American English: Teacher Blogs

The “New Car” Phenomenon: Priming,Triggering, and Consolidation

By David Barker
Author and Publisher of Materials for
Japanese Learners of English

When I was about ten years old, my father announced one day that we were getting a new car. Now, there is very little in the world more guaranteed to arouse the interest of a 10-year-old boy and his younger brothers than a new car, and naturally, we wanted to know what my father was planning to buy. He told us that we were getting an “Opel Mantra.” This was a bit of an anticlimax, because neither my brothers nor I had ever heard of it. Later that day, however, my dad pointed one out to us when we were out shopping. Suddenly Opel Mantras were everywhere! It was as if everyone in the country had gone out and bought one at once. Of course, the actual number of these cars had not changed at all; what had changed was our awareness of them.

This “new car” phenomenon can be observed in many areas of life, and it can be a very powerful tool for language learners. In my own language studies, I have noticed a cycle that has three stages: priming, triggering, and consolidation. “Priming” is what happens when your attention is drawn to something, or when your awareness of it is raised; “triggering” is the point at which your raised awareness causes you to notice the thing in a different context; and “consolidation” is what happens when you deepen your knowledge of it through repeated exposure.

When I began learning Japanese, I started out spending two or three hours a night writing Chinese characters a hundred times each. Unfortunately, I found that even after I had written a character that many times, within a few seconds of putting my pencil down, I had completely forgotten it. I began to think that I was just wasting my time, but then something interesting started to happen. On days when I had been studying, I noticed that the characters I had written would literally jump out at me from all over the place as I went about my daily life in Japan. It was almost as if someone had deliberately planted them to help me. Of course, those characters were no more common than any others, but my brain had been “primed” to notice those particular ones. Interestingly, I found that in many cases, even though I recognized a character, I could not remember what it meant or how to read it. At that point, I would go back to my book, find the meaning, and then practice writing it again. That was the “consolidation” part of my cycle.

This kind of focused, de-contextualized study fell very much out of favor with the advent of Communicative Language Teaching. The problem, I think, was that people realized that it does not lead directly to acquisition. And of course, they were right. If focused study is all you ever do, it will have little benefit because it represents only one phase of the learning cycle. Unfortunately, however, too many writers and academics jumped to the conclusion that “focused study is not effective,” which is a very different thing from “focused study by itself is not effective.”

In his excellent book “Vocabulary Myths,” Keith Folse lists as Myth #2 “Using word lists to learn second language vocabulary is unproductive.” It is amazing (and depressing) how many teachers still believe this myth to be true. If you read books and articles by vocabulary experts like Paul Nation, all of them will tell you the same thing—that focused study of words and phrases out of context is one of the fastest and most efficient ways of improving your vocabulary. Of course, this needs to be backed up with other study and use of the language, but that does not detract from the importance of the focused study.

Some might say that vocabulary is a special case, but I have found that exactly the same phenomenon can be observed in the learning of grammar. Shortly after I arrived in Japan, I discovered a wonderful book containing English explanations of Japanese grammar in a dictionary format. I loved it so much that I read the whole thing from cover to cover over the course of about two weeks. Now, if a language learner came to you and suggested reading a grammar dictionary non-stop from cover to cover, what would you say? I suspect that a great many teachers would try to discourage that student, but reading the Japanese grammar dictionary turned out to be hugely beneficial for me. It may seem unlikely that the whole population of Japan would agree among themselves that on any given day, they should all try to use as frequently as possible the grammar I had just been studying, but that was certainly how it appeared to me! When I heard someone use one of the grammar points I had studied (or when I wanted to say something in Japanese that required it), I would scurry back to my book and read the point again, but this time with a much better understanding and appreciation of how it is actually used. In that way, the “prime, trigger, consolidate” cycle was completed, and I was able to achieve a reasonable mastery of an enormous number of grammatical structures in a relatively short period of time.

Of course, the “prime, trigger, consolidate” cycle is not a simple linear progression. In reality, it might be something like “prime, prime, prime, trigger, trigger, consolidate,” or even “prime, forget, prime, forget, trigger, forget, prime, trigger, consolidate!” The important point is that you need all three stages to complete the cycle, and the usefulness of the “priming” part should not be underestimated simply because it may not lead to learning on its own. If any of you have similar experiences to mine, I would love to hear about them.

How to Write Numbers

By David Barker
Author and Publisher of Materials for
Japanese Learners of English

Last weekend, I was working on a book that contained a lot of numbers. I frequently found myself unsure as to whether to write numerals (e.g., “50″) or whether to spell the numbers out (e.g., “fifty”).

I realise, of course, that I may be the only one who finds this confusing, and that many of you may have no difficulty with it at all. If you are one of these people, you should probably not bother reading the article, but before you click away from this page, please consider the following introduction to the topic from the Chicago Manual of Style:

It is difficult if not impossible to be entirely consistent in the treatment of numbers in textual matter. As soon as one thinks one has arrived at a simple rule for handling some category of numbers, exceptions begin to appear, and one realizes that the rule has to be made more complicated.

For those of you who are not familiar with it, the Chicago Manual of Style, or “CMS,” as it is commonly known, is the main reference on matters of English style for writers, editors, and publishers around the world. Although it is published in America, it also covers the rules for British English. The CMS deals with a vast range of topics including the rules for using capital letters (another entry on that coming soon!), how to use the various types of punctuation, and, of course, how to write numbers in text. If you have a question about something related to style, google “[your question] + CMS” to get the Chicago rules.

The problem I have with books like the CMS is that I keep looking things up, finding the answer, and then promptly forgetting it. My primary motivation in writing this article is therefore to have a quick reference of the main points for myself. If others find it useful too, all the better.

Rule 1 (I am writing “1″ instead of “one” because I am treating this as a numbered list.)
Whole numbers from one to ninety-nine are spelled out. Twenty-one to twenty-nine, thirty-one to thirty-nine, and so on are hyphenated, whether used alone or as part of a larger number, should the larger number for some reason be spelled out. (See Rule 5.)

seventy-five
one hundred (and) eighty-six.

Numbers of 100 and above are written in numerals.

2,670 pages
a length of 4,066 feet
space for 540 more cars

Rule 2
Rule 1 also applies to ordinals:

on the eight day
in twenty-first place
the 121st runner

Rule 3
Larger numbers may also be written with numerals followed by million, billion, etc.

2.3 million yen
4.5 billion years
3 billion stars (or three billion stars)

Rule 4
Numbers that apply to the same category should be consistent, so if some require numerals because they are bigger than ninety-nine, use numerals for all.

There are 9 Korean students, 20 Chinese students, and 159 Japanese students in the department.

Note that numbers in the same context that apply to different categories may be treated differently.

In one block, a 103-story office building rises between two old apartment houses only 3 and 4 stories high.

Rule 5
If a number comes at the beginning of a sentence, it is always spelled out, even if this results in inconsistencies in the paragraph. If possible, reword the sentence so that it does not begin with a number.

Rule 6
In scientific texts, physical quantities such as heights, weights, pressures, etc. are expressed in numerals.

45 miles
240 volts
6.4 meters

In non-scientific texts, follow the normal rules.

twenty degrees
seventy-five miles per hour
more than two-thirds of registered voters

Rule 7
As far as I can make out, percentages are treated as an exception to the general rules and are always written in numerals. In scientific text, use “%” with no space after the numeral.

23%
from 10% to 18%

In non-scientific text, use numerals with “percent.”

from 40 percent to 50 percent

If you know any other interesting rules or exceptions, if you think there are any mistakes in the above explanations, or if you think I have missed something important, please let me know and I will update the entry.

