As usual, I struggled to get out of bed this morning for my class at Lockwood Greene in La Boca. The weather had improved a bit after a night of rather violent storm. For a short while during the night I was actually startled by all the thunder and lightening. I arrived at my class a bit late but it wasn’t a huge deal. As we waited for Raul I jumped on the chance to work with Andres on his “much” problem. You see, in Spanish it’s customary to use the word “mas” for just about everything but in English things are described by different quantifiers. Some students use literal translation to go from Spanish to English and as a result they say things like: I drink much wine with much friends. The sentence, although not correct, is still perfectly understandable. However, since it happens so frequently that I find myself beginning to catch onto a bad case of English grammar as well so I had to make some corrections before I get contaminated with Spanglish. I started to explain to Andres that we use the word “much” more for uncountable things such as emotions and feelings. We say “thank you very much” and “I love you very much”. It’s also used when there is an unknown amount in the cases of inquiries: “how much …?” For more quantified amounts we use words such as “some” (which doesn’t exist in Spanish), “a little” and “a lot”. Furthermore, in cases when there is a definable unit we use words like “couple”, “few” and “many”. We say “I would like to have a little wine” and “I would like to have few bottles of wine”. We use “a couple” and “a few” for 2 or more things. We use “couple of” and “few of” for 2 or more things from a larger group/amount. Ok, so we made a little chart to classify those words which I thought was pretty good without using any reference guide or lesson plans. Andres seems to be getting a much better grasp on the subject so I was satisfied. We examined the differences between “I like a lot of wine” and “I like wine very much”. Everything seems to be in good order until I started to think about the stuff myself. If we used specific quantifiers for different items then why is it incorrect to say “I drank much wine” but ok to say “I drank too much wine.”??? Thankfully, nobody asked that question. By the way, we used wine as an example because that’s Andres’s favorite.
When Raul joined us we moved on to articles. Ok, not a big deal. I’ve never had any specific training on using articles myself but it’s all pretty intuitive from conventional uses. So we started the following dialog:
A: Would you like AN apple?
B: Yes, I love apples!
A: I have A big one and A small one. Which one would you like?
B: I will have THE small one please.
A: Are you sure you don’t want THE big one?
B: No, the small one is fine. What A delicious apple!
A: Well, I’ll have THE big one then.
The students got through it pretty well without much help. So now the next suggested activity was to talk about a different fruit using the same format. “Ok, let’s talk about bananas!” I said. It didn’t take long before a seemingly harmless subject turned into a cause for uncontrollable laughter. Here I am with two older engineer managers asking each other: “Would you like a banana?” “I love bananas!” “I have a big one and a small one. Which one do you prefer?” “I’ll have the small one please.” “Then I’ll have the big one.” I was in tears by the end of that dialog. It’s probably one of those you-had-to-be-there moments.
The class got me thinking about more grammar issues. Although I’ve been teaching for a couple of weeks now I rarely cover grammar points since most of my students from Dublin are advanced enough to use them properly. Sometimes they are even better informed about the different verb tenses then I am. I have taught a few classes on how to use passive sentences in formal writing but it was very easy because they were pre-exposed to the topic already. In reality, I’m really unsuitable for teaching English since I barely learned it myself. You think my blog is hard to understand but you would have even less of a clue if I didn’t use spelling and grammar check every time. Most English I know I acquired from day to day conversations, television and books I read outside of the classroom. The only grammar lessons I had were from three years of Latin classes in high school. Now that’s a language with perhaps the mostly logical and complex grammar rules. I could explain perfectly well all the parts of speech and verb tenses but that doesn’t mean I always use them correctly. I spent half of my life speaking a language with no gender, articles, tenses or plural forms. However, Chinese does have a crazy number of different quantifiers, almost one for every item. I once heard that they even have special grammar class in high school and colleges just on quantifiers. For example in English we say “a loaf of bread” or “a cut of tea” but not everything has a unit like that, well, not unless you’re speaking Chinese! They have words like “loaf” and “cup” for just about everything. There’s a different one you must use when you say “a cow”, “a horse”, “a big”, “a cat” and “a fish”. And that’s just the beginning for animals. There is even a different one you use for “a person” in formal and informal situations. Andres joked about learning Chinese instead of English. Well, although the grammar is pretty easy at first I have to agree with Carolina that learning Chinese is really “an intellectual kamikaze experience”.
So instead of teaching grammar and spelling, I focus more on tailored English lessons involving Finance. After all, I have to utilize my four year of over-priced economics degree somewhere! It’s very convenient for me that most of my students have backgrounds in finance and work for banks and consulting firms. As a result, I’m constantly on the outlook for the latest economics headlines regarding the weakening US economy. We have discussions on the housing bubble, mortgage crisis, interest rates, unemployment rate, inflation and reversal in investment trends. My ipod has become an indispensable tool for teaching. It allows me to download and play the latest installments of NPR podcasts to work on listening skills in class. We listen to a variety of things from interview with Allen Greenspan to comedy clips from Jon Stewart and Chris Rock. Also after four years of “melodic dictations” from one of the toughest music institutes I now play songs for students to write down lyrics. Old standards such as Nat King Cole work extremely well because of the clear diction. I’ve also used the song “If I had a Million Dollars”. It’s another fun way to improve listening skills and start the class on a good note.