PPS vs. PPC

Question

"I've been studying some Spanish. I think I'll do a course in French next."
or
"I've studied some Spanish. I think I'll do a course in French next."

?
I like the first sentence better, but probably both sentences work, depending on context.
What do you reckon?

Usenet · Accepted Answer

[nq:1]"I've been studying some Spanish. I think I'll do a course in French next." or "I've studied some Spanish. I ... next." ? I like the first sentence better, but probably both sentences work, depending on context. What do you reckon?[/nq]
Hi Enrico, long time no hear...
PPS v PPC is a tricky one. Your first (PPC) example suggests that the studying continues - you're going to learn some more Spanish. The second (PPS) suggests that at some time in the past you studied Spanish but now your studies are finished.
I hate trying to explain this stuff to students... DC

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]"I've been studying some Spanish. I think I'll do a ... in French next." ? I like the first sentence better,[/nq]
The "next" suggest to me that the person speaking has just completed a course, or is just about to end it perhaps, so (s)he has been lerning Spanish up to now or up to a very recent past, and now (s)he is thinking about the next one.
That's why, if the context was like that, I would use the PPC here.
[nq:1]but probably both sentences work,[/nq]
[nq:2]depending on context.[/nq]
I take it that you agreee on this.
[nq:2]What do you reckon?[/nq]
[nq:1]Hi Enrico, long time no hear...[/nq]
Hi DC, nice to read all you guys again
-)
[nq:1]PPS v PPC is a tricky one. Your first (PPC) example suggests that the studying continues - you're going to learn some more Spanish. The second (PPS) suggests that at some time in the past you studied Spanish but now your studies are finished.[/nq]
I see.
[nq:1]I hate trying to explain this stuff to students...[/nq]
What sort of pupils do you teach to?

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]What sort of pupils do you teach to?[/nq]
I'm an English Language Teacher. At the moment I'm working at a University, teaching English for Academic Purposes to postgraduate business students, mostly from China.
DC

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]What sort of pupils do you teach to?[/nq]
[nq:1]I'm an English Language Teacher. At the moment I'm working at a University, teaching English for Academic Purposes to postgraduate business students, mostly from China. DC[/nq]
Great!
Am I right to believe that people from Asia have to make an effort bigger than Europeans to learn English? I mean, they have to start from scratch, while European languages have so much in common. In that, I admire Asians. If I were to study Chinese or Japanese or Mongolian I would be completely lost!

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]I'm an English Language Teacher. At the moment I'm working ... Academic Purposes to postgraduate business students, mostly from China. DC[/nq]
[nq:1]Great! Am I right to believe that people from Asia have to make an effort bigger than Europeans to learn ... In that, I admire Asians. If I were to study Chinese or Japanese or Mongolian I would be completely lost![/nq]
(Me too.) That's probably true, and may become more so according to how much the student's home culture has absorbed western language and (popular) culture. Students from the Far East have to start by learning the Western alphabet, but while those from Taiwan and Japan have always been exposed to advertising which uses written English (googling 'Jingrish' or 'Jinglish' brings up any number of mildly amusing examples), people in China maybe be totally unfamiliar with Western letter forms. There are also problems caused (as you say) by the wider gap between European and Oriental languages in many features of the language, expressed when students speak or write.

One way this comes up is the way students, especially from China, give up before the end of multi-syllable words. A student told me recently she'd lived in the US, in "See-ah". It took me a while to work out we were talking about 'Seattle' and I then had to explain that if she didn't say the full set of syllables, people just wouldn't understand her. I think this may reflect some feature of the student's first language (Franke?), but it may also be a feature of a lack of basic comprehension of the function of language as a communicative tool.

You can always tell when students come from a language learning culture where the language is studied as if it's an isolated, academic subject, rather than something you use to communicate with people. Such students may find it a shock to be in class with a Western-trained teacher and find they're expected to talk. This phenomenon isn't exclusive to Far Eastern students by any means, but you do get fairly regular conversations like:-
Teacher:- "Good Morning class! How are you today Andy?" (students from some Far Eastern countries - China, Taiwan, Thailand - often adopt Western forenames). "What did you do at the weekend?"

Andy:- (sucks teeth, looks at floor, giggles. Long pause.) "'What - did - you - do - at - the - weekend?'"
Teacher:- (smiling encouragingly) "That's right - what did you do at the weekend Andy? Did you go shopping?"
Andy:- "'Did - you - go - shopping?'" (gestures in space with forefingers of both hands while mouthing the sentence, as if attempting to adjust its word order in mid-air; turns to friend and speaks rapidly in first language; grabs wildly for electronic dictionary).
Teacher:- "Fine. Maria, what did you do at the weekend?"
What's depressing and frustrating here is that there's been zero communication. The example is a typical 'warm up chat' activity in the first moments of a class before the main activity starts; the teacher doesn't want to spend half an hour parsing the question. It's not occurred to Andy (who is at a level where this SP question shouldn't present him any problems) that the teacher might genuinely want to know how he spent his weekend.