English, a Constantly Evolving Language

By Richard Firsten Retired ESOL Teacher, Teacher-Trainer, Columnist

PART 1

Now that I’m retired from teaching ESOL, I have the luxury to sit back and observe things at my leisure. Having been in the field of ESOL for the better part of four decades, one thing I like to observe and muse about is how many items in English are now accepted or may one day be accepted as standard language that weren’t “back in the day,” as they now say. I’d like to share some of my observations with you and ruminate a bit about a few of them. I’m going to have some fun pointing out why some items don’t seem logical and why others seem totally unnecessary to me. But the long and short of it is that these items are commonly used by native speakers every single day, and that’s what I think needs discussing.

Almost all the examples I’ll be giving come directly from educated native speakers, which is what I find most interesting, that educated speakers are saying what they’re saying. It used to be that many of these utterances were considered uneducated or nonstandard, even substandard – but oh, how times have changed!

So what’s my motive for bringing these points to your attention? It’s that as ESOL teachers or others involved in teaching or learning English, you’ll want to keep up on what’s going on in the language. Not all textbooks or teacher reference books deal with the latest developments in English that have come to my attention, items that used to be frowned upon, but aren’t frowned upon anymore. Being aware of such things will help keep what is taught and what is learned as accurate as possible. And I have to admit that I just think it’s a lot of fun to catch what’s going on in the language and make others aware of these things if they aren’t already.

There’s plenty of material to discuss, which is why I’m going to divide it into six parts for “Teacher Talk.” So let’s plunge together right into Part 1.

Bits and Pieces Already Accepted in the Language

Redundancy is so Redundant!

English speakers – and speakers of other languages, too – just love redundancy, so I think it’ll be fun to review some of the redundancies that have become part of modern, standard English.

One such redundancy – which you may never have thought of as a redundancy at all – is the vestigial conjugation ending in the 3^rd person singular form of verbs in the simple present. What am I talking about? Well, that darn -s or -es like in he/she/it lives or he/she/it goes. Do we need those verb endings in this tense? Of course not! From the days of Anglo-Saxon to modern times, we’ve gotten rid of the other endings we used to have on verbs in the simple present (e.g., thou livest), but we held on to this one. Strange, isn’t it? But there it is. It’s redundant because if we say he live or she go, with the subject right there, it’s just as clear as you live or they go, making that final –s and –es superfluous. The subject that goes with the verb tells us all the grammatical information we need, so the subject plus one of those endings is a built-in redundancy that we all accept, even though it’s illogical. Will that silly –s or –es fall off one day? Only time will tell.

Then there’s the kind of redundancy in which we repeat a word or use synonyms together to emphasize meaning:
- a very, very interesting story
- a tiny little insect bite
- a great big house
- my whole entire life
- not for one single moment
- the honest truth

Redundancies like these are quite accepted and a regular occurrence in the language, and I have to admit that they make such phrases more fun to say and listen to. The last one may be questionable as far as its acceptance goes, but it’s still commonly said.

Here’s another redundancy – one of my favorites – that’s so common, most people don’t even think about how silly it really is:
- I like tuna fish sandwiches.
- I never developed a taste for codfish.

We know that tuna and cod are different species of fish, don’t we? Then why do we need to say fish? We’re not even consistent in doing this. We don’t say salmon fish or red snapper fish, so why say tuna fish and codfish? An unnecessary redundancy, right?

Ah, but what about swordfish? That’s fine, actually. It’s not a redundancy to say fish in this case, because without it, you’re talking about a sword and not a kind of fish, of course – and that won’t work.

Moving right along, we can find quite a number of redundancies that at one time or another were considered poorly spoken language, but now seem to be accepted as standard English. Here are some examples. I’ve mentioned one or two of these in previous contributions to “Teacher Talk,” but they’re worth repeating:

I don’t believe him, and this is the reason why.
That’s the reason why I was afraid to tell you the truth.

I remember my English teachers in junior high and high school having fits if any students said or wrote these two words together. They’d point out how redundant the phrase is. You can say this is the reason or you can say this is why, but putting the two together is really taking redundancy to another level – although it’s been so commonly said for so very long that it seems to have become accepted as proper English. Just about everybody uses this redundancy nowadays.

The reason I cursed at him was because I was so angry.

Because is a redundancy when partnered with the reason. Because means “the reason (for something),” and that’s why it’s redundant. It wouldn’t be redundant to say The reason I cursed at him was that I was so angry or I cursed at him because I was so angry, but here’s another redundancy that English speakers use all the time.

And, for the fun of it, we can take all three words (reason, why, and because) one step further and combine them all into one sentence as many native speakers actually do: The reason why I cursed at him was because I was so angry.

They’re going to return back home shortly.
She returned the wallet back to its owner.

The verb return means “come back,” “go back,” or “give back,” so saying back in these two cases is totally redundant and totally unnecessary.

To use an ATM machine, you have to know your PIN number.
Before we repossess a car, we always check the VIN number to make sure it’s the vehicle we want.

How often do you hear these phrases or say them yourself? The M in ATM means “machine,” so when people say an ATM machine, they’re really saying “an automatic teller machine machine.”

The same is true for PIN. The N means “number,” so when people say PIN number, they’re actually saying “personal identification number number.”

And, of course, the same is true for VIN, which stands for “vehicle identification number.” So once more, people who say the VIN number are really saying “the vehicle identification number number.” Wouldn’t it be nice if people just said ATM, PIN, and VIN? But of course, they don’t, they don’t.

In Part 2, we’ll be looking at more surprising bits and pieces that are used all the time now in English, so stay tuned.

PART 2

More Bits and Pieces Already Accepted in the Language

The following have already made a niche for themselves in the language, and if you go by what descriptivists say, they’re considered acceptable in informal language:

There’s been endless books written about the Titanic.
Where’s the bargains in this flea market?
Here’s the files you asked for.
There was lots of lights we could see coming out of the woods.
There’s been some problems with starting the business.

The problem is that now it seems just about everybody uses these five in every kind of situation, informal or formal. In fact, at this rate, I won’t be surprised if there are, there were, there have been; where are; and here are just about disappear altogether from usage.

We told him to never do that again.
I’ve told them to always use the back door for deliveries.
People getting divorced always have motives to not like their spouses.

The traditional rule for the three sentences above, based in large degree on the dictates of Bishop Robert Lowth in 18^th century England, has been that you should never split an infinitive, and this rule was upheld for the most part in educated speech a generation ago. You were only supposed to say . . .

-We told them never to do that again.
-I’ve told them always to use the back door for deliveries.
-People getting divorced always have motives not to like their spouses.

But Robert Lowth, who had a great deal of influence at the British court for some reason and therefore with the upper crust of British society at the time, was actually basing his ideas on what he thought “good grammar” was by looking to classical Latin for inspiration. That’s not realistic since it really doesn’t work to impose the grammar of a Latinate language onto that of a Germanic language, of which English is one. Sorry, Bishop Lowth, but it’s actually fine – and quite an efficient way of phrasing something – to split infinitives, just as it’s now considered fine to end a sentence with a preposition. So these are things that we don’t need to worry about.

Let’s review the results real quick.
I just love fresh baked bread, don’t you?

In my time, the form of these three words as they appear in these sentences would have been considered no-no’s, and teachers would have corrected them with really quickly and freshly. There was a time in English, however, when the grammar of these words in such sentences was considered perfectly fine. In the 18^th century, for instance, it was not uncommon to hear lots of what we call flat adverbs, adverbs that don’t have the typical –ly ending. Of course you know some that are commonly used, such as hard (They work hard) and fast (He can run fast). Fresh in the third example above is fine, too, since it’s another flat adverb. (Are you getting a bit frustrated or exasperated at this point? I can sympathize!)

In American English, real is now accepted in informal speech and even in informal writing as a synonym for very (e.g., She’s a real good worker). But, from what I gather, it’s still not accepted in formal speech or formal writing. I’ve observed, however, that the boundary between formal and informal language seems to be getting more obscure. On many occasions I’ve heard the use of real, meaning “very,” even in quite formal situations.

