Grandiose Grammar: Recent Episodes
Aoife
Hello folks!
It’s been a while since I last produced some content for this website and my podcast. Last week, I had some very interesting feedback from a friend regarding a comment I made about the salutation Dear Sirs towards the end of episode 43. Anna K. informed me that her language school teaches students that the salutation Dear Sirs should be used when addressing a legal entity. I had never come across this before and so I decided to do a little reading and investigating.
This is a link to an article from The Guardian. If you’d like to check out Ken Adams’ article, you’ll find it here. It’s very informative and definitely worth a read. Have a look at this to find out what the UK Law society has to say and here is a link to an announcement by the Irish Law Society on the same topic.
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Hello folks,
this week while preparing a lesson for one of my grammar classes I stumbled across a footnote in a grammar book on cognate objects. The topic is absolutely fascinating from both a grammar perspective and a cognitive linguistic perspective. If anyone is interested in reading more about this topic, I highly recommend this article. In particular, chapters 4 and 5 of this dissertation are worth reading if you have some time on your hands.
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This week I’m chatting with you about how to address people in emails. In this episode I have things to say about honorifics and mention the conversation about gender-neutral titles. If you are interested in reading more about that, check out this link.
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Hello folks!
I’m back with more from my interview with Anna. In this episode we talk about the impact of Covid-19 on teaching and what the future might bring. We also spoke about how a digital future could impact our work. Another topic that came up was the idea of global English or English in an international context and how the subtleties of hedging require a human teacher/trainer. During our chat we referred to some news articles we had read that claim that native English speakers are poor communicators. Here’s one from the BBC. And here’s a link to the SAP News Center article on Digitizaton vs. Digitalization.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on these topics. Feel free to leave a comment below.
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Hello folks!
This week I’ve got another interview; this time it’s with my friend Anna. She works in adult education and has lots of really interesting insights into teaching. This week we talk about teaching, imposter syndrome and Anna shares her method of teaching Germans how to use the present perfect - of course that led to a bit of grammar geekery. There’ll be a part two for this interview, so be sure to come back and listen in to the second half of this conversation.
Thanks again to Anna for sharing her time and insights with us! I really enjoyed this conversation.
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Hello folks,
I’ve been thinking about this entry for a while. The verb get is both brilliant and brutal. If you have a very limited vocabulary in English, get is your friend. As my grandmother likes to say: it can cover a multitude. Or, as one of my colleagues likes to put it: get is a catch-all verb. Very often get can be used as a substitute for a myriad of other verbs making it super-useful to new learners of English. However, for more advanced learners of English get is the verb equivalent of the adjective nice: it’s bland.
In my opinion, get constructions should be reserved for instances when there is no better alternative, which is a rare occurrence. There are a few instances in which a get-construction is the only idiomatic option, for example, get married, or get divorced. Those instances that call for get as the only option are, by their very nature, passive. In order to get married, you fill out paperwork but the marriage happens when the registrar files or signs the documents. The same thing happens with a divorce.
My German friends should note that people don’t get babies. Babies are born, or a person has a baby. Hearing something like: “my sister is getting a baby,” makes me think: What the hell? Is she going to a shop to buy one, or did she choose it from a catalogue? Babies aren’t got in the way that you get a present or a bill, in which case received is the better verb choice.
Even though get can serve a multitude of purposes often there is a better one-word verb that would do the job more effectively. Especially in an academic context, get-constructions are generally considered to be informal register. As a broad generalisation get is a useful verb for new learners of English but once they have reached an intermediate level of English (B1/B2) encourage them to use more specific verbs especially in instances that don’t require a passive construction.
Hello folks!
This week I’ve got part two of my interview with Anja. In particular, we discussed how Covid-19 has impacted our teaching. Anja brought up the topic of teacher bashing and the widespread mis-conception that educators are unwilling to embrace modern technology when in fact the real problem is a lack of investment in educational infrastructure.
This series of interviews will continue into the autumn of this year. If there’s someone you’d like me to interview, leave a suggestion in the comments. If there are questions you’d like me to ask, leave those in the comments too.
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Hello folks!
