Hi Ted,

 

I’d like to add my thoughts to your response to Michael Tate and am also directing this to Steve Kaufmann.  

 

There is a well-known distinction between “prescriptive grammar” and “descriptive grammar.”  I would add there is also “prescriptive language use” and “descriptive language use.” 

 

Ultimately, I believe our students need to drive instruction.  That doesn’t necessarily mean that we don’t help (some of) them formulate their goals, especially because goals often evolve in the course of instruction as students become more aware of life choices they can exercise as a result of it.  Bottom line, though, is to help pave the way for our students to be able to go in the direction they wish to go.

 

Living in Hawaii, Hawai`i Creole (“Pidgin”) English (HCE) is alive and well, albeit in spoken form.  Literature written in HCE is predominantly an object of study by learners who (also) speak “Standard American English” as their L1. The University of Hawai`i is a hotbed for studying HCE.

 

If/when my ESL students struggle understanding HCE, I help them to understand its grammar as well as its lexicon.  Being able to interact with the “local” community makes life easier for many, even if interaction becomes difficult not so much for linguistic reasons but for ones of sociocultural backgrounds and social divergence across different communities here. Hawai`i is one of the most difficult places in the United States for “newcomers” to call home, unless they live in the “other” reality here of the rich and famous, secluded behind the screens of the tourist industry.

 

There’s also the other side of the coin: many ESL students will have picked up HCE speech patterns by the time they take class.  Almost always, these students have “low” socioeconomic status when they arrive here, and will have lived and worked in Hawai`i before realizing that in order to secure better-paying and/or more satisfying work, they need to improve their (standard) English proficiency levels. That’s when they seek out classes to further their education.  By that time, “Standard” English will have become a second dialect for them, thus making its acquisition more challenging than it would have been learning it as a first dialect.

 

First and foremost, I believe we need to teach whatever is necessary for each individual student’s goal attainment (something that is subject to considerable variation); even more so, we need to avoid stigmatizing any language variety and instill a sense of awe and respect for the diversity our students encounter, just like the diversity we behold in a field of flowers or amongst the many variety of birds in the skies, our trees, and on our lawns pecking at remnants of mangoes and freshly mowed grass.

 

Michael

 

 

 

From: englishlanguage-bounces at nifl.gov [mailto:englishlanguage-bounces at nifl.gov] On Behalf Of Ted Klein
Sent: Tuesday, May 19, 2009 4:08 PM
To: The Adult English Language Learners Discussion List
Subject: [EnglishLanguage 4316] Re: Using group games toteach; phonetic reduction

 

Michael,

 

We are preparing our students for the real world outside of a classroom, where unfortunately exaggerated English often rears its ugly head. It's quite simple. If our students are going to communicate in the real world, "hafta, didja, oughta" etc. are quite normal in the stream of speech. Don't we owe them that? I acquired a class several years ago where the teacher had managed to convince the students that even contractions were "slang."  ESL teachers are totally responsible for the verbal survival of our students after they leave us, not for the preservation of written English in speech.

 



www.tedklein-ESL.com     

 

 

----- Original Message ----- 

From: Michael Tate <mailto:mtate at sbctc.edu>  

To: The <mailto:englishlanguage at nifl.gov>  Adult English Language Learners Discussion List 

Sent: Tuesday, May 19, 2009 3:15 PM

Subject: [EnglishLanguage 4307] Re: Using group games toteach thepresentcontinuous

 

Hi Miriam and All,

 

It’s common for American English speakers to treat all two–word modals in this way like “have to=hafta” and “ought to=oughta”, as well as modals prior to the verb “have”:  shoulda, coulda, musta, woulda, etc.

 

I’ve always had students write standard English, but this discussion is making me wonder if it would be better to have students write in reduced/relaxed way to start, and then transition them to standard English.

 

In Thailand, we picked up the Thai of the people we most often encountered much to the disappointment of my teacher who insisted we talk like university Thais, not like Thai cabbies.  I don’t remember it being difficult to learn the formal Thai that is used with royalty or the Thai of the educated class.  My recollection is that it was easier because the “just the facts” street Thai served as a shorthand or template for the more loquacious proper Thai.