At any rate, the list of what most consider to be acceptable flat adverbs has shrunk a great deal since the 18^th century, but you’ll still hear flat adverbs pop up here and there. If a speaker chooses to use the regular adverb form with the –ly ending (really, quickly, freshly), that’s fine, of course, but there’s nothing wrong with flat adverbs – just as long as they’re accepted as flat adverbs.

I think this place is very unique.
These are among the most unique animals in this part of the world.

The adjective unique means “one of a kind,” “the only one.” It’s not a gradable adjective with such meanings, so some people feel that the intensifier very, the comparative more, and the superlative the most shouldn’t be used with it. They say that either something is unique or it isn’t unique.

Some people argue, however, that in informal English, unique has come to mean “remarkable” or “unusual.” These are indeed gradable ideas, so they claim that it’s okay to use very, more, and the most with unique. What’s happened, however, is that you can hear these combinations (very unique / more unique / the most unique) all the time, even in formal language. Once again it seems that the boundary between formal and informal has become quite blurred, socially as well as linguistically.

It’s become very common to hear native speakers say person X and I when person X and the speaker are not only the compound subject of a sentence, but the compound object as well:

-A couple of weeks ago, my producer and I received a letter from him.
-Just three weeks ago, he sent a letter to my producer and I.

-Helen and I would love to have you over for dinner.
-You should come visit Helen and I when you get a chance.

It’s thought that this is due to hypercorrection or the misconception that it “sounds more educated” when, in fact, it’s just the opposite. In fact, Betty Azar has dealt with this phenomenon in one of her grammar texts.

This misused form of the personal pronoun I isn’t put in the object form (me) when it’s part of this compound object, but it always becomes me as the object when it stands alone: I would love to have you over for dinner. / You should come visit me when you get a chance. Nobody would ever say You should come visit I when you get a chance!

But there’s something else going on that’s related to this phenomenon which we’ll take a look at when we get to Part 6, entitled “More Trends in the Language.”

PART 3

Silly and Illogical – but still Commonly Used – Bits and Pieces

In Part 2 of this series, we took a look at some things in English which, although considered ungrammatical by conservative language users, have nevertheless become commonly used features nowadays. At least they aren’t silly or illogical in a common-sense way of looking at things.

Now, however, let’s take a little time to check out some elements of English that really are silly or illogical if you step back and think about them objectively, even though they, too, have become standard features in the language. Here are examples of things that educated speakers say and write.

They say they’ll try and get here before sunset.
I know you try and save some money every month for your kid’s college fund.

Try and is a very commonly used phrase that goes way, way back to who knows how long ago. But if you dissect it, you can see on different levels why it’s really very silly and illogical. In the two examples I’ve cited, they’ll try and get here and you try and save money, my question is, try WHAT? If it’s “getting here,” shouldn’t the speaker just say they’ll try to get here or they’ll try getting here? And in the other case, shouldn’t the speaker just say he or she knows that the other person tries to save or tries saving some money every month? In these versions I’ve suggested, we clearly see what those people will try: “to get here” and “to save some money.” But that try and get here and try and save money really throw me for a loop. It seems that they’re trying to accomplish two things, with the first of those things simply not mentioned.. For me it just doesn’t work, it’s illogical, it’s silly – but for many, many native speakers, it’s fine. Go figure.

To add to this silliness, can you use this phrase try and with he, she,or it? Let’s try to do so: She says she’ll try and get here … That’s okay. / I know she tries and saves some money every month. Oops! That’s not okay. It doesn’t sound right. Hmm … How about I know she tries and save some money every month. Nope. That doesn’t sound right either. What’s going on, you ask? What’s going on is that we don’t use the phrase try and with a 3^rd person singular subject in any form of the present, just in the future. How strange is that!

And if you want strange, here’s more strange: You don’t use this phrase in the past either: They tried and got here … No, that doesn’t work. I know you tried and saved some money … Forget it! If you stop and think about it, try and really is silly and illogical on many levels.

Now, what about saying stop and as I’ve just done (If you stop and think about it …)? Why is stop okay when try isn’t? It’s okay because I really am talking about stopping some activity in order to think about what’s being discussed: If you stop (reading this blog entry) and think about it (what we’re discussing), try and really is silly.

Who would think you could say so much about a two-word phrase like try and! Well, it’s a standard phrase in English now, so here’s one of many great examples in which silliness wins out in language.

This show was pre-recorded in front of a live audience. (They’re talking about a TV sitcom.)

I love this statement, which I first remember being said at the start of each episode of the hit comedy All in the Family back in the 1960s.

First off, we have a very silly statement. The show was pre-recorded? Really? Doesn’t that mean that the show was recorded before it was recorded? What?? Of course that’s not what they mean to say, but that’s what it means. And this statement is still being used.

Second, when they say in front of a live audience, of course they mean that during the show, you’ll hear the reactions of real people sitting in the audience, not canned laughter. But it does sound very funny. They wouldn’t record the show in front of a dead audience, would they? All they really need to say is This show was recorded in front of an audience.

The last showing of this movie on Saturdays starts at 12:00 a.m.
The office always closes for lunch at 12:00 p.m.

These two are silly because 12 o’clock is neither a.m. nor p.m. When you say 12:00, it’s either midnight or noon. The designations a.m. and p.m. start at 12:01, but these two silly time phrases are commonly used.

My name is Dr. Lynn Sousa.
His name was Captain John Walker.

I think commonly heard sentences like these are silly because Doctor and Captain are not part of those people’s names. I guarantee that you won’t find those titles on their birth certificates! What should be said is My name is Lynn Sousa. / His name was John Walker. If there really is a need to mention their titles, what should be said is I’m Dr. Lynn Sousa. / He was Captain John Walker.

It’s become acceptable to use they, them, or their instead of the 3^rd person singular forms when it’s not known if somebody is male or female. For example,

If somebody leaves their valuables inside their car in the store parking lot,the management is not responsible for any break-ins or thefts.

In this case, somebody could be a man or woman, so instead of using the awkward he/she and his/her, it’s become acceptable to use their just to simplify things. (Of course this problem could easily be avoided most of the time by simply using a plural subject (If people leave their valuables …), but almost nobody thinks of doing this.

However, take a look at the following.

The speaker knows she’s talking about a man:
This is someone who really knows their stuff. (It should be his.)

The speaker knows he’s talking about a woman:
How could somebody say such a thing in front of their six-year-old daughter? It should be her.)

The speaker is aware he’s talking about an all-woman’s team:
Every member of the relay team did their job perfectly. (Correct word: her.)

The caller realizes she’s talking about another woman:
“911. What’s the nature of your call?”
“Yes, I have someone here who’s been physically abused by their husband. I think she needs medical assistance.” (The right choice: her.)

The speaker is looking directly at a father when he says this, and he’s referring to the father:
I understand a father wanting to protect their child, but … (It should be his.)

It seems that the use of the 3^rd person plural has become so common that even when the speaker knows that the somebody is a man or woman, the 3^rd person plural form is still used. I think that’s bizarre! It’s commonplace, but bizarre!

Do you mind if …? / Would you mind if …?

These phrases are quickly losing their meaning. More and more native speakers think they mean “May I …? or “Can I …?” instead of their real meaning of “Will it bother you if …?” or “Is it a problem if …?” Listen to how native speakers respond to requests that start off with one of these phrases and you’ll see what I mean. You’ll hear people respond by saying something like “Sure” or “Okay” instead of “No” or “Not at all.”

If somebody asks, “Would you mind if I took a photo of your dog?” the traditional response is “No, not at all” when the speaker means it’s okay. That’s because the speaker is really communicating, “No, it won’t bother me at all” or “It’s not at all a problem.” What you’ll hear instead is “Sure,” which actually means they’re saying “Sure, it will be a problem.” But that probably won’t stop Sure or Okay from eventually becoming standard answers to these two questions when their real meanings are lost completely at some point in the future.

