Spoken ‘gonna’ (and ‘wanna’) is perfectly acceptable in American Standard speech. As has been pointed out, in the future tense it is always distinguished from the present participle of the verb go.
In reply to “Where are you going?” you never say “I’m gonna the beach”; the other person would say “You’re gonna do what at the beach?”
The problem is the junior high school Grade 1 English textbook explains the terms (in Chinese) without saying they are only used in speech, not writing- at least it used to.
Right. That’s my point. Potential for students’ use of these forms in non-standard/incorrect forms is the danger of introducing them in the first place. Text/articles (even transcribed) should avoid them. First steps first.
It’s the bane of my existence. When teaching elementary school students and junior high school students I’m aware that my job is preparing them for eventually going to university.
But even the brightest and most diligent are thrown a curve ball by the use of contractions in the textbooks.
An example just today.
Text book provides example: “He’s bought the cake, but he hasn’t bought the candles.”
Student answers the next question: “They are bought the donuts, but they haven’t bought the popcorn.”
It’s really unfair on the students to cause such confusion under the pretext that this is “natural” English.
Even adult ESL students get confused about the difference between “they’re, their, and there.”
For God’s sake, let them learn the formal grammar required to master the language before attempting to teach them how to be cool in the neighborhood slinging high fives and saying “wassup, bro.”
Maybe not, but I might say something sounding like “gowenduhthuh beach”. If I stop and examine what my tongue is doing while rolling off that phrase, it’s a somewhat interesting sequence. It seems to be making three different stops at three distinct positions in the mouth, in rapid succession. There’s the “nnn” at the end of “gowen” with the tip touching the hard palate; then shortly thereafter the tongue is released from this position to make the “duh” sound corresponding to “to”, then finally the tongue is placed between the teeth for the “thuh” (the) sound.
Just for fun: try entering the phase “国文肚子比去” into Google Translate and clicking on the little speaker icon to listen to the spoken Mandarin.
Right. The statement is “gowendown”, not “gonna”. It’s a quick statement of the phrase ‘going down’. Re-insert ‘gonna’ and it means you’re going to down the beach. Good swallow!
But, yea, it’s irritating too have to correct ‘gonna’ and ‘wanna’ in written work, especially as it usually comes from the kid who has been paying attention enough to notice the mention of the usage, and is quite proud of using “native-language” speech patterns.
I used to teach my students not to use slang until they were very fluent, especially swearing, as it’s really difficult to use appropriately. Inevitably, they seemed to get their language from Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. Like the well-known passer-by who knows three English phrases: “Hello”, “I love you” and “Fuck you”, which he often uses interchangeably.
On the other end of the spectrum, I had a friend ask me extensively about usage of ‘shall’ and ‘lest’ since his grammar book taught those words, including that ‘should’ is the past tense of ‘shall’ Not sure why he keeps using this book, as I’ve told him multiple separate times that a lot of what it’s teaching is never used in the modern day.
I suppose my point is that it may be tricky to try and hit the happy medium of ‘not too colloquial’ and ‘not too shakespearean’ especially when a lot of the materials/teachers are from Taiwan.
“How good a book this is.”
Had a Taiwanese teacher haul up a kid for me to reprimand because he pronounced what as ‘wat’ instead of ‘hwat’ like she had been taught with K.K.
I’ve seen Taiwanese people write “gonna” and “wanna” in formal academic writings. My philosophy is that students should learn to recognize it when they see it written or hear it spoken, but never write it unless it’s a direct written quote of written material (e.g., Never Gonna Give You Up).