Comments on: Six despised bits of grammar

By: Steven

Steven — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 08:18:22 +0000

Teaching question tags is a nightmare. I can never create an exercise where it seems natural; on the contrary, it feels absurd. My students feel it, I feel it. Now I try to address the tags one at a time when the situation calls for it….and it very rarely does.

I’m North American too and have picked up the habit of using “innit”. At first a bit ironically, but now quite unconsciously. I love it. To be honest, it’s only a slight variation on what we say in parts of the States.

By: Clare

Clare — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 12:53:07 +0000

Ah – the penny drops! I didn’t realise you were north American.

I’ve also heard “innit” used as a kind of “default” tag in and around London. I’m not sure if non-native English speakers are that fazed by it, given the other challenges of understanding idiomatic London speech at full speed.

By: lclandfield

lclandfield — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 23:55:43 +0000

Ah, Clare please do not be intimidated or impressed or anything else. Of course I don’t pronounce all words in their entirety. I use regular contractions, plus things like doncha, and didja, and wanna and many other shortened forms very common in spoken English. However, innit to me sounds more British and not as common in the North American variety (of course fellow North Americans can correct me if I am wrong) which is what I speak. The other thing I had understood was that innit was being proposed as an all-purpose tag, as in “He’s smart, innit?” or similar. That, to me, does sound strange and more “marked” and frankly I don’t think I would put it into a syllabus as something students have to know beyond a receptive level.

But again, I may be proven wrong by the English as a lingua franca people. We’ll see! Thanks for dropping by, and I hope not to have you reeling from shock at future posts.

By: Clare

Clare — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 19:50:55 +0000

Am still reeling from the shock that you’ve never said “innit”, or “int’it”, or “ennit” or any of the other regional variations of “isn’t it”. I think you must be one of the very few people who pronounce words in their entirety! Not sure whether to be impressed, or intimidated.

By: Betty C.

Betty C. — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 18:16:02 +0000

I personally blame the Brits for all that emphasis on question tags. And I don’t think you’ll start using them less any time soon, will you? (Or the one in which the affirmative tagged verb stays affirmative because the main verb is negative…LET ME OUT OF HERE!)

And happy holidays…

By: Eric

Eric — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 04:05:02 +0000

Point six captures the difficulty and often absurdity of “academic English” in more advanced ESL classes. My personal pet peeve is when the curriculum calls for extensive attention to relative clauses and unreal conditionals. How often do native speakers have to tell apart “which” vs “that” in relative clauses?

By: lclandfield

lclandfield — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 14:51:12 +0000

Thanks Vicky!

By: lclandfield

lclandfield — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 14:50:44 +0000

I agree that translation can be helpful in times. And I am also at a loss why it’s called a “perfect” tense when as you point out it’s not exactly perfect in the other sense of the word.

By: lclandfield

lclandfield — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 14:49:51 +0000

Hi there

I admit that there are lots of “bits” to the third conditional. I guess for me that one never posed so much of a problem, as I felt the concept checking was quite straightforward (“did he do X? did she/he do Y?”) As for the avoidance-strategy to problematic bits of grammar I could not agree with you more. I’ve seen it happen loads of times.

By: lclandfield

lclandfield — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 14:48:04 +0000

Very good point there. I’ll let you, ahem, correct the Hulk on his inflections and syntax though…