There is / are .....
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Duncan Powrie
- Posts: 525
- Joined: Sun Jan 11, 2004 3:33 pm
By the way, William, how do the students themselves respond to your teaching? The reason I ask is not because I am imagining they won't understand, but rather, because I guess the approach you have adopted is reasonably successful (otherwise you'd presumably discontinue using it)! You Chinese are maybe more motivated than some of the students I've had to teach! What I'm saying folks is different strokes for different folks
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Stephen Jones
- Posts: 1421
- Joined: Sun May 18, 2003 5:25 pm
William, If you go to the thread on countable and uncountable, you'll find that your method is viewed by some as positively villainous.
You're making a mistake with example 3), if your goal is to simplify. You've created a third example, whereas if you stick to 1) and 2) you actually have the explanation to 3) and 4).
You'd be teaching that the first element in a collection that comes after the there is/are is what determines the verb, which although a simplification is probably closer to the truth than what you are teaching at the moment, and less complicated.
You're making a mistake with example 3), if your goal is to simplify. You've created a third example, whereas if you stick to 1) and 2) you actually have the explanation to 3) and 4).
You'd be teaching that the first element in a collection that comes after the there is/are is what determines the verb, which although a simplification is probably closer to the truth than what you are teaching at the moment, and less complicated.
Breakfast is....
Good morning all!
I wanted to go back to the sentence: Breakfast is bacon and eggs.
Breakfast for me is the third person singular subject of the sentence and thus should take is as its verb, that's all.
In the case of there is and there are, though it can be argued that there is the subject of the sentence, the verb be is usually conjugated based on what there is or are. Yet, in the case of There's bacon and eggs for breakfast, I think we are facing the same thing as There's a coffee. In the latter we suppose that the coffee is in a cup. In the former, we suppose that the bacon and eggs is a dish that we will eat.
Finally, on William teaching grammatical accuracy to his kids. I won't say he is wrong in doing so; however, I will point out that later on, some teacher will have to help those same kids get over the tendency to say things like "I--am--7--years--old." when a native kid might just say "I'm 7". I think both need to be taught from the first class. English is full of reductions, of words left out, of fast bridged talking, and a student who believes that what they are saying word for word is correct will only feel lost when they hear a native slur and cut words!
peace,
revel.
I wanted to go back to the sentence: Breakfast is bacon and eggs.
Breakfast for me is the third person singular subject of the sentence and thus should take is as its verb, that's all.
In the case of there is and there are, though it can be argued that there is the subject of the sentence, the verb be is usually conjugated based on what there is or are. Yet, in the case of There's bacon and eggs for breakfast, I think we are facing the same thing as There's a coffee. In the latter we suppose that the coffee is in a cup. In the former, we suppose that the bacon and eggs is a dish that we will eat.
Finally, on William teaching grammatical accuracy to his kids. I won't say he is wrong in doing so; however, I will point out that later on, some teacher will have to help those same kids get over the tendency to say things like "I--am--7--years--old." when a native kid might just say "I'm 7". I think both need to be taught from the first class. English is full of reductions, of words left out, of fast bridged talking, and a student who believes that what they are saying word for word is correct will only feel lost when they hear a native slur and cut words!
peace,
revel.
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Duncan Powrie
- Posts: 525
- Joined: Sun Jan 11, 2004 3:33 pm
I think there is a risk of treating students like (linguists have) computers, that is, of giving them instruction/input and then simply hoping that they will be able to process it successfully (and that they will not, therefore, produce anything ungrammatical afterwards). Of course, we all know that both computers and students sometimes don't perform quite as well as we'd been hoping! Why is this?
With computers, it is obviously due to their lack of intelligence and, therefore, their greater need for (quite complex and therefore potentially incomplete) instructions; students, on the other hand, are undoubtedly better at understanding language than computers ever will be, so the exact form of the instruction might not matter so much; but both computers and students are similar in that they are (or, more accurately in the case of students, can choose or be are made to be or feel, by teachers both good and bad) dependent upon the instruction, which, if it is indeed INCOMPLETE, will obviously not be anticipating and therefore less able to avoid any future problems.
The issue to me is therefore not so much whether instruction is based on native language norms vs. non-native norms, or notions of "difficulty" (subjective), but whether it is not only internally consistent but also (and more importantly) complete and adaptable/malleable enough to be able to cope with the demands that real users will make of it in communication in the outside world - will the student produce the "necessary" output later on the basis of the input?.
That is, there will be quite a gap between what a learner with exposure only to incomplete instruction can do or is willing to try, and what native speakers and other more experienced learners are capable of and comfortable with on the basis of their (in the case of the more experienced learners, possibly hard-won) real-life knowledge. In this respect, students who are instructed like computers with incomplete instructions will probably then behave like computers (i.e. always be seeking clarification and yet more instruction) instead of using their initiative. (It would be interesting to speculate how foreign or second learners of English can or will conceptualize the world, or be able to make sense out of it, and also IN it (productively I mean), on the basis of their instruction ("respectable" research has, as far as I am aware, only looked at differences between languages re. the Sapir-Wharf hypothesis etc, rather than at ESOL student perceptions IN/THROUGH THEIR ENGLISH...but correct me if I'm wrong, or if you think SLA/interlanguage or contrastive analysis research has really addressed this issue - it's a very wide field!)).
Anyway, it is excusable that linguists working with crappy computers are not able to forsee every problem; what is inexcusable is for a teacher to deliberately ignore a possibly vital or necessary step in formulating a sequence of instruction(s) (that would probably aid processing and "competence"), and then acting surprised or claiming they "did their best" when things don't go according to plan...