This week I’ve got part one of an interview with my friend Anja who is a teacher in Bavaria. This week Anja introduces herself and tells us a little about her work before we start digging into topics like fun over fear and fluency over accuracy and then we start really digging into the meaty of topics of edutainment, learners as consumers and what that might mean for independent thought and further education. Come back next week for part 2! We’ll be discussing topics like open book exams and how societal changes impact our classrooms and what that could mean for the future.
If you have questions you’d like to hear answered in future episodes, leave them in the comments. This interview series is going to carry on over the summer and early autumn. I’d love to ask your questions: share them with me.
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Hello folks!
This week I’m going to talk you through the processes I follow when I see a verb phrase that my English-native-speaker gut feeling tells me is wrong and I automatically know how to correct it but I want to really understand what’s driving the correction. This episode was inspired by one of my students who will remain anonymous and the use of the verb phrase have been arising.
Here’s a link to the dictionary definition that I refer to in the episode.
If you want to read more about stative verbs, check out chapter 5.3 of Biber, Douglas, et al. Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English, which I also reference in this episode.
If you have verb phrases you suspect are “wrong” but can’t figure out why, leave them in the comments below and we can investigate them together.
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Hello folks,
This week I’m back with another episode of say this, not that. I’ll be talking you through two errors that my students frequently make in written English and one transfer error from that German that really amused me recently.
If you have suggestions for expressions you think should appear in a future episode of say this, not that… leave them in the comments below.
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Hello folk!
This week I have part of my interview with Victoria Gath. In this week’s episode we discuss whether or not native English speakers make better English language teachers. Victoria speaks from personal experience about raising children bilingually and about language acquisition in general. We also tackle the tricky subject of error correction.
If there are questions you would like me to pose in future interviews, leave them in the comments for me.
Hello folks!
In this episode, I bring to you an interview with my friend, and colleague, Victoria Gath. In this episode Victoria introduces herself and tells us about how her own experience of language learning informs her approach to teaching. We also discuss testing and things we’d change in the classroom if we had a magic wand.
If you have questions you’d like to hear future interviewees answer, leave them in the comments below.
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Hello folks!
I’m back with an episode on the as and when introducing adverbials. I’m slightly perplexed by a translation error lots of my students made in a recent piece of work. In an effort to untangle my thoughts, I’ve decided to make as and when the focus on this week’s episode. If you’d like to join the discussion, feel free to leave comment on why you think my students used as instead of when in their work.
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Hello folks!
As promised, I’m back with an episode on mixed conditionals. This is a very dense topic and I’m sure it’s one that I’ll revisit in the future. Please note that while I’ve talked about a lot of possible mixes, I’m sure that the list is not exhaustive.
If you want to read more about conditionals, I recommend the following resources:
“Chapter 11.2 Conditional Meaning.” A Student's Advanced Grammar of English, by Peter Fenn, Francke, 2010, pp. 386–404.
“Part Two: Grammar in Use; Section B Information, Reality and Belief.” A Communicative Grammar of English, by Geoffrey N. Leech and Jan Svartvik, Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2002, pp. 145–154.
“Section 22 If.” Practical English Usage, by Michael Swan, Oxford University Press, 2018, pp. 238–248.
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Hello folks!
It’s good to be back! This week we have a topic that many people find tricky, namely conditionals. I’m starting off with the zero, first, second and third conditionals. These are all pretty clear cut and fairly easy to use. Next week I’ll be back with the trickier mixed conditionals.
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Hello folks!
Welcome back to another episode of say this, not that! This week I’m tackling some false friends from German. The first item that we’re taking a look at this week is the locative adverbial next to vs. the linking adverbial in addition to. I’ll also be explaining the genesis of two prepositional errors which come from direct translations from German into English.
As you know, errors arising from first language interference are very difficult to remedy. If any of the errors in today’s episode are fossilised in your English or that of your pupils, you need to keep correcting them until they vanish.
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Hello folks!
This week I’m back with some errors that I routinely hear in my classes. While the present simple can be used to refer to the future in both German and English, Germans (or at least my students) use it far more frequently than English native speakers do. Am I the only person who thinks that the German Präsens is slowly replacing the Futur 1? If this is the case, does it explain why my students frequently use the futurate in instances that call for the will-future in English. Let me know what you think in the comments.
