Loving (the language we teach)

PAUL DAVIES muses on the English language and how loving and understanding its idiosyncrasies may make us better teachers.

For a time after the old Hollywood tear-jerker Love Story, some people put stickers on their cars or wore T-shirts with statements such as ‘Love is never having to say you’re sorry’. Is it possible to twist that cliché to the love of a language? Well, you could say that if you never make a mistake in English, you never have to say you’re sorry for ‘torturing the language’, as some people put it.

But that immediately brings up another question: What is a mistake? Different native speakers say, ‘He’s older than I / me / I am’, and some say ‘He’s older than what I am’. Are all of these native forms correct, or are some (or is just one) correct and the others mistakes? Most EFL tests and examinations would certainly classify at least one of them as a mistake. Personally, I generally use ‘He’s older than me’, and would never use ‘He’s older than what I am’ (even if he was—or ‘were’). I wonder if I would lose points in TOEFL.

Interest, understanding, and acceptance
Let’s try another angle. True love grows from attraction, interest, understanding, and acceptance: first you’re attracted by someone or something, then you’re really interested in them, next you begin to understand their real nature, and finally you accept them (still with some enthusiasm) in spite of certain irregular or contradictory or incomprehensible things about them. How does that sound?

Well, there’s certainly quite a lot of irregularity to accept in the English language. There are also contradictions, for example:
British and American children (especially middle-class ones) are often told by teachers and parents never to drop their aitches (that’s ‘h’ in the plural), but virtually everyone drops the aitch in ‘he / him / his’ after another word, as in, ‘What’s ’is name?’ and ‘Let’s invite ’im’.

Supposedly, we never omit subject pronouns in English as in Spanish, for example. Got that? (Oh, yes, with ellipsis we omit auxiliary verbs as well as subject pronouns.)

Are there also some incomprehensible things to accept so that our love for the language is stretched to the full? Well, you’re probably aware that the very best linguists don’t quite agree (now, is that quite as in moderately or quite as in totally?) on many aspects of language in general, and of English in particular. It’s a complex matter. After all, where did human language come from (we can only speculate), and where is English specifically going (we can only speculate)?

Well, I don’t know about you, but I find this interest-understanding-acceptance approach a bit more satisfactory than the cliché approach.

Making love last
One of the notorious problems with love is making it last, or even maintaining it as affection and stopping it from deteriorating into disillusionment or even hate. Too often people find themselves saying how they hate someone they once loved, and people also say things like ‘I hate the way young people mutilate English nowadays—there’s no love for the language any more.’

That really takes us back to understanding and (I’m afraid) a cliché: change or die. Don’t worry, my fellow English teachers, it isn’t quite as desperate as that, but it is a fact that languages change over time and vary from situation to situation, so we’d better change and vary a little with them.

Like people, languages change and behave differently in different situations. We have to understand and accept that if we want to continue loving them as they are, and not as we would like them to be. And also, in the case of languages, if we want to use them effectively, and not talk like an old book or write like a breathless child.

Yes, but...
OK, so some change and variation is natural and inevitable. But surely we must see a definite character in someone or something for us to be able to know and love them. Yes, of course, and contemporary English certainly has its stable characteristics, its elements, structures, and rules. We can describe them and make useful generalisations about them.

In fact, our descriptions and generalisations—about lexis, grammar, pronunciation, conversational English, formal written English, and so on—are better now than ever before. They have actually improved so much that many ‘lovers of English’ really need to catch up on them in order to understand better what English is and how it works.

The benefits of love
So, how can understanding more about the English language help you teach better, and prosper one way or another? My co-author Anne Fraenkel and I believe we have many answers to that question in our book The Language in English Teaching published by Richmond Publishing. We have written it thinking particularly of people on teacher training programmes who need to learn about English lexis, grammar, pronunciation, and spoken and written discourse and how they all work together when English is actually used for communication, but we hope it will be interesting and useful for anyone who teaches English—and loves it.

Note: Some ideas in this article may also help you in your relationships with friends and partners, but I accept no responsibility for undesirable outcomes.

Paul Davies has an MA in Linguistics and the Cambridge DELTA. He has been an English teacher since 1963 and a teacher trainer since 1972. He is currently Senior Consultant in ELT to the British Council. He was a founder-member of MexTESOL in 1972, and National President in 1979-80. He has co-authored three ELT methodology books and many EFL course books.