http://www.eslcafe.com/forums/teacher/v ... php?t=2109
http://www.eslcafe.com/forums/teacher/v ... php?t=2225 ,
I assisted with some classes recently, and it got me thinking about not only RPs but (functional) English and TEFL in general.
For the first class, the Japanese Teacher of English (JTE) hadn't had time to make a plan, and therefore asked me to come up with something for the class; but as she also didn't have time to let me later then explain and tell her what I was going to do, she informed me that she'd be taking 15 minutes or so at the beginning of the class to "explain the grammar of RPs to them".
Here are almost all of the examples that she put on the board:
Mr X is a teacher. He teaches English > Mr X is a teacher who teaches English
I have a friend. He lives in Hokkaido > (she substitutes 'He' with 'who')
I have a pet dog (Rover). It swims well > (she substitutes 'It' with 'which')
I know a house. It has big windows > (substitution with 'which')
This is a train. It goes to Nagoya > (blah blah blah)
You get the idea I think.
Obvious objections: Mr X teaches English (and...)/Mr X is an English teacher; Why are you telling me about this friend? I haven't even mentioned the fact that I might be going skiing (I live in Japan) this winter (and need info about various things) - you must be a mindreader! Plus, 'in' is powerful enough by itself to convey the meaning of 'who lives'; Pets are often thought of and characterized as 'human' (in English at least, anyway!); Um..."Right, okaaayyy I seeee..."; kind of like Mr X, why not just make a simple statement or modify the noun prenominally (as part of a sentence's predicate after the copula)?
This JTE had no further activities beyond this formal introduction, and left it to me to talk about several actors, and introduce the class to a few urban legends or jokes (Have you heard the story about the salariman who dies on the Yamanote line train?). Ended the class by reading out a few definitions with RPs and seeing if the class could guess the word (kind of basic/traditional activity idea).
In the other class, a different teacher entirely was taking it (hadn't talked to me at all, although he had observed/helped out in the above class a day or so before his own).
His formal introduction avoided the 'teachteachteachteach' pitfall (he used e.g. 'I know a teacher. He likes golf'), but the lack of a context for uttering the combined sentence(s) soon became apparent when it was the students' turn to make up sentences based on the teacher's:
Student: I know a teacher who drives a scooter.
JTE: Who?
Student: I don't know (="I didn't think I needed to bother thinking about meaning as well as form, even though one would assume from my choosing 'scooter' as opposed to 'car' - the former of which is kinda unusual for teachers in Japan - that I had had a specific individual in mind; but no, I have nobody in mind, because I am indeed just mindlessly following a model sentence's grammar and lexicalizing my own slots more or less at random, just like my JTE often does! I just hope it ends up making a modicum of sense to everybody!")... - oops, sorry, being a bit mean there, the students do try hard and do make (some)sense (to me, a native speaker who can fill in any gaps in context and create a more ideal conversation), but what they are made to say often isn't ultimately that earth-shattering, is it! It can be strange stuff, of questionable use (at least until more clearly contextualized). I suppose what I'm driving at here is, is grammatically correct english actually "correct", right, kosher etc in the speaker's mind if no thought is being given to its wider context? (A competent listener will register a blip even if the speaker doesn't).
Some of his examples were also a bit strange:
I want a robot. It cleans my room.*
I want a robot and a friend. They talk to me (> 'that', apparently; why not just use 'to talk to', and of only a human friend - robots can't really TALK (yet)!).
His second activity was a "matching sentence halves" type (students would also supply the missing required type or RP):
(Hideo) Nakata is a man...(who)...was born in Yamanashi and lives in England now.
Mr Koizumi is a man...(who)...looks like Richard Gere (well, that's what Richard Gere told him anyway: 'You look a bit like me!')
I don't think I need to tell you guys that just from the names alone, these people are obviously men: this would thus seem to be an instance where factual statements (without the copula+RPs), focussing on the main verb instead, are what are trying to surface.
The final activity that this second JTE had was a collection of real people or fictional characters, or animals, or things (e.g. salt), each of which had 3 or 4 statements (clues) all beginning in the same manner:
He is a man who lived in England/wrote many famous stories/wrote Romeo and Juliet
This is an animal which lives in Hokkaido/sleeps in winter/likes honey
This is a thing which is used by us/produced from sea water/is thrown away by sumo wrestlers/is put on holy places (the English is getting a bit dodgy here 'cos obviously the ideas involved are more complex)
The keywords could be He, It, and It/Something respectively, with the nouns man, animal and thing and the linked copulas + relativizing phrases thus rendered unnecessary.
Now, I have nothing personal against this JTE, he is a nice guy and his lessons are generally fun (the students enjoy them, anyway), but he kind of made a point of saying to me after my class that my talking about actors was a little too difficult (even though I picked people in Harry Potter, or Titanic - hardly movies that many Japanese students won't have seen).
My point is, fun though it is to guess that I am talking about e.g. a bear, this is ultimately "just" a guessing GAME. It will obviously be harder to understand which actor I am going on about (e.g. Billy Zane versus David Warner - the two "bad guys" in Titanic who can be defined relative to each other if not by their "characters" then at least by their respective and differing actions in that movie's storyline), but then, that is precisely why I am taking (and why it takes) a bit more time and effort to go through this (as opposed to getting to 'bear' by a few easy keywords and/or associations, collocations etc).
Both sorts of activities have their fair share of useful vocab, but it is the actor one, I would argue, that aims to demonstrate an actual conversational topic/TALKING POINT.
The compromize, of course, would be to include both easier and harder types of activities, but the message I am getting (about the opinion the JTEs seem to have of me if not most AETs, if you'll allow me to indulge my paranoia) is that we the AETs don't actually have a clue about English grammar etc because we can never seem to "grade" our language to the JTE's satisfaction (?to their generally low/poor/abysmal level - delete as appropriate - so that they won't feel inferior in any way, even though it needn't ever be made to appear so in front of the students (I'm never out to show the JTE up)).
All this however rather ignores the fact that definition-style activities are, as I've said, hardly going to be news to anyone who's ever had to teach RPs; and what of MY objection that the JTEs generally make an embarassment of themselves (unbeknowest to them/like they care), think nothing of giving loads of dodgy/crap input to the always obedient but ever-struggling (to make sense of anything, and in turn everything/nothing) students, and only come out of it looking good 'cos they stretch out the easy/"fun" stuff so much and 'cos I'm not really allowed or expected to give them any critical feedback (not that I necessarily want to give them feedback - it's the preparation stage that matters, and where things go astray. See next para).
I think we'd see a lot more eye-to-eye if the JTEs could just make some time (i.e. felt they had to make the time) to thrash out what would be "good" or "bad" in the long run for the students...then again, maybe we'd end up at each others' throats (even) more!
Hope I don't sound like the sort of AET who takes the educational aspects of the job so seriously that I forget to have fun with the kiddies (or the JTEs!).
*I think this, more than any other example I've seen, really does show how misguided the sentence-combining "function/view" of RPs is: the fact is, we produce only the one sentence with the RP, and all students might need to be aware of is how removing the RP changes the meaning; it is not a case of substitution at all.
... 
