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joyce L

A is for Aspect « An A-Z of ELT - 0 views

scottthornbury.wordpress.com/...a-is-for-aspect

aspect Thornbury ELT

shared by joyce L on 06 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • “Phrases like in an hour and for an hour are part of a mental system in which stretches of time are dynamically spun out, measured, and sliced off … They are temporal versions of the mental packager in the noun system which can convert substances into objects, as when you order a beer or take out three coffees“.
  • progressive aspect
    • joyce L
      joyce L on 06 Aug 11
       
      again aspect as perspective - the way you see something
  • aspect
    • joyce L
      joyce L on 06 Aug 11
       
      aspect is NOT tense
  • ...32 more annotations...
  • x-word grammar and have been encouraging students to say “the -ing form” instead of “present/past progressive” since those traditional terms can be so misleading and are also meaningless to students unfamiliar with them. I use examples like the ones you gave to help them see that the time meaning is found either in the context alone or in the context and the x-word (i.e. auxiliary is vs was etc). The sense of “temporary” is clear.
  • The only difference is syntactic (i.e. the way you make these sentences into questions or the way you negate them). But the meaning of ‘waiting’ is fairly constant, isn’t it?
  • when I tell them that time is not equal to tense. All those years of studying rule after rule leaves them in disbelief.
  • Labelling collocations like the present tense of the verb to be + -ing as the present progressive and then calling the whole thing a tense doesn’t seem to me to be of much use in developing that feel for what -ing means, au fond.
  • we should think of verbs as having a similar potential — to represent states, at times, and actions, at others. Thus, the verbs to know or to want normally describe a state, but occasionally we might want to look inside that state to see it evolving in a more dynamic fashion, hence we might (and do!) say “I find I’m knowing more and more about less and less” or — even more plausibly — “I’ve been wanting to meet you for ages”
  • steady state, as seen in its entirety.
  • I’m with you there; the progressive aspect is commonly used with those verbs traditionally described as ‘stative’ (and it’s become gradually more frequent over the last 20 years or so).
  • And that adding -ing marks them for dynamism. I think this is the line Michael Lewis takes in The English Verb, arguing that the base form – whether used as an infinitive or as a finite verb – is the unmarked form
  • affect (likes, dislikes, preferences, etc) is not normally thought of as being something that evolves, changes shape, has blurred edges, and so on. You either like something or you don’t. Just as you either know something or you don’t.
  • Which is all just to say that our perceptions influence our language choices. A different perception, a different language choice. That’s what I’m thinking/I think!
  • “You change the rules of the game by playing it”, as Diane Larsen-Freeman is fond of quoting. An advertising slogan (itself derived from a colloquialism) or a song lyric, or a line from a film, becomes a catchphrase, and it in turn influences how ‘the language of the tribe’ evolves. ‘I’m lovin’ it’ is a perfect example. ‘OK’ is another.
  • Now taking aspect to be taking a perspective/view on events/objects looking down from above the line we can either zoom out or zoom in. This can have 2 different effects: EFFECT 1– we LOSE OR GAIN sight of AN OBJECT’S PARTICULARS/ DETAILS/ STRUCTURE (if there is any internal structure/process)
  • EFFECT 2 – we LOSE OR GAIN sight of AN OBJECT’S OUTLINE (BOUNDARY) or the sense that it is a bounded whole entire UNIT
  • “I’ve been meaning to ask you…”, where MEAN is still solidly stative in general, but has become acceptably dynamic when used, as here, in conjunction with perfect aspect (at leat, in BrE). What is going on here, and can anyone spot other similar cases?
  • Given that perfect aspect allows us to ‘retrospect’ on situations (more on that in a further post) it’s probably not surprising that retrospection encourages an unfolding (i.e. progressive) view of what would normally be states. Hence, ‘I’ve been meaning to…’, ‘I’ve been wanting to…’
  • Could this also explain the difference between “I like swimming” and “I like to swim…” – the former used for the general enjoyment of the activity, the second used often with the (implied) context of a particular (!) occasion e.g.” …on a Saturday morning”. (unbounded vs bounded again) ?