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Hello folks!
This week I’m making a start on future time reference. As you know the linguists out there view the future as a tense but many grammarians think of future time as a semantic category. Today I’m going to chat to you about the five most commonly used ways to talk about the future.
If you are interested in reading up on this topic in more detail, check out chapter four of Geoffrey Leech’s Meaning and the English Verb
For practical exercises, check out chapters 9-14 of Martin Hewings’s Advanced Grammar in Use.
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Hello folks!
This week I’m correcting errors mainly with the prepositions of and for. And we’ll be taking a look at a false friend which has turned up in my inbox quite a few times recently.
If you want to practice prepositions, I recommend the exercises in the book English Grammar in Use by Raymond Murphy as a good starting point.
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Hello folks!
I’m going to take a look at how the German word sondern messes up your English. This is an error that I see fairly frequently in work produced by my students even at a very advanced level. That is of course because this is an ingrained error and you know what I have to say about fossilised errors: identify; correct; correct some more; rinse and repeat until you don’t make that mistake any more.
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Hello folks!
This week it’s another episode of say this, not that. In this episode I’m focussing on errors that are made with interrogatives. All of these errors are a result of first language interference meaning they are classic transfer errors from German to English. We all know these are the kinds of errors that most easily become fossilised. As always, I’m asking you to correct these errors whenever you hear them.
If you can think of any other typical errors that Germans make when asking questions, write them in the comments below. If you have suggestions for a future episode of say this, not that…, I’d love to hear them!
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Hello folks!
It’s lovely to be back and to bring a new episode to you. In this episode I explain where I’ve been and what happened last week. I also respond to a request for clarification on the topic of stative vs. dynamic use of the verb hope.
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Hello folks!
This week’s episode is a response to a question from a listener. I’m so pleased that my listeners are starting to really engage with this podcast and send me requests for content - keep the requests coming!
In this week’s podcast there’s a lot of nitty-gritty with regard to tense and to modality. On the one hand, we’ll be summing up the dominant paradigms with regard to tense and modality, and on the other, we’ll be engaging with some linguistic research that questions these paradigms.
For anyone who is interested, I highly recommend reading this paper by Raphael Salkie.
Here’s a list of all the material that I have referenced either directly or indirectly in this episode:
“4 Tense and Aspect.” Advanced English Grammar: a Linguistic Approach, by Ilse Depraetere and Chad Langford Bloomsbury Academic, 2020 pp. 175-154.
“5 Modals and Modality.” Advanced English Grammar: a Linguistic Approach, by Ilse Depraetere and Chad Langford, Bloomsbury Academic, 2020, pp. 255–314.
“Chapter 4 Clause as Exchange.” An Introduction to Functional Grammar, by M.A.K Halliday, 3rd ed., Hodder Education, 2004, pp. 106–167.
“Chapter 6 Below the Clause: Groups and Phrases.” An Introduction to Functional Grammar, by M.A.K Halliday, 3rd ed., Hodder Education, 2004, pp. 309–361.
“4 The Expression of Future Time.” Meaning and the English Verb, by Geoffrey N. Leech, 3rd ed., Routledge, 2004, pp. 55–71.
“Chapter 5 Verbs: Modals .” Navigating English Grammar a Guide to Analyzing Real Language, by Anne Lobeck and Kristin Denham, Wiley-Blackwell, 2014, pp. 90–94.
Salkie, Raphael. “Degrees of Modality .” Modality in English: Theory and Description, by Raphael Salkie et al., Mouton De Gruyter, 2009, pp. 79–104.
Salkie, Raphael. “Will: Tense or Modal or Both?” English Language and Linguistics, vol. 14, no. 2, 2010, pp. 187–215., doi:10.1017/s1360674310000055.
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Hello folks,
This week I’m responding to a listener request for some content on multi-word verbs. Here’s a link to what Michael McCarthy author of English Phrasal Verbs in Use has to say about teaching phrasal verbs.
Here’s a reading list if you want to delve a little deeper into multi-word verbs:
“Chapter 5: Verbs.” Longman Student Grammar of Written and Spoken English, by Douglas Biber et al., Longman, 2005, pp. 123–135.
