English Language Learners

10:00 AM

Hehe, I have already added it to my alloy list. :-)

About it being written by a native or non-native speaker, I think, to be fair, we should pretend not knowing the writer's name.

Even with such pretending, the language should tell a lot of things, given that the text is long enough.

Jim Reynolds

Well, there is also an opportunity to hit at the myth that there is a correct English.

Damkerng T.

nods

Jim Reynolds

@snailboat Hiiiiii

Damkerng T.

> This is a blog entry from a website in Thailand (where traditionally Britsh English is taught). Its usage of a space before a comma (,) or period (.) is not in accord with standard UK and US usage.

Oh, no! Why did he use that piece of writing as an example?!

Good morning, @snailboat!

Jim Reynolds

What's a blog entry . . . ?

Damkerng T.

10:05 AM

Exteen is something equivalent to Blogspot, but for Thais.

So, the quality of English will vary very widely.

Jim Reynolds

What the ^*)(*# are you talking about?

In "This is a blog entry . . . ." What does this refer to?

Damkerng T.

Oh, I see. I forgot to add the link.

Jim Reynolds

0.O

Damkerng T.

That excerpt was taken from our answer: ell.stackexchange.com/a/54010/3281.

Jim Reynolds

You . . . forgot . . . to ....

There will be a trial.

Damkerng T.

10:08 AM

trembling...

Jim Reynolds

:-)

Anonymous

Unfortunately, Krashen is responsible for some colossal failures in language education, like "whole language". He's got one key insight which I think everyone can agree with (learners need lots and lots of input), but he's not really much of a scientist

Jim Reynolds

I tend to ignore certain people's long and weird answers.

Anonymous

A lot of things he says are simply false

Anonymous

So I'd avoid the radical side of Krashenism…

Jim Reynolds

10:09 AM

:-(

Anonymous

But his key insight about having lots and lots of input is correct

Damkerng T.

Ah, "learners need lots and lots of input" is basically the same key I used to ~~master~~ improve my badminton skills.

Jim Reynolds

I must admit, I was a very naive Krashenivist.

I'm an English teacher who's never taken a TESOL class!

But my academic background has a fair amount of more general learning and teaching research.

Damkerng T.

I followed a blog of a TESOL teacher who writes about her experience during her teaching in Thailand. (I just read her posts, not really followed her on a social networking thingy.) I think a TESOL class is unnecessary.

Jim Reynolds

Put that together with my experience in classrooms over the past seven years, and I find that helping people use English to communicate about things they care about, things they love, or things that involve their emotions works.

Anonymous

10:14 AM

That's a good insight

Jim Reynolds

Well, some research shows that for children who immigrate to the US from countries where they spoke another language, in general, ESL classes don't help with English acquisition.

Anonymous

Are you familiar with Nutall's Vicious Circle of the Weak Reader and Virtuous Circle of the Good Reader?

Anonymous

Anonymous

Jim Reynolds

People will learn it on their own if they want to become members of an L2 speaking group, and if they get . . .

Absolutely makes sense. So yes, I think Krashen and company made some boo-boos there.

The better question is about supporting and encouraging reading.

Of course, considering larger social contexts, which is easy to not do.

As well as controversial, then emotional.

Still, I think we are so stuck in rote memorization of vocabulary words and grammar facts as "the" way to learn English, that most people need a comparatively radical alternative in order to get out of outdated theories.

What effect does marking a question as "favorite" bring about?

What's an efficient way to keep track of questions we're interested in following?

Anonymous

10:22 AM

You subscribe to a list of updates on that question―edits, comments, new answers, and so forth―which you can see on your profile page

Jim Reynolds

Hmm..

I thought I saw an option like that once upon a time

Damkerng T.

Or you can leave 1000+ tabs open. :P

Anonymous

A number will show up next to the word "favorites" if there are updates

Jim Reynolds

@Dam Shhh!

A sane person is here now.

Ahem. Snailboat, I'm looking at a question. How do I subscribe to it?

Anonymous

Click a star

Jim Reynolds

10:25 AM

That sounds like a song from a musical.

Anonymous

The star is to the left of the question, under the upvote and downvote buttons

Jim Reynolds

Oh, ok, ok. I got it. Your answer means, that favoriting something has those effects.

It subscribes you to updates which you can see on your profile page.

Click!

OK. Carry on with the robot.

But he didn't sleep very much today, and he has >1000 ELL-related tabs open on his browser or browsers. If in fact he is not himself a browser.

Damkerng T.

fancying fusing itself into a browser...

... and becoming, a browser-bot!

Hmm... that doesn't sound very cool. I'd better change my mind...

Jim Reynolds

We want you to stay you.

We like you you.

Not browser you.

Damkerng T.

Yay! Thank you! I'll keep myself being me me!