PART 4

Items in English that May Stick. Only Time will Tell

There are lots of really quirky things going on in English these days, and I have a hunch that some of them will become standard parts of the language as time goes by simply because they’re so commonly heard and read. So when will we be teaching them? That’s an interesting question. I wonder what your take on this is.

At any rate, here are just a few examples I’ve noted over quite some time. And remember that all of these examples come from educated native speakers:

Change in Stative Verbs

Many stative verbs, which are traditionally used only in the simple forms of the tenses and aspects, are now being used in the progressive form more and more often, perhaps signaling a significant change in this area of grammar:

It’s close to the end of the game, so for sure they’re not wanting their opponents to get any more points.
We weren’t believing any of what he was claiming.
The kids are loving their new board game. Look how into it they are.
She’s having to look for a second job now to make ends meet.
What they’re needing is more money for a down payment.
I guess I just wasn’t understanding where you were going with that story.
Where did he go? I’m not seeing him.

The had in the phrase had better is just about disappearing:

You better read the fine print before signing.
He better not try to do that by himself.

Please reference the below article for more information.

The word below is not an adjective; it’s either a preposition or an adverb, and in this sentence, it’s an adverb. That means it should follow the article: Please reference the article below for more information.

By the way, the same holds true for above: Please read the instructions above to see how this is done. I’ve come across the mistaken positioning of the adverbs below and above quite often: Please read the above instructions to see how this is done.

It’s becoming more and more common to hear the object form of personal pronouns used as the subject of a sentence. Here are some examples:

Him and my brother did it.
She claimed Kathleen told her the truth when her and Kathleen were talking the other day.
Me and her were the only ones at home at the time.
Her and I left the party early.
Them and their parents were told to make appointments to see the principal.

You’d think the sentences above were all uttered by uneducated native speakers, right? Well, surprise, surprise! Some were spoken by highly educated people – one even by a teacher!

Notice the two variations of the same subject? Look again at the third and fourth examples: Me and her / Her and I. Of course the traditional form should be She and I in both sentences. I find things like this fascinating!

It was just awful! We drug all those heavy potting soil bags to the car, and not one employee helped us.
After the successful attack, the wolf spider drug its prey into its burrow to feed on it.

Just as I’ve cited the strange use of object personal pronouns used as the subjects of sentences, you might also think that the two examples here showing the use of drug as the past tense of drag were uttered by uneducated speakers. Well, once again I have to say surprise, surprise! Both were said by quite educated native speakers, and I have found that more and more people, especially in the American Midwest and South, seem to use drug as the past of drag instead of dragged.

What I find quite remarkable about this is that it goes against the natural tendency of English to regularize verbs and nouns. For example, dive > dove/dived; leap > leapt/leaped; plead > pled/pleaded. In this case, oddly enough, just the opposite has happened. A regular verb has been made into an irregular verb: drag > drug/dragged.

At the moment, I don’t believe this alternate past tense form is accepted – at least not in any dictionaries I’ve looked at – but perhaps drug will one day be an acceptable alternative for dragged just as dived is an acceptable alternative for dove.

In each of the following sentences and news headlines, you’ll note how the names of countries have been used where their corresponding adjectives should have been employed:

Life is dangerous in many Mexico towns because of battles between drug cartels.
Thousands of refugees have been streaming over the Lebanon/Syria border into Lebanon.
There will be two Great Britain divers in the semifinals in platform diving.
China Wedding Party’s Cars Plunge into River
Egypt Pyramids Discovered On Google Earth, Researcher Says

In each example above, there was absolutely no reason to use the name of the country when the adjectival form should have been used, but this seems to be a growing trend among journalists even in spoken English. We do have adjectives for all the countries listed above. For example: Life is dangerous in many Mexican towns because … / Thousands of refugees have been streaming over the Lebanese/Syrian border into Lebanon / There will be two British divers in the semifinals …

What strikes me as so odd about this strange usage is that none of the people who wrote these headlines or sentences would ever write something like Drought Suffocating America Midwest. If they think that America sounds odd here, why do they think all these other misuses are acceptable? Very strange indeed! In short, since an adjective exists to identify each of these countries, it should be used, but we’ll have to see if this trend takes hold.

What? Are these somebody’s teeth marks on this apple? Yuck!
For teeth whitening, dentists recommend a limited number of over-the-counter products.

I’m sure you’ve heard phrases like these. Do they bother you? If they don’t, to be consistent, shouldn’t you say teethpaste instead of toothpaste and an ants hill instead of an ant hill? Whether we have a compound noun (two nouns written together as one word to create a new word) or a noun adjunct (the same as a compound noun, but with the words written separately), the first element always functions as an adjective to describe the head noun (the second element), and because it functions as an adjective, it’s usually singular, even though it may represent something plural. That’s why we say tooth marks and not teeth marks; footprints and not feetprints. And keeping with this, you’d expect to hear tooth whitening.

I said that the first element is usually singular, but that’s not always the case. We do have exceptions for words that aren’t commonly used in the singular. For example, when it comes to arms meaning “weapons,” we say the arms race because we don’t normally put arms in the singular.

In my next installment, we’ll look at more quirky items in English that ESOL teachers may be teaching one of these days as standard elements of the language.

PART 5

More Items in English that May Stick. Only Time will Tell.

In Part 4 of this series, I presented some quirky things that are happening in English these days, things which I have a hunch may become standard parts of the language or accepted alternative forms in the language as time goes by simply because they’re so commonly spoken, heard, and read by educated native users of English. These quirky things may just be aberrations, but if they’re not, we English teachers may have to accept that they will very likely be taught at some point in the future. Here are some more of these oddities that perhaps won’t be considered so odd down the road.

An interesting observation I’ve made is that even though they’re referring to time, many native speakers use where – which signifies a location, of course – instead of using when, which signifies a time. To me it’s a very odd occurrence, and I can’t figure out why it’s so common. Here are a number of examples:

There was a moment where I knew that I couldn’t do it on my own.
There were instances where she just seemed to drift off into a daydream
Did there come a time where you believed he had done it?
It happened about ten years ago where I found myself wondering why …
One test is called a hand drop. It’s where a neurologist takes the patient’s hand and …
I’m lucky to be in a time where more people champion human rights than ever before.

In each and every example above, it’s clear that when is the appropriate word to use since it deals with time as do all the words preceding where in these sentences. I don’t know if this use of where will ever be considered okay, but that doesn’t mean it won’t continue to be commonly heard.

What follows is nothing new, but the question is, will reflexive pronouns eventually be acceptable in this usage? It’s important to reiterate here that all of the following examples are direct quotes from educated native speakers.

So what seems to be happening? This use of a reflexive pronoun as the subject or object in place of the personal pronoun seems to apply only to 1^st person and 2^nd person, both singular and plural:

“How are you, Al?” “Fine, thanks. And yourself?”
The only two people who know the answer are John and myself.
Everybody knows, myself included, that we all need …
So, if I get this correctly, Patrick, your father, and yourself were all there, correct?
There’s greater intelligence in the universe than ourselves.
Myself, Dirk, and his grandfather decided to fly together to Houston.
We’re going to the company picnic this Saturday. What about yourselves?
The cop gave parking tickets to Ann and myself. We hadn’t noticed the no-parking sign.
All the neighbors are being invited, including yourselves.

Perhaps you feel that this use of these reflexive pronouns has a place in conversational English. You may feel that such a use fills a desire on the part of the speakers to give more stature to themselves or to the person(s) being addressed. This may very well have its roots in the colloquial habit in Irish English of using himself and herself to show that a person of high rank is being discussed:

“Is Himself having dinner at home tonight?” asked the cook.
“I’ll have to check,” replied the butler.

