Winter is a time for dream mongering. We reveurs and reveuses of this planet burrow deep into the cracks of our darkness to let the light shine through…

The result might be something like this:

THE VERB ‘TO BE’ IN JUNIOR CLASSES

For decades we, teachers of English, have been starting our junior classes by introducing the verb “to be” in the first units of any course book we might be using without questioning the principle behind this choice. And though I have been in the profession for decades and repeatedly frustrated by my inability to successfully teach the verb “to be” to my pupils, it was only recently that the idea solidified in my mind.

Even when we assume that learners have put all kinds of difficulties behind them and can now use the verb properly and therefore move on to more “sophisticated” concepts, forms such as I “was be” or “he be” rear their ugly head challenging any certainty about having got the verb “to be” out of the way.

In my effort to account for such an insistence on an item which seems to elude most beginners, it crossed my mind that we people in the West are possibly obsessed with existential issues to such an extent that we ignore common sense.

One may ask what common sense would dictate in this case. For one thing, we could leave the verb at “I am……… (name)” rather than insisting on both singular and plural or affirmative, interrogative and negative form. The plural is a concept which in many junior books is not introduced before the verb “to be” anyhow.  

Besides there are so many action verbs that young children would find much more straightforward and memorable. I suggest that the imperative form of the verb is a smooth way into the verb system of the English language. It allows the teacher to introduce a wealth of lexical items which perhaps cannot be easily learnt later on. For instance, teaching advanced students “pop”, “hop”, “wobble”, “tiptoe”, “wiggle”, “rumble”, “howl”, “roar”, “pitter patter” etc often feels such a strain when with juniors it is fun non-stop and cashes in on their kinesthetic intelligence.

Concrete nouns along with action verbs could still provide great learning opportunities and motivate young learners by the immediacy of the sentences that could be built as well as their effectiveness and relevance. Prepositions are also easy to present either by using children’s objects or bodies or by making simple drawings.

Without any pretensions to completeness or thoroughness, this is along the lines of what I had in mind:

run                                                                               ball

sit                                                                              chair    

sleep                                                                          floor              

throw                                                                         boat

catch                                                                            hat

train                                                                               pencil

Prepositions could be presented one by one so that each new item is consolidated and the following image could provide a visual aid for use.

Therefore, the pupils would be able to understand and produce sentences along these lines:

 Throw the ball.

Catch the ball.

Sit on the floor.

Don’t sleep.

Wake up.

Introducing “and” could lead to more complex sentences and provide children with great joy at being given the opportunity to jump and clap or skip and touch their nose or whatever combination they could come up with.

In any case, what could follow is a matter of acting on the pupils’ feedback and abilities.

Idlers

It is sad how unequal we prove in our struggle with time despite the best intentions.

IDLERS

We spent the time

On idle talk

Hardly aware

Of walls of mist

Between us rising

Year by year

A hollow yearning

Took hold of me

You peered through

Seeing nothing

My friend, fret not

It wasn’t meant

Some might say

Not torn asunder

Only drifting

Drifting away

MODAL VERBS AND INFINITIVE TENSES: A METHOD TO DEAL WITH CONFUSION

After such a long time in the teaching profession, I am becoming more and more convinced that how you teach grammar is determined by so many different factors that there are no hard and fast rules. It primarily depends on the teacher’s formal education, his/her mastery of the students’ mother tongue, the students’ grammar skills in general and the teacher’s ability to adapt their teaching to different individuals’ or groups’ needs.

Teaching grammar, like language in general, is a trial-and-error process which is constantly readapted but never finalized: only the end of teaching puts an end to it.

I will illustrate my point with an example. An area which is particularly difficult for Greek learners of English is modal verbs and infinitive tenses in English.

I normally make a point of presenting the tenses of the infinitive before I teach the Third Conditional. My reason for this is that you can’t teach the Past Conditional if you don’t break it down to its constituent parts. And its constituent parts are not would + have + Past Participle. (I find this approach too mechanical and not paying off in the long run.) Its constituent parts are would + Present Perfect Infinitive. It is very easy for students to make the mistake of changing “have” to “has” when a third person singular subject precedes the modal.

X He might has stolen the money.

In order to anticipate this kind of mistake I explain to the students that the form “have stolen” is the present perfect infinitive, which is not conjugated.

In Modern Greek the infinitive form is only used to form the perfect tenses, and most students do not even realize it is the infinitive. In Modern Greek we normally present a new verb in the first person singular of the Present Tense (there is only one present form).

However, most Greek students are familiar with the infinitive form in Ancient Greek as this is formally taught in Secondary school. The infinitive in Ancient Greek can be found in the Present, Past, Future and Present Perfect Tense.

So I often draw a parallel between the infinitive in Ancient Greek and in English to hammer it home to the students that

1.    the infinitive does not change

2.    the infinitive has tenses

In order to explain how we use modal verbs to express modes of “possibility”, “deduction” and so on, I break a sentence into parts: we find the part which allows us to think of the correct modal verb and then we spot the verb form which will be transferred to an infinitive tense. We decide on the tense of the infinitive depending on whether the verb form is in the present or past and then form the appropriate tense of the infinitive. Following this we put the pieces together so as to form the sentence.

Perhaps	he knows the truth
may	know
He may know the truth
There is no doubt	she missed her train.
must	have missed
She  must have missed her train
She is not studying	and it is wrong.
be studying	should
She should be studying.
It is just not possible	that he was driving at around that time
couldn’t	have been driving
He couldn’t have been driving at around that time.

SCREEN LURKER

All kinds of occasions may give rise

to poetry. Here is a poem I wrote some 

time ago. It is dedicated to online friends.

SCREEN LURKER

You lurk right there

In the corner of the screen

You call yourself a friend

You dissemble unabashed

When the screen gets blank

Little friend you are not enough

You are so much more than a drug

So much less than a cure

Every day your image

Fades with the tempo

Of a novelty turned

Threadbare with the use

A Greek poem

My philosophy of language(s) is perhaps similar to my philosophy towards life. We are who we are, we can surely reach out to many people and share what we can. Friendships of different kinds and order can form between people from all cultural backgrounds: there is always a side of us that can meet with the same side of another individual, and we should be able to celebrate and treasure this.

By the same token we experience life on many different levels depending on the language or languages we speak. Knowing more languages enriches us as people, broadens our scope and provides new insights into how we view things.

I write both in Greek and in English and it is in this capacity that I am posting one of my Greek poems. I hope those who share my views will forgive this transgression from the more “universal” English.

Θα στα παλιά

Θα γυρίσω πάλι

Στ’ ανθισμένα λόγια

Στις εικόνες χρόνων

Που αιωρούνται

Στις χαραμάδες της μνήμης

 Θα μου λες

Ποτάμια με πήραν

Θα είναι λέει

Ένα αγέρι μουσκεμένο

Μ’ απλωμένα χέρια

Θα είναι ένας

Μόνο ουρανός

Σκοτωμένος στο αίμα

Θ’ αντηχεί το σύμπαν σου

Μες το χοϊκό μου σxήμα

Pain

PAIN

I've felt the pain 
Of the rose
When it could no longer
Be called a bud

The sadness of the tree
When its trunk 
Bent in the wind

The yielding of the moon
Before the onslaught of the clouds

The grieving of the skin
At the loss of your touch