Jim Reynolds

10:30 AM

We prefer to browse with browser browsers.

Damkerng T.

By the way, before I will forget, here are error categories that might help teachers cope with students' errors.

Anonymous

~~will~~

Damkerng T.

Category 0: Perfect English (no correction needed)

Hmm...

I didn't mean it in the sense of before this thing happens.

But maybe that's unidiomatic in English.

Anonymous

before I will forget doesn't make sense

Anonymous

Because the state of something occurring in the future has no beginning point

Damkerng T.

10:38 AM

How can I say, "before the time that I might forget, which I think I will forget, comes" idiomatically?

(Note that will is not about a point in time, but it's about the likelihood of a point in time.)

Anonymous

before I forget is a common phrase meaning you think you might forget in the future, so you want to say or do something now

Damkerng T.

I see.

Jim Reynolds

And now did you forget?

Damkerng T.

So it's unlike If you will consider this.

Anonymous

Yes, that's different

Damkerng T.

10:41 AM

Or the other exception which I remember exists but don't remember what it is.

Anonymous

Exception?

Jim Reynolds

snailboat, what question did you put a bounty on?

Damkerng T.

Please forgive my sleepiness. I can't think straight right now.

But basically, If you will consider this is an exception in my idea.

Anonymous

6

Q: Is the "doubly remote" conditional construction optional?

BACKGROUND In the 2002 reference grammar by Huddleston and Pullum (et al.), The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (CGEL), Anita Mittwoch and Rodney Huddleston and Peter Collins talk about "the doubly remote conditional construction" on page 754: The doubly remote conditional construc...

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Ah, I see

Jim Reynolds

10:49 AM

More categories!

Damkerng T.

> I've finally stopped the children from fighting,
a) but it won't be long before they'll be at it again.
b) but it won't be long before they're at it again.

Jim Reynolds

The tension between error correction and encouraging/allowing people to continue with a train of thought is here manifest while the very subject of discussion. How meta.

Damkerng T.

I think this is another exception I was thinking about. (Which somehow I thought my case "before I will forget" was similar.)

Jim Reynolds

c) by murdering all of them.

Damkerng T.

Well, back to my categories. Maybe it'd be better if I write them in Notepad first.

(So it won't interrupt the chat flow.)

Anonymous

10:53 AM

Oh, then you could put them in one big multi-line message

Anonymous

Sorry for interrupting with ~~will~~!

Jim Reynolds

How many Notepad docs do you have open?

Anonymous

@JimReynolds I habitually offer corrections for people who've asked for them

Damkerng T.

Actually, I don't use Notepad. I use SciTE. It has 5 tabs now.

Jim Reynolds

Me too!

Damkerng T.

10:54 AM

@snailboat Don't worry! My sleepiness makes my kinda slow. :-)

Anonymous

I try to keep track of who wants corrections and who doesn't, but sometimes I get confused :-)

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. makes me kinda slow :-)

Damkerng T.

Oh, that's a typo for sure! :-)

Jim Reynolds

(To snailboat). I like your corrections, too. Including to me.

Anonymous

I'm not sure I've ever had a correction for you

Jim Reynolds

10:57 AM

Snailboat, then once I've favorited questions, do I click on any certain option or view on my profile page?

Anonymous

Native speakers do make errors, but they tend to be categorically different from the sorts of errors non-native speakers make, since native speakers acquire the grammar of their language more or less completely at a young age

Jim Reynolds

Ohhhhh!

There's "Favorites."

Anonymous

Though it depends, since people acquire non-standard varieties of English natively, and the acquisition of the standard variety can be incomplete…

Jim Reynolds

Yes. I'm interested enough about my own language to take in any observations that someone with your knowledge has.

Anonymous

Native speaker errors can be pretty interesting, though.

Jim Reynolds

10:59 AM

It's a special space in here, after all, isn't it?

Damkerng T.

> Category 0: Perfect English (no correction needed)
Category 1: Passable English (unidiomatic but acceptable; make the correction only occasionally)
Category 2: Spontaneous Error (the student recognizes the error, but may make it spontaneously; the student can correct the error by themselves in writing; correction is unnecessary but useful)
Category 3: Known Error (the student recognizes the error, but may make it both spontaneously and in writing; the student cannot correct the error themselves; correction is required)

Anonymous

Hey, you typed that faster than I expected! :-)

Jim Reynolds

Thanks Dam.

lol

Yeah. And even while sleepy!

Damkerng T.

Hehe! Before I forget! :-)

Anonymous

Native speakers make lots of errors that fall into what you call category 2.

Jim Reynolds

11:00 AM

And then . . . do I recall reading that snailboat makes "brainos"?

Anonymous

Like, I might mix up -ing and -ed in writing or speech every now and then, but I can realize that on my own and fix it :-)

Anonymous

@JimReynolds Oh, yes. My brain makes all sorts of errors. Stupid brain!