“Chapter 2 The Verb and Its Complements.” Advanced English Grammar: a Linguistic Approach, by Ilse Depraetere and Chad Langford, 2nd ed., Bloomsbury Academic, 2020, pp. 62–68.
“Chapter 5: Verbs.” Longman Student Grammar of Written and Spoken English, by Douglas Biber et al., Longman, 2005, pp. 123–135.
“Section 1 Verbs 12 Two-Part Verbs: Phrasal Verbs.” Practical English Usage, by Michael Swan, 4th ed., Oxford University Press, 2018.
“Section 1 Verbs 13 Two-Part Verbs: Prepositional Verbs.” Practical English Usage, by Michael Swan, 4th ed., Oxford University Press, 2018.
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Hello folks,
This week I’m back with another episode of say this, not that. I’ve picked three pairs of words that often cause problems for native speakers of German, namely: isolated vs. insulated; economic vs. economical, & happy vs. lucky. Two of these errors arise as a result of L1 interference or false friends.
I haven’t yet pinpointed why native speakers of German tend to struggle with the difference between economic vs. economical but when I figure it out, I’ll let you know. It might be that it’s just a morphological error or perhaps people are oblivious to the fact that these words describe two entirely different things. Do you have any idea what triggers this error? If so, let me know in the comments below.
If you or your students/pupils make any of these errors, work on correcting them. As you already know, repeated correction is the only way to eliminate fossilised errors.
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Hello folks,
This week we’re taking a look at the correlative conjunction as…as vs. than in comparative constructions. I’ve reviewed the German use of als vs. wie because I’m pretty sure that’s where errors in the use of as…as vs. than have their genesis.
In this week’s podcast I said I’d give you a link to the now retired After Deadline blog from The New York Times.
If you are a school teacher and looking for some pretty simple classroom examples you can use, check out units 105-107 of Raymond Murphy’s English Grammar in Use.
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Hello folks!
This week I’m back with a more on modals. This week’s content is aimed at the true grammar nerds amongst my listeners. My focus today is on categories of stance meaning and modality. In order to elucidate that I take a trip down memory lane and use a story about my childhood to demonstrate the variety of meaning in modal verb phrases. I hope you’ll enjoy this.
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Hello folks!
This week we are delving into the topic of modals. As this is quite a complex topic, today I’m reviewing some basics on how modal verb phrases are constructed and giving you an overview of what is and is not possible. Modal verb phrases operate a little differently in English than in German, which is where some of the errors in the modal verb phrase arise. Other errors occur with negation and occasionally with interrogatives both of which are addressed in this episode.
I will be returning to this topic in the near future with an episode on modal meaning. Of course, modals play a major role in conditional clauses too. Do you have questions you’d like me to answer regarding either of these topics? If so, let me know in the comments below and I will try to address them in a future episode.
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Hello folks,
This week, I’ve decided to delve into the topic of reported speech. We have two main ways to tackle reported speech in English. We can choose to use direct reported or indirect reported speech. Indirect speech is where all the trouble is. German has a verb form which elegantly indicates reported speech (Konjunktiv 1); however, English lacks this type of subjunctive and so reported verbs play a very important role in reported speech. The tense of the reporting clause plays a vital role in the tense choices for the subsequent reported clause. Past tense reporting verbs trigger a backshift in tenses in the reported clause.
Regardless of the tense of the reporting verb phrase, there are some changes which are always triggered in indirect reported speech. As you are aware, in reported speech there is a switch in perspective and all of the information is filtered through a third party. This triggers changes in pronoun choices, some determiners as well as time and place adverbials.
As I’ve already mentioned, German often calls for the Konjunktiv 1 when rendering reported speech, but German has a second subjunctive form (Konjunktiv 2) which is used to render reported speech if the verb form is ambiguous in Konjunktiv 1. This can cause some problems for German speakers when rendering reported speech in English as German and English subjunctives do not share all of the same qualities. The biggest difference between subjunctive forms is that the English subjunctive is often hypothetical (overlapping with the German Konjunktiv 2), but it can never be a stand-alone option for rendering reported speech; instead a reporting clause is required.
Here’s a handy pdf if you’d like to have a quick overview of the main changes that occur in indirect reported speech.
