exactly.Originally Posted by jonny danger
'i'll do it tomorrow' and 'i WILL do it tomorrow' are not same same.
but i'm not real sure how to explain 'i'm going to do it tomorrow' in the same lesson
fred
this is really the crux of the issue. We shouldn't talk about future tenses simply because we don't conjugate the verb. To talk about the future we use different types of modality to describe a number of different ways of talking about the future dependant on factors such as certainty, possibility, intention, probability, ability, etc. Aside from 'will' there are other modal verbs that also address the future such as, might, may, can, could, should, need to, must, have to, and so on. All of this depends on the context and the sooner we get students aware of recognising contexts the sooner they will be able to deal with the complexities of talking about the future...
Papa was a rodeo - Mama was a rock'n'roll band
I could play guitar and rope a steer before I learned to stand
This particular "crux" sort of gets up my nose because this sense of "tense" is based on Latin grammar, which is a notoriously bad fit for the Anglo-Saxon insouciance of our dear English. It would be nice to just call the four forms of future that we use "future tenses" without having to genuflect towards those 19th century grammarians.
Markle, do you do this in your lessons? From what level? And how? I agree with you, but wonder how to go about it, given that most texts concentrate on four aspects to express the future.
^^come again?
^This is a perspective I've come to only recently so I'm still getting to grips with how to get it across, especially since the overwhelming orthodoxy is with the 'four tenses'.
I guess my basic approach would be to approach teaching talking about future in a way that is not restricted to the 'four tenses' but rather focuses on different contexts and the appropriate modals to deal with the context in question.
Last edited by markle; 13th August 2012 at 21:52.
It makes sense the most difficult parts of a foreign language are those that don't appear in your native language. We all know how rag-tag Thais is with the future.
Spanish has a tense English doesn't, and it's a good, useful one. An auto passes you rapidly and and you ask, what kind of car was that? Why not ask what kind of car is that? After all, just because it has passed doesn't mean the car has changed from a Ford to a Mercedes. Spanish has, what was and continues to be .. nice.
Well with all grammatical tenses really. All time reference is through adverbials and modal verbs and simply context.
My point is that "to be going to+bare infinitive" and "will+bare infinitive" are only NOT tenses because in Latin the term "tense" applies only to verbs that are conjugated. i.e. words that change form to change time reference. That's great for French and Spanish and other Latinate languages whose grammars are descended from and closely related to Latin. It's less great for a language like English whose grammar, nomenclature notwithstanding, is definitely not.
There is nothing stopping us from calling our future tenses "tenses" except the hoary tradition bequeathed to us by all those old retired clergymen for whom Latin was the mother of all languages and the peak of perfection etc....
Have you read The English Verb by Michael Lewis?
Not yet.
and the point I'm making is that they aren't the only way of referring to the future. take this as an example, the old "boy asking a girl out on a date' scenario
Boy: What are you doing Friday night?
Girl: I'm washing my hair
Boy: Saturday?
Girl: My grandma might visit.
Boy: Saturday night.?
Girl:I need to see the dentist Saturday night
Boy:Sunday?
Girl: I have to work.
Boy: Sunday night?
Girl:I should study for Monday's English test
Etc....
Yeah, I get the point about various "subjunctives" having a clear future reference, and I bring this up with appropriate groups and individuals, but I wouldn't like to lose the distinction between a "real" future-- I'm washing my hair-- and a present imaginary thought or opinion about the future-- I have to work--. In general, I like to emphasize "degrees of reality" as a function of English verb grammar alongside the more conventional "time relations" approach.
If you overstress the shared "futurity" of statements like "I'm going to work on Saturday" and "I should work on Saturday" you risk losing the more significant element of "attitude".
So, whereas I'd prefer to call "going to" a future tense, I'm happy to keep "should" as an imaginary.
I think you're forgetting once you've established you're talking about the future there isn't the need to use future tenses, nor past.
Without additional context there is no difference. The phrases are not mutually exclusive. The student might just as well ask the difference between "It's freezing today" and "This cold weather has rendered my brass monkey incomplete."
I sleep in the daytime, I
Work in the night time, I
Might not ever get home
^
Inflectional morphemes (-ed, -ing endings) + free morphemes (words) as 'time markers', auxiliaries working with inflected verbs, etc...work together in English to make reference to various time frames.
jesus, get clued up people!
I bet that's the first time the beautiful word 'morpheme' as ever made its way onto this forum.