 

Michael Tate

 

From: englishlanguage-bounces at nifl.gov [mailto:englishlanguage-bounces at nifl.gov] On Behalf Of Miriam Burt
Sent: Tuesday, May 19, 2009 12:24 PM
To: The Adult English Language Learners Discussion List
Subject: [EnglishLanguage 4306] Re: Using group games to teach thepresentcontinuous

 

Hi, all.

The point Bonnie makes about how “going to” when used to show an action in the near future is not recognized unless pronounced as “gonna”  is interesting and important, I think. And it brings up the intersection of oral and written English skills development. 

 

We do not pronounce “going to” the same way when it is used as the main verb. We do not say “I’m ‘gonna’ [going to] the store” – although in normal, relaxed speech we may very well say “I’m ‘gonna’ go [going to go] to the store. ‘Gonna” occurs in the near future use of ‘going to’ as a result of the stress, timing, rhythm, and intonation patterns of English. 

 

So, when practicing present continuous in class – it seems we need to be on top of listening and speaking and reading and writing of the verb forms. 

 

Any thoughts on this? How does that resonate with your experience when you’re working with this form?

 

Miriam

 

Miriam Burt

Moderator, Discussion list for practitioners working with adult English language learners

mburt at cal.org

 

 

 

From: englishlanguage-bounces at nifl.gov [mailto:englishlanguage-bounces at nifl.gov] On Behalf Of Bonnie Odiorne
Sent: Tuesday, May 19, 2009 12:30 PM
To: The Adult English Language Learners Discussion List
Subject: [EnglishLanguage 4301] Re: Using group games to teach thepresentcontinuous

 

Proliteracy (Formerly LVA) used to have in its tutor training manual a quite clever quadrant with pictures: a clock to symbolize present time; a calendar to symbolize every day; pictures of Suzanne and Robert (?) watching television and washing dishes to differentiate simple present and present continuous. Another thing I noticed while tutoring: The expression "going to" (near future) is not recognized by students usually unless pronouncing as illustration "gonna." That's how they hear it. I wonder if that's true for other -ing tenses.

Bonnie Odiorne, Post University

 


  _____  


From: MaryAnn Florez <mflorez at dclearns.org>
To: The Adult English Language Learners Discussion List <englishlanguage at nifl.gov>
Sent: Tuesday, May 19, 2009 11:56:00 AM
Subject: [EnglishLanguage 4299] Re: Using group games to teach the presentcontinuous

This “study group” approach is a nice idea.  It reminds me of the kinds of conversations and sharings that would happen between teachers as we met in the resource room or at the copier and asked each other what a handout that was being copied was all about, or if someone had another idea for teaching a point that just wasn’t clicking for a student or a class. We’d end up building on each other and then continuing to follow up with each other whenever we came upon another good idea.   I know technology isn’t just about replicating face-to-face interactions, but in this case, it does in some ways, and it multiplies it by hundreds of potential ideas.  

 

Betsy mentioned working with simple present and present progressive.  I often found myself teaching present progressive and simple present in a connected way, because they made a logical contrasting pair that seems to have helped students “get” each one (or get the difference between them).  I worked a lot with beginning level learners and because giving them explanations and parameters as concrete and clear as possible was helpful, using this sort of natural contrast between the two (simple present for everyday or habitual activities and present progressive for now, in-the-act activities) was useful.  As long as I kept the two clear, and clearly indicated what we were working with at any given moment (including using the appropriate markers---e.g., “now”, “on Mondays and Tuesdays”, “everyday”) learners generally picked the two up quite quickly.

 

I don’t know how many people use diagrams to try to help illustrate things like tenses, but one thing that I didn’t always find helpful with the present progressive was a diagram that I saw used in books and by other teachers when I first started teaching:

 

Now

  X----------------à   (here the “X” is “now” and the arrow indicates that the action is continuing, but still in the present)  

 

I tried using it at first because it made perfectly logical sense to me, and I thought it would be one more way to reach some learners.  But many of my learners found it counterproductive because they thought it was showing the action going into the future and then confused it with a future tense. Or they just didn’t make the connection between the lines and explaining the use of the tense.  I had a lot more success with things like charades and pictures, as others have described.  Has anyone used anything like that successfully?

