A teacher has got
strengths and weaknesses depending on their ability and natural inclinations.
For example I am rather lousy at drawing --though I do try hard-- but I can
make the most of every opportunity a text affords me to clarify, illustrate and
further practise language issues.
I feel that some
problematic areas for learners of English are not given proper attention or
sufficient space by course or grammar book writers. If you look at a typical
course of English, you will not fail to notice an excessive emphasis on tenses
so much so that one gets practice for the Present and Past tenses right into
Proficiency level. To my mind, this is superfluous given that a B2 level
student should be able to use those quite efficiently. On the other hand, there
are other grammar points introduced well into a typical course that require
further drilling and consolidation if only because they are too sophisticated
to be assimilated by younger or lower-level learners.
In my experience of teaching mainly Greek people, one of those areas in English grammar which merit special attention and should be dealt with in more detail is the infinitive tenses and their inextricable link with modal verbs. Since in most cases the tense of the modal verb provides no clue as to the time the verb phrase refers to, it is the tense of the infinitive that is the time marker. For instance, could is a time marker for ability but not for possibility whereas may or might are no time markers and one needs to denote the time by choosing the appropriate infinitive tense.
However, in Greek and
other languages such as French and Spanish for example, it is not the infinitive
but the subjunctive tenses which denote time.
As a result, it is quite difficult for Greek, French or Spanish learners to comprehend the infinitive tense
use or grasp the idea that the infinitive has tenses but does not agree with
the subject in person. This leads to mistakes of this kind:
He should has tried more.
The above sentence shows
that there is some understanding of infinitive tenses but not sufficient
understanding of the infinitive as a non-conjugated form or what appears like
an understanding of the infinitive tenses might be an attempt at the rendition
of the subjunctive normally used in their first language. (Greek is a morphologically rich language with
person differences marked by different endings.)
In order that my students
get enough practice of problem grammar areas, I take advantage of original
texts which provide a number of instances of a particular structure either underlining
the examples of this particular structure or creating an exercise.
What follows is a hands-on activity of what I have tried to illustrate so far. In addition to infinitive
tenses, the text lent itself to some practice of noun adjuncts (I have already
discussed this in detail in a previous post of mine providing a methodology of
making sense of noun adjuncts by Greek learners.)
The first exercise is
meant to be completed before reading the news story and checked in the process
of reading it while the second evidently is to be done while reading the text.