Jim Reynolds

slaps snailboat's brain a few times.

Anonymous

Yeah! Take that, brain!

Jim Reynolds

:D

Damkerng T.

11:01 AM

I spot one Cat 2 in my Category List!

Jim Reynolds

One of your own?

Or mine?

Damkerng T.

(I have a feeling that I will spot more if I try hard enough.)

Mine.

Anonymous

It's in the last line.

Jim Reynolds

slaps Damkerng T.

Damkerng T.

Ouch!

Anonymous

11:02 AM

A stray -s!

Jim Reynolds

My hand is getting sore. Imma take my dogs and my person out to get dinner.

Damkerng T.

smacking the s!

@JimReynolds Have a nice evening!

Anonymous

Poor inflectional affix!

Jim Reynolds

snailboat, do you know this thing where people say something while pretending to cough or sneeze for comedic effect?

Anonymous

Yes

Jim Reynolds

11:03 AM

What could it be called, or how can we even just find an example of it online?

I couldn't!

So far.

I believe there's no name for it, but I'd think it shouldn't be so hard to find examples from movies, etc.

I mean I would believe it if there is no name for it; and I'd believe it if there is a name for it.

Anonymous

There's an ELU question for it, but it doesn't appear to have any real answers

Anonymous

9

Q: Is there a term for "*cough*<something>*cough*"?

What I mean is the act of "coughing" something that you don't actually want to (or rather dare) say outright. So instead of writing, say, "Miss Parker", you'd write "*cough*Ms Parker*cough*" or fake a cough that sounds very much like "Miss Parker". Written and spoken differ in that of course, w...

linguistics

Jim Reynolds

*Native speaker's error!!

O.o

Anonymous

tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CoughSnarkCough

Jim Reynolds

O.O

o.O

Anonymous

11:06 AM

I don't know a name for it

Anonymous

And my attempts to find one online have failed! Or at least, I've exhausted the amount of time I'm willing to spend on searching :-)

Anonymous

I'm an inveterate overpunctuator. I put, commas, where, they, don't, belong

Damkerng T.

If my sentence is missing commas next time, I know where I can find the missing commas now.

Anonymous

Yay!

Damkerng T.

Maybe commas attract more commas!

Anonymous

11:10 AM

And if you put enough together commas, you get a singularity!

Damkerng T.

Oh, no!

Anonymous

Sorry, my homework is past an event horizon!

Damkerng T.

I have to tend my garden for a bit. Be back later!

Jim Reynolds

11:42 AM

Oh. Second reference I noticed to @Dam's garden.

Damkerng T.

Yeah! I just came back in.

Jim Reynolds

Does it include vegetables?

Damkerng T.

Only a few. It's easier to think of my garden as a small forest. :-)

Jim Reynolds

I'm a wanna-be gardener.

Luna would be so happy there!

Damkerng T.

The garden came with the house.

Hehe! I'm sure that Luna will find a lot of friends here (or competitors!).

My snails are really good at hiding.

(and consuming my plants!)

Jim Reynolds

11:45 AM

:-)

Damkerng T.

@JimReynolds You live in an apartment. I imagine that you have a balcony of some kind.

Could be a good spot for growing something.

When I was still living in my apartment, growing that kind of grass brought me great joy!

I don't know why I really like green things. :-)

It's a shame that you don't look green in your photo. :P

Sometimes I think we don't have many questions a day, but when I check our stats, it's always above 20 Qs/day.

Hmm... Looks like it's dropped a bit. I remember it was like 25 Qs/day. Now it's 21.

Anonymous

There's a weekly cycle and an annual cycle

Anonymous

And some noise

Damkerng T.

nods -- The annual graph must be interesting!

Anonymous

Moderators have those graphs

Damkerng T.

11:55 AM

Ahh

Oh, I found an interesting string of English: but I'm afraid then that. It's a 5-word string that doesn't look that unidiomatic, but there are fewer than 20 results.

(Exactly one result on Google Books.)

Anonymous

That's okay, native speakers put together phrases no one's ever said before all the time

Anonymous

You could put commas around the then if you wanted

Anonymous

But I'm afraid, then, that ...

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

(People probably don't, but you can, and it shows that it's set off from the rest of the sentence)

Damkerng T.

11:59 AM

I like it with commas better in this case.

Ping me! Ping me!

Oh, I forgot. I can ping myself...

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Beep!

Damkerng T.

Aww... It still sounds the same. But thanks!

I wanted to test my new Bluetooth speaker.

It sounds less hurtful than when it pings on my headset, I think.

Jim Reynolds

Hmmm. Sounds hurtful.

snailboat, tell him what's wrong with that.

Before I tell him something that really sounds hurtful.

