Sorry for the question, dear English teachers, but all my teaching materials/grammar books are in storage, so I am in trouble here. I’m helping my boss’ daughter prepare for an oral test. She’s fairly fluent, has some vocabulary problems -weird as they read TIME in English, not the recycled stuff, and at that level me thinks she should be OKish, but no. However, the most serious problem I’ve noticed after just one session is that she’s using adverbs, or rather, the adverbial form of words, instead of adjetives in sentences where they should be, stuff like I am carefully instead of I am careful. All the time. Aside from the task of battling a fossilized mistake/structure, I would like to explain this or illustrate it in a differnet way from the usual grammar approach. Has anybody encountered this problem before and how have they faced it, hopefully solved it?
Input, input, input! Sneak a billion adverbs and adjectives into your normal conversations or sentences so that she doesn’t even realise you’re doing it. Lengthy grammar explanations or forced examples (and production on her part) probably won’t cut it, and will also bore her to tears unless she’s the kind of kid who plans to major in linguistics eventually.
I have this gorgeous functional approach book somewhere that would be perfect. Input, input… gotta find input… Muchas gracias, Senor in Taiwan. Will do as suggested.
Input is great if your students will actually listen. I can give them input all day, but they don’t even pay attention.
I TRY to give them input, but they don’t put any of it in.
I find that people only pay attention to vocabulary words or memorize phrases, and never even try to figure out how sentences go together. They just wait for me to stop talking and write another word on the board so they can look it up in their electronic dictionaries instead of listening to me use it. If I write it down they write it down and look up every word in the sentence in their dictionaries. If I speak, I get blank looks. Good job, guys! You totally missed the point, yet again. Way to go. They’ll wait for me to finish explaining it, and then ask me what it means. TRY LISTENING. I have no idea what they can and can’t understand… I can’t teach to their eyes because I only see the tops of their heads. Even my highest level students can’t properly write down a short phrase unless I stop and write it on the board. Their listening is abysmal. “The phrase is ‘how are you doing’” “Oh, ‘how your are do today’”. No no no …
I used to give listening comprehension activities during a movie class, where they’d watch a scene 4-5 times (first WITH subtitles), and then fill in some blanks… like one word per line. I’d say the average score was about 2/10. I picked easy scenes, and asked them totally normal words, nothing strange. I thought Taiwanese students were good at memorization. They could just memorize the subtitles the first time (hell, they had the sheet in front of them, they could just write them in as they see them), but they never even figured out that much.
Then they get mad at me because “Oh you speak too slow and waste time! We can listen to natural English!!! 
” No… no you can’t. They always have a reason why their way is the best despite their total inability to do anything. I tried circling, but that’s “too easy”. Well, that’s kind of the point… I think the key is to just always pat them on their little heads and tell them they’re smart even though they barely know how to say hello.
Sometimes they use their dictionaries to find some obscure word nobody on Earth ever uses and they’ll interrupt my example sentences to ask me if they can use that word instead. They’ll never answer my questions, but their nonsense is extremely important. This is what they spend their time doing instead of trying to pay attention to a single thing I say. These people honestly haven’t even figured out that listening is a good thing. I can’t believe the amount of wasted time in Taiwan. It’s like monkeys on typewriters expecting something to magically appear.
I’ve explained this stuff so many times too… kill me now.
Input is fine, and explaining is obvious, but for me I find the most important thing about teaching anything is concept checking and practical experience.
Give them opportunities to USE the information. When I was taught the art of teaching English it was stressed many many times that students need to USE the language, to have experience with and practice it. The idea is to take it from the ears/textbooks/brains and get them comfortable with and thinking in the language. One of the main criteria we were judged on is the time ratio of teacher/student speaking. If the teacher was speaking 80-90% of the time and students were only using the target language 10-20% the teacher would always get reminded of his/her role in the learning process. Get the students using the target language, make it fun.
Taiwan students spend their whole lives using Taiwanese/Mandarin. One of our roles as teachers is to give them a safe, encouraging and helpful environment to practice their new language skills. While our mis-informed managers/bosses think our role is to stand up front and cram them full of information, our real job is provide an environment conducive to using the target language. Students should be doing the majority of speaking, not the teacher.
Teach and explain the theory and usage of verbs-adverbs, nouns-adjectives and ask concept checking questions while you are explaining. Then give them exercises to use and experiment with adverbs/adjectives. These should start simple and become more and complex and challenging as they start to feel comfortable.
From my experience, students love working with adverbs and adjectives. They give color and life to sentences. Give them tons of adverbs/adjectives and let them take the ball and run with it. Soon the whole class will be laughing, learning and having fun. Let them make sentences or give them a basic skeleton and allow them to embellish it and give it life.
TaiwanVisitor: There are two things you need to do. The first is to try to change their expectations. That’s a big ask, I know. The second is to sneak in the input (circling) without them even knowing it. It might be a case of you having to pick only a little bit of stuff (that which you consider the most important) and really working only on that.
