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English Grammar


MichaelGray
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in case some fuckwit wants to act as prosecutor and trot out the old "profundity is the crutch of the inarticulate" cliche:

ladies and gentlemen, exhibit A:

It's all too easy to take cheap shots at the errors of non-native English speakers. And usually the cheap shots come from native English speakers who are too f*cking stupid to realize how poor their own English skills are.

the defense rests.

In this instance I felt it would be prudent to use a descriptive word that can be understood even by the feeble minds of those being described. And as one can see from the semiliterate babble in a couple of the responses to my post, I reached my audience. How dare you refer to "artistic license" as profanity!

---Rob the Riter, pandering to monosyllabic morons since 2005

typo. fixed. (see above) better?

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English speaker stereotype? :shock:

However I do agree that ?grammar? is important in English as it's so in other languages and I do AGREE that many Thais have screwed up the language. (I am one of them) but..what is the point of the topic anyway?

i believe the point of the topic was that grammar is nearly useless since the OP didnt have to study grammar in order to be able to use it, and therefore the way many non-native-speakers are taught english is flawed as it emphasizes grammar.

What I can see is, someone is telling us, Thai, that we are poor in English and some Farang(s) are showing off their English language skills.

my impression was, that was just a bonus.

p.s. I don?t have any language degree to show off. I just beat my farang classmates with the top grade in the class.

include me out, i only have a art degree.

i drawed a purty picher once, does that count?

ps seeing as you can reed and rite english, you're over-qualified to teech enlish in thailand.

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in case some fuckwit wants to act as prosecutor and trot out the old "profanity is the crutch of the inarticulate" cliche:

ladies and gentlemen, exhibit A:

It's all too easy to take cheap shots at the errors of non-native English speakers. And usually the cheap shots come from native English speakers who are too f*cking stupid to realize how poor their own English skills are.

the defense rests.

In this instance I felt it would be prudent to use a descriptive word that can be understood even by the feeble minds of those being described. And as one can see from the semiliterate babble in a couple of the responses to my post, I reached my audience. How dare you refer to "artistic license" as profanity!

---Rob the Riter, pandering to monosyllabic morons since 2005

soooo...no blow job then?

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in case some fuckwit wants to act as prosecutor and trot out the old "profanity is the crutch of the inarticulate" cliche:

ladies and gentlemen, exhibit A:

It's all too easy to take cheap shots at the errors of non-native English speakers. And usually the cheap shots come from native English speakers who are too f*cking stupid to realize how poor their own English skills are.

the defense rests.

In this instance I felt it would be prudent to use a descriptive word that can be understood even by the feeble minds of those being described. And as one can see from the semiliterate babble in a couple of the responses to my post, I reached my audience. How dare you refer to "artistic license" as profanity!

---Rob the Riter, pandering to monosyllabic morons since 2005

soooo...no blow job then?

Stalking my posts now?

lol...two quotes of your posts in two days is stalking?...you're probably all for that "yellow card for unprovoked ridicule" rule too......ya ******* big baby...who you gonna go cry to now?

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HEY!

Can't any of you ******* read? You were warned by a moderator to stop the **** now shut up before I give everyone a permanent vacation.

Jeesh talk about blatantly ignoring authority.

I do mean it..shut up...next person to post an off-topic post or take a sling at someone will get banned...no cards. Just because a moderator steps in and tries to be nice is no reason to ignore him/her.

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HEY! Can't any of you f*cking read? You were warned by a moderator to stop the sh*t now shut up before I give everyone a permanent vacation.

Jeesh talk about blatantly ignoring authority.

I do mean it..shut up...next person to post an off-topic post or take a sling at someone will get banned...no cards. Just because a moderator steps in and tries to be nice is no reason to ignore him/her.

Well said. *applause*

Now can someone please provide a resoned argument for learning English grammar?

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More about language and grammar! :) PiAnt, you're a teacher, anything to give to the topic?

Ah a teacher eh! ELT per chance? Tell us why grammar is so important. :)

if you studied a language other than english--you don't have to be fluent at all, in fact it might get in the way--then try the following:

take a paragraph from something that is regarded as written simply, but well. a quality magazine or newspaper (that is, not a tabloid or lowbrow). something nonfiction--fiction writing is an entirely different animal.

transliterate it into engliish words. DO NOT rearrange the words to make sense or "fix" verb tenses etc. after you do so, it should be immediately obvious to you why grammar is important.

if you're too lazy to do that, take a similar paragraph written in english, go to the babelfish translation website (sorry, too lazy to link it) translate it to, for example, japanese. (it has to be a language whose grammar is significantly different from english). then take that translationa and, using babelfish again, translate it back into english. get it?

i'd imagine that what you're really on about is rote memorization of grammatical rules, not grammar per se. if you had no command of grammar you'd have the communication skills of a chimpanzee, and even the average english teacher in bangkok can do better than that.

