[etni] Re: present simple/progressive
- From: Judy Cohen <cwejudy@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: etni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2012 10:06:58 +0200
I have to agree with Ilana, I think our books begin with the progressive
too early and use it too much. I suspect the reason is that it is handy
for interpreting pictures - you can look at a picture and see what everyone
in it is doing. But in life we don't need it that much. At a hishtalmut I
used to give, I would ask teachers to jot down all they could remember from
last night's dinner conversation with the family. They would see that most
of our everyday conversations go back and forth between past and future -
what happened today, what we plan to do next. The main times we really use
present progressive are in X-rated phone conversations ("What are you
wearing?") or in the ER ("I'm intubating").
Worse yet - if we insist on heavy use of present progressive, we turn all
our classes into make-believe, as we encourage the students to say they are
doing things which they are obviously not doing at the moment. This makes
language learning less authentic.
So as Ilana said, it's good that newer textbooks are reversing this trend.
I have many lesson plans about the different present tenses, including
stative verbs, present progressive for the near future, etc. Anyone who
wants is welcome to write to me.
And if you do like *midrash tmunah*, you can easily use a picture to
discuss things people do every day, what happened yesterday, and of course
modals. (You must cross at the light, I can walk to school, etc.)
Happy Purim!
Judy
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