But the following is an example that just demonstrates plain bad grammar – and this utterance was made by an educated speaker, mind you! Even though you can hear native speakers make this error, I don’t think it will ever become standard in the language:

They’ll just have to look up the property taxes themself.

Our house’s heating system needs to be revamped.
The average income’s decline in the US shows the recession is still a big threat.
Serious Problem Found in Cars’ Trunks

There was a time when we were taught that we should use the –s genitive for higher life forms (human beings and most animals) and for time expressions like today, last week, next month. We were also taught that there were pat phrases that used the –s genitive like your money’s worth and a stone’s throw from here and nouns that are commonly anthropomorphized like ships and celestial bodies: the Titanic’s hull, the moon’s gravitational pull. For inanimate objects and lower life forms like insects, we were taught to use the of genitive (e.g., the heating system of our house; the decline of the average income in the US). And, in other cases, we were taught to use noun adjuncts rather than any genitive form: car trunks; kitchen cabinets.

Now, it seems, anything goes. People use the –s genitive on just about any noun, as you can see in the examples that started off this section.

I want them to pay for the damages they caused to my apartment.

It used to be that damages referred to money awarded in court at the end of a law suit to a plaintiff for having suffered some kind of loss or injury caused by a defendant. But when referring to harm done to property, it’s been traditional to say damage, a singular, uncountable noun.

Well, that’s changing rapidly. More and more native speakers now say damages when referring to harm done to various parts of an object or various incidents of harm done to a property. Even judges are using damages instead of damage for harm done to different parts of something such as an apartment.

It was so fun!

This is interesting. When fun is used adjectivally, it traditionally comes before the noun it describes (e.g., It was a fun party. / We had a fun time at the beach yesterday).

But this kind of adjective is not used after a copula like be, so when we say It was fun, fun is actually an uncountable noun in this case. That’s why it’s not traditional to use so before it because we use so + an adjective, not a noun: so amusing, so entertaining, so enjoyable – but not so fun. If we want to use an uncountable noun like fun, we need to employ such: It was such fun. This traditional rule seems to be changing rapidly, though, for many native speakers.

Here’s another grammatical form that seems to be going through a transformation among native speakers, educated and uneducated alike. The past perfect, which has traditionally been used for the past subjunctive in imaginary sentences (She wishes she hadn’t flunked her midterm exam) and the past subjunctive in imaginary conditional sentences (If she hadn’t flunked the midterm, her parents wouldn’t have restricted her social activities so much), is being replaced with the simple past, which has traditionally been used for the present subjunctive in imaginary contexts (I wish I were rich. / If I were rich, I’d buy a castle in Ireland). So the simple past is being used in the subjunctive clause in both present and past imaginary sentences. Here are examples:

He just wishes he knew more than he did when he made that decision.
If Babe Ruth wasn’t a pitcher at the beginning of his baseball career, he would probably have hit over a thousand homeruns.
If there wasn’t a firearm on the scene, tensions wouldn’t have escalated so much.
Do you feel you wouldn’t be here today if you didn’t have the pepper spray to protect you from that bear?
If we didn’t smell the gas leak when we did, the whole house could have blown up.

The currently correct grammatical version of these sentences is:

He just wishes he had known more than he did when he made that decision.
If Babe Ruth hadn’t been a pitcher at the beginning of his baseball career, he would probably have hit over a thousand homeruns.
If there hadn’t been a firearm on the scene, tensions wouldn’t have escalated so much.
Do you feel you wouldn’t be here today if you hadn’t had the pepper spray to protect you from that bear?
If we hadn’t smelled the gas leak when we did, the whole house could have blown up.

PART 6

More Trends in the Language

Well, here we are at the end of my series on observations I’ve made about changes that I see happening in English. Some of them will probably become permanent and end up being taught as either the grammatically correct forms or acceptable alternatives to traditional forms. A few, in fact, are already considered acceptable alternatives in some dictionaries and grammar books. Perhaps I should have titled this “The Heads-Up Series” since my goal has been to give you, our intrepid English teachers, a heads-up on what you may be teaching in the not-too-distant future. At any rate, let’s take a look at a few more changes I’ve observed.

Lay and Lie

Okay, my hardliners, in case you’re not aware of it, these days it’s considered acceptable to use either lay or lie as the intransitive verb meaning to be in a horizontal or reclined position. The traditional distinction between the two, with lay being transitive (When I set the table, I lay a napkin on top of each dinner plate) and lie being intransitive (They got sunburned because they were lying on the beach too long) is a thing of the past, for all intents and purposes. So you can lay a napkin on a plate and lay on the beach to sunbathe. It’s interesting, though, that this change is a one-way street; it doesn’t work in reverse. You won’t hear people say A mason lies bricks or chickens lie eggs, will you?

· The Illogic of Less

I’m sure that everybody has heard all sorts of native English speakers say phrases like less calories and less accidents. Traditionally, of course, we’re supposed to use less with uncountable nouns (and adverbs, too, for that matter). As for countable nouns, we should say fewer calories and fewer accidents. Well, more and more I hear and read phrases in which less is used with countable nouns instead of fewer.

But keep in mind the basic forms and comparative forms of these words (little → less; few → fewer) and now let’s see how illogically less is being used by more and more people. We see that less is the comparative form of little, so we have little money → less money, both of which speak to how much money is being discussed. In keeping with this, if it becomes acceptable to say less accidents, doesn’t that mean we should also be able to say little accidents if we’re not making a comparison, but are only talking about how many accidents? Of course not! We can use little accidents when speaking about accidents that aren’t serious, but little accidents doesn’t mean “fewer accidents.” We can say few accidents → fewer accidents, but not little accidents → less accidents the way we can say little money → less money. You get it, I’m sure.

· June WHAT? April WHAT??

I don’t know how long ago this started, but over the past few years I’ve noticed more and more native speakers saying things like June five or April twenty-two instead of June fifth or April twenty-second. When and why people started using ordinal numbers instead of cardinal numbers in dates is beyond me. At first I thought it might be for the sake of clarity, to make sure the listener doesn’t confuse the date that the speaker is saying, but that’s not true at all. None of the nine ordinal numbers in question sounds like any of the others. So get ready for the possibility that you’ll have to tweak that rule we always teach about dates only being made with ordinal numbers.

· Mom

Here’s a prediction: The word mother may disappear from common usage, at least in American English. I can hear you saying “Huh??” but just hear me out. Even in formal situations, people are using mom much more often than mother. Here are three examples:

- “I’d like to introduce a fellow mom, Michelle Obama!” said the speaker who introduced the First Lady at the last Democratic National Convention. Not a fellow mother, but “a fellow mom.”

- And during her speech at the convention, Mrs. Obama said, “At the end of the day, my most important title is still ‘Mom in Chief.’ ” Not Mother in Chief, but “Mom in Chief.”

- Judge in Juvenile Court addressing a 15-year-old defendant: “Is that your mom?”

If you’re skeptical about mother possibly taking a back seat to mom and disappearing from common usage, just start listening to how many times you hear mom compared to mother. I’ve heard mom used in all sorts of situations, formal and informal, and by all sorts of people – but not mother.

I think there’s something psychological going on, not just cultural. Perhaps it’s tied in with something “cute,” something “homey,” “something “more adoring.” I don’t really know, but I do know that it takes me aback when I hear mom used in what I would consider an inappropriate setting, and I hear it several times every single day. This common preference now to use mom instead of mother is also likely tied in with that blurred division nowadays between what we consider formal and informal in American culture and how language is reflecting that.

Oh, by the way, the same thing is happening with dad vs. father, although it’s not as commonly heard. So listen for these changes and you may be surprised at what you hear.