  • Is it improbable to see an analogy in “It was interesting” vs “I was interested” the former being the unbounded experience, the latter the bounded bodily experience ?
  • – e.g. whether there is a core semantic difference between -ing forms and infinitives. I quoted The Cambridge Grammar of English (Carter and McCarthy, CUP, 2006) to the effect that the difference in meaning is often not great, but -ing emphasises the action or event in itself, while the infinitive places the emphasis more on the results of the action or event (p. 515).
  • ater he goes horribly wrong: “In describing a current state… you have to use the simple present — he knows the answer; he wants a drink, not he is knowing the answer; he is wanting a drink. … Presumably this is because the progressive, which turns an action into a state, is redundant with verbs like know and want that already are states” (p.203). The progressive turns an action into a state? Surely it’s the exact opposite!
  • So I propose we stop talking about stative verbs and dynamic verbs, and simply talk about verbs being used sometimes statively and sometimes dynamically. And the same goes for countability in nouns.
  • we seeing these experiences as somehow bounded? ‘I like…’ and ‘I know…’ are definitely not as clear-cut as ‘She crossed the street’, which is an event, and has a definite beginning and end to it. Is ‘boundedness’ perhaps a continuum?
  • If time is represented on a line heading with an arrow from left to right (past –> future) with events placed along it, the tense locates events/objects along the line [relative to points in time, or relative to other objects/events on the line].
  • no internal structure or process to it; (in the noun analogy – we don’t see the dimples on the lemon, we just see a yellow dot)  we LOSE sight of AN OBJECT’S PARTICULARS/ DETAILS
  • zooming in on an events/objects leads to us to start to see some of its internal structure and processes (in the noun analogy – we start to see the dimples, pips, segments etc).  we GAIN sight of AN OBJECT’S PARTICULARS/ DETAILS
  • noun analogy – see an entire and whole lemon ‘bounded’ by its lemon shape) > we GAIN sight of AN OBJECT’S OUTLINE (BOUNDARY)
  • magnifying a bit of an object/event (in the noun analogy – we will then see just a glob of lemon-like stuff – ‘unbounded’
  • But even though verbs such as ‘like’ normally describe a homogenous state, “occasionally we might want to look inside that state to see it evolving in a more dynamic fashion”. It’s because it’s only occasionally that makes it ‘marked’. To use a song as an example of something we like, we could use progressive when We want to show a dynamic change in degree in how much we like it: Okay, I’m liking this song more now, even with the vocals. I’m liking this song more and more every time I sing it. We want to express the dynamic process of beginning to like it: Even it’s only 20 seconds, I’m liking this song already. Or express that it is a dynamic changeable state of affairs: I’m liking this song though it’s surprisingly more country influence than I expected. It still sounds great though.
  • The first, inner circle, represents the here-and-now; the outer circle represents there-and-then. In this way we capture the fact that tense is about distance – typically distance in time, but not necessarily.
  • y way of comparison there are 256 examples of is/are/am wanting (and contractions) although in quite a few of these wanting is an adjective. But: If that’s what Mr. Shipp is wanting, ” she said, ” that’s not possible. The one other point, Daryn, that the marine general is wanting to make is, they are calling this not an evacuation. Bill is wanting to get a job but we can’t because we ain’t got a car And, of course, people are wanting to know who to blame. Is it the band? is it because of my allergies? I am wanting to know because sometimes I stop breathing while I am sleeping.
  • You’ll be wanting a bed for the night, then, I suppose?’ and ‘You want to get married, you want kids, next thing you’ll be wanting Tupperware.
  • progressive aspect with so-called stative verbs is that a lot of the citations with ‘be loving’ relate to enjoyment, e.g. ‘She’s been at university for three months now, and she’s loving it.’ Here, ‘love’ is more or less synonymous with ‘enjoy’, which is traditionally seen and used dynamically, and so it is less marked
  • slightly different sense of ‘love’ that people use when they see something they appreciate, and comment on it, as in ‘I’m loving the new hairstyle!’ Interestingly, people don’t seem to be using ‘want’ in this way, as in *’I'm wanting that car!’
joyce L

