i work for a melody franchise, and they use a british publication.
in level umpty-dump;
the kids are in a garden:
“Are there any tomatoes?” “Yes there are.”
“Are there any carrots?” " No there aren’t."
“Are there any corns?” “Yes there are.”
“Are there any lettuces?” “Yes there are.”
where i come from, you have ‘corns’ on your feet,
and lettuces are different varieties of lettuce.
i.e. you have kernels of corn, or ears of corn,
a leaf of lettuce or a head of lettuce.
do you brits have different gardens?
This has been discussed before. In British, Australian and New Zealand and maybe South African etc English lettuces is acceptable. Corns looks weird as a plural for vegetables. It was traced back to Beatrix Potter in another thread.
Here’s the thread: forumosa.com/taiwan/viewtopi … 34&start=0
Doesn’t corn also mean grain in the UK?
Thank you “MM”.
That was the discussion I wanted.
(never considered, or new of, buying a “half a lettuce”)
Thanks too for the link to the DUM.
If you search “corns” you get Chewycorns, which for some reason
brings me back to thinking of the feet!
Corn in UK is a generic name for grain, but usually wheat or barley. US corn is known as sweetcorn or maize in UK. Corns are what you get on your feet.
[quote=“Matchstick_man”]This has been discussed before. In British, Australian and New Zealand and maybe South African etc English lettuces is acceptable. Corns looks weird as a plural for vegetables. It was traced back to Beatrix Potter in another thread.
Here’s the thread: forumosa.com/taiwan/viewtopi … 34&start=0[/quote]Agreed. “Lettuces” sounds fine to me, though I may have Peter Rabbit to thank for that. “Corns” are things on your feet.
Old Canuck, what textbook is this, anyway?
joesax-sorry for the delayed answer, i don’t bring these books home.
at work today i made a copy of the publishers page, brought it home
but don’t know how to paste the scan here.
as i said, i work for a franchise - Melody - based out of Taichung.
there are twelve ‘levels’, each with a half dozen books.
a class for me involves teaching two lessons in two of the books, the
“Pupil’s Book” and the “Workbook”. they’re more the size and shape of
magazines, only about 50-60 pages each.
the lesson that prompted this discussion involves two children in
the garden with their aunt - new vocabulary and is/are usage.
the text was written by Nick Beare and Jeanette Greenwell in 1997,
for Macmillan Publishers Ltd in England.
generally i only conduct the oral tests, but i happened to notice one
time that this was on one of their written tests (no surprise!) and i felt
guily for ‘correcting the English’ in the books and leading them to confusion.
while i’m here i may as well unburden myself with another issue.
i’m constantly hounding the kids with pronunciaton -
good not gooDa, fast not fasTa, book not booKa.
the boss has explained that in elementary school they are pushed
to emphasize the consonant at the end of a word, and unfortunately
a few of my local co-workers still do it too.
anybody else get this, or is it just Hakka speakers?
I don’t think it has anything to do with Hakka speakers. Your boss is right that they are pushed to emphasize the consonsant, but your examples are of emphasizing a non-existing vowel after that consonant, which is just wrong. It’s good to pay extra attention to final consonants in class because hard consonants don’t exist in Chinese - only words that end in “n” or “ing” “ong” etc. The best way to correct that tedious extra vowel is to show them how to count syllables - usually one vowel=one syllable, not including “silent” Es or vowel blends.
[quote=“old canuck”]joesax-sorry for the delayed answer, i don’t bring these books home.
at work today i made a copy of the publishers page, brought it home
but don’t know how to paste the scan here.
as i said, i work for a franchise - Melody - based out of Taichung.
there are twelve ‘levels’, each with a half dozen books.
a class for me involves teaching two lessons in two of the books, the
“Pupil’s Book” and the “Workbook”. they’re more the size and shape of
magazines, only about 50-60 pages each.
the lesson that prompted this discussion involves two children in
the garden with their aunt - new vocabulary and is/are usage.
the text was written by Nick Beare and Jeanette Greenwell in 1997,
for Macmillan Publishers Ltd in England.
generally i only conduct the oral tests, but i happened to notice one
time that this was on one of their written tests (no surprise!) and i felt
guily for ‘correcting the English’ in the books and leading them to confusion.[/quote]Well, I think you’re right to point out correct usage. It does seem odd to me that these mistakes got through the Macmillan editorial process. I wonder whether the books you’re using are licensed versions that have been through some further editing in Taiwan.
[quote]while i’m here i may as well unburden myself with another issue.
i’m constantly hounding the kids with pronunciaton -
good not gooDa, fast not fasTa, book not booKa.
the boss has explained that in elementary school they are pushed
to emphasize the consonant at the end of a word, and unfortunately
a few of my local co-workers still do it too.
anybody else get this, or is it just Hakka speakers?[/quote]No, not just Hakka speakers. It’s common with all native speakers of languages in which syllables don’t end in hard consonants.
Kids can pick up better pronunciation quite easily though. When they say things such as “pig-er” just point out that it’s not “pig-er”, just “pig”. When you say “pig-er” they’ll hear that it sounds quite ridiculous, and correct their pronunciation accordingly.
Another thing that helps with this is to concentrate on accurate phonemes when teaching basic phonics. So when you teach the basic sound of the letter “k” it isn’t “ker”; it’s an unvoiced “k” sound. It’s a little more difficult when teaching voiced phonemes such as the basic hard “g” sound. With this it’s hard to avoid a little bit of a vowel sound at the end. But at least you can teach the kids that it’s not a long drawn-out “gerrrr” sound, just a short “g”. Hope that makes sense.