English for Vietnamese 5

So whatever language you choose it’s better to rely on general notions like PROCESS, RESULT, HABITUAL ACTION, PURPOSE, PROMISE, CONDITION, INTENTION, PLANNING and other notions rather than grammar notions with its strange 16 tenses (in English) and sophisticated terminology.

If you understand a basic meaning of this or that structure then you need only some minimum of these grammar terms. Cramming and learning grammar terms by rote without understanding had proven many times to be useless for our pilots during our English classes as well as for any pilots all over the world irrespective of their native language either Chinese or Vietnamese, it does not matter. It might be that this grammar terminology, especially English terminology is clear for some European pilots somewhere in Germany, France or Italy because their languages have something in common being influenced by the Latin language but not in Asian countries.

Even though many of our Russian grammar terms have been derived from Latin thanks to Michail Lomonosov, they are not quite clear sometimes to our students, I can judge about that from my experience after delivering more than 10 000 linguistic hours for our pilots, to say nothing of Latin/English terms.

I have come across this situation many times during my classes while explaining some rules and giving examples of some English grammar phenomena – very often some wise pilot would enthusiastically exclaim that he identified this or that structure – “ah, this is gerund” (for example) but after I asked that enthusiastic student to give me examples in practical usage of this “gerund”, there would be no reaction and no understanding. Even if I tried to explain its meaning by using another term like “substantivated verb” that explanation would not clarify anything because that would be nothing but another term. The only way out for me was to explain that you can make a noun out of a verb and use that new derivative in a noun position or that you can make something tangible out of an action but that was also difficult.

