www.americancorpus.org (Corpus of American English) Definitions First computerized in 1971 [http://iteslj.org/Articles/Krieger-Corpus.html] A corpus consists of a databank of natural texts, compiled from writing and/or a transcription of recorded speech.A concordancer is a software program which analyzes corpora and lists the results.The main focus of corpus linguistics is to discover patterns of authentic language use through…
past oriented/factual = gerunds forward oriented (can be past form, however/hypothetical = infinitives <—————-| (backward) |—————-> (forward) Infinitives are the optimistic verbs. You can’t finish or enjoy something hypothetical, so they’re in the future “Enjoy” takes only –ing form “Do you like” versus “Would you like”: one is real, one is hypothetical “I like” (present…
By William ZinsserA talk to the incoming international students at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, August 11, 2009 [formatting added by Elka] Five years ago one of your deans at the journalism school, Elizabeth Fishman, asked me if I would be interested in tutoring international students who might need some extra help with their…
Last speech, day before assassination. Filled with 3rd conditionals. You know, several years ago, I was in New York City autographing the first book that I had written. And while sitting there autographing books, a demented black woman came up. The only question I heard from her was, “Are you Martin Luther King?” And I…
TGB Condition and result Imaginative Hypothetical (unlikely but possible — future and present) Counterfactual (impossible — present or past) Problems Inconsistent tenses Use of “were” Confusion with ___ conditional: ‘if it rains, I will…’ versus ‘if it rained, I would…’ (The former expresses more confidence in the likelihood.) If: confusion with non-conditional; also, if sometimes…
Learner Data * I lived here since six months but can’t find no job. (Puerto Rican student, lower intermediate) A. Student’s problem: wrong tense, wrong adverbial, double negative B. What the student got right: pronouns, adverb, syntax, lexicon (except adverbial), modality C. Interlanguage: L1 Transfer: In Spanish, the present perfect is not used in this…
4a. What is working in EAL for you? I like the classes in which we gain a greater familiarity with a concept AND discuss (or practice) how that knowledge can transfer to the classroom. I thought our phrasal verb classes did that. 4b. What isn’t working and why? Sometimes I’m frustrated that we don’t have…
Above & Over Above: ‘more than’ with temperature, weight, vertical scale Over: Covering, ‘more than’ with age, time, speed; movement from one place to another Both: Higher than, higher rank Start with movement uses. Fly over/above… Under & Below Under: touching, right below (under the sun). Both: lower than, less than. Below: more general. Shades…
Don’t come into class with a defensive attitude, or tell students who are confused about a class activity: “No no no no. I PUT it up on Moodle. And it’s right there in front of you.” Take note when everyone is confused; consider your instructions. Don’t assign homework until you know you have no changes…
Elka handed out this quote in class. “‘A’ inclines toward the unfamiliar… ‘The’ is anchored in the known; ‘a’ sets sail toward horizons unforeseen, undefined, undisclosed. Where ‘the’ entitles, ‘a’ unsettles. Preachers need ‘the’s’; poets need ‘a’s.’ ‘The’ meets its (already made) match, ‘a’ meets its (unmatched) maker. ‘The,’ by its very nature, is famous;…
From Elka: “Learner challenges here are very much form related (the mastery of the past participle forms and the complex passive voice forms in the perfect and the progressive tenses). Because of th is formal complexity and the message sent by many textbooks that the passive and active are interchangeable, we end up with usage…
Focal adjustment (or shift): With the passive voice, refers to changing the semantics of an utterance by changing the emphasis of the action, away from who did it and toward its simply having been done. “The passive allows speakers to make a kind of figure/ground reversal.” Transitive v. intransitive verbs: Transitive verbs co-occur with subjects…
Please be advised that I couldn’t be at our English leson. [from Jess] Type of error Semantic: unclear meaning. Student data Jeremy, male low-intermediate EL. L1: Portuguese, L2: French. Format: e-mail to teacher. What student did correctly He knew that he needed a modal in the sentence and knew the right one; he recognized the…
Some ideas for article lessons Zero article stuff I did in Mexico An idea adapted from Grammar Practice activities: have students expand headlines that I had found or made up, as an exercise in the zero article versus the definite article. I did the same thing with a few proverbs. I rewrote (to simplify) a…
I read book yesterday. [from Yajuan] Type of error: Missing definite or indefinite article. Student data: Korean student, high beginner, age unknown, oral error (male?) What student did correctly: Correct syntax: SVO + adverb. Inter-language system: Probably L1 transfer is at least partly responsible, since I don’t believe Korean has articles before nouns. Corrected error:…
Simple Past versus Past Progressive What is/are the core meaning(s) of SP? Actions and states that began and ended in past. Factual, completed action or state in the past Remote from present with no possibility of continuing Often used for narrative and description What is/are the core meaning(s) of PP? Actions in progress (and not…
The idea of interlanguage is founded upon the assumption that an L2 learner, at any particular moment in his learning sequence, is using a language system which is neither the L1, nor the L2. It is a third language, with its own grammar, its own lexicon and so on. The rules used by the learner…
Interlanguage According to Ginna: What is interlanguage Interlanguage is what is spoken by a language learner who is in the process of acquiring a language additional to his/her first tongue. It implies that the learner has begun to develop some grasp of the language, but with errors. It represents, ideally, a phase that the learner…
I was teaching in a city of about 400,000, situated about 1.5 hours northeast of Mexico City. Once a hub of silver mining, Pachuca continues its creep up the mountainside from its historic center. The population seems to be mostly working and middle class, with my students apparently from the latter. I saw almost no…
Ur, Penny. “Grammar Practice Activities: A Practical Guide for Teachers.” Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Approach to Grammar Introduction of target structure: deductive approach. Being an activity-based book, all the exercises involve student use of a target form stemming from auditory and/or visual stimuli. I found no exercises involving reasons or rules (prescriptive or…
I was teaching in a city of about 400,000, situated about 1.5 hours northeast of Mexico City. Once a hub of silver mining, Pachuca continues its creep up the mountainside from its historic center. The population seems to be mostly working and middle class, with my students apparently from the latter. I saw almost no…
Ur, Penny. “Grammar Practice Activities: A Practical Guide for Teachers.” Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009. What kind of text is it? Modular units and activities organized by grammar category. Part of a series of activity- and theme-based handbooks for language teachers. CD with PDFs of exercise handouts. Exercises for elementary to advanced students, children…
In was a new and interest interested [interesting] experience. Gabriela We drove through coconut planatios [guessing based on L1] Sonia My thumb was a lot of sore. Sonia When I was (or when I had) three years. [e.g. Diana] I spended a lot of time there. Diana The instructor told me that I’ll I should…
You need to collect oral and written grammatical errors that your ESL/EFL students make. Errors are best understood if analyzed in context. Bring back written homework, journals and essays that your students wrote or just type up / write the errors you would like to include in your error database. For your oral errors, either…