· Baby Mama and Baby Daddy

Speaking of mom and dad crowding out mother and father due to a cultural shift, there are two terms that seem to have taken hold in American English in the past few years which fill a gap that didn’t exist a generation ago in our culture. I’m referring to the identifiers baby mama and baby daddy.

A generation ago it was still considered taboo to have a child out of wedlock, but American culture has done a 180-degree reversal on this issue. Now it’s become so commonplace to find babies born to unmarried parents that two new identifiers, which work quite efficiently, have arrived on the linguistic scene for these new relationships. It was just too awkward to say things like the mother of my baby or the father of my baby, which can get really tiresome to say if repeated a few times during a conversation.

These identifiers were borrowed from Black English, in which the possessive marker, the ’s genitive, isn’t used (e.g., my brother car; his auntie house). So his baby mama is the woman who some guy had a child with out of wedlock, and her baby daddy is the man who some woman had a child with out of wedlock.

Aside from any cultural discussion on this issue, it’s interesting to witness once again this really marvelous feature that a language can generate new terms to fill a need whenever necessary.

· In Part 2 of this series, I made mention of sentences like They saw Jim and I at the mall yesterday, in which the subject form of the 1^st person singular pronoun is used following somebody and … where the object form (Jim and me) should be used in traditional grammar.

This is now being carried to an extreme I would never have thought possible – and by educated speakers, no less. The new version of this phenomenon occurs when he or she appears in a compound object (he/she and somebody). I’ve only heard this odd construction with the singular personal pronouns I, he, and she, so I can’t attest to the existence of they and somebody.

The following examples came out of the mouths of a TV news reporter, a talk show host, a lawyer, and a judge:

It was the same thing with she and her husband.
As his attorney, whatever we discussed would just be between he and I and the district attorney.
I saw no talking at all between she and her sister during the party.
You want she and her mother to be his caregivers instead of LPN’s?

I must say here that even though I’ve heard such constructions uttered by educated people, I’m going to keep hoping that it’s just an aberration, not something that will catch on!

· It All Started with Ms.

Throughout the history of English, changes have occurred. Sometimes they’ve been accidental, such as when the n in napron got detached and was stuck onto the indefinite article before it so that a napron became an apron. Sometimes the changes have been deliberate, such as those influenced by the Feminist Movement (e.g., the creation of Ms.; firemen becoming firefighters; airplane stewards and stewardesses becoming flight attendants; mailmen becoming mail carriers).

That was all well and good. I totally agree with dropping gendered words and replacing them with neutral words for jobs that are now done by both men and women, but let’s remember that we had many of these even before the Feminist Movement, such as doctor, teacher, lawyer, and judge, to name a few. And we can find other examples of this trend, such as mankind becoming humankind. That’s great!

But what strikes me as very odd – even amusing – is when this trend went beyond job titles and the like and started adopting the male term for both males and females: actor (no more actress); murderer (no more murderess); heir (no more heiress). I just wonder why activists in the Feminist Movement are comfortable with deferring to the male forms of these words. Why did the male forms win out?

And come to think of it, what do we do with terms like manhole, one-upmanship, and no-man’s land? Oops! Your guess is as good as mine. (Yes, I’m sitting here grinning a little.)

______________________________________________________________________

So there you have it. It will be fun to see down the road how many – if any – of the lexical and grammatical items discussed in this six-part series will become commonly accepted either as replacements or alternatives. One thing’s for certain, though. English will keep evolving, and if it’s still a living language a thousand years from now, it will probably be as unrecognizable from today’s English as the English of a thousand years ago is to us today. Just have a look. Our Father who is in heaven, may Your name be revered … hardly resembles how it was spoken and written a thousand years ago: Fæder ure þu þe eart on heofonum, si þin nama gehalgod …

I rest my case.

Thoughts on Teaching Listening

By David Barker
Author and Publisher of Materials for
Japanese Learners of English

PART 1

I can’t remember who said it (I have a feeling it may have been Penny Ur), but I remember hearing a quote about teaching listening once that really made me stop and think:

We don’t really teach listening; we just keep testing it.

Whoever it was, I think he or she had a very valid point. Our standard methodology for teaching listening is a cycle of giving listening tasks and then asking questions in order to test the learners’ comprehension of what they have heard. In our defence, of course, it is difficult to see how we could do otherwise. Like reading, listening is a receptive skill that can only be developed through repeated practice, so there are good reasons for teaching it the way we do. Anyway, I was recently asked to do a presentation on this topic, and I started thinking about aspects of listening that do actually need to be taught rather than simply practiced. The first thing that came to mind was a list of general principles of which learners often seem to be unaware, and I want to write about the first of those today.

The first point is that we listen with our brains, not our ears.

Many learners think that improving their listening skills means developing their ability to recognize audio signals produced by proficient speakers of the language. In fact, the audio signal that most speakers produce does not contain sufficient information for it to be recognized in isolation. To hear an example of this, try saying the following sentence quickly.

“There was a great movie on TV last night.”

Now say it again at the same speed, but stop at “a.” Repeat the first three words, but keep your pronunciation exactly the way it was when you said the full sentence. Now dictate this segment of language to a proficient speaker of English and ask them to write down what you are saying. The chances are that they will be unable to do so. If you then complete the sentence, however, you will find that the listener is suddenly able to understand what just sounded like random noise a few seconds ago. The person will probably even tell you that they can “hear” the words now. Of course, the listener cannot hear “There was a” because you are not really saying it. The reason they think they can hear it is that after the words enter their ears, their brain takes over to decode the signal in the light of what went before, what came after, and what that person knows about the way English works. In other words, it is the brain that is doing the listening, not the ears.

You can see this process in action for yourself by playing around with an iPhone 4S. Even if you do not have one of these yourself, I am sure you have been bored to death by friends who do have one telling you about it and/or demonstrating its features. Anyway, Siri is a “virtual personal assistant” that, so its developers claim, is capable of recognizing natural speech. The interesting thing about Siri is that it only works when you have a good Internet connection. This is because it has to take the audio signal and process it through powerful servers in order to work out what has actually been said. If listening really were a matter of simply recognizing audio signals, this would not be necessary. The fact that it is necessary shows that it is the computers that are doing the listening, not the microphone.

I was quite skeptical of Siri before I tried it, because the voice recognition software I have used in the past has been worse than useless. Siri, however, is remarkably accurate, and it gets things right a lot more often than it gets them wrong. When it does make mistakes, however, it provides interesting insights into the challenges the human brain faces when it attempts to comprehend spoken language. One of the most difficult things about decoding the audio signal produced by spoken language is working out where the word boundaries lie. This is because different sequences of words can produce an identical audio signal. To give you an example of this, here is a true story about a message I tried to send the other day. On that day, I was feeling particularly pleased with myself because I had managed to get up at 6 a.m., and I decided to send an email to a friend to inform her of this remarkable achievement. Picking up my phone, I dictated to Siri, “I just broke the world record for getting up early.” When it had taken a moment to absorb the sequence of sounds that came from my mouth, Siri displayed the following message on the screen:

I just broke the world record forgetting up early.

If you think about it, the audio signal produced by my original sentence and the one produced by Siri’s transcription of it would be identical, but no speaker of English would interpret those sounds as Siri did because that sentence simply does not make any sense.

Another issue that both humans and computers have to cope with is the problem of homophones (different words that share the same pronunciation). One way software engineers attempt to deal with this is by taking into account the relative frequencies of words. For example, “rain” is more common than “reign,” so when in doubt, the computer will opt for the more common word. This, however, can lead to mistakes. As a follow-up to my first sentence, I continued my message: “Maybe I should contact the newspapers to tell them about my feat.” Before you read on, can you guess how Siri transcribed this sentence?

Of course, “Maybe I should contact the newspapers to tell them about my feet” is perfectly grammatical, and it would even make sense in some contexts. The problem is that in order to arrive at the correct interpretation, the listener has to hold in his or her mind a continually developing sense of what is being discussed. This sounds simple, and indeed it is—for humans. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately!), however, it is still beyond the capabilities of even the most powerful modern computers.

