Search results for 'tag:Present tenses tag:Word order' matching tags 'Present tenses' and 'Word order'

Looking for some tips and/or curriculum suggestions

mikesusangray — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 21:50:11 GMT

Hi all!

I've been giving English conversation lessons to a theology professor for about a year now. He's getting on in the years - a couple years from retirement - and his primary goal has been just to get his spoken English going a little stronger. His mother tongue is French but he's been teaching at a German language university for many years.

I'd like to add some more specific inputs to our lessons but I can't seem to find the right material. His passive skills are excellent - he reads widely and with perfect comprehension in his field - and he can communicate quite understandably. He is a linguistics specialist and can grasp any concept about the language immediately. I brought along Cambridge Advanced Grammar in Use and he could plow through a chapter in five minutes with perfect conceptual comprehension.

However, he also continues to make very simple errors - for example, he has trouble choosing between present simple and continuous or often uses the present tense for past events. Sentence order tends to get wander hither and yon while definite and indefinite articles come and go with the tide. (Prepositions are a problem too, but I won't beat him to hard there - prepositions are difficult in any new language.) In many cases his mistakes are typical of French or German speech patterns.

One other limitation is that he enjoys the weekly lessons (a good hour), but doesn't have much time to study in between.

Right now we spend about 15 minutes reading a chapter from Advanced Grammar in Use and about 45 minutes talking about just about anything under the sun, while I take notes and show him problems under the categories Pronunciation/Articles & Prespositions/Word Order/Other Grammar/Vocabulary/Idioms. However, I don't think the work book is a good choice - particularly since he doesn't do the homework - and it seems like he isn't making very good progress with his typical problem patterns - though he greets them like old friends when I point them out.

Any tips here?

Re: question formula

Cool Breeze — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 09:21:39 GMT

Hi Nader

I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean. Has he talking? is wrong. You could say: Has he been talking?

If you are asking whether a have or has question can always be formed by changing the word order, the answer is no. It is safer to use do in the present tense:

Does he have money?
Especially in BrE it is possible to say: Has he [got] money? Without the got, it's not very common, though.

When have means 'eat', 'drink', 'must' etc., do must be used in questions:
Did he have an early breakfast today?
Do you have to talk about it all the time?

When have, has and had are perfect and past perfect auxiliaries, do is never used:
Have you seen him today?
Has he said anything so far?
Had he been there before?

Have you been reading all day?

CB

Re: Joy to the world, the lord is "COME" ????

Cool Breeze — Tue, 26 Dec 2006 20:06:53 GMT

I always thought it was a remnant of the French (Norman Invasion, 1066). There is a handful of verbs in French conjugated with "to be" rather than "to have" in the passÃ© composÃ© (past) tense. Rise, [to be] born, arrive, leave, go (all "coming and going" verbs) are some examples. We also sing "He is risen" and we allow for "he is gone" as well as "he has gone".

Hi Philip

There has been vacillation between be and have as the perfect auxiliary in the Germanic languages - that's what I really meant to say in my previous post - but to my knowledge no one has ever maintained this usage derives from French. As a matter of fact, French had little effect on English grammar in terms of grammatical structures although the number of loan words is remarkable.

One of the structures derived from French is the of-genitive, which most scholars believe is based on the de-structure of the French language. And of course the word order of e.g. court martial reflects French grammar.

The only tenses Old English had were the present tense and the preterite (past tense); in other words, the Angles, Saxons and Jutes who invaded Britain in the 5th century didn't take the perfect, pluperfect and the future tense with them from the continent.

Cheers
CB

Re: Sequence of tenses in official language

Ruslana — Sat, 01 Apr 2006 18:07:06 GMT

Oh, it's "formal" indeed. I clean forgot this word.

Clive, I don't mind any your comments!

Honestly, now I am confused why I was sure that you know it! sounds odd whereas other such phrases don't. Is there any ways by means of which I can find out whether present tense may be used or not in a subordinate clause?.. It seems one has to be a native to see that.

Clive wrote:
Unlike with French, there is no 'official body' that sets standards for 'correct English'. Perhaps this may sound inefficient or untidy to you, and perhaps it is.

Quite the contrary. I don't know what about French, but in comparison with Russian, English language is very "standardized". For example, I have heard that absence of definite word order in Russian drives some learners of it mad. On the other hand, while reading the forum I see that modern English has lost its strict word order, hasn't it?.. Well, that moves English nearer to Russian then.

Re: Are grammar rules helpful to non-native speakers

Pemmican — Mon, 14 Mar 2005 21:51:40 GMT

Hello Xavier,

you're right of course: Communication is one of the tasks of language.
The Grammar is "late": Language follows special patterns (word order, inflection, cases, conjugation, etc) - language has to follow those patterns as without them, communication wouldn't be possible.
The only reason why you understand what I say is: you know the language-structure.
This structure works without any problems for your native language. For languages that you learn(ed) later, you need to know its structure to a certain level ---> GRAMMARS "filter out" these structures , show you HOW components are set together and how the whole complex works.

Grammar therefore is necessary for anyone who learns a foreign language but also for those who want to know how their native language works. It is very helpful to know about the Grammar of your native language, too, as comparing special aspects can show you where difficulties are.

As Ancient Greek grammars (and also Latin grammars later on) had a huge influence also on Germanic languages like English, they also took over some grammatic features that haven't existed originally in Germanic languages.
You mentioned the tenses e.g.:
Germanic languages originally had TWO tenses only,
The PAST-Tense and the NON-PAST-Tense
(= today's Simple Past and Simple Present tense)

Everything could be expressed with these two tenses as the simple Present wasn't and still isn't only used for events that take place in the actual present, but also for general facts and truths (=It SNOWS a lot in Sweden), for events that happen in the future (=The train LEAVES at 4 o'clock), etc.

Beside the indicative mood, the Germanic languages also have a conjunctive (also: subjunctive) mood which describes events and happenings as irreal.

All other tenses and also the conditional-mood have been constructed and base on Greek and Latin Grammars (e.g. the Perfect tenses and the Future tenses). That is btw why these tenses have to be paraphrased in English by a helping verb and the participle or infinitive of the main verb, while the original Past and Present tenses consist of the conjugated full verb only.

So you're correct that the traditional Grammar originally came over from Greece, but no matter what language you learn, you need to know about its structure - and this structure is explained in Grammars.

I hope I could help you a bit.

Cheers
-Pemmican

Re: Don't

rommie — Fri, 19 Mar 2004 07:55:36 GMT

It's "...do you not like".

I suppose the answer is that the negation of "to like" is "not to like". So, in the present tense, the negation of "like" is "not like". The correct word order is therefore "...do you not like".

However, as you quite rightly point out, it *IS* abbreviated to "don't you like". That does make sense if you regard "don't" as a separate word. (There's no such word as "doyoun't"). You can't put one word inside another word (except in very unusual circumstances), so if you're going to use "don't" it will have to go either one side or the other of "you". It definitely can't go after the "you" because that would completely change the meaning, so the only option left is before.

Curiously, "...do not you like" is probably not actually formally incorrect, just very, very unusual.

Rommie