also England. Sorry, the title doesn't allow me much space. Unfortunately, the time has come to start preparing classes for the new year, and as ever, I have to prepare the graduating students for an exam on English Speaking Countries. Every year the same old thing, this year I have a little energy and want to make these classes really good.

On Australia I'm fairly well prepared, but just from stuff from the net. I would appreciate any Australians out there who want to comment on something they think that foreigners ought to know about their country - we've got the koalas and kangaroos down pat, but these are clever kids and reallly interested in hearing something a little different. Welsh persons, same thing, especially about language. Scottish people, if you could explain the independence movement, that would be great. Irish and Northern Irish people, well, just talk.

This would help me a lot and help the kids a lot too. They're ready for something other than capital city/industry/culture and it would be great if you could write a post I could use in the classroom. Thanks!

Gidday Dobrov,
Not sure about how old your students are, but perhaps you could interest them in some Australian bush poetry. If you google 'Banjo Paterson' and 'Henry Lawson', you will find some great stuff.

Also, have you checked out the quizzes on Australia? You may find something that you can use. Terry's beaut search engine should help.

If you want something more specific, just let us know.

Cheers

I have to agree with Ozz about the bush poetry ... a special interest of mine. It's a pity that more Australians don't know more about it! How about some of the lesser known animals like the echidna, bilby and some reptiles?

Like Ozz said, just let us know if you need more of a hand.

Ok. The students are all 18-19 years old and in their final year at gymnazium, which is an academic-stream secondary school. They are in general pretty clever with an upper-intermediate to lower level advanced knowledge of spoken English, although their reading skills aren't so hot. THey're brighter than average on the whole and some are very bright indeed. Most of them are pretty cute. Their final in English is pretty elaborate and involves knowing a lot of information on 'English Speaking Countries'. This is usually a mutual nightmare. I hate preparing, they hate memorizing how high, how long, how many, etc. I did my best with tourist brochures, but materials to flesh things out were scanty.

But last year I got Internet access in my office and now I have access to tons more stuff. I spent a lot of time last year, especially on Australia - to my surprise it's not just like Canada only with kangaroos instead of bears (blush). For Wales I concentrated on language, which is a situation Czech kids can relate to well. Northern Ireland was great, of course, because the students all know something about it already. The list goes on. Anyway, this year I want to make it better, and would like to be able to convey a better idea of what's important to people in the country. This is totally interesting for the students; much more interesting than how high how long.

This year I'd like some help (which you're already on, Australians!). Yup, I did the quiz on Banjo and one on the Bush poets and that is a sensational idea. Actually, going back and finding Australia quizzes is sensational. Thanks a lot already!

As to the section on England, would it be an idea to look at accents (regional) and the way words are pronounced differently? I am thinking of the way we Cornish speak as compared to , say the Northeners. The thread we did ages ago which Heather started about this , might be useful... You say Tomatoes... or some such , it was called. Just a thought.

Actually, that's a good idea, but British/American usages area bit of a touchy subject. A lot of students would like English to be something like German - one general standard that you use no matter what regional dialect anyone is speaking to you. The presence of not just two, but many Englishs, both regional dialects and national standards, a lot of them feel to be a plot aimed at poor students of English who have to enough to remember what with boot/trunk, pram/carriage, highway/motorway, etc. That Britain is a country where there are regional dialects as diverse and distinct as there are in German Lands is something most people resist.

And to be fair, this is a concept the textbooks do not encourage. "In Britain we say..." "In Britain we don't pronounce the final r". Ha! Ever been to Somerset? British textbooks are keen to tout RP and polarize the Brit/American thing and negect, or omit to mention, the richness of their own linguistic map.

The sad fact of learning a language is that the thing in front of you in the book has been engineered. Every language is going to have regional varieties and in the case of world languages such as English, French, or Spanish, those varieties are going to be pretty distinct. Most students, however, behave as if they've been swindled. I have pointed out so many times that if I go to Brno (in Moravia) then I have a horrible time understanding people becuase they speak very differently there. This doesn't seem to make much impact, though.

You mention that you're Cornish and this is one thing that really grabs them is other languages on the island. A student last year did a presentation on Cornish, a couple of them on Welsh (Welsh is very very popular) and there is one brilliant boy who is endeavouring to understand and speak broad Yorkshire.

Anyway, I'm still on it and thanks to everyone!

