Comments on: Feed the grammar guru

By: What you can learn from my PLN Quiz #2 (June 18) – Teaching Village

What you can learn from my PLN Quiz #2 (June 18) – Teaching Village — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 14:17:24 +0000

[...] Feed the Grammar Guru by Anne Hodgson [...]

By: Anne

Anne — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 18:59:00 +0000

Dear Toby,

This story is bouncing around in several versions:

“How Albert Einstein Saw Things A Little Differently

Albert Einstein had just administered an examination to an advanced class of Physics students.
As he left the building, he was followed out by one of his teaching assistants.
“Excuse me, sir,” said the shy assistant, not quite sure how to tell the great man about his blunder.
“Yes?” said Einstein.
“Um, eh, it’s about the test you just handed out.”
Einstein waited patiently.
“I’m not sure that you realize it, but this is the same test you gave out last year. In fact, it’s identical.”
Einstein paused to think for a moment, then said, “Hmm, yes, it is the same test.”
The teaching assistant was now very agitated. “What should we do, sir?”
A slow smile spread over Einstein’s face. “I don’t think we need do anything. The answers have changed.”

- http://elearn-university.org/Medicine/Science/13328.php

“ALBERT EINSTEIN was teaching at Princeton University and had just administered an exam to an advanced class of physics students. On the way back to his office, the teaching assistant carrying the exams asked him, ”Dr. Einstein, wasn’t this the same exam that you gave to this same class last year?”

Dr. Einstein responded, ”Yes, it was.”

The teaching assistant, in awe of perhaps the greatest physicist of the twentieth century, then asked, ”Excuse me for asking, Dr. Einstein. But how could you give the same exam to the same class two years in a row?”

Einstein replied simply, ”The answers have changed.””

- http://www.briantracy.com/blog/general/reinvent-yourself-and-thrive-in-2010/

(If anyone knows the origin, please do leave a note – thank you!)

By: Toby

Toby — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 13:36:12 +0000

Anne:

I have nothing to add to this conversation. I just wanted to say that I loved that lost comment. It really sums up my experiences–not only, but especially–in teaching.

This is my notice that I’m going to steal your quote.
-Toby

By: Anne

Anne — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 10:05:35 +0000

I’ve forgotten where I read this, Alex, but Einstein used to tell his students that they would be sitting the same test again in a subsequent year, but the answers would all be different.
I think that’s how learning works in general, doesn’t it? You find an answer that is satisfactory under the circumstances. But as soon as you raise the level of complexity it becomes wrong and you need to find a more sophisticated answer.
So basically we have to convince the learners that it’s good and productive to deal with various layers of explanation.

By: Alex Case

Alex Case — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 03:58:33 +0000

It sounds like the presenter is guilty of the most common of TEFL assumptions- assuming a blank slate student when we almost never get such a thing. By the time students get to us, they have already been taught loads of grammar rules and/ or formed their own conscious or unconscious generalisations. Many of those are wrong, or at least oversimplified. How on earth can we correct them without giving an alternative rule?

By: Anne

Anne — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 07:34:10 +0000

I’m with you on that one, Toby. And then just teach the concept of “How long has this been going on?” That covers 90% of the lower intermediate to intermediate crowd. I’m just really sensitized to the younger crowd, the students whose level is actually way out there, who have grown up with English and need a fair amount of sophisticated language, yet simple explanations as they really don’t have much time and their attention span is short. So I think it’s worth refocussing rules, and getting model sentences up to date and all the rest.

By: Toby

Toby — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 18:01:39 +0000

You know, Anne. . .

My students know that German doesn’t really conform to the rules. And they don’t expect English to be as iron-clad as they’d like. (Though they still complain when they bump up against an exception.) I think that giving a degree of rules–or what you called ’signal words’–doesn’t hurt. And they know there are exceptions.

My current rule–regarding the two tenses here–is to say “use the simple past unless you know why you want the present perfect.” It’s not perfect, yet, but it seems to work.

I haven’t read “Natural Grammar,” but now it’s on my list of books to get. I really enjoyed “Teaching Speaking,” but, well, it didn’t give rise to many big changes in how I teach. (Maybe that’s my fault.)