grammar teaching « An A-Z of ELT - 0 views

scottthornbury.wordpress.com/...grammar-teaching

grammar teaching Thornbury elt 'guided discovery'

shared by joyce L on 07 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • The actual degree of guidance can vary a lot. It might simply take the form of such attention-grabbing devices as a conspicuously frequent number of occurences of the targeted item in a text (also known as input flood), or the use of design features, such as enlarged font, to highlight the item in question (input enhancement).
  • n conjunction with the question sequence, or as an alternative to it, new data may be progressively made available to the learners, challenging them to review and restructure their current state of knowledge.  Indeed, Pit Corder went so far as to argue that “teaching is a matter of providing the learner with the right data at the right time” (1988, p. 33).
  • typically mediated by questions, each question challenging learners to advance their understanding one further step.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • consciousness-raising (CR) – the common ground being that activities are structured in such a way as to invite learners to develop their own hypotheses about the targeted feature of the language.
  • know whether inductive (or data-driven) learning has an advantage over deductive (or rule-driven) learning. Reviewing the research Ellis (2008), concludes that “a tentative general conclusion might be that deductive FFI [form-focused instruction] is more effective than inductive FFI (when both involve practice activities) but it is possible that this may in part depend on the learner’s preferred learning style” (p. 882). 
  • In Ellis (2002) he states that “a discovery-based approach to teaching explicit knowledge has much to recommend it” (p. 164). One reason is that, arguably, a rule that has been ‘discovered’ is more memorable than one that has simply been presented.
  • Talking about grammar might be more meaningful than talking about the kinds of general topics often found in communicative language courses” (p. 165)
  • Scrivener (2005) advises teachers that “guided discovery is demanding on both you and the learner, and although it may look artless to a casual observer, it isn’t enough to throw a task at the learners, let them do it and then move on. Guided discovery requires imagination and flexibility” (p. 268).
joyce L

R is for Rules « An A-Z of ELT - 0 views

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Thornbury ELT rules

shared by joyce L on 06 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • A passive knowledge affects learners’ competence more than performance and befits accuracy more than fluency. So putting a big emphasis on rules is a back-to-front approach; placing form before meaning, knowledge before skills and study before learning.
  • This story suggests to me that conscious learning of rules is likely to be effective only under certain conditions, e.g. when the learner is motivated (as in Isherwood’s case by having a ‘gap’ in his competence pointed out to him) and, even more important perhaps, when the learner is ready — i.e. at the right stage in his/her interlanguage development. I
  • “When we use language in real communication, grammar manisfests itself in ways that seem to have little to do with the conscious application of these linguistic facts (=rules). Grammar seems to be more like a process” (p. 1).
  • ...19 more annotations...
  • the central misunderstanding of language of language teaching to assume that grammar (rules and terminology) is the basis of language and that the mastery of the grammatical system is a prerequisite for effective communication” (Michael Lewis, 1997, p. 133).
  • I think using consciousness-raising activities with learners to prime their minds for noticing grammar works in the same vein. We want them to be conscious, with a great deal of logical precision, of the rule-based patterns we are showing them so that they can work it out for themselves (thus promoting autonomy!) However, when a CR task is finished, it only makes sense that we check to make sure that learners have gone through the process in the intended way, a sort of confirmation that yes, indeed, they have got the rule right – and this IS the rule. In the end, where do we draw the line? We either start with the rule or end with i
  • . In fact, I’m not even that bothered if their rules are ‘wrong’, so long as that they are ‘heuristic’ — that is that they provide a learning ‘hook’ – or the kind of self-scaffolding materials that I mentioned in my post. Dick Schmidt’s ‘rule-of-thumb’ for the imperfect in Portuguese probably worked better for him than the dozen or so grammar book rules his teacher was trying to teach him.
  • CRITICISM, YESTERDAY, “ne nado bylo”. That’s it. Nothing really new. The keywords are labels, can we call them rules? I think we can. Have I explained it? Yes, since they understood and used it appropriately.
  • I would say that your ‘shorthand’ rules do qualify as rules, in the sense of being rules-of-thumb, reminders, or mnemonics, rather than fully descriptive rules, and are all the more effective for being so
  • Diane Larsen-Freeman distinguishes between rules and reasons: “It is important for learners not only to know the rules, but also to know why they exist. I’m not referring to how the language came to be; I am referring to what I call the ‘reasons’ underlying the rules”. As an example she gives the rule that prohibits using the progressive with stative verbs (as in *I am owning a car). “The reason for the rule is due to the semantic incompatibility between processes depicted by the progressive, which typically involve change, and unchanging states embodied in stative verbs… Knowing the reason for a rule… gives language students an understanding of the logic that speakers of another language use” (pp. 50-51).
  • ules about language are seldom watertight, and are often fuzzy at the edges — not least because there is so much variability in language, due to factors such as geography, register and style, and mode (e.g. speaking versus writing)
  • A quick corpus search reveals many so-called exceptions (all from the British National Corpus):
  • “rules of production”, as opposed to rules of accuracy. E.g. if expressing future meaning, when in doubt, use ‘will’ (you have a statistcally very favorable chance of being right). Or, use ‘Really?’ or ‘…no?’ instead of short questions and question tags – they’ll save you a lot of bother!
  • is that it conflates both prescriptive rules (what you should say) and descriptive ones, (what people in fact do say) without making a distinction. As language teachers, the assumption is that we are more interested in the latter, but the distinction is not always that clear cut
  • So, if we’re going to use rules, maybe we should raise learners’ consciousness about language in general, including their own language, before we even start.
  • teaching using very simplified, one-word rules (I call them “keyword rules”) introduced through situations and contexts and immediately practiced in situations, with subsequent abundant exposure to the structures within broader contexts (reading, listening) – so the rule is there to provide a sense of security, yet it is so minimal that it does not in any way dominate the teaching/learning.
  • teaching the students to notice, process, verify and acquire language odds and ends independently
  • letting go of them and not teaching anything, but simply immersing them in the language
  • It’s not the rules as such that are to blame for the learner’s struggle – it’s the abstract and obscure meta-language used to formulate the rules, along with the lack of situation-based practice
  • Teaching rules as part of a process of acquisition has always seemed pointless to me, and as Mr Lewis points out in The English Verb, most of the rules we have to describe grammar (where grammar means the verb phrase) are inadequate and just plain wrong.
  • learners uncovering rules allows learners the chance to notice regularities and patterns in the language
  • They also allow learners to reflect on their own language. It helps them notice. They’ll take the language they said/wrote and compare it to the rules they know. Without a knowledge of rules, this self-reflection may not happen for some students. In effect, it encourages a second look and even a reformulation. There is also the point made above of students noticing the rules when seeing/hearing the language used.
  • As far as acquisition goes, rules have little direct impact. However, in their ability to instill comfort in many students and their aid in allowing students to notice language (their own and others) they can have a indirect impact on acquisition.
joyce L