This might be my contribution to putting together an answer to that recent letter/article thing on ajarn.com.. what was it.."Why can't Thais speak English?": because, in part, none of the foreigners teaching them except for manneddrake appear to know what a 'morpheme' is. therefore their instruction is very likely uninformed by a working knowledge of anything but surface structure.
"what, you're teaching deep structure grammar to Thai students? WTF?" I can imagine someone thinking there ^
No, silly. The knowledge of structure informs the teaching, doesn't form its contents. It's AMAZING how subtle, yet completely night and day the difference between a lesson on say the present perfect is as taught by a teacher informed by knowledge and the one seeing the language 'from the top'. it's easy to check who's who, too without hearing the lesson or even seeing the room. if you only had a video camera zoomed into their eyes as they teach it, you will know 'where its coming from'. annnyway..
Explicit knowledge of the language system informs appropriate and effective language instruction, it doesn't form its content.
What that would inform is clear attention to, and one hopes, in a way, 'access' to (as an 'accepted' -into their brain- language instructor or maybe better called acquisition coach...really they need to accept you INTO THEIR BRAIN) - the process of "'growing' the interlanguage" which is the activity of the language learner. And (in response to mandude's 'you can't teach grammar' thing) that interlanguage gardener/learner is best well equipped with the tools of explicit knowledge of the system's rules - in this case beginning with the elementary fact that English involves a mix of two morphological types to form tenses - not to mention plurals and semantic categories organized by prefixed and suffixes (bound morphemes, them). As suppliers of those rules (the reason we should know them) we're like the Monsanto of learning, handing down the chemicals for big GMO language fruit.
I suppose you're thinking more like the on-a-mission organic gardener, inviting everyone to GROW YOUR OWN! GROW YOUR OWN! despite the fact that most of the fields roundabouts are rather barren. But that guy's got something to say, too, to be sure..and he's usually wonderfully fuzzy and sweet and healthy...if sometimes lonely without a car, computer, or any 'processors' around and all...a TRUE elt hippy
Hopefully we can all appreciate mandude's obsession with the value of the comprehensible input flood through extensive reading but any funloving linguist within reasonable earshot of the so-called 'cognitivist revolution' in SLA might not stick around long enough to hear him say it thrice.
My humble actual addition to a discussion like this is just to suggest that before teachers like us begin 'taking stands' and 'arguing' various perspectives on acquisition we perhaps more patiently assess whether we've not jumped into a race before ever looking at the road (both ways- behind and before us)..and consider that EVERY SLA theory with a modicum of established credibility is worth a bit more than dismissal by those who would like to argue, for whatever reason, their 'case' about teaching methods instead of discuss why a method is even constructed and what is used to construct one.
no..instead, what's truly worthwhile is time and energy spent in synthesizing a working hypothesis of your own IN PRACTICE and spending your time collect, examining, and perhaps sharing the results of that instead of your opinions based on never-mentioned details of your general teaching "experience", from which you call out!
But I've got to say, folks calling out from these stumps and trees and hills is better than anything else on this horrid site! so bravo, glad to have a chance to post every noooooow and thennnnnnn
Last edited by Matthew; 14th August 2012 at 04:28.
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oh, please
this top 1% talk is ridiculous. it applies to such an elite, rarefied individual that it isnt even worth mentioning. your avg thai learner has no business knowing what a morpheme is in a literal sense.
grammar is not the issue. NES should not teach grammar unless the students are at least CEFR B1s, probably B2. maybe the OP's student is to that level, but i doubt it.
i agree with you as far as a NES knowledge is concerned. but NES have nothing to do with the english ability of thais. absolutely nothing at all.
I vote bull shit. In fact these statements show how anal and pedantic and out of touch the teacher is.
Three points: Most of us are average teachers teaching average students. How important is it to your students to fancy yourself an English language intellectual? You see your high style as the fruits of your hard work and you're a hammer and have found a class full of nails. And as you polish your lily white ass with your own tongue the students just see you as boring.
Two (the lowers levels): What percentage of our students will ever take a SAT (or equivalent)? What percentage of the average - majority - of Thai students will ever attend a university? How many will ever use English to augment their livelihood? How many of us teach at top-tier international schools? And if you do would you think your methods and philosophies are something the rest of us should heed and strive to equal?
Three: Think back to your teachers. Who among them made a difference in your life? Who ever convinced you the material he/she was instructing would be extremely valuable to the point you boned up and boned up well? Was he an intellectual snob who used terms you'd never heard of and made explanations that sounded more like a Boeing rocket guidance system convention than a young person's class? No, he was someone you respected, not because of his thesaurus skills but because he found a way to reach you, heart and mind .. through a true teacher's qualities.
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