PS and don't get me started on why chimps or apes can't learn human language no matter how brilliant they are or how many words are in their vocabulary.

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The teaching of grammar does not serve any practical purpose for most students. It does not improve reading, speaking, writing, or even editing, for the majority of students, nor does the teaching of English grammar necessarily make it easier for students to learn the structure of a foreign language (indeed, many students who have studied English grammar consciously learn the structure of English for the first time when studying a foreign language).

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it seems to me that, in tf, you can tell a lot from the way people write... i mean - their "background" ... especially, with farangs.

definitely but i think you can tell more about people from their ideas than their background. i've met 'street' types who were brilliant and immaculately educated types who couldn't think their way out of a paper bag. and ivy league graduates who swear like sailors, for all those morons who claim profanity is the crutch of the illiterate and/or inarticulate. what's interesting is to see how people think on their feet.

ideas can be faked too.

if you ever noticed. lots of men (on tf) try too hard. (especially, those who leave testimonials for almost every single lady in tf.) they seem very dodgy to me. :roll:

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The teaching of grammar does not serve any practical purpose for most students. It does not improve reading, speaking, writing, or even editing, for the majority of students, nor does the teaching of English grammar necessarily make it easier for students to learn the structure of a foreign language (indeed, many students who have studied English grammar consciously learn the structure of English for the first time when studying a foreign language).

Agreed. I have probably learnt more about the English language in the last 5 months, since I started reading and writing Thai and using the dictionary on a regular basis, than I have in my lifetime. I now know what a Noun is!!LOL

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The teaching of grammar does not serve any practical purpose for most students.

I, and pretty much every bit of published classroom research on the subject has to call you on that.

Saying that teaching grammar has no practical purpose is like saying teaching vocabulary, functions, social rules of appropriacy and so on has no practical purpose. I certainly wouldn't say that.

Vocabulary relies on rote memory -- and we only have a finite ability to learn like that. Grammar is a closed system. A few rules can enable people to make a very limited vocab go a long way. That's why people learn algebra -- so they can apply some basic rules to complex and novel situations. Grammar is no different. Yes, people learn it by using it -- but it's an extremely slow process. Explicit instruction greatly speeds up the process.

I do agree that with writing, grammar plays a less essential role -- writing is mostly about manipulating low frequency vocabulary and noun groups. But analysis of speech shows it to be of low lexical and high grammar density. So to say that teaching grammar can't help a student improve their oral expression is just plain wrong.

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it seems to me that, in tf, you can tell a lot from the way people write... i mean - their "background" ... especially, with farangs.

definitely but i think you can tell more about people from their ideas than their background. i've met 'street' types who were brilliant and immaculately educated types who couldn't think their way out of a paper bag. and ivy league graduates who swear like sailors, for all those morons who claim profanity is the crutch of the illiterate and/or inarticulate. what's interesting is to see how people think on their feet.

ideas can be faked too.

if you ever noticed. lots of men (on tf) try too hard. (especially, those who leave testimonials for almost every single lady in tf.) they seem very dodgy to me. :roll:

ideas can be faked... more often than not, unsuccessfully. lots of men try too hard in real life too.

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it seems to me that, in tf, you can tell a lot from the way people write... i mean - their "background" ... especially, with farangs.

definitely but i think you can tell more about people from their ideas than their background. i've met 'street' types who were brilliant and immaculately educated types who couldn't think their way out of a paper bag. and ivy league graduates who swear like sailors, for all those morons who claim profanity is the crutch of the illiterate and/or inarticulate. what's interesting is to see how people think on their feet.

ideas can be faked too.

if you ever noticed. lots of men (on tf) try too hard. (especially, those who leave testimonials for almost every single lady in tf.) they seem very dodgy to me. :roll:

ideas can be faked... more often than not, unsuccessfully. lots of men try too hard in real life too.

if some girls learn to notice a bit. then, for them, its a big benefit being in tf... eh ?

as in real life they dont get to see where/whom those men are leaving sweet words.... but on tf, there are loads of virtual evidences. :shock:

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The teaching of grammar does not serve any practical purpose for most students. It does not improve reading, speaking, writing, or even editing, for the majority of students, nor does the teaching of English grammar necessarily make it easier for students to learn the structure of a foreign language (indeed, many students who have studied English grammar consciously learn the structure of English for the first time when studying a foreign language).

in your case, learning to read might help.

again: some grammar teaching is necessary because as an adult, YOU CANNOT ACQUIRE IT WITHOUT DEVOTING SOME ATTENTION TO IT, AND YOU CANNOT COMMUNICATE VERY EFFECTIVELY WITHOUT GRAMMAR. THE REASON YOU DIDN"T NEED TO STUDY GRAMMAR IS THAT CHILDREN ARE BUILT TO ACQUIRE GRAMMAR FROM TALKNG AND LISTENING. ONCE GRAMMAR IS ACQUIRED AND THE "WIRING" IS FIXED, YOU CAN"T ACQUIRE IT THE SAME WAY AGAIN.

and that is just plain scientific fact.

and if your'e about to offer the counterexample of people who never study a language formally, yet pick it up: no doubt a very few people can do that. most who appear to do this, however, analyze the grammar of the foreign language even if they don't necessarily consciously call nouns "nouns" etc. ALL the people who've informally acquired languages i've talked to, when questioned about their approach, were doing exactly that.

you can stubbornly keep insisting you made an interesting point if you want to, you seem to get a kick out of making yourself look like a fool on this website. generally discussion consists of responding to those that respond to your statements, not tuning them out and shrilly restating your facile, ham-handed "points," but hey whatever makes you happy. seems to me the real problems with the conventional approach to teaching languages to adults are rigidity and disengagement from the environment, two qualities your posts have manifested abundantly on this thread.

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ideas can be faked too.

if you ever noticed. lots of men (on tf) try too hard. (especially, those who leave testimonials for almost every single lady in tf.) they seem very dodgy to me. :roll:

i do believe that their ideas are pretty obvious :wink:

of course.

its obvious. you are on a dating site afterall.

but ..... ermmmmmmm you get to see - who is obviously desperate than who ? :roll:

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The teaching of grammar does not serve any practical purpose for most students. It does not improve reading, speaking, writing, or even editing, for the majority of students, nor does the teaching of English grammar necessarily make it easier for students to learn the structure of a foreign language (indeed, many students who have studied English grammar consciously learn the structure of English for the first time when studying a foreign language).

PS: and no, einstein, i don't teach english, never have, never will. so take a break and save your next feeble attempt at making a funny, it just makes you look even more illiterate.

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The teaching of grammar does not serve any practical purpose for most students. It does not improve reading, speaking, writing, or even editing, for the majority of students, nor does the teaching of English grammar necessarily make it easier for students to learn the structure of a foreign language (indeed, many students who have studied English grammar consciously learn the structure of English for the first time when studying a foreign language).

PS: and no, einstein, i don't teach english, never have, never will. so take a break and save your next feeble attempt at making a funny, it just makes you look even more illiterate.

Did I suggest you taught English?

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The teaching of grammar does not serve any practical purpose for most students. It does not improve reading, speaking, writing, or even editing, for the majority of students, nor does the teaching of English grammar necessarily make it easier for students to learn the structure of a foreign language (indeed, many students who have studied English grammar consciously learn the structure of English for the first time when studying a foreign language).

PS: and no, einstein, i don't teach english, never have, never will. so take a break and save your next feeble attempt at making a funny, it just makes you look even more illiterate.

Did I suggest you taught English?

OOPS.

reread the post, you weren't suggesting sunsnow taught english, you were commenting on piant saying he was a teacher. D'OH.

SORRY, MY BAD.

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During my uni days (back in the 19th century), one of my French professors used to admonish the slower students, "The reason you have so much trouble learning French is because you never learned English." What he meant was that the students never learned things like diagramming sentences and verb conjugation.

Now, obviously there are plenty of people who've learned other languages without enduring those two types ot torture, but the fact is it's a lot easier to grasp things like verb tenses and sentence structure in a second language if you possess an understanding of them in your native tongue.

diagramming sentences and conjugation are things that are consciously learned and not built in. thats' probably why they're a) torture and B) useful when trying to learn a new language as an adult.

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The teaching of grammar does not serve any practical purpose for most students. It does not improve reading, speaking, writing, or even editing, for the majority of students, nor does the teaching of English grammar necessarily make it easier for students to learn the structure of a foreign language (indeed, many students who have studied English grammar consciously learn the structure of English for the first time when studying a foreign language).