In his classes in his home country Andy has only had to speak English as part of a drill, and he's confused by having to look for an autonomous response. Shouldn't he have a picture in the book or something to tell him how to answer the teacher's question? It may not occur to him either, that in terms of human to human interaction and courtesy, he's actually being ****** rude.
The above is a wicked stereotype, but it does happen; however, many Far Eastern students are lively and outgoing members of class. I've also noticed a difference over the 20 years since I first started teaching English; in particular Japanese women, who used to be terminally shy in class, are now generally enthusiastic and confident participants. What is unfortunate is where you get a class dominated by a particular language group. Where this happens in an English speaking country (it's inevitable if the teacher is in the students' country) it's probably the least ideal of situations; this is, however, what often happens with PRC Chinese students on English-medium courses in Europe.
I think there may be a myth that Far Eastern students work harder and are better motivated than their European colleagues. What is true is that in most countries the Education system places far greater demands on students than the various European ones (though what Spanish Medical Students go through sounds like sheer ****), so the students have no choice but to work like slaves. Several Far Eastern students have told me that its a popular option to study at a Western University because once you've learnt the language it's much less hard work. Maybe this means we always get the dossy students...

DC

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Students from the Far East have to start by learning the Western alphabet, but while those from Taiwan and Japan have always been exposed to advertising which uses written English[/nq]
Does this make any difference? I must have seen many thousands of Chinese characters in my life, but because I've never tried to study Chinese (or whatever) they're still just funny squiggles to me. I don't see how having seen English characters (without knowing anything about their meaning) helps.

Mark Barratt
Budapest

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]I think there may be a myth that Far Eastern students work harder and are better motivated than their European ... because once you've learnt the language it's much less hard work. Maybe this means we always get the dossy students...[/nq]

BTW, a young woman from Mongolia told me they don't actually have much trouble learning English sounds, as I thought, because in their own language (which I don't know in the slightest!) they have plenty of sounds, including the notorious "R" sound which the Chinese lack.

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]Students from the Far East have to start by learning ... have always been exposed to advertising which uses written English[/nq]
[nq:1]Does this make any difference? I must have seen many thousands of Chinese characters in my life, but because I've ... just funny squiggles to me. I don't see how having seen English characters (without knowing anything about their meaning) helps.[/nq]
I think that knowledge probably goes beyond funny squiggles, and that coupled with maybe a little junior school learning, or even knowing how to say the cool slogan on their tee shirt, many people would have a head start on the rough phonetic significance of the letters of the alphabet and possibly pronunciation of letter names.

But this is just an example. In my experience Taiwanese and Japanese students are way ahead of those from Mainland China. Not having worked in the region, I'm just speculating why this might be. Both Taiwan and Japan have a longer English teaching and learning tradition than the PRC...
DC

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Great! Am I right to believe that people from Asia have to make an effort bigger than Europeans to learn ... In that, I admire Asians. If I were to study Chinese or Japanese or Mongolian I would be completely lost![/nq]
Actually, I believe both Chinese and Japanese (I don't know about Mongolian) are much easier languages than English. Especially the phonetic systems are much, much simpler. The Chinese phonetic system is actually very hard for us to learn, because it's totally different from any of the european languages, being a tonal system; still, the number of syllables is very limited and there are almost no contractions, let alone irregular ones (just think about it; in every english sentence a native Englishman or American will leave out dozens of letters, and merge every word with those around it in hundreds of different ways.)

The Japanese use a sound system which is even easier for a westerner to learn than those of most, if not all western languages: they use only 9 consonants, w, r (or l, they make no difference; in songs or very slow speech you'll hear l more often and in rapid speech r), y, m, h, n, t, s and k, and 5 vowels (aiueo), but they combine them only in the form of a consonant and a vowel; they have no concept of loose consonants whatsoever. Their phonetic writing consists of characters for a consonant and a vowel (ka, ki, ku, ke, ko, etc.), 5 for the vowels, and
1 for 'n'. The only contractions they make are the leaving out of 'i'and 'u', in a completely regular way.
And think about pronunciation; in english, you'll have to learn the writing and pronunciation of just about every word separately in chinese and japanese, pronunciation is completely regular.

And apart from all this, even the words are much easier to learn: most of them are compounds, made of chinese characters; if you learn a couple of characters you can make lots of compounds with them, which are easier to remember than our words if you already know the two characters (or sometimes more) they are comprised of because those characters convey meaning.
I do know that I have missed some things that make chinese and japanese quite difficult too, and that the story I just wrote might not sound all that easy to you in the first place, but the point I'm trying to make is that it will be a lot harder for a japanese, and especially for a chinese student to learn english, than the opposite.

Comments welcome.
Sytse Wielinga

Usenet · Answer

Hi,
I'm a Chinese. It's both hard and easy for Chinses to learn English.

Millions of Chinese students spent about 13 years to learn English.

But I think the grammar of English is regular and simple. The really hard to Chinese is the large and growing vocabulary of English.

Japanese comes from Chinese. Thousands years ago, Japanese had not character system. There came China, Tang Dynasty, and learnt Chinese. So There are many Chinese characters, which pronunciation are same as Chinese too. For example Tofu (Jp.) is known as Japanese food. Actually, it's a traditional Chinese food. Maybe the European know it from Japan first. It's said the Japanese pronunciation have two origin from China. One is from Chang An,Tang Dynasty, the other is from Wu, east of China.
English or other European languages and Chinese is two very different language system.
If you will learn Chinese. To learn the Han Yu Pin Ying (it's a Chinese phonetic notation, like 'Han Yu Pin Ying') first is an efficient way. And after you know some Chinese characters, you can guess some unknown characters' meaning by othse known. The same character almost have same meaning and pronunciation in different words.

PPS vs. PPC

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