Homey: You’re assuming that output is preferable to input in the acquisition process. How’s that communicative approach working out here in Taiwan? At best, it’s producing tons of Chinglish speakers, at worst it’s producing completely inept speakers and writers a la what TaiwanVisitor has described. It also sounds like you’ve never heard of things like the affective filter. Why should the student do the majority of the talking? What if they don’t want to? What if they don’t feel comfortable? What if that just produces, and reinforces, the same old mistakes? A room full of Chinglish speakers don’t suddenly teach each other correct English. Why is it that native speakers of pretty much any language could actually use all sorts of language that they rarely, if ever use, or maybe have never used, if necessary? Output simply doesn’t explain the ability to accurately use language that is so rarely used for output.
Funnily enough, I, and billions of other people on the planet, learnt to use adjectives and adverbs without ever being sat down and instructed in the theoretical usage of such things, and then told to do substitution drills.
It’s working out great here in Taiwan. Thanks for asking.
It’s exactly what these students need. It’s painfully obvious that the old “Teacher speaks —> Students listen” model isn’t working. It’s mind boggling how so many students can spend years “learning” English, yet very very few can actually speak the language. The old model simply doesn’t work. The hilarious Taiwan method where you crank up the volume using a microphone and speakers doesn’t make any difference. No matter how loud, the students just tune it out. There is a reason why Taiwan lags behind other countries in overall English ability and it has nothing to do with not getting enough instruction. A large percentage of Taiwanese that can’t speak English have spent many years “learning” it.
Language needs to be practiced. Students need to be challenged to put the pieces together in many different ways. Burn in those neural pathways. This is most effectively done through thinking, speaking, and using the language.
Adjective; How are things? How things are.
Adverb:; How do you do things? How things are done.
She is a careful student. She studies carefully.
Adjective: How is the student? or What is the student like?
She is a careful student.
Adverb: How does she study?
She studies carefully.
good/well
He is a good singer. How is the singer? Singer = noun
He sings well. How does he sing? Sing = verb.
The questions asked lead to the answer adj. or adv.
Practice these questions every time you spot an adj/adv. and your student eventually will get the point.
I’ve had a lot of luck lately with my students and getting them to at least realize their fossilized errors.
Student: “I’m going to Taipei tomorrow to play.”
Me: “What will you play?”
Student: :
:
Me: “Will you play basketball? Baseball? Video games?”
Student: “Oh. I will travel to Taipei tomorrow.”
Student: “Teacher, remember to close the air conditioner.”
Me: “It’s not open.”
Student: “Oh. Turn off the air conditioner.”
If I treat it like they meant to say what they said, they notice it more. In this case, you might want to try:
“I will be carefully.”
“What will you carefully do?”
She may intellectually know how to fix it. Once it becomes known that it causes an actual communication problem, she’ll be more conscious of it every time you ask about it. Add that with input and it’ll improve.
You have to make lists and have them memorize them:
She is beautiful. She dances beautifully.
He is slow. He thinks slowly.
She is dutiful. She obeys him dutifully.
He is studious. He studies studiously.
Be poetic and slightly Confucian.
This is how I learned it at high school in Taipei, and seemed to work for me for all these years.
Adjectives are to modify nouns.
Ex: Beautiful trees
Adverbs are to modify verbs (thus Ad-verbs). Many adverbs end with ‘ly’
Ex: Run beautifully
[quote=“Homey”]It’s working out great here in Taiwan. Thanks for asking.
It’s exactly what these students need. It’s painfully obvious that the old “Teacher speaks —> Students listen” model isn’t working. It’s mind boggling how so many students can spend years “learning” English, yet very very few can actually speak the language. The old model simply doesn’t work. The hilarious Taiwan method where you crank up the volume using a microphone and speakers doesn’t make any difference. No matter how loud, the students just tune it out. There is a reason why Taiwan lags behind other countries in overall English ability and it has nothing to do with not getting enough instruction. A large percentage of Taiwanese that can’t speak English have spent many years “learning” it.
Language needs to be practiced. Students need to be challenged to put the pieces together in many different ways. Burn in those neural pathways. This is most effectively done through thinking, speaking, and using the language.[/quote]
You’ve completely managed to miss the entire point of what I’ve been writing about. You’re fighting a strawman because I’m not talking about the old way. I actually don’t disagree with you that the old way is a complete nonsense. Yet the “teacher speaks, students listen” model you’re talking about isn’t input anyway. It’s a linguistics lesson about English, delivered virtually entirely in Chinese. The amount of English input is virtually zero. That’s not what I’m talking about though.
Language does not need to be practised. That’s not how any native speaker learns to speak his first language, and it’s not how people effectively learn subsequent languages. Output is the consequence of language acquisition, not the cause of it. You didn’t answer any of my questions on these matters, and you also didn’t address my point about the affective filter.
[quote=“fh2000”]This is how I learned it at high school in Taipei, and seemed to work for me for all these years.
Adjectives are to modify nouns.
Ex: Beautiful trees
Adverbs are to modify verbs (thus Ad-verbs). Many adverbs end with ‘ly’
Ex: Run beautifully[/quote]
To add to that, adverbs also modify adjectives. I don’t think it’s a problem of the person knowing the information as much as using it correctly.
The noun is adjective. The book is blue.
The noun verb/s adverb. The book runs quickly. hahahah
[quote=“Battery9”]The noun is adjective. The book is blue.
The noun verb/s adverb. The book runs quickly. hahahah[/quote]
“Colorless green ideas sleep furiously” — Noam Chomsky, 1957