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Hello folks! Happy new year! We’re starting this year with a complex topic; interrogative and relative pronouns. The word what is increasingly frequently used in place of the relative pronoun that. Based on the work I’ve seen including this error, it’s clear to me that some students believe that what can be used exactly the same way as the relative pronoun that. What is almost always an interrogative pronoun, sometimes an exclamative, but very rarely a relative pronoun. This episode also takes a look at reduced relative clauses which exclude the relative pronoun in favour of a participle form of the verb. Germans overuse this type of construction and I explain why.
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Hello folks! Yes, I’m making the case for rote learning. While you may believe that learning stuff off-by-heart is empty learning, I beg to differ. There is a case to be made for learning something for the sake of knowing rather than understanding it. I have two somethings that ought to be learnt even if they aren’t understood: spelling and irregular past tense verbs.
No, you don’t need to understand why the tendency is for i before e except after c. Nor do you need to understand why in words ending with y, y changes to i +es to create a plural. While you might make the argument that in this day and age pupils and students mainly use electronic devices with auto-correct to ensure their spelling is ok, I still believe learning to spell is an essential building block of language accuracy. In my work, I frequently come across spelling errors. Here are just a few from last week:
- payed (This makes me want to throw a fit because everyone should know y changes to i + d: paid.)
- discreased (Clearly, this is a morphological error involving the prefix dis instead of de: decreased.)
- necesarry (Here, we require double s instead of double r: necessary.)
- oppertunitys (o instead of e and someone doesn’t know the y to i +es tendency: opportunities.)
- manipuleted (This requires a instead of e before t: manipulated)
- missused (Yes, as if it’s a person: Miss Used told us to go and learn to spell! The prefix mis has only one s: misused)
- developped (This should have only one p: developed. Doubling consonants before a suffix usually only occurs in single syllable words like stop - stopped or red reddened.)
- devided (Again, this is a morphological error. This should be di not de: divided.)
- differenciate (While it may sound like there’s a c in here, it’s actually spelt with a t: differentiate.)
- syllaby (Latin words usually take i as their plural form and while this sound can be created with y in English it is incorrect: syllabi.)
Lots, of the errors above could have been avoided with careful proofreading. However, some of them could have been avoided if my students as school pupils had been just given a list of rules to learn. Yes, I’m using the word rule here. Spelling does not call for, or require, independent thought. Spelling is either right or wrong. My students, and your pupils, will enter a world of work in which it is required that they are literate. The unfortunate trend of accepting spelling that approximates how a word might sound certainly does not encourage accuracy.
Irregular verbs are my next hobby-horse. Had the student who made spelling error 1 in the list above learnt their irregular verbs by rote, they would have known that the verb pay behaves as follows:
- pay: paid: paid
There is no version of this verb which calls for y + ed ever. Every English school book I have ever seen in this country has a list of irregular past tense verbs at the back. There are about 200 common irregular verbs. Please encourage your pupils to learn them. Test them. Again, no-one needs to know why a verb is irregular just that it is.
In your capacity as educators, please see to it that your pupils learn to spell and learn their lists of irregular verbs. Rote learning will allow them to unthinkingly make the correct verb form and spelling choices. Unless you are making an argument for simplified spelling or standardised verb forms, I think you’ll find that you can agree with me that both spelling and irregular verbs can be consigned to rote learning and you can save the more exciting learning strategies for other aspects of literacy.
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This episode takes a look at how to use the verbs make and do correctly in English. It also high-lights some typical German errors involving the verb make.
I’m focussing on the verb forget; a transfer error from German to English with the phrasal verbs stand up vs. get up and Brexit is also getting a mention.
This episodes recaps theory regarding the present simple and the present progressive. It also gives examples of frequent errors.
This episode takes a look at the difference between say and tell. It also gives some examples of how they differ in German.
This episode takes at look at the errors: discuss about, in the last years and study English on a teacher degree.
It’s been one of those weeks when I’ve been confronted with several transfer errors from German to English. Basically, a transfer error is the result of a direct translation from the native language of a student to the foreign language the student is learning. We call them L1 errors (errors arising directly from the student’s first language). Of course it’s normal to make mistakes when communicating in another language; however, there’s a risk that transfer errors can become fossilised. This happens when an error is made so habitually that it just becomes a normal part of the learner’s vocabulary. As a result, the error goes undetected by the learner.