To summarize, it is important for learners to understand that the reason they cannot “hear” clearly what proficient speakers of English are saying is that the speakers are not saying it clearly in the first place, so the sooner they give up on that idea, the easier it will be for them. Other proficient speakers can’t “hear” English in that sense either. What allows us to decode the signal and understand what is being said is our knowledge of English vocabulary and grammar, and our ability to keep track of topics over the course of a conversation. As I said, we listen with our brains, not our ears.

PART 2

Pronunciation is one element of language courses that often gets overlooked. Part of the reason for this is that experienced teachers know how difficult it is to learn the sounds of a foreign language as an adult, especially if that language is nothing like your own. This basically means we accept that Japanese students will always have a Japanese accent, that Koreans will always have a Korean accent, and so on. Incidentally, I always used to think in terms of learners “gaining” the accent of a foreign language, but I remember hearing a friend talking about a Japanese person he knew who had managed to “lose” her Japanese accent. That is an interesting way of looking at it. I wonder which viewpoint is more common among teachers?

Anyway, as well as acknowledging the difficulty of the task of teaching pronunciation, most teachers also realize that even with a heavy accent, the majority of learners will be able to make themselves understood to proficient speakers of English. The combined effect of these two beliefs is that pronunciation often gets relegated to a once-in-a-while exercise with the sole purpose of providing a bit of variety in the course.

There are at least two problems with this way of thinking. The first is that teachers, particularly those of monolingual classes, are often very poor judges of how comprehensible their students actually are to regular speakers of the language. When I lived in New Zealand, I did the examiner training for IELTS (International English Language Testing System). As part of the workshop, we had to watch videos of candidates speaking and assign grades. What soon became clear was that teachers were giving far higher grades to students of nationalities they were familiar with. For example, two teachers who had worked in Korea gave a Korean student a high grade for her speaking, whereas the teachers who had mainly worked with European learners gave her a low one. Their reasoning was, “We can’t really understand what she is saying.”

The second reason why pronunciation deserves more attention in language courses is that a learner’s knowledge of the sounds of a language will directly affect their ability to perceive and recognize those sounds. In other words, having good pronunciation is just as important for listening as it is for speaking. My limited understanding of how recognition systems work is that they compare sensory input with stored representations of a variety of forms. For example, we learn how the word “boy” sounds, and we then create and store a template of it in our brains. When audio signals reach our ears, they are run through the database in order to find matches. The same principle applies to the recognition of words and letters. You recognize “x” as the letter that comes before “z” because the marks on this screen fit the representation of that letter that you already have stored in your brain. Of course, you would probably recognize it if I wrote it as “X” too, and even if I wrote it by hand. The human brain has an incredible tolerance for variation that allows it to recognize shapes in a way that computers cannot. That is the theory behind those weirdly shaped letters you have to input manually on some blogs in order to post a comment. The system works because humans can tolerate greater manipulation of basic forms than computers can.

Even so, there are limits to the tolerance (I am using the word here in its engineering sense) of even the human brain’s recognition systems, and these become stricter when representations of objects or phenomena resemble each other. For example, in many cases, it is impossible for us to distinguish between “1,” “l,” and “I” when written in isolation because they look so similar. When that happens, the knowledge of language and context that I described in my previous entry kicks in and allows us to make inferences that go beyond the information that is being provided by the senses.

When a language student learns a new word, they create a template for it and store that template in their database. It is quite possible that when they reproduce the word from its template, the audio signal that results will be within the limits of tolerance of proficient speakers of the language, so the learner will be able to make him or herself understood. A problem arises, however, when the focus switches to listening. Because the template the learner has created does not really match the signal produced by proficient speakers, and because the learner’s recognition system will naturally have a more limited tolerance owing to their lower mastery of the language, there is a very good chance that they will not recognize what they are hearing. It’s a bit like going to meet someone that you have never met at an airport armed only with a photograph that was taken twenty years ago. If the person doesn’t actually look like the photograph, there is a good chance that they will walk right past you without you recognizing them at all.

Like all language teachers, I constantly struggle to make myself understood to my students. I have often noticed that the reason my students cannot understand what I am saying is that they have learned an incorrect pronunciation of a particular word. The following is a typical example of a conversation in one of my classes:

Me: Can you close the curtain?

Student: ??

Me: The CURTAIN.

Student: Curtain??

Me: (gesturing) The curtain!!

Student: Ah, kah-ten!!

It is almost as if they are correcting my pronunciation to match their internal representation of the word. Every teacher in Japan knows that we can easily make ourselves understood by simply saying a word the way our students say it, and I suspect the same is true of any teacher with experience of teaching a particular language group.

My point is that learners need to learn words as accurately as possible so that the template they create reflects the audio signal that is produced when proficient speakers of the language pronounce that word. If a learner creates a template that is significantly different, it might be close enough for their recreation of it to be understood by proficient speakers, but it may not be close enough for them to recognize the word when they hear it.

As teachers, I think we need to start realizing that pronunciation is just as much a listening skill as it is a speaking one, and we need to start giving it greater prominence in our courses.

PART 3

Speaking from my own experience, I think a strong argument could be made that, wherever possible, it is better to study the pronunciation of a language before you study the actual language itself. This is because listening to a language when you have no idea of its vocabulary or grammar forces you to rely 100% on your ears, which results in you hearing the language the way it really sounds. If you learn a non-phonetic language like English or Chinese by reading and writing graphic representations of the words, your brain will automatically assign sounds to those characters according to how it thinks they would be pronounced in your first language. I had that experience when trying to read Chinese words written in “pinyin.” I was fortunate in my learning of Japanese that I was able to learn the sound system before doing any formal study of the language by listening to Japanese pop songs and learning the words by heart. One great way of helping your students to understand what it means to use only their ears is to play them videos or recordings of songs in a language that none of them is familiar with. Check out this video for a famous example of someone just using their ears to copy the sounds of a foreign language. Isn’t it amazing how much it sounds like English while being completely incomprehensible!

In my last post, I discussed the importance of developing pronunciation skills in order to improve your listening ability, but I did not say exactly what skills I was talking about. That will be the topic of today’s post. There will be nothing new here for experienced teachers, but I hope it will remind people of things that they might have forgotten over the years. For newer teachers, I hope some of the points will give you ideas about how the teaching of pronunciation can be broken down into manageable (i.e., teachable) components.

In his excellent book “Sound Foundations” (essential reading for new teachers), Adrian Underhill breaks the English sound system into three parts:
1.Sounds in isolation
2.Words in isolation
3.Connected speech

Of these, it is probably the first that has traditionally received the most attention in EFL classes, yet many teachers (including me) would argue that it is actually the least important. I do not have the space to go into the mechanics of English phonetics here, but I would like to mention two points that learners may not be aware of.

The first concerns our ability to produce sounds. As far as my limited understanding goes, musical instruments can be divided into two groups: those that can produce a potentially infinite range of sounds, and those that can only produce a specified number. An example of the former group is a violin. Whatever note you play on a violin, it is always theoretically possible to play another that is slightly higher or lower by moving your fingers a tiny amount. An example, of the latter group is a piano. If you play the note “C” on a piano, the next note up on the keyboard is a “C#.” It is not possible to play a note that lies between the two.

The human voice is far more versatile than any musical instrument, and when we are born, we are like violins in that we have the potential to recognize and produce any sound of any language in the world. As we grow up and master our first language, however, we become “pianos,” only able to make and recognize the sounds that our language requires us to distinguish. This is not a limitation of our brains; it is one of its strengths. Knowing which sounds are used to distinguish meanings in our own language allows our brains to have a far wider tolerance for variation, which is a key element in our ability to decode spoken language. To return to the musical instrument metaphor, it allows us to hear which note is being played on any kind of piano, even ones that are not quite in tune. This is one of the biggest challenges faced by learners of English, who not only have to learn sounds that may not exist in their own language, but who then also have to learn to tolerate the variations of those sounds that occur in different accents and dialects.