It is not so much "poverty of the stimulus"/quantity I'm talking about here (we can introduce as much data as we want into the classroom) or even issues of quality (this is subjective even with "authentic" data), but whether the data that informs our teaching is as accurate and complete as possible for the processing to work and be complete. Natural language cannot be expected to be as neat and tidy as that used in computer programming, but I am convinced that despite its apparent unwieldiness or messiness, that it is ultimately more consistent at a deeper level, and could therefore perhaps eventually produce more consistent results in the long run from our students (than...I'll leave you to fill in the blank here!). I also do not see why a syllabus based on natural language should not be as clear or clearer than any other (besides, there are other factors such as design, layout, quality of writing/explanation, quality of activities etc which can aid understanding of language regardless of how "easy" or "difficult" it may appear to be).
I'm trying to be provocative here of course, but I certainly don't wish to sound like I believe that structural approaches do not work at all; in comparison, it it is early days for data-driven (I'd prefer to say data-informed, and better still, data-inspired*) teaching and/or learning (if the teaching is good, then learning shouldn't be a problem, should it?!) - we still need to whip whatever we unearth into pedagoical shape and, let's face it, the pedagogical/methodological dimension of (the) Lexical Approach(es) isn't exactly its/their strongest suit! Anyway, a lot of ink has been spilt over learning vs. acquisition already, and it is not my intention to draw people into a debate over that (or into Corpus Linguistics etc) specifically, but rather to just get everyone to think about the choices they make in compiling their syllabuses, and especially the long-term benefits of it all for the learner as opposed to the short-term "I've got it just so" satisfaction or convenience for the teacher.
* See McCarthy and the other author he quotes (whose name I can't remember) in his Spoken Language and Applied Linguistics.
With computers, it is obviously due to their lack of intelligence and, therefore, their greater need for (quite complex and therefore potentially incomplete) instructions; students, on the other hand, are undoubtedly better at understanding language than computers ever will be, so the exact form of the instruction might not matter so much; but both computers and students are similar in that they are (or, more accurately in the case of students, can choose or be are made to be or feel, by teachers both good and bad) dependent upon the instruction, which, if it is indeed INCOMPLETE, will obviously not be anticipating and therefore less able to avoid any future problems.
The issue to me is therefore not so much whether instruction is based on native language norms vs. non-native norms, or notions of "difficulty" (subjective), but whether it is not only internally consistent but also (and more importantly) complete and adaptable/malleable enough to be able to cope with the demands that real users will make of it in communication in the outside world - will the student produce the "necessary" output later on the basis of the input?.
That is, there will be quite a gap between what a learner with exposure only to incomplete instruction can do or is willing to try, and what native speakers and other more experienced learners are capable of and comfortable with on the basis of their (in the case of the more experienced learners, possibly hard-won) real-life knowledge. In this respect, students who are instructed like computers with incomplete instructions will probably then behave like computers (i.e. always be seeking clarification and yet more instruction) instead of using their initiative. (It would be interesting to speculate how foreign or second learners of English can or will conceptualize the world, or be able to make sense out of it, and also IN it (productively I mean), on the basis of their instruction ("respectable" research has, as far as I am aware, only looked at differences between languages re. the Sapir-Wharf hypothesis etc, rather than at ESOL student perceptions IN/THROUGH THEIR ENGLISH...but correct me if I'm wrong, or if you think SLA/interlanguage or contrastive analysis research has really addressed this issue - it's a very wide field!)).
Anyway, it is excusable that linguists working with crappy computers are not able to forsee every problem; what is inexcusable is for a teacher to deliberately ignore a possibly vital or necessary step in formulating a sequence of instruction(s) (that would probably aid processing and "competence"), and then acting surprised or claiming they "did their best" when things don't go according to plan...
It is not so much "poverty of the stimulus"/quantity I'm talking about here (we can introduce as much data as we want into the classroom) or even issues of quality (this is subjective even with "authentic" data), but whether the data that informs our teaching is as accurate and complete as possible for the processing to work and be complete. Natural language cannot be expected to be as neat and tidy as that used in computer programming, but I am convinced that despite its apparent unwieldiness or messiness, that it is ultimately more consistent at a deeper level, and could therefore perhaps eventually produce more consistent results in the long run from our students (than...I'll leave you to fill in the blank here!). I also do not see why a syllabus based on natural language should not be as clear or clearer than any other (besides, there are other factors such as design, layout, quality of writing/explanation, quality of activities etc which can aid understanding of language regardless of how "easy" or "difficult" it may appear to be).
I'm trying to be provocative here of course, but I certainly don't wish to sound like I believe that structural approaches do not work at all; in comparison, it it is early days for data-driven (I'd prefer to say data-informed, and better still, data-inspired*) teaching and/or learning (if the teaching is good, then learning shouldn't be a problem, should it?!) - we still need to whip whatever we unearth into pedagoical shape and, let's face it, the pedagogical/methodological dimension of (the) Lexical Approach(es) isn't exactly its/their strongest suit! Anyway, a lot of ink has been spilt over learning vs. acquisition already, and it is not my intention to draw people into a debate over that (or into Corpus Linguistics etc) specifically, but rather to just get everyone to think about the choices they make in compiling their syllabuses, and especially the long-term benefits of it all for the learner as opposed to the short-term "I've got it just so" satisfaction or convenience for the teacher.
* See McCarthy and the other author he quotes (whose name I can't remember) in his Spoken Language and Applied Linguistics.