Help/Suggestions

[Linda]

First off, I'm not a teacher, but I'm hoping somebody can give me some suggestions. I'm a senior citizen taking Spanish for fun. I have been conversing with native Spanish speakers on-line, most of whom are trying to learn English. It's a great way to learn the language, but I get a lot of questions on English grammar that I can't answer.

I've been out of school 50+ years and I just plain don't remember any of the "rules" or "technical stuff." Yesterday I said "she has finally finished..." I was asked why I used the word "has" instead of saying "she finally finished." I couldn't answer. I'm sure there's a grammatical "rule" or something, but I don't know it. Actually, I don't even KNOW why I said it the way I did.

I've also been asked repeatedly how a native Spanish speaker learning English knows when to use "do/did" in questions. We would say "Do you have to study tonight?" In Spanish it would be "You have to study tonight?" How can I explain to somebody how/when/why we use those words?

If anybody knows of a good on-line resource, I'd appreciate it. I've done a fair amount of searching but haven't come up with anything that helps me easily explain the quirks of our language.

Thanks for any advice. :-)
Linda

[stepka]

Hi Linda, here is a link to a site for ELL's. http://www.teachingtips.com/blog/2008/06/24/100-best-resources-and-guides-for-esl-teachers/

Actually, you are a teacher; just not a paid one!

I'll try to take on your questions. You were speaking in the present-perfect form. "Has finished" implies that right now, in the present, the job is finished. "Finished" just means that the job was finished some time in the past. It's a subtle distinction, so I'm not sure how successfully you'll be able to explain it to your friends.

As for do/did, I'm not sure if I could answer that. My guess is that it's idiomatic for us to use an auxiliary verb to start an interrogative sentence and we invert the order of the verb and the subject, or in this case, stick the subject in between the two verbs. The Spanish speakers never invert word order for questions; they simply inflect their voice at the end to indicate that it's a question. We can do that too but it's not common.

Spanish is interesting isn't it? I was interested in the different ways we express being. In English we say "I am cold" or "I am hungry", but in Spanish they say "I have cold" or "I have hunger".

Oh, I should tell you that I answered your questions with the book "The Grammar Bible" by Michael Strumpf. I've been studying this stuff lately in hopes of becoming an English teacher, so this was a good exercise for me!

[Liane]

Hi Linda,

Great questions! And excellent answers from stepka.

As far as do/did is concerned, there are a couple of things:

1. If there is any question as to whether the word 'did' or 'do' should be used, that depends on whether the question is asking about something general (do you smoke? -simple present) or something specific in the past (did you take out the garbage? -simple past).

2. If the question is how you know when to use 'did' or 'do' in a question, the answer is to use it in every question in the simple present or simple past. If there are exceptions, you will be able to tell them because you speak English natively.

3. As far as where to "place" the helping verb 'to do' when asking a question... well, that's a little more involved. The simple thing to do is to place 'to do' (conjugated, of course) in front of any sentence. The way it works underneath is like this:

Say you have the sentence "You eat lunch every day." In truth, before you ask someone whether they eat lunch every day, you add the helping verb 'to do' and turn the sentence into: "You do eat lunch every day." Next, you move the 'do' in front of your sentence to make "Do you eat lunch every day?" This is why the answer is, "yes I do" instead of "yes I eat" (which Spanish speakers tend to say).

4. Where it gets messy is when you start asking things like 'what', or 'where'. "Where do you eat lunch every day?" "What do you eat for lunch?" In this case, here's how it works:

You eat beef for lunch every day. (The basic sentence)
You eat what for lunch every day. ('what' goes in for 'beef')
You do eat what for lunch every day. ('to do' is added before the verb)
What do you eat for lunch every day? ('do' is moved to the front of the sentence, and 'what' goes in front of it).

In truth, you'll never need to explain all that. It's probably overkill. The best thing to do is to show your fellow language learners patterns in English. They'll figure out the internal grammar on their own.

__________________
ESL Teacher and Yoga Instructor Liane Carmi has joined with Jay Kubassek of Carbon Copy PRO in his mission to create 100 millionaires by 2012. For information on how you can be part of this opportunity log on to http://better-educated.com (http://better-educated.com?t=teachnology)