 

MaryAnn

 

 

MaryAnn Florez

Project Director

Adult Education Professional Development Center

D.C. LEARNs

1612 K Street, N.W. Suite 300

Washington, DC 20006

202/331-0141, x25 (tel)

202/331-0143 (fax)

www.dclearns.org/aepdc 

mflorez at dclearns.org  

 

 

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The Adult Education Professional Development Center at DC LEARNs – Connecting D.C. adult educators with professional development opportunities and resources.

www.dclearns.org/aepdc

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The D.C. LEARNs Mission

To work with Washington, D.C. literacy programs, learners, and supporters to strengthen adult, family and children's literacy services, and present a strong, unified voice on the importance of literacy as an investment in the community.

 

D.C. LEARNs' literacy calendar lists significant literacy events or deadlines, as well as a selected number of regional and national events that may be of interest to the D.C. literacy community.  If you know of any upcoming events in the D.C. region, please submit them to be added to our calendar at info at dclearns.org 

 

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If you want to volunteer as a teacher or tutor for GED, ESL, ABE (Adult Basic Education), Computers, or Children's Literacy, please enter your information into our volunteer database at www.readoutloud.org <http://www.readoutloud.org/>  

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From: englishlanguage-bounces at nifl.gov [mailto:englishlanguage-bounces at nifl.gov] On Behalf Of Betsy Wong
Sent: Tuesday, May 19, 2009 10:22 AM
To: 'The Adult English Language Learners Discussion List'
Subject: [EnglishLanguage 4295] Re: Using group games to teach the presentcontinuous

 

There have been some great ideas on this listserv about teaching the present continuous. I’d like to second Cheryl’s suggestion of using visuals to teach the present continuous.

 

An easy way to do so is to use a picture dictionary – for instance, often there are pictures of people in different rooms of a house. In class, we ask each other, “What’s s/he doing?” “S/he’s watching TV/eating breakfast/cleaning,” etc.

 

I try and tie in visuals to contexts that are relevant to learners. For instance, I often have housekeepers and janitors in a class, so we practice vocabulary related to cleaning. Together, we look at a page from the picture dictionary that illustrates different cleaning tasks and ask each other what the people are doing (“He’s mopping the floor,” “She’s emptying the trash,” etc.)

 

Magazine ads are a great source of visuals, too. For the previous example, I might show magazine ads with people using housecleaning products; learners can say what people are doing (“He’s dusting”/”She’s vacuuming”), or they can match sentence strips (long strips of paper or cardstock with a phrase printed on them) to the pictures illustrating the action.

 

After this practice, we always play a group charades game: I write phrases of activities (such as everyday tasks) on strips of paper and put them in a hat. Each learner comes to the front of the room, picks a phrase (such as “cooking dinner”), and acts it out. The others have to guess what the learner is doing (“He’s cooking dinner”).  It’s always fun!

 

Janet and Cheryl made some really good suggestions about discriminating between everyday activities and “right now” actions. Another way to help learners with this is to have them work in groups to list things they do every day in the morning, afternoon, and evening. Then, they can each say one thing that they do at a certain time of the day (“In the morning, I go to work”) and one thing they are doing right now (“I’m practicing English”). 

 

The instructor then asks the full group, “What does s/he do in the morning?”, and learners repeat the statement in the 3rd person (“S/he ___s”); then, “What is s/he doing right now?” “S/he’s ___ ing.” This is good practice for getting in the frequently-dropped “s”, as Steve mentioned!

 

I’d love to hear other suggestions …

 

Cheers!

 

Betsy

 

------------------------------

Betsy Lindeman Wong

Lead ESL Teacher

Alexandria Adult & Community Education

Cell (703) 862-1931

 

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