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Discussion Groups / ESL Teaching / August 2006Wanted!
Wanted: English-speaking friends signalment: good humor, cheerfulness, patience))) Hi! My name is Max. I'm russian 20 old student of 2 universities. I'm from siberia. I want to find friends from other countries, who good in english. Now my english is worse, but i wanna make it good! Help me, and some time i'll help U))) Email me, i'm wait for you Hi Max, My name's Matt. I'm 22 from USA. If you're wanting to improve your english, here's one site I think you'll like: http://lang.tabonga.com You can practice and people will correct what you write. And you can also help other people who are wanting to learn Russian (or any other language you know). -Matt > Wanted: English-speaking friends > signalment: good humor, cheerfulness, patience))) [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > and some time i'll help U))) > Email me, i'm wait for you HaggMan schrieb: > Hi Max, > > My name's Matt. I'm 22 from USA. If you're wanting to improve your > english, here's one site I think you'll like: It should be "If you want to improve ..." and "English" is always written with a capital letter. > http://lang.tabonga.com > > You can practice and people will correct what you write. And you can > also help other people who are wanting to learn Russian (or any other > language you know). And it should be "people who want to learn Russian". Regards, Einde O'Callaghan Thanks for that Einde :) I spent two years outside of my country (U.S.) where I picked up the habit of -ing my words. I think it's still okay to do that --- though maybe I've really lost my sense of "proper" grammar. I keep second-guessing myself... No, I think it's alright to say "If you're wanting to do something." Your correction is more straightforward, though. Thanks, -HaggMan > HaggMan schrieb: > > Hi Max, [quoted text clipped - 14 lines] > > Regards, Einde O'Callaghan HaggMan schrieb: > Thanks for that Einde :) > [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > you're wanting to do something." Your correction is more > straightforward, though. "Want" is one of a series of verbs to do with mental states and the senses that are very rarely used in continuous tenses (i.e. the tenses formed using "be" + the -ing form). I'm very aware of this class of verbs as I have to teach it regularly to more advanced students. Regards, Einde O'Callaghan Einde, Hmm, I'm interested in this. I'm a native speaker of English (American English). Yet I know, from learning Spanish, that native speakers of languages don't know all the formal "rules" that learners of second languages know. I have never ever heard of a series of verbs having to do with mental states and senses that require special treatment. Where did you learn about that? Thanks, HaggMan > HaggMan schrieb: > > Thanks for that Einde :) [quoted text clipped - 15 lines] > > Regards, Einde O'Callaghan HaggMan schrieb: > Einde, > [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] > states and senses that require special treatment. Where did you learn > about that? Normally, native speakers use these correctly without thinking. Sometimes, however, when people live in a foreign country there can be some grammatical interference (also sometimes in vocabulary too) from the language of that country - particularly if they are fairly fluent in that language. I sometimes detect such language interference from German in my own speech even though I'm particularly aware of it, being an English teacher. As to these verbs rarely used in the continuous tenses, I learned about them partly through teaching about them and looking into teh reasons why I felt that some sentences written by fairly advanced students seemed to me to be wrong even though apparently they had followed the rules of thumb given in their textbooks. I delved into various more advanced textbooks, grammars and books on usage and discovered backing for for my gut feeling. Just to list the categories roughly and give some examples: 1. verbs relating to mental process: think (when giving an opinion), love, like, hate, understand, remeber, forget. 2.verbs relating to use of the senses: see, hear, taste, smell - when referring to the use of the senses - usually we use "can" instead of the present continuous to refer to actually doing these processes, e.g. "I can see an apple tree full of fruit in the garden and the apples are falling to the ground all the time". Several of these have a transferred meaning that can be used in the continuous tense, e.g. "I'm seeing Tom tonight" medaning "I'm meeting Tom tonight". "Feel" is an exception, but there is no real difference in meaning between "I feel unwell" and "I'm feeling unwell". 3. verbs relating to possession: have (not in relation to actions), own, possess. In some varieties of English spoken by large numbers of people in Asia, e.g. the 15 million or so people in India who speak English as their first language, this distinction is not made - partly perhaps because some of their ancestors adopted the rule of thumb about use of the present continuous to describe present action and extended it to these categories as well. Regards, Einde O'Callaghan |
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