The second point is that it is extremely difficult to produce sounds that you cannot hear. When I first studied Chinese, I remember being drilled extensively in the four tonal variations that are used to carry meaning in that language. My problem was not so much that I couldn’t produce the tones, but rather that they all sounded the same to me when the teacher pronounced them. It may help learners to know that there is no way they will be able to produce sounds that they cannot hear, and that the pronunciation and recognition of sounds will be a constantly ongoing project for them as they continue with their studies.

Underhill’s second level of “words in isolation” is one of the key areas where I believe teachers and learners need to focus their attention in the classroom. Although it is tempting to analyse the individual sounds that make up a word, it is far more beneficial from both a “speaking” and a “listening” point of view to focus on its syllable pattern – i.e., how many syllables it has, and which one(s) are accented. I was taught to use circles to represent syllables when introducing new words, with a big circle used to show the location of accents. For example, “computer” would be “oOo,” and “America” would be “oOoo.” I also use underlining to show secondary accents, so “information” would be ooOo. I have found that it is very useful for students to practice saying the pattern of a new word using “da-da-da” before they try to pronounce the word properly. Once the correct pattern has been established, it becomes much easier to say the word with good pronunciation. (Using this system, “information” would be “DA-da-DA-da.) By learning how many syllables a word has and which of these is/are accented, students will be able to store an accurate representation of a word’s “silhouette” in their brain. This, more than anything, will enable them to recognize it when they hear it in spoken language. (If you think about it, this is also how we recognise people: we tend to look at the overall size and shape of prominent features rather than at the details of how those parts are made up.)

Underhill’s third level is “connected speech.” From the point of view of learners, particularly speakers of Asian languages, “word linking” is a vital concept that needs to be explicitly dealt with in the classroom. When learners complain of spoken English being “too fast,” the problem is often not one of speed at all, but rather an issue of words being pronounced together differently from the way they are pronounced in isolation. One common example of this is the shifting of final consonant sounds to the start of following words that begin with a vowel. (Betty Azar’s co-author, Stacy Hagen, has done a video explaining how this works.) I used to use John Lennon’s song “Imagine” for song dictations in some of my more advanced classes, and I found that someone would always ask me “What does ‘sonly’ mean?” I didn’t understand the question until we listened together and the students told me to stop the music as Lennon sang “above us only sky.” A particularly common example of this type of word linking occurs with “an” in phrases like “an umbrella” or “an orange.” Actually, I remember hearing somewhere that the only reason the word “an” exists is that it allows “a” to “lend” the final consonant to the following word so that it becomes easier to say.

This is a very brief summary of an extremely complicated area, but once again, I would like to stress its importance not so much in speaking classes, but rather in the teaching of listening. There are many great books and online resources available for those who want to do some further study. Stacey Hagen’s series (link above) is a great place to start, and you can also find some useful basic guidelines on word linking by searching for “rules for connected speech” on the Internet. As you study how word-linking works, however, remember to keep your “listening teacher’s hat” on and think about how it will help your students to develop their listening ability as well as their speaking skills.

Why I Teach the Parts of Speech

By Dorothy Zemach
ESL Materials Writer, Editor, Teacher Trainer
Eugene, Oregon

Actually, I wanted to write about phrases and clauses and about teaching them as adjectives and adverbs. However, that reminded me how many teachers I’ve run into over the years who disagree that the names of parts of speech should be taught to students. I argued with a publisher over this for at least three years, actually, before being “allowed” to teach the parts of speech in a textbook for lower-level students. So let me take a brief diversion to defend this position.

The arguments against teaching the names of the parts of speech are mainly that the terms are too difficult for students to learn, and further, that they aren’t helpful. I disagree with both of these arguments.

Minimally, I think students should know noun, pronoun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, and article. With advanced students I might add in determiner. OK, that’s seven words. Is that too high a vocabulary load, especially when most of those concepts exist in the learner’s native language? I think if they can learn seven objects in the classroom, or seven modes of transportation, or seven irregular verbs, then seven parts of speech isn’t going to short out the brain.

A larger issue is whether they’re helpful. This depends, of course, on whether the teacher uses the labels. I use them all the time. I use them to talk about

different word forms (accept is a verb, acceptance is the noun form of that verb);
the placement of different parts of speech (Your sentence “Is late again,” is missing a noun or a pronoun as the subject); and
the functions of subordinate clauses and prepositional phrases and so on.

And now I’m back to where I wanted to be . . .

It seems to me that one of the challenges of forming correct and elegant sentences in English is in knowing where to put the different elements. Where does the subject go? Where does the verb go? How about the direct object? And those are the easier things to teach.

Where my more advanced students trip up is in knowing where to put longer elements, such as

in the morning,
running for the bus,
while on his way to the bakery, or
on the corner.

The problem is that students don’t know what these elements are—that is, how they function. Therefore, they can’t place them correctly in a sentence.

Pretty much, they’re adjectives and adverbs—more correctly called adjectivals and adverbials, but I use adjective phrase and adverb phrase with my students at first, and then just adjective and adverb, once we’re all on the same page.

Suppose we have a simple sentence:

He fell.

Even lower-level students have probably seen the structure subject + verb + adverb, and might be able to write a sentence such as

He fell slowly.

However, the most common adverbs are actually NOT the one-word ones that end with ~ly, even though those are the easiest ones to identify. An adverb tells us where, when, why, or how. If students know that phrases can be used to talk about when, where, why, or how, then they can write

He fell to the ground.
He fell when he tripped.
He fell as soon as he tried to stand up.
He fell with a strange choking sound.

The trick is in knowing that to the ground (where?) functions as an adverb, as do when he tripped (when?) and as soon as he tried to stand up (both when? and why?) and with a strange choking sound (how?). English allows (and even encourages!) one to combine adverb phrases and clauses, as in

He fell to the ground with a strange choking sound as soon as he tried to stand up.

Getting this concept down is huge. It doesn’t bother me terribly much if a student writes

*He fell at the ground.

*He fell as soon as tried to stand up.

Those sentences contain errors, of course, but the basic pattern of subject + verb + adverb is still there.

Adverbs are movable elements, more so than most others. But students need to know that adverb clauses and phrases move as units, and where they move to—for instance, to the beginning of a sentence:

As soon as he tried to stand up, he fell.

To take another example: A student who is writing short, careful, simple sentences and wishes to expand them might wish to add some adjectives. Students are usually taught simple one-word adjectives (that answer the question What kind of? or Which?) that come before a noun.

She went to the bakery.
She went to the new bakery.

But how much more interesting if we can describe the

bakery with some prepositional phrases; note that these come after the noun:

She went to the bakery on the corner.
She went to the bakery with the jumbo strawberry creampuffs.

Again, an error in choosing the correct preposition doesn’t bother me if the student is able to modify the noun with a phrase.

This is the way I like to address syntax, especially in reading and writing, with at least intermediate and advanced students—and some beginners as well. And that is why my very lowest level students learn the names of the parts of speech—so that we can talk about what the parts of speech are and how they function.

American English

Fecha

Pages

The “New Car” Phenomenon: Priming,Triggering, and Consolidation

How to Write Numbers

English, a Constantly Evolving Language

Bits and Pieces Already Accepted in the Language

More Bits and Pieces Already Accepted in the Language

Silly and Illogical – but still Commonly Used – Bits and Pieces

Items in English that May Stick. Only Time will Tell

More Items in English that May Stick. Only Time will Tell.

More Trends in the Language

Thoughts on Teaching Listening

Why I Teach the Parts of Speech