Hi, just getting back into the swing of things after my two weeks back in the UK.
I wonder what's happened to that aforementioned thread on tomatos and tomahtoes...wonder if it can be recovered, it was getting very big when we last left it.
I think I could use it myself!
I kept on remarking on things that had changed since I'd last visited or even lived there.
I am looking at things in light of being an English teacher for foreigners and having them find a happy medium to get by.
I read about five newspapers a day, bought loads of novels, just absorbed the news etc to see if I could safely say that this or that word would get them more mileage.
I particularly wished to see if my theories were correct about things such as telling time, greetings etc.
It is so difficult for some French to muster the courage to say things, I'm looking for ways of helping them.

I'm going to surprise you but I found that I understand the Scottish variations of English better, perhaps because I have had more experience in Scotland and there is an affective link for me, it's clearer to me than the infinite variety of English accents I encountered. It's pretty rare that I totally miss what someone is saying to me, and yet, this time it happened several times in England. But our trip was very long and covered a lot of territory.

Now as I was helping the kids get used to the accents, I also had to kind of explain discretely what had just been said. So that they didn't answer with a blank stare.

I've noticed a lot more supposed Americanisms entering British speech too. Way out and exit appear to be used interchangeably etc.
Guy. a few others.

Here's one thing that I heard in Wales, England, and Scotland though..cheers has now overtaken any other word I know as the most useful!

I'm still drawing my own conclusions from my observations and I say this without any notion of chauvinism on my part, but the North American accent may be boring, nasal and what have you to some, but I still think there are fewer regional variations than in British English which has a multitude despite the geographical difference in size.

Dobrov, what are you doing about the time thing? I have found my own solution for French plagued by the old half past thing...
You see, though the British use the half past system of time telling, for foreigners and even for Americans, it still isn't terribly clear. I prefer a digital answer myself, even in America...I don't like the ten to...without ten to what...
I'd rather hear, "It's ten fifty".
So I teach my students to understand the half past three and so on and then give the exact time if they know it...
presuming of course that Brits will not be offended at hearing "it's ten thirty."
I don't do this because I'm American, in the UK I probably adapt to the half past system, but for a foreigner it's harder to shift gears so I look for a happy medium that will help the person get out of a jam.

By the way, the Dutch and Scandinavians seem to have the clearest accents in English that I've ever heard for non native speakers. They choose the middle ground though they might have been taught the British English was "better" somehow, and yet, they don't shock either party at all...they sound just great.

The French spend endless years of humiliating students because they haven't pronounced a word in English in a false English accent that is synthetic...they listen to these tapes about the tonic accent and even a native speaker from England couldn't answer it correctly. They except non native speakers working with non native teachers to reproduce these sounds, that few of us could manage. As one of my English friends from the South of England said, "this is insane, I have that accent from birth and I can't manage this exercise!"
The only good thing is that people like me have jobs in sorting out the whole mess. I find the correlation of number of years of study and trauma is very strong in France. The more you've been in school being told you'll never manage, the more you believe it!

PS, I also listened with great attention to the BBC English on the news, the same lady who was on when I lived there is still there...a sad looking tight lipped person with dark hair..anyone know her name? If you put a tape of that in front of students as an example of standard British English, they'd all give up...
I thought Skye channel did a better job of getting announcers who spoke very well and clearly, with more expression.
The Radio announcers were good though. I zapped channels in the car.

In another place, I'm reading a fascinating book by one of my favorite commentators on language, Claude Duneton..and the cultural differences within France from the standpoint of an English teacher. It's worth a thread.

Hi Bruyere! Glad you're back! Ok, the time thing. I got a horrible shock this summer when guy I sort of know (a friend of a friend) came here for a few days. He is from Brighton, is great and talked all the time. One thing he said repeatedly which is very big news for me and very bad news for Czech kids is that he kept saying "It's half seven" (six, five, whatever) when asked the time. What he meant was 7:30. Now, if you're Czech (or German, for that matter), 'half seven' means 6:30 (halfway to seven). This is really confusing and I kept asking him if this was just a personal affectation or did people really say this. He swears that people really say this. It doesn't show up in Headway, by golly.

I am not that worried about current colloquial usage anywhere, though. The vast majority of my students are going to use English in the future to talk to Germans, Russians, Poles, Hungarians, French, Italians (if they're lucky), and I think that a modified British standard will get them a lot further than learning a lot of idioms only familiar to people in very local areas of the US and Britain. The kids pick up a lot of slang/profanity from the cinema and from music, and they don't need my help much.

