The other day, a kid asked me this grammar question and now it’s really getting on my nerves. Hope someone can tell me what is right. Here’s the problem…
I saw him tell a story.
I saw him telling a story.
The kid asked me if these have different meanings and (as I was stuffing down my dinner with 3 minutes before class) and without really considering it I said they mean the same thing. So he says…(insert whiny, know-it-all voice) but my junior high teacher said the first one means I saw him tell the whole story and the second one means I only saw part of it. :fume:
well, why the f*** are you askin’ me
Is that right? Oh… the loss of face…Now it’s really buggin’ me. What about
I heard a woman sing.
I heard a woman singing.
or
We saw him walk into the bank.
We saw him walking into the bank.
They mean the same thing. Even for a native speaker, the difference is largely contextual. Attempting to explain the difference to a kid who doesn’t speak English is pointless and virtually impossible. What the other teacher told him is…not so much right as it is just an attempt to make it understandable. If you saw someone tell part of a story, you would say “I saw him tell part of a story”.
If you really want to get into it with the student, you would need to explain that the individual sentences are virtually indistinguishable. However, when the sentences are part of a larger paragraph, then the difference becomes important. ie
I saw him tell a story, while he was visiting Taiwan.
I saw him telling a story when he visited Taiwan.
The more you expand the idea, the more the grammar tenses become important to the concept you are trying to get across.
Disclaimer: Not a teacher - no knowledge of proper terminology nor claim to accuracy
The former examples are far less active & lead me to wonder, “So? When? Where? Why do I care?” Was this just now or 10 years ago? They don’t relate directly to a particular instance of that activity, but instead refer to the activity in general, leaving the question of WHEN completely open-ended.
The “ing” examples sound to me as if the speaker is answering a question about/explaining circumstances of a specific occurrence, especially one that’s more recent.
Just the way I interpret it. Pretty sure either usage could work either way, but it depends on context of the conversation & what message the speaker wants to impart.
I would also say the two sentences mean pretty much the same thing. The teacher is probably thinking of the following:
In the Simple Past, a specific time is used to show when an action began or finished. In the Past Continuous, a specific time only interrupts the action.
Examples:
* Last night at 6 PM, I ate dinner.
(I started eating at 6 PM.)
* Last night at 6 PM, I was eating dinner.
(I started earlier; and at 6 PM, I was in the process of eating dinner.)
With simple past, the difference is very clear. What tense does the tell/telling a story fall under?
It’s true that neither “I saw him tell a story” or “I saw him telling a story” is past continuous. However, there is a similarity in the second case.
In “I saw him tell a story”, the meaning is probably more likely to be “I saw him tell an entire story”, while in the second case, it is more likely to be “I saw while he was in the act of telling a story.” That is, the second case may have a similar function to past continuous, through the common use of the present participle (V-ing).
I think that would be the finicky differentiation, but as we all know, most of us aren’t so picky when we are speaking, so they could mean exactly the same thing! But it might shut your student up!
They’re both ‘incorrect’ in that neither have any time marker. Simple pasts almost always have a time marker to contextualise the utterance, otherwise the half-sentence is meaningless. ‘I saw a frog’ So? When? Where? Even if this phrase is answer to the question ‘Which animal did you see yesterday evening, in the garden?’, it would still be a fairly artificial construct.
see is often followed by infinitive and -ing forms, and for see, watch and hear after an object, the -ing form can have a progressive or continuous aspect, but it’s not a rule that works for every verb.
[quote=“Byshguy”]They mean the same thing. Even for a native speaker, the difference is largely contextual. Attempting to explain the difference to a kid who doesn’t speak English is pointless and virtually impossible. What the other teacher told him is…not so much right as it is just an attempt to make it understandable. If you saw someone tell part of a story, you would say “I saw him tell part of a story”.
If you really want to get into it with the student, you would need to explain that the individual sentences are virtually indistinguishable. However, when the sentences are part of a larger paragraph, then the difference becomes important. ie
I saw him tell a story, while he was visiting Taiwan.
I saw him telling a story when he visited Taiwan.
The more you expand the idea, the more the grammar tenses become important to the concept you are trying to get across.
Hope that’s been a help.[/quote]
It’s not helpful at all. He isn’t discussing tense he is discussing aspect. Tense refers to when an action occurs and aspect refers to whether the action is repeated, continuing or completed. In both examples the sentences are in the past tense but in the second one the person describing the action chooses to focus on the continuous aspect of the action occuring in the object clause. They don’t “mean the same thing.” They might very well describe the same event but they don’t “mean the same thing.” Either sentence could describe an event in which the entire story was told but if the entire story were told and there was no reason to focus on the continuous aspect of the noun clause it would be correct to choose the simpler form.
I looked again at where you were wrong again and had to conclude it was everywhere but here…
That part was correct but you might have pointed out that it didn’t make the sentences more understandable. What it did was cause a misunderstanding of the second sentence.
For sure most of what people say about language is pure nonsense. People can use language so they think they can describe it. (Most can’t and the ones who can generally don’t.)
What happens then is that students sit and listen to people making mistakes when they talk about language using concepts that are so comlicated that even if correct would be of no value. They frequently also do this in the wrong language. I sat last week and listened to a woman contradict in Chinese a simple and very useful grammar pattern what I was trying to demonstrate. She sat there in my class lecturing in Chinese and got everything precisely wrong. Unfortunately or not for her I learned chinese by learning to explain English grammar in Chinese.
It was a good way to learn Chinese and a really lousy way to teach English.
