Comments on: Go with the Flow: Yes or No?

By: Richard Firsten

Richard Firsten — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 23:14:48 +0000

Hi, Ms. Ortega! I’m very glad that you find my articles interesting and helpful. By the way, please don’t use “Teacher” as a title with a person’s last name.

As for what you’ve said in your comment, you’re not the only one confused by what your former teacher said. We can’t use the term “rules” when teaching English grammar? Really?? The only thing I can suggest is that you find that teacher and ask him or her to explain such a statement. If you find out, Ms. Ortega, please let all of us know.

By: oriel ortega

oriel ortega — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 21:33:21 +0000

Hi!!! Teacher Firsten

I am from Panama. Your articles are always interesting and helpful. I am taking a master degree program in TESOL. My former teacher told me, that we can’t use the expression ‘rules’ when teaching English grammar. I use the Betty Azar series.Teacher Azar has the expression ‘rules’ in her books.I am confused!!!!

By: Carol

Carol — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 14:26:27 +0000

Present perfect vs. simple past with yet, still, already? As usual, Canadians are comfortable with both the British and the American usages!

By: Naleeni Das

Naleeni Das — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 05:27:46 +0000

They didn’t leave yet?! Don’t let my students in Malaysia hear that, please!

By: Richard Firsten

Richard Firsten — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 14:34:52 +0000

Note from Author: It is true that the British use the present perfect more frequently than Americans do “still,” “yet,” and “already.” Americans tend to use the simple past, although not necessarily all the time. Americans do use the present perfect as well. Both verb forms are considered acceptable with these three adverbs. (I wonder what Canadians use more often. Hmm …)

By: Tamara Jones

Tamara Jones — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 11:20:19 +0000

This blog came at a very appropriate time for me! Last week my class and I were correcting a quiz from an OLD version of New Headway in which the students had to determine which sentence was correct: (A) “They haven’t left yet.” or (B) “They didn’t leave yet.” Obviously, the grammatically correct answer is (A), but I have heard and even probably said (B). I told them both were correct because English is a living, changing language, but if they were taking the TOEFL or the CAE, they should use (A). Coincidentally, just today I was having lunch with a British friend and, without knowing about this quiz, she pointed out that one difference between British English and US (Canadian) English was that Brits tend to say “I haven’t” with “yet” and Americans tend to say “I didn’t” with “yet.” I am not sure if that is true, but I do think that English is always changing and we are limiting our students if we only teach them the text book version of things.

By: ChrissyDC

ChrissyDC — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 04:30:42 +0000

I do not agree that we should *only* teach from a corpus, because English has an infinite number of possibilities of utterances.
In any event, Dr. Keith Folse, my esteemed professor from UCF in Florida, really stresses the importance of learning key vocabulary in order to even begin speaking.
On the other hand, some scholars do not believe that grammar should even be taught, nor, corrected in a writing/comp class. Personally, as an ESL comp GTA, I cannot ignore obvious grammatical errors; however, I probe my ESL students by asking questions, offering hints (starting from very implicit, getting more explicit as the error goes unnoticed) in order for them to experience all parts of Kolb’s experiential Learning Style Process.
Although I usually understand HOW they want to say something, but they do not know the English word, I continue to try to elicit information from them (“please give me an example of what you mean–in context). I feel that this strategy may lead to more acquisition over-time.
ELLs LOVE idioms! They want to use them…and phrasal verbs, but they are unsure because the translations from their L1 to L2 are not correct.
Ultimately, writing, grammer, speaking, etc. are all skills that will develop as more input is received by the student and the teacher facilitates meaningful role play, cloze, or critical-thinking activites, which allow for ample opportunities for ELLs to practice (doing/saying) what they are internally thinking, therefore, moving into another quarter of Kolb’s theory. I believe our ELLs should be able reatin as much autonomy of their pieces of writing…I never want to raise their affective filter (Krashen) by discouraging creative language, so I try to pull out the words for them to speak if they cannot get the proper grammar out initially. Then the as many times during the week that I remeber I again, try to elicit information from them to see if they grasped the meaning and can verbalise it. Repetion is key for me!

By: Warwick

Warwick — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 04:48:51 +0000

With salespeople it’s the motive rather than the act that I find objectionable: that they use first names on purpose in order to force a closer relationship with people so that they can get something out of them.

By: Claire

Claire — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 15:55:26 +0000

Ditto to the posts above. I also teach grammar from a textbook. When my students complain that this isn’t the English they hear at work or in the community, I remind them that the grammar book is teaching formal English. Just as the previous posts mentioned, I have to remind them there’s a time and a place for formal and informal English. Some students become particularly unnerved when native English speakers make mistakes. Eventually they understand, but it’s an ongoing issue that takes place every semester. Thank you for starting the dialogue.

By: Andy

Andy — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 15:04:32 +0000

I’m glad I’ve found this article. I never knew native speakers make grammatical mistakes. By the way, I’m from Indonesia.