I forgot. what is really useful, though, is those spoken conventions invovled in everyday life. In the Commons Pia-Fraus has started an interesting thread on this.

Oh that's wonderful Dobrov...just when I thought I'd explained everything they might encounter..you've reminded me of that one...I have heard it.
I think the reason I don't like quarter til, and ten to...are that I might not know what the hour is!
I'd rather hear three forty five.
As I've helped with work on several collections of English words there was a group of expressions and things that Brits and North Americans both understood, then there were those that were specific to one or the other.
I always shoot for the middle..
I too have the same audience for my students with Australian and America added.
A nice neutral European style English...Flemmie must not be back yet..he's the best one to ask, goes well in this market.

I translate in several gears as I think of it...I have different types of English according to the speaker and the listener or reader.
I refuse to teach them those old things like "I remain your humble servant" as they'd really like to satisfy their craving for the French formality in the modern day business world.
they keep on insisting I haven't translated it correctly...so I tell them what it would mean in English...and leave it to them to decide. I mean, they are writing to backslapping, first naming, Americans...whom I've met..and this stuff sounds odd.


What's the word on the two forms of the past?

I'm going with the one past tense except in obvious sentences where it's not correct.
Thus, "I read your letter."
instead of the former and sometimes current British usage "I've read your letter".
It's easier than insisting on the subtle difference that most Northern Americans don't make anyway.
I obviously give them the "I've just read your letter." "I've never read your letter."

When I taught French I used to say, "you know...you can conjugate verbs till you're blue in the face, but it all boils down to being able to communicate in a coherent sentence. Trust me, the French will always correct you when you're mistaken...they do it to themselves, don't worry, but if you shoot for perfection you'll lose the deal."

In reply to:

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What's the word on the two forms of the past?

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We had to memorize every single grammar rule concerning the use of both forms and it didn't do my English any good! It just makes me aware of the fact that I'm possibly/probably making a lot of mistakes!

Poor old Lo. Boy, was I glad I was born speaking English. What we're talking about here is past time and present perfect. Present perfect is a real pain in the Royal Canadian and even in university people used to say things like "People don't use the present perfect any more so it's not important to teach it." This is a gross untruth, but it does take the worry out of the unit if you tell your students it's a useless form. Yes, Flem is back and lurking around here somewhere and he's probably a lot better and explaining this than I am, but here goes.

There are really only two tenses in English - present and past. All those other things that are often called 'tenses' (meaning time) in textbooks are time and how you look at the action - complete, incomplete, or 'aspect'. This is the sitch. Present perfect does NOT express past time. The formal term for it is 'present time, perfect (or completed) aspect'. When you use the present perfect in one way or another you are always talking about now - the impact of the past on the present and possibly future events. Hmmm... an example.

Past time (tense) expresses something that happened in the past, it's over. If we go on vacation together to a resort, we might split up in the morning to do different things and plan to meet at lunch. Ok, we meet and I say "Hey Heather and Lo, what did you do this morning?" You guys would probably answer something like "We went sailing and we caught a giant cormorant." That's easy. Now, if I met you in front of the dining room at the hotel and you both were covered with blood and seaweed and had lost several teeth, I probably wouldn't say "So tell me, what did you do this morning?" I'd say "WHAT HAVE YOU TWO BEEN DOING???" What I mean is that I don't want a chronicle of your morning activities, I want to know why you look like that now, at this very moment.

Likewise, if we're on the beach and there is someone drowning out in the sea, I wouldn't say "I saved a person from drowning once." This is interesting information, but not necessearily the time to tell an anecdote. It would be better if I said "Fear Not! I've saved a person from drowning !" (So I'm capable of doing something about the situation NOW).

My superspecialsecret sentence for the present perfect comes from a sad day the first year I was in the Czech Republic. It was Thursday and a firm I was working for was having a Christmas party the next day - Friday - and I hadn't been invited. I met my friend Brian on the street and told him. He said not to worry, the firm he worked for was having a Christmas party in a week's time and no invitation there either. Then a third party arrived, our friend David. David asked what we were talking about and I said "I wasn't invited to my firm's Christmas party and Brian hasn't been invited to his either." Boooiiinnngggg! I was so happy! What a great example! Why did I use past tense for me and present perfect for Brian? It's simple! My Christmas party was only a day away and there was no hope for me at all. But Brian still had a week... He hasn't been invited...yet...

When the crunch comes, there are certain markers in sentences that demand one or the other form - a concrete expression of time in the past - last week, yesterday, 5 minutes ago - means past tense. Markers like yet, lately, still, up till now - present perfect.