I saw him singing (at the train station/last thursday/at 8:00.) - time/location specific
I saw him sing (before/that song before/at that place before, etc…at some point in life). - self explanatory
While “I saw him sing at the train station last Thursday” is understandable, it sounds wrong. It’s a statement of a non-significant event. It’s like saying “I washed my hair at 8:00 this morning”. So what? If you say “I was washing my hair at 8:00”, that fits into the context of a conversational question/statement involving what was happening at the time, like “I called you at 8 this morning (why didn’t you answer?)”.
That’s the general rule that should be taught. There are exceptions, like for significant events. “I saw him (a recording artist) play/perform last Monday”.
Best way to teach it IMO it to use those guidelines with the example sentences and put them in the context of a conversation to show why or why not they are appropriate.
When following the verbs see, hear, watch, and feel, the object plus infinitive is used to talk about a completed action, while the obect plus -ing form is used to talk about an action going on.
After some other verbs, such as begin, continue, intend, and start, both the -ing and infinitive forms are possible with very little difference in meaning.
Anyway, it’s rude to watch people, so don’t do it.
Don’t know if it’s helpful or not, but the reason your student’s teacher probably taught that is because it’s word for word out of “English Grammar in Use”
What the book says:
“I saw him do something” = he did something (past simple) and I saw this. I saw the complete action from beginning to end.
“I saw him doing something” = he was doing something (past continuous) and I saw this. I saw him when he was in the middle of doing it. This does not mean I saw the complete action.
…
Sorry, I just had to go through this book recently, so that’s why your post sounds familiar. Anyway, I think the book has the basics right, but no grammar book can adequately explain all the exceptions in regular speech. And as it’s difficult to teach a child all of these things, the teacher probably just went word for word through the book.
I think that, although the examples were not strictly past continuous, they might often be used convey the same impression of the observed action (with all deference to special verbs), that being, simple form of verb inferring completion, and present participle implying continuous uncompleted action.
I’ll even dare to disagree with Buttercup about a time reference being necessary within that particular sentence. It could be imbedded in the context or it could have been in a previous sentence.
I hate these weird -ing forms. You always know what is the correct form, without knowing why (unless you’re Stray Dog). I had somebody against me on something like “What I want to do is clean the floor.” vs. “What I want to do is cleaning the floor.” and I remember some questions about “I woke up feeling excited.”
All the websites only seem to post the most basic forms. Drives me nuts.
Get hold of ‘Practical English Usage’ by Michael Swan. It’s comprehensive yet really easy to use and gives you the grammar from a learner point of view.
[quote=“Tiare”]Don’t know if it’s helpful or not, but the reason your student’s teacher probably taught that is because it’s word for word out of “English Grammar in Use”
What the book says:
“I saw him do something” = he did something (past simple) and I saw this. I saw the complete action from beginning to end.
“I saw him doing something” = he was doing something (past continuous) and I saw this. I saw him when he was in the middle of doing it. This does not mean I saw the complete action. [/quote]
That is almost exactly correct. It should say “I saw him while he was doing it.” Middle implies middle. Maybe it took him ten years to build a building and you saw him six months in.
Anyway that isn’t what the OP said. What the OP said was…
That’s wrong.
It doesn’t mean you only saw part of it. It means you saw him while he was telling it. You would chose to frame it that way if another even occured simultaneously…
I saw him telling a story one time and he forgot what he was talking about and then the phone rang and he suddenly remembered the story but forgot to answer the phone. Gosh he is stupid. Anyway, it was a great story.
Nobody would come out of the blue and say “I saw him telling a story” so there is absolutley no point it discussing what it might mean.
Honestly, I’m not just trying to be irritating here. “English Grammar in Use” is probably one of the better grammar books. It isn’t exactly right. The teacher who we think might have read that book definitely wasn’t exactly right. You weren’t right when you read the OPs description of the event and I am likely somehow not right in my analysis of this whole situation. In my original post in response to this topic I made a glaring mistake that apparently nobody noticed. Don’t look, I cleaned it up.
The point (my point I guess) is that most people really screw up when they talk about language and most people can’t learn a language by listening to people talk about them anyway. People need to be able to “see” what words and structures “mean” and those words and structures need to be drilled till they are engrained.
Good for what? Certainly not teaching. If I wanted to illustrate the difference between the two I’d grab the second best looking one (not really, my bravado is “always” a joke - I really hope you know that) and giver her a peck on the lips and ask, “Did you see me kiss her?” I’d emphasize the instananeous nature of it physically and with tone of voice. It is really easy to do. Then I’d grab the very best looking one and kiss her till her ears caved in and ask “Did you see me kissing her?” I’d emphasize the continuous nature of it physically and with tone of voice. Again, very easy to do. I’d repeat both with different objects, different subjects, perhaps with a few different modifiers Again, very easy to do. They need to “see” what you “mean” and they need to drill the vocabulary and structures. An explanation of the rules is generally of no use whatsoever. If it was of any use you wouldn’t meet students who had read all the grammar books but still can’t talk very well and when they do talk are making mistakes talking about grammar.
This example has nothing to do with the original “rule” of course which was likely your intention anyway. The rules say:
“I saw him do something” = he did something (past simple) and I saw this. I saw the complete action from beginning to end.
I saw him doing something" = he was doing something (past continuous) and I saw this. I saw him when he was in the middle of doing it. This does not mean I saw the complete action.
But in this example the choice between one and the other doesn’t depend on whether or not you observed the event in it’s entirety. It depends on the nature of the event. The rule says nothing about that.