kitchen table math, the sequel: Gone fishing

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Gone fishing

In Illinois for a couple of days.
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14 comments:

Catherine Johnson said...

Funny moment at dinner last night. I asked everyone what the most common verb in spoken English is, and the middle schooler at the table said, "What's a verb?"

I can't say I did a particularly good job explaining it.

April 18, 2012 at 1:47 PM
Catherine Johnson said...

That reminds me. The other day I wrote the words "the cat in the hat" on the board & one of my students thought "in" was a verb. This is a very sharp student, btw.

April 18, 2012 at 1:50 PM
SATVerbalTutor. said...

Here's the shortcut: if you can stick "to" in front of it, it's a verb. I use it with my students who are weaker grammar-wise, and it helps them a whole lot when they're trying to figure out whether a word is a verb.

April 18, 2012 at 5:20 PM
Anonymous said...

That's not a fail-safe shortcut, though, because "to" can be a preposition as well as an infinitive marker. What do you do if they start identify prepositional phrases rather than verbs, then?

April 18, 2012 at 7:52 PM
Anonymous said...

In Russian the verb definition is simple: it is a word that answers the question: to do what? does what? did what? to run, to see, to talk etc.
Is and are are problematic though...

Exo

April 18, 2012 at 8:08 PM
SteveH said...

I remember my first Russian class in college. Boris (the professor) had us saying things like (phonetically)

Eta lampa? Da, eta lampa.

Translated to:

That lamp? Yes, that lamp.

I wondered where the verb went. It sounded like caveman talk, but Boris always complained about how in English people would say things like:

I got "dis" and I got "dat".

I still remember his contempt. This was during the Nixon/detente era and it was radical to take Russian. I didn't like all of the noun forms. I felt like I had to conjugate the nouns. Then again, if you could pronounce the words, you had a chance of knowing what they meant.

April 19, 2012 at 4:58 AM
SATVerbalTutor. said...

@ Anonymous, no, it's not a fail-safe shortcut, nor is it intended to be; it doesn't work for most forms of "to be," which is unfortunately tested a whole lot on the SAT, but it does work for most verbs. I haven't actually seen anyone get confused w/prepositional phrases, though. Usually when they stick the "to" on, they can hear that something is or is not a verb. For a kid who doesn't know a whole lot about grammar, it's much more effective than sitting and pondering whether something really qualifies as an action.

April 19, 2012 at 7:42 PM
GoogleMaster said...

If Catherine has gone fishin', does that mean we can hijack this thread for whatever?

Victory! "Texas schoolchildren should not use calculators until they learn to work through math problems the old-fashioned way — on paper, State Board of Education members said Thursday.

The board on Thursday tentatively approved new math curriculum standards designed to add rigor while encouraging students from kindergarten through fifth grade to learn basic math without the aid of calculators."

http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/State-board-wants-calculators-out-of-grade-3496172.php

April 19, 2012 at 10:16 PM
Catherine Johnson said...

<< If Catherine has gone fishin', does that mean we can hijack this thread for whatever? >>

Nope

April 20, 2012 at 7:41 AM
Catherine Johnson said...

<< Victory! "Texas schoolchildren should not use calculators until they learn to work through math problems the old-fashioned way — on paper, State Board of Education members said Thursday. >>

Woo hoo!!!

April 20, 2012 at 7:42 AM
Catherine Johnson said...

Erica - great! Thanks!

I'll add that to the test I use:

1. What tense is the sentence in?

So far all of the native speakers in my classes have been able to answer this question, although students sometimes have to think about it for a few seconds.

I don't have enough experience w/ESL students to generalize.

2. Change the tense.

Again, native speakers can do this ALTHOUGH they often have to think about it.

3. What word changed form? That's the verb (or part of it).

4. TO FIND THE SUBJECT: What word goes w/the word that changed form?

Generally speaking, this works, and it has the virtue of underlining the fact that verbs change form w/tense.

The problem comes with participles, which don't change form...

I find that students essentially never know that 'the verb' can be more than one word.

English doesn't a future tense, but so far I haven't found that to be a problem using this test.

April 20, 2012 at 7:54 AM
Catherine Johnson said...

Actually, I tend to like hijackings.

April 20, 2012 at 7:55 AM
Catherine Johnson said...

The real problem I was having was defing verb in a way that rang any bells w/the student I was talking to. (Defining, as opposed to explaining how to pick it out.)

April 20, 2012 at 9:08 AM
Catherine Johnson said...

I'm reading Greenbaum $ Nelson's Intro to Grammar, which is terrific - best (most engaging) grammar text I've found thus far.

They say all verbs include an 'operator' (which is what the rest of us call an 'auxiliary' or a 'helping' verb. They say, too, that singl-word verbs should be thought of as having 'dummy' operators.

Next semester, I'm going to teach that idea from the get-go.

I think it will help with the participle problem.

'I was swimming.'
'I am swimming.'

'Was' & 'am' are the operators.

April 20, 2012 at 9:14 AM

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