According to your logic, my asnwers were deemed invalid until I quoted an appproved source? Am I understanding correctly? If you recap my last posting, I believe we both agreed the sentence is better off without "by bill". What was your point?? Although I am not a native speaker, it doesn't mean my comment is invalid and less credible. Anyone can post a comment which he gahters from a source on the Net and "the book.". I only go to the book when I am in doubt.

I don't do tongue and cheeks on the forum. If I agree I'll tell you. If I don't, I''ll try to go to great length to exaplain why. You call dsiagreement  "opposition" which means either you have a perception problem, or you yourself treat every disagreement as an "opposition". It's not the first time we have this contest and  it won't be the last! Other didn't disagree with you doesn't  mean you were correct either. You had been corrected more than once....Let's just say "we went to different schools" Shall we ?

You had been corrected more than once..Let's just say "we went to different schools" Shall we ? That's fine.

I am still learning from the posts answered by other members.

It's true there are some members who disagreed with my replies, and posted theirs but I did not go against what they said.

I also disagreed with some replies given by other members and I posted mine. However, they did not go against what I said.

We are here to guide members who are weak in English and learn from others whose command of English is good, be they native or non-native speakers.

It seems that you don't need English usage and grammar books. You say that you refer to one when you are in doubt, but I have yet to see you quote from one, and I remember you don't think much of English authorities, including the lecturers from the British Council in my country.

Hi A

Avangi

“What I wanted to know about transformations was how the exercise writers felt / feel about the learner's choices between a good sentence and a good transformation.”

In my opinion, exercises for transforming active sentences into passive ones are frequently created by people who do not actually know what they are doing.  Bad writers may know the mechanics of the transformation, but seem to neglect just about everything else. Just because a book calls itself a "grammar book", that does not automatically mean that it is a good, or even an accurate book. There are lots of grammar books on the market that I would NEVER recommend to a student.

That said, I am aware that many teachers are required to use specific course books. Unfortunately, some of the books that teachers are required to use are poorly written and conceived ones. Some teachers recognize this fact and do what they can in the classroom in order to compensate. However, I'm sure many don't recognize the poor quality -- and I feel sure this is sometimes because they themselves learned English with the same sorts of awful books.

The sentence "Bill saw the girls swimming in the pool" is a perfect example of a sentence that simply should NOT be transformed to a passive sentence at all. Telling a student to transform that sentence to a passive sentence may help the student learn the mechanics of grammar, but at the same time it misleads the student. It in essence tells the student that it is perfectly natural to use this sort of sentence as a passive. As I see it, an important aspect of teaching the passive to learners is teaching them when it is appropriate or even preferable to use the passive. Students need to learn and understand the reasons that a passive sentence can/should be used or not used. They should learn why "The girls were seen swimming in the pool by Bill" is the type of passive sentence they would generally NOT want to use.

English is not a mechanical device. Telling learners to mechanically create a heap of unnatural sentences is not my idea of good teaching.

That's my two cents. I'll get off my soapbox now.

Hi Koh

I know that you always look for the good stuff.  I am also aware that there are other English teachers on this site who post questions about information they have gotten from the grammar books they have to use. I think it's great when a teacher goes to the trouble of verifying the accuracy of what they have to teach.

No grammar book will ever be 100% perfect, and not every good grammar book works well for every student. But there certainly are plenty of very poorly written grammar books on the market, aren't there?

Hi A

I can understand the reluctance to use the term "gerund", but it's a fact of life that lots of learners are taught about things called "gerunds", so you just have to deal with it.

There are also people who will get all hot and bothered if you refer to the present perfect as a "tense".