English.

It is hard to tell if the 'they "can't" in English' sentences are due to an insistence that English forms correspond exactly in form and meaning to the L1, or an insistence that students try out one English form over another just for the hell of it ('It IS possible to say If we arrived tomorrow, that would be wonderful as an indirect, very clever and therefore very impressive way of saying (or continuing) (but) I don't think we'll arrive by tomorrow (=but I don't think we can)...it's a shame...').

The truly "educational" thing in all this is, I believe, that with a bit of thought, many if not most things can be rephrased using structures and ways of thinking with which the students are doubtless already more than familiar. But of course, if there are examples which simply cannot be rephrased in this way, then obviously, they would seem essential to learn as they are indeed exactly worded.

[metal56]

I don't know where anyone gets the idea that teaching EU students to pass the CAE is a cushy number.

Did anyone say that?

[fluffyhamster]

Ooh, hiya lolwhites, you were writing as I was expanding on my above thoughts, and posted just before I did. I'll obviously read what you've written, but will hold off on responding too soon, to give others a chance to comment on what either or both of us have said.

[fluffyhamster]

I don't know where anyone gets the idea that teaching EU students to pass the CAE is a cushy number.

Did anyone say that?

Yes, I did (I implied it, that is).

[metal56]

I suppose that what I'm saying is, I doubt if many of the examples that you present strike that many teachers as being absolutely essential (oh no, was that another cliche?!) for a learner to know in order to attain a very satisfactory level in English.

"Satisfactory" by what or whose standards?

It is hard to tell if the 'they "can't" in English' sentences are due to an insistence that English forms correspond exactly in form and meaning to the L1, or an insistence that students try out one English form over another just for the hell of it

The "can't" comes from teachers who either do not know what they are talking about or, again, feel it's better to hide the whole picture so as to push students through exams. My student can deal with being told the truth and also getting trough exams. So, where is the problem?

The truly "educational" thing in all this is, I believe, that with a bit of thought, many if not most things can be rephrased using structures and ways of thinking with which the students are doubtless already more than familiar. .

You're not listening to anyone but yourself. Students are more than familiar with more than 3 conditional structures in their own language. You, and teachers like you, sell the idea that English is a language of semantic paucity. By all means, concentrate on getting students through exams, but do not boldy profess that classrommenglish is anything more than that. The world of English, and I'm citing standard English here, is rich, full of possibilities. Stop hiding natural, native speaker, structures just because they question your pedagogic grammars.

This is not just a source for ESL grammar, this is an Applied Linguistics forum. Thinking beyond the exams is required.

[Stephen Jones]

Fluffy, nobody objects to your choosing a rodent of insignificant size and indeterminate outline to be your moniker. It's when you start applying the above qualities to your arguments that we get annoyed.

First of all, the reasons for Metal 56 producing so many of these brief posts. Nothing to do with wanting to have a discussion about the point, on this forum. Whether metal is having a discussion on another forum or the matter is to be raised with his student teachers I don't know, but what he is doing he is using the forum as a sounding board. He wants to be sure his ideas are right.

Next let's go through your ideas point by point:

1.

I recall SJ and metal weren't in quite the same sort of agreement there.

Err , perhaps we were talking about something completely different?

I disagree with Larry, and possibly with metal and lolwhites over one or two things, in particular to the assignment of some kind of nebulous core meaning to all modal auxiliaries, and the attempt to explain the use of the second form to describe events in a past time frame solely as a logical extension of the quality of remoteness. On most other matters we appear to be in agreement.


2.

I've remarked before about the overabundance of "remote" versus "proximal" main verbs on Dave's - it's like the modals suddenly ceased to exist as a real possibility in a verb phrase.

Eh? What's this got to do with the point in question.


3.

I think Tara's point isn't so much 'The 4 conditionals are the only conditional structures that can or should ever appear in English' but rather, 'Do students really have to grapple with this sort of sentence to understand, and in turn produce their own sentences?'.

Now we get to the meat. The truth is that the idea of the four conditionals is the result of a kind of mass hypnosis amongst EFL teachers. English speakers don't have an idea of there being four types of conditional sentences naturally. In fact one of the CELTA trainers at IH London wrote an article in the "Guardian" about having to teach basic 'grammar' to his ignorant Celta trainees and defended his explaining to them the concept of the three condiotionals (presumably he accidentally let the zero conditional slip down the plughole or had just bought Conditional XP standard as opposed to Conditional XP Pro).