Dude, don't plagiarise the work of others and expect to get away with it.

EJ English Journal Nov96

Teaching Grammar in the Context of Writing

Constance Weaver

...in general, the teaching of grammar does not serve any practical purpose for most students (Hillocks and Smith 1991). It does not improve reading, speaking, writing, or even editing, for the majority of students--nor does the teaching of English grammar necessarily make it easier for students to learn the structure of a foreign language (indeed, many students who have studied English grammar consciously learn the structure of English for the first time when studying a foreign language).

http://athena.english.vt.edu/~grammar/GrammarForTeachers/readings/weaver.html

Google quite apparently does not equate to knowledge and or intelligence. Unless that is, it is yours.

Oooooooo!!! Caught red-handed!

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The teaching of grammar does not serve any practical purpose for most students. It does not improve reading, speaking, writing, or even editing, for the majority of students, nor does the teaching of English grammar necessarily make it easier for students to learn the structure of a foreign language (indeed, many students who have studied English grammar consciously learn the structure of English for the first time when studying a foreign language).

Dude, don't plagiarise the work of others and expect to get away with it.

EJ English Journal Nov96

Teaching Grammar in the Context of Writing

Constance Weaver

...in general, the teaching of grammar does not serve any practical purpose for most students (Hillocks and Smith 1991). It does not improve reading, speaking, writing, or even editing, for the majority of students--nor does the teaching of English grammar necessarily make it easier for students to learn the structure of a foreign language (indeed, many students who have studied English grammar consciously learn the structure of English for the first time when studying a foreign language).

http://athena.english.vt.edu/~grammar/GrammarForTeachers/readings/weaver.html

Google quite apparently does not equate to knowledge and or intelligence. Unless that is, it is yours.

Oooooooo!!! Caught red-handed!

Plagarism is a crime... ban him :wink:

stoopidcriminals.jpg

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One thing doesn't have to exclude the other.

It is o.k for a Thai to learn Lao language without having to learn about the grammar things. But English structure of sentence is so different from Thai.

Firstly, Thai language doesn't have an aritcle before a noun.

Secondly, Thai language have only infinite verbs. Our Thai verb does not change according to the tense, the plurality and the singularity of noun.

Thirdly, Thai adjective is put behind the noun, and a Thai adverb is usually put after a verb only. But it seems like English can put adj. and adv. more freely. They exist everywhere in the sentence.

Forthly , The tenses in English are different from Thai.English have so many tenses which connote different meanings.How can English say : If I were you, I would shut up. I would like to be your friend. Or, I would have liked to be your friend. ( -''- perplexed)

But I agree that the study of English grammar is emphasized in our English class already. So, generally speaking, a native speaker can understand English writing of a Thai. It is not perfect, but it is comprehensible. However, methink it is not a good idea to stop teaching a structure of English to an adult learner. Many adult learners do not immerse into a new language like a child. Our brains somehow become dull when we grow older. And if you object, I challenge you to learn Thai without learning a Thai grammar.

Yes, I speak Thaiglish. Manytimes, the person who is not get used to Thaiglish doesn't understand me. I think it is because usually our Thai media likes to use English word. But sadly, the formal transcription of English into Thai is always distorted because the sound of vowels and consonants in English is different from Thai, but the media have to transcribe an English word by using the sounds that are available in Thai language. Additionally, the tonation in each word is ripped off. They thinks this is o.k., but the English native speakers usually does not get it. For example, the word Dove, which is a brand name of a soap and lotion, is transcribed as â´ê¿. Actually the vowel of 'o' in the word 'dove' is pronounced like 'u' in the word 'cup'.

(Can We sue Dove for misinforming us?)

We listen to the transcription of Enlgish words for many years, until we learn English in a fifth or a sixth grade. It is difficult to unlearn what you have learned. Sometimes, a teacher is not aware of the mistakes too. But even if she is aware of it, it is still difficult to correct it because you have to put so much effort to correct what is wrong to your fourty students.

And I have been conscious that my speaking is poor according to the Native english speakers's standard. But, formerly, I was too lazy to care about it.

I thought it was good enough to communicate anyway.But...Oh now I want to get a well-paid job. Now I wanna to Go-Inter!

So I find MichaelGray 's opinion a constructive criticism. But I am not going to leave the grammar thing behind because English ain't neither my fathertongue, nor my mothertongue, and I find it is difficult to use it right if I do not practice it often. That is why I like to go to TF.

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