Fossilised errors are notoriously difficult for the advanced learner to correct because:
- They’ve been allowed to habitually make the same error(s) for an extended period of time and as a result they may not even be aware that there’s a problem.
- Even when they are made aware of the problem, it’s so ingrained it requires repeated targeted correction.
In a perfect world, transfer errors would be stamped out at the source. However, this isn’t a perfect world. Teachers operate in classrooms where they are expected to tend to the needs of 20+ pupils and yet somehow tailor all their lessons to everyone’s needs. It’s a monumental task. The ubiquity of German makes it even harder to detect some transfer errors simply because they don’t register as an error with the instructor; therefore, they go uncorrected.
What can you do as a learner or an educator? First of all, make yourself aware of typical transfer errors. If these errors crop up, correct them immediately. Be prepared to repeat the process of identifying and correcting the error many times until it eventually remedies itself.
Episode six of my podcast tackles three fairly typical transfer errors from German to English. I’m sure that this is a topic I will return to repeatedly. I’d love to hear your thoughts on transfer errors and how to remedy them. Feel free to join the conversation!
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This episodes discusses quantifiers with countable and uncountable nouns. It also explains the difference between number and amount.
Hello folks! As you can see it’s been a busy weekend here at Grandiose Grammar. Now that I’ve finally bitten the bullet and uploaded the first three episodes, I hope to release one episode per week on Sunday mornings. Stay tuned for more musings, theory and helpful hints.
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If and would is not good, or is it? In this episode we'll investigate when if + would is not good and in which instances it's perfectly acceptable.
If I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it hundreds of times: “The rule for X is Y.” Episode two of the podcast showcases a classic example of a rule which isn’t actually a rule at all. Many German school teachers and pupils are familiar with the adage if and would is not good. In fact, I’m frequently told that this is a rule.
Let’s have a little think about the word rule and its meaning before I go any further. Most people would agree that a rule is a principle that governs or restricts a particular area of our lives. In the case of grammar, rules guide learners and help them to avoid errors in areas of grammar which can be very complex. However, using the term rule can be hugely unhelpful for advanced learners who can and should develop a far more nuanced understanding of the grammatical phenomena behind the rule. As educators, we must remember that telling pupils or students that something is a rule often creates an environment of blind acceptance that rules hold true.
Let’s go back to that example from earlier: if and would is not good. For this rule to be helpful it would need a few tweaks. First up, if and would is not good only if the modal is being used conditionally (this applies to any modal being used conditionally, not just would). For example: If I would be you, I would use the word tendency instead of rule. You’ll recognise this as an example of the conditional two. The if-clause is hypothetical (I’m not you). The correct version of the sentence should read: If I were you, I would use the word tendency instead of rule. In conditional if-clauses if and would is not good. So far it looks like I’ve confirmed the rule, but this is where I break out examples of if and would/modal not confirming the rule.
Now we know that if and would is not good only in conditional if-clauses. This means that there are plenty of instances in which if and would are good. There are three frequent examples of if and modal being correct.
- Politeness
- Emphasis
- Reported speech
In the first instance, it’s perfectly acceptable to say: I was wondering if you would listen to episode two of my podcast. The rule if and would doesn’t hold if I’m being polite. In terms of emphasis, no one in the anglophone world would bat an eyelid if you said: If you would just read this blog entry, you’d finally understand why the term rule is problematic in grammar. The rule if and would doesn’t hold. I’m using if and would to emphasise that I think something would be helpful. And finally: Aoife asked if you would listen to her explanation. Here we have an instance of reported speech. The past tense verb askedcauses a backshift in the verb phrase in the reported clause making if and would grammatically acceptable in reported speech.
Rules are fixed and unchanging, but tendencies are flexible. Tendencies make room for learners to posit theories, investigate them and then use the balance of evidence to decide if a phenomenon is stable or whether it has an array of exceptions. I don’t think the term rule is helpful to anyone who has left middle-school. Help make one of my dreams come true and start telling your pupils/students that there are tendencies not rules.