tropic of cancer

Thank you for your replies - even the abusive ones - and I apologise for not replying sooner (no internet at home).

On reflection, I perhaps shouldn't have mocked the woman's accent, but it is very strong.

For the person who said I wasn't a native speaker...quoi?! Which bits of my incomprehensible gibberish' did you not get?

Cream: the reason I asked 'a bunch of strangers' is because most of them are language teachers.

As for my original point, I'm surprised at the number of folk who argue the use of 'I will' over the far more common 'going to'. As I say, I can understand why people want to use 'will' but the latter is simply far more common. In examples such as I gave, 'will' would never be used - at least in England. Maybe in the US or Antipodes, habits are different here.

Most books I've used delineate the differences very clearly, which is why I mentioned it to my colleague to begin with.

I think the answer I was seeking is a fairly emphatic 'yes', however!

Bad day at the office.

8ball

Am I too L8 2 b abusive?

missed anotha chance,,,,,GDI

anyway,,answer: yes

let her do her own thAng,,,,u do ur own thAng

upity SLs dun take kindly 2 correction,,,,she sounds so

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I-never-dun-a-ting-rong-in-me-life-m8

fencesitter

Sorry for the abuse...was being a twat...here's a green...

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Reclined amongst these packs of reasons
For to smokes the days away into the evenings
All these poses of classical torture
Ruined my mind like a snake in the orchard
I did go from wanting to be someone now
Im drunk and wearing flip-flops on fifth avenue

Ramalamadingdong

Maybe they should say "Tomorrow I eat KFC. I vely hunngee!"

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"Would you like some cheese with that WHINE?"

"Beer is proof that God exists and that he wants us to be happy!"
- Benjamin Franklin

I to speaking gooder Engahland wary mutt!

"We have a date with destiny...and it looks like she's ordered the lobster!"

Asper

Shit. You've never told a friend "I'll call you tomorrow"?

I rather like "will" (although I teach them both) because when you're teaching the future tense to speakers of a language that doesn't have it, it's less confusing to have them use simple future than confuse it with present continuous of "to go" + infinitive.

Just my opinion though.

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emjay

"I'll call you tomorrow" is usually a spontaneous utterance expressing a decision being made at the time rather than a statement of some planned, already-decided upon future, so falls clearly within the usage pattern for the "so-called" simple future.

As to the OP's example, unless the card being used as a cue gives contextual information, it's impossible to say whether the going to or the will future is "correct". Which means that the OP was being "wrong" rather than pedantic; this kind of undecidable, resulting from inadequate contextual information in many materials used in teaching English, is one reason it's not wise to rely on materials when trying to teach accurate verb tense usage, or at least not exclusively.

I've come to the conclusion that this sort of lovely subtlety in English tenses is hardly worth insisting on in circumstances where it's hard enough just getting any close-to-accurate tense inflection happening. It also does seem that the will form is likely to become the standard future in international, as opposed to native speaker, English. And we're not paid to teach the native speaker version[s], eh?

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"When the ignorant are taught to doubt they do not know what they safely may believe." Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

stfranalum

arguing? i disagreed with her? so what?

they allowed us to keep swear words and nonsense out of the teaching related stuff. does that mean i need to hold my opinions about teaching stuff back? i like liz. but if i diasgree, where else than a discussion forum to say so?


are we honestly debating "i will go to the movies" as an incorrect form in thai EFL?

HONESTLY???!!?

at a high level, say 4th year uni english majors, or for kids of diplomats who want strictly american english IN AN AMERICAN ENGLISH CURRICULUM, where grammar isnt the focus?

jesus guys. "i will go to the market tomorrow" youve got to be kidding me with a debate as to the relevance of this compared to the mountain of issues facing learners.

there is literally a mountain of issues learners face. in fact affective factors like their attitude matter a ton. nitpicking over a detail which in the context of their level, is ok, would hinder their speech. and not a little. most students ive taught would be perplexed as to why thats not correct. they would double check and slow down a lot.

this is nonsense. the guy had a bad day, was sharp with his colleague and although no one asked, if that was me, id apologize. she tried to make a relevant activity. WTF

"lets play bingo" <-- more likely deserving of some comment.

"i will go to the movies tomorrow" <-- an utterance perfectly in line with a corect speech act by a thai EFL learner.

native speaking is not their goal. please show me a thai EFL learner who accomplished a native speaking ability with only classroom activity. not being a pendantic, nitpicker is in fact a tactic that matters in this job. its not about perfection, which has been the downfall of many a good teacher with equally good intentions.

lets get our kids to communicate and produce language and leave the "native" part for fantasies, ummkay? unless that is, you think that nitpicking makes kids at an EP's summer camp more in line to have native speaking abilites.

do show the methods of this revolution. i beg you. i'll be at the bar all night waiting.

emjay

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"When the ignorant are taught to doubt they do not know what they safely may believe." Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

stfranalum

no really. that chill-pill should go to the dude who questioned "i will go to the park" as an inaccurate statement for a thai english learner.


for real???

emjay

well, yeah... the worst of it is though that he was so wrong about it being wrong for anyone at all... as i pointed out, only a context could establish which future was preferable here and i doubt that that camp card had one, other than the camp of course...

on the other hand, sometimes it's hard not to want to get the odd dig in there with non-native-speaking teachers who insist on the correctness of some piece of english that they have limited information about... there are ways and ways to go about this though, and a heated argument is not a very productive one...

he wasn't rabbiting on about this with his students, remember...

your point about not insisting on these subtleties with thai efl learners is a good one, unless that learner is at a sufficiently advanced level that it becomes worthwhile...

the "going to"--"will" distinction can cause a kind of miscommunication, although not related to time reference... for years i listened to swiss and german students responding to a low-key friday class-closing "what are you going to do this weekend?" question with something along the lines of "i will go skiing to whistler... we will stay at a condo of my homestay family" without realising how my sense of central europeans was inflected by this off-key use of "will"... pictures of ranks of swiss villagers marching up the sea-to-sky with banners and chants insisting on their going to whistler for skiing swirled in my head... a simple "going to" would have avoided this particular bit of cultural miscueing... just as a false sense of japanese timidity and evasiveness is suggested and reinforced by their constant use of "maybe" with future statements... turns out it's just an importation of 'tabun', which translates dictionary-wise as "maybe" but is commonly used to indicate futurity in nihongo...

but, in the end, i think it's likely that the "going to" future will not have a very significant, if any, role in the language that we are being paid to teach, which is, after all, international english... which is one reason that insisting on the vast superiority of native speakers as tefl teachers is more like a union's attempt at closing a shop than a valid notion where tefl is concerned... very few second-language speakers of english give a crap about what native speakers "usually say"; they just want to speak well... which is not the same thing IMO...

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"When the ignorant are taught to doubt they do not know what they safely may believe." Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Topper

Having a difference of opinion is one thing, but when you're discussing a posters attributes publicly with as little information has the OP provided COULD suggest that first or low post count posters opinions are not welcome. Personally, in this half of the forum the moderators should be promoting an exchange, rather that just after a few posts making a decision based on a rather public debate of the posters attributes.

Just a thought...and wouldn't have answered if you didn't answer the question, Franny and Liz. But then again, what do I know!

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- Helping Teachers Help Students

LoveBucket

i'll have a job explaining to my boss why i can't come in tomorrow

kiwiling

Maybe...but I will bet a dollar to a knob of sheepshit that the woman can speak Thai better than she speaks English.

8ball