We read about the three/four concitionals in Murphy, Swan, Streamline and a host of other books and never actually question it. Yet how many EFL teachers have told their students?
If you've finished the exercise, you can go.
Indeed we've even told our students this when the exercise was on conditonals, and not one of the exercises gave an example of the construction we've just used.

Speaking personally I spent nearly twenty years teaching the 0,1,2,3 variieties of conditional before I realized that the ever incrasing number of exceptions I was coming across and having to explain or tell my students to ignore weren't exceptions at all, but the 'rule' itself didn't exist. It's not a question of emphasizing or hiding the exceptions - it's that there isn't a 'rule' for them to be exceptions to.

[fluffyhamster]

Metal, I do not teach exam classes - I am thankfully not yet under any obligation to push students through to passing the FCE or CAE or CPE or whatever. I just mentioned those as examples. However, there are some teachers who might say that teaching those exams would help me to develop as a teacher in some ways - there's an interesting thought!

I think we all know what "satisfactory" is - it describes the sort of student who'd be managing fine until they got into an "advanced class" where all they knew was undermined aand thrown open to doubt and possible confusion. I'm not saying that they wouldn't emerge from the process the stronger for it, but then, did they (the 'smarter ones' among them, to borrow lolwhites's phrase) really have unforgivably huge gaps in their knowledge before going into it? It seems that "satisfactory" to you is at or very near-native level and type speech only. That is why I am tempted to say you must be in quite "cushy" settings, with students who don't really need to continue studying, unless they are obsessed with being "perfect" (now there's a term I think we could argue the meaning of).

The "can't" came from your post, actually. I only mention(ed) it because, as I said above in relation to "translation", I didn't really understand what the students were expecting to learn or be able to do in English

Where did you get the idea that I think any language (even a learner language) is or has to be (made) semantically sparse? All that I am interested in is "how much is enough", and I don't mean just to be able to order a coffee but to be able to hold one's own in a lighthearted good-natured conversation between people who see each other as intellectual equals on a variety of intelligent topics.

As I keep saying, I really don't want to hide anything: I'm just asking, if this stuff is so valuable, why isn't it being incorporated into a syllabus somewhere? I would prefer to have that (which teacher wouldn't?) to just bringing in random newspapers and the like each day (students might then wonder why they don't just save on the course fees and go but a newspaper themselves instead)...or would doing that be pandering to my concerns too much, and just be setting up a whole new generation of dumbass can't-think-for-themselves teachers?

Look, I really don't mind being given the role of the lost newbie teacher, but I'd appreciate it if you'd accept the role of the blustering disorganized scattershot hope-some-of-it-sticks sandal-wearing professor type, metal.

This thread is a repeat of an earlier one:
http://www.eslcafe.com/forums/teacher/v ... 0300#10300

There, we were told to go figure it all out for ourselves - no specifics supplied; as for me there, I didn't ask metal to write a book, but just wondered where the good books were at. Metal's reply? 'Just get hold of a copy of Innovations and use it to create similar material for all levels' - easier said than done. Did he do even that himself, I wonder?

So, as I say, I'd still like to know in which contexts these alternative forms of metal's are an absolute necessity that would bear close study and practise; I think we've all gathered by now that there are more possible combinations of clauses than the traditional four conditionals anticipate, and are now simply wondering which of these previously unanalyzed combinations throw up new possibilities for practise rather than one-off, seemingly passive analyses.

[metal56]

I don't know where anyone gets the idea that teaching EU students to pass the CAE is a cushy number.

Did anyone say that?

Yes, I did (I implied it, that is).

And is it cushy?

-------------
If you say we move tomorrow, that ______ be great, but I can't see it happening.

"Will", "would", or either?

[metal56]

Speaking personally I spent nearly twenty years teaching the 0,1,2,3 variieties of conditional before I realized that the ever incrasing number of exceptions I was coming across and having to explain or tell my students to ignore weren't exceptions at all, but the 'rule' itself didn't exist. It's not a question of emphasizing or hiding the exceptions - it's that there isn't a 'rule' for them to be exceptions to.

And that is the kernel of this thread. Teachers are leading students to believe that there are many, many exceptions in English. So much so that students end up believing that there is no system. There is.

[fluffyhamster]

Valid points there SJ, I guess I should just shut up. Of course metal has a right to check his ideas out here...it's just, I get excited that there might be some ready-made applications to be had from whatever insights he is having. Of course, if metal just isn't in the business of writing materials or textbooks, or even sharing something rough and ready on Dave's then that's his decision, but it seems a shame that "we" are left wondering quite what to make of half of what he says, is all.

By the way, examples like 'If you've finished the exercise, you can go' aren't really a problem, are they!