newlits - Integrating viewing across the curriculum - 0 views

newlits.wikispaces.com/+viewing+across+the+curriculum

visualit_lesson picturebooks shauntan viewing curriculum integrating newlits multiliteracies multimodality

shared by joyce L on 23 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • As a viewer, we are positioned as quite dominant here. This high angle shot, looking down on the sea of people, most of who are looking up to us, portrays them as much less powerful than we, the viewers, are. While the ropes and masts take some of our attention, it is the sheer number of passengers staring upwards that is a salient feature of this photo. Historically we know that most have given all they have to travel to the land of opportunity, often leaving family and friends behind in their birth country. How might an individual feel in the midst of this? Can one historical photo give insight into the emotional experiences of these people? How does this photo suggest we "should" feel about immigrants in general? By explicitly combining knowledge of the photo’s composition and its implied power relations, teachers can help students understand how some images can create empathy, while some can suggest superiority or dominance. It is here that reading a graphic novel such as The Arrival can provide another "account" of the immigrant experience. Compare the historic photo here to the images on Shaun Tan’s website, taken from The Arrival. The images of the harbor entry are particularly poignant, when compared to similar historical photos of the Statue of Liberty who greeted ships coming to Ellis Island. Tan studied many photos and documents from that period and students can find many points of connection when viewing the graphic novel with other historical photos.
  • but for teachers to clearly understand how to guide students in reading visual elements. Making meaning, extracting relevant information, developing relevant, shared metalinguistic terms to describe what is seen, and understanding how images and multimodal texts position viewers are key skills. T
  • joyce L on 23 Sep 11
     
    Teaching viewing
  • joyce L on 23 Sep 11
     
    a wonderful resource
allisonfuhr

The discovery technique | Onestopenglish - 0 views

www.onestopenglish.com/...the-discovery-technique

Grammar English education

shared by allisonfuhr on 28 Jun 17 - No Cached
  • What is the discovery technique?
  • Grammar can either be taught explicitly or implicitly. When we talk about an explicit approach to grammar we are talking about stating directly, usually at the beginning of a particular activity, what the grammar is. For example, “Today we are looking at the third conditional.” On the other hand an implicit approach to grammar is one where the students are ‘led’ to the grammar through a series of steps – this is what is meant by the ‘discovery technique’. In other words, the ‘discovery technique’ aims to lead students towards a generalized grammar rule or pattern.
  • allisonfuhr on 28 Jun 17
     
    An article, tips and activities by Adrian Tennant for teaching grammar using the discovery technique.
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