Do you know your grammar? Can you only vaguely remember your English teacher droning on about it, but you don’t even know what the word means? Well, we’ll tell you: it’s the set of rules that tells us how our language is structured. You know, words and how they combine to make sentences and phrases. There’s a whole host of mistakes that TEFL students AND teachers often make. These are some of the most common:
Its and it’s
Ah, the apostrophe. Did you know that there’s an actual Apostrophe Protection Society? You examples of its misuse everywhere, but this is one of the most common. “It’s” is only ever a contraction of “it is” or “it has”, as in “It’s a beautiful day”. If you’re talking about possession, you should use “its”, as in “That car has lost its number plate”. The easy way to test if you’ve got it right is to repeat your sentence with “it is” or “it has” instead. If it sounds weird, use “its”.
A recruitment company not quite at ITS best!
Simple past and present perfect
Huh? The what what? Like many grammatical rules, this is one that your TEFL students will get wrong because it doesn’t appear in their own language. The culprit this time is the present perfect, which refers to something that happened at an unspecified time in the past, like “I have visited Paris”. As soon as you start talking about a specific time, you must use the simple past, as in “I visited Paris last week”.
Their, there and they’re
You could be cooler than a polar bear’s toenails, but deciding which of the three to choose might still get you flustered. Thankfully, working it out is easy. “They’re” is just a contraction of “they are”, whereas “their” is always possessive, as in “It’s their pet monkey”. For everything else, use “there”. Simple!
Punctuation
If you’re teaching anywhere where a non-roman alphabet is used – think Arab countries, Japan, China and Korea – or you have students from those countries, they’ll probably have trouble with punctuation. Why? Because they either don’t use punctuation, or use it in a completely different way from English. All of those problems that native English speakers have with “it’s”, “they’re” and “you’re” will be even worse! So to be able to teach them effectively, you’ll have to understand the differences really well.
Which person?
English verbs are a bit like French philosophy – difficult to understand and even harder to explain. And the first thing that trips learners up is the difference between the third person singular (he/she/it lives) and other forms of the present tense (I/we/you/they live). Many a teacher has tried and failed to get their students to tack that elusive ‘third person s’ onto the end of verbs. This is made even more confusing when you introduce the idea of plurals. In simple terms an ‘s’ equals a plural, but ‘he lives’ is singular. Oh, it’s a minefield…
This is just a tiny selection of the grammatical problems that will flummox even the most capable TEFL students (and teachers!). If you think you need some extra help in this area, make sure you choose a TEFL course that includes the Grammar Awareness Module to boost your confidence before you step in front of your first class.
Do you have any grammar gripes? Share them below!
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This is all very interesting - Thanks Bette
I do understand that language is constantly evolving and starting sentences with And, Because etc are becoming more common and acceptable.
But as for the Apostrophes - it has been long debated whether to keep them because so many people do drop them or use them incorrectly...the modern culture is use to text messenging and quick emailing...this is why there are societies out there trying to protect the use of apostrophes
They can help for understanding but at the same time without them the sentence is still understood...if a person is relying on the apostrophy then they are reading each word individually when they should be reading the words as a complete senence - i know over here most students prefer not to use apostrophes and lets face it, they werent always used
@PDixon.
Apostrophes Nope. Whoever told you that about apostrophes is either uninformed or just winding you up. Apostrophes serve a very useful purpose and show no signs of dying out. What's more, in my 20 years experience of teaching English A1 to C and beyond to adults and children in Brazil, Russia, Africa and the Middle East, I've never found learners who don't quickly absorb and correctly apply apostrophes.
If anything, EFL learners seem to love them, for some reason I haven't really fathomed. In my experience, it's only ever native English-speakers (and then a small proportion) who struggle with apostrophes (actually only with the its-it's canard) - or pretend to, because it often seems to be a rebellious phase that passes soon enough. (I've also taught English first-language for many years.)
(cont. below)
@PDixon. (cont.)
Initial And On your other point, starting sentences with And (and But), this is something that's becoming more common and generally more acceptable in this age of screen-based text, driven by the more general tendency to shorter sentences. But, as a matter of interest, initial And, But and So are rife in all the various corpora: there doesn't seem to have been any time in the history of modern English when they weren't used freely. It seems to be one of those odd rules of the "never end a sentence with a preposition" type, applied rigorously by some, sitting uncomfortably with the majority and dismissed out of hand by some. To my mind, it's a useful device, particularly in less formal or more chatty writing. And it is used very effectively in pedagogical contexts such as e- and m-learning. But I do understand that some will feel more strongly it.
Initial Because Starting a sentence with Because is, of course, a different matter, because a because clause is subordinate. Whether it's used correctly or incorrectly simply depends on what follows the clause. It's clearly wrong when nothing follows it - the main clause you expect doesn't arrive and you have a hanging subordinate clause - a sentence fragment. This confuses the reader and is likely to annoy many too. On the other hand, there's nothing at all wrong with initial Because in a properly formed sentence: Because it was raining, I decided to stay home.
Regards, Bette
i have heard that in the English world that they are trying to do away with apostrophe because most people choose to not use them or just dont know how to use them...and lets face it - you still understand the meaning...
take the picture you used...with or without the apostrophe its still read the same and still understood...its only when some one points it out or someone is being Pedantic that people question it
One od the bad things they teach in japan is sentences starting with And and Because...for some reason they dont teach conjoining sentences...i always cringe at this because i do remember my teaching drilling us,and getting frustrating everytime someone started the sentence with And
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