I sure hope I haven't made things worse.

Oh Lord Marcus! What have you done??? (Now my mom's really going to kill me)

I didn't say useless, that word never slipped out of my mouth...I just said that you're certain to be understood with the "I read your letter and understood it", than worrying about the "do I say, "I have read your letter and I have understood it."
I wasn't going to bandy about the old names thing...as the French call them one thing and the other places call them another...but as you've done it Dobrov...one handy thing is the only time you really use them is "Have you ever seen a purple cow?" "no, I've never seen a purple cow, I never hope to see one, but I can tell you anyhow, I'd rather see than be one."
Temporal expressions.
You see Lo, in my opinion, people worry unduly about these things...as school English tends to be perfectionist...
It's a bit like Olympic skating and exhibition skating...they always fall down during the Olympics and then they do great things during the showing off sessions...

What is your job again, Dobrov? Teacher, isn't it?

Your explanation makes perfect sense, but for the last ten years I have been trying to remember the same kind of stories concerning German and French and I'm not doing a good job at telling them apart... I'm happy that English doesn't have all the different conjugations French and Italian have. That makes it easier. And I keep telling myself that as long as I can make myself clear in English, I'm doing ok. If someone is not satisfied with my English, they should try to speak Dutch!

Seriously though, I do know all the right terms and stuff (I took Latin for 5 yrs and I'm studying language & speech technology) and have analyzed many English sentences, but still. I think you either have to be born speaking English, or you have to live in an English speaking environment for some time to master all the details...

Bruyere, your BBC news reader must be either Anna Ford or Moira Stuart, I would go for Moira Stuart!!

Hezzer, was this woman black or white? Is Anna Ford still about Buffy?

She was very recently Sue and I i'm fairly sure she still is.

Nonono Bruyere, I didn't mean you - you didn't say that! You are totally right in pointing out that a lot of the time people much about with obscure grammatical points without teaching anything the students might find useful.

Lo, every language has got those little ins and outs that make them difficult to master for foreigners. You seem to be doing ok, though because your mastery of written English is phenomenal. I wish I had more students like you. Yeah, I'm a teacher and I love grammar (don't you notice?) and this morning I'm off to the first day of school. sigh.

I just googled for their photos and it's Moira. She was smiling in the photo though!
She hasn't changed one iota though!

Good luck to our brave Dobrov, isn't it funny how in the old days, all those new school supplies helped us go on our merry way?

Another thing about the language teaching problems here, they have great difficulty being put in real situations, which is what I emulate in class. I mean, they feel much more reassured spouting off the irregular past participles than trying to explain about current events or in a recent exercise, describing how a bike works...
So my classes just loosen them up...some need a crow bar!

I tell people that it doesn't matter how many years of English they've had in school if they can't get up the courage to tell the employee at the little window their destination so that she can sell them a ticket.

The best way is a team effort too...make people do something that requires everyone, they find they know more than they think.

Lo, your English is incredible, as is the English of all of our non Native English speaking friends.
I have contributed to French sites before when they still existed, (there aren't any like this one though) and it's not really as easy as it seems.

Thanks, Bruyere. Yeah, do you remember the first day of school and your new Barbie pencilcase, 3-colour pen, Prismacolours, and Rocky and Bullwinkle lunchbox? those were the days. It doesn't look too bad for me this year, though.

Actually, a lot of the students here are pretty good at functional English because their parents are very nervous about their kids' getting jobs. Without really good English and/or French, German or Russian, you're toast in this country. To that end parents pay for English summer camps, home-stays in England and very often a year's study in a high school in the US. I'm lucky because no matter how resistant the class is, there are at least three kids every year who've spent the last while in England or the States. They show off dreadfully and make all the cool noises (uh HUH, Oh God! naaa, brill, cheers, etc) but the other kids see the point and are more willing to work on functions. Whew. Deep in darkest France, I can believe you might have a problem with that. Is English that important to the moms and dads there?

English is like having vaccinations Dobrov...necessary evil!
Now I'm off to the memories section, you've sparked one now with those lunchboxes..we have Catnippin occasionally who's done a quiz on them!
Sorry to our antipodean friends, as they have different school terms.

Dobrov

Here's a link to a great site giving the origins and meanings of many sayings/proverbs etc. which are used in everyday in English speaking countries.

Hope it helps.

http://phrases.shu.ac.uk/meanings/a-1.html