Anonymous

Hurtful is usually used for things that cause emotional distress, especially words

Anonymous

12:14 PM

So, it's usually applied to things people say, not sounds made by machines

Damkerng T.

I know that It hurts my ears is safe, but isn't there anything as concise as hurtful that can express the feeling?

Anonymous

It hurts my ears. goes with painful

Damkerng T.

Hmm.. I associate painful with physical pains!

Anonymous

If something hurts my ears, I'm having a physical, viscerally negative reaction to hearing it

Damkerng T.

(Don't ask me why I don't think the hurtful feeling in my ears is not a kind of pain!)

Anonymous

12:16 PM

It might be too loud and causes physical pain, or it might just make me cringe because it's out of tune

Anonymous

If something's out of tune, I might say it's painful to listen to…

Anonymous

Even though you might say it's really just unpleasant

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

There's definitely some sort of unpleasant physical sensation any time I say something hurts my ears, though

Damkerng T.

I think I'd better go with painful.

Anonymous

12:17 PM

That's just what I'd do. I can't speak for anyone else

Anonymous

It's a safer choice than hurtful, in any case :-)

Damkerng T.

Thanks! @Jim @snailboat

Btw, that's a Cat 5.

Anonymous

Category five sounds serious! Or like a type of cable.

Damkerng T.

Hehe!

Anonymous

Saffir–Simpson hurricane wind scale

The Saffir–Simpson hurricane wind scale (SSHWS), or the Saffir–Simpson hurricane scale (SSHS) for short, classifies hurricanes – Western Hemisphere tropical cyclones that exceed the intensities of tropical depressions and tropical storms – into five categories distinguished by the intensities of their sustained winds. To be classified as a hurricane, a tropical cyclone must have maximum sustained winds of at least 74 mph (33 m/s; 64 kn; 119 km/h) (Category 1). The highest classification in the scale, Category 5, is reserved for storms with winds exceeding 156 mph (70 m/s; 136 kn; 251 km/h). The...

Damkerng T.

12:20 PM

I think, in a way, it's serious! :-)

Anonymous

I think that due to this scale, when I hear a category five, it sounds serious to me

Damkerng T.

Oh, I miscounted my own scale. It's actually a Cat 4.

Anonymous

Cat-5, on the other hand, sounds like a kind of ethernet cable to me :-)

barznjy

Hi

Damkerng T.

Hi!

@snailboat 156 mph! Argh!

barznjy

12:21 PM

I have the following sentence, could you please let me know if it is fine:
In the case of K approaches zero, the system performance goes to the worst case

Anonymous

There's a website called Lang-8 where you can post sentences like this

Anonymous

It's difficult to rewrite without context, though. There are a couple issues

Damkerng T.

Goes to the worst case is surely one of them.

Anonymous

One is approaches. Replacing it with approaching would make it grammatical, because K approaching zero is a noun phrase, and that's what we expect after of

Anonymous

But if we had more information, we might come up with a more natural way of saying the whole thing.

Damkerng T.

12:24 PM

I'm not sure if When is better than In the case of.

Jim Reynolds

In the event that K approaches zero is another choice, but when is probably better if it is a routine occurence.

Well, when is better in most contexts, I think.

Damkerng T.

> Category 5: Unsolvable Error (the student does not recognize the error; the teacher does not know how to fix the error; no correction is needed because nobody knows how to fix it!) -- PS. Just kidding!

barznjy

I have doubt about using goes

Jim Reynolds

Can you tell us what it's about?

If it's a military attack plan on Thailand, California, or Taiwan, we might not help you though.

Anonymous

Approaches is what occurred to me, too

Damkerng T.

12:35 PM

@JimReynolds Oh, no!

barznjy

it is about investigating the performance of the system under several circumstances

Jim Reynolds

And would the system actually perform at its worst?

barznjy

Yes

Damkerng T.

Is there a list of possible cases of performance results before that sentence?

Jim Reynolds

Would it's performance level fit into a set of categories that are already defined?

barznjy

12:37 PM

after this sentence, I have similar statement; In the case of K approaches infinity ....

Damkerng T.

Hmm... Maybe In the case that is better.

Jim Reynolds

Oops. My favorite error is extra apostrophes. Especially in let's.

Damkerng T.

@JimReynolds I thought it was because of Auto(in)correct of some kind.

Jim Reynolds

No. AutoJimMessupification.

Anonymous

Possessive its used to be written with an apostrophe

Anonymous

12:41 PM

The spelling is an arbitrary matter that doesn't relate to the spoken language as it's acquired by native speakers, so it's not surprising people mix them up so often

Damkerng T.

I think In the case that is formulaic enough in math books.

Knock-knock.

Who's there?

Lettuce.

"In the case that" looks better. What about "goes" I think it is not academic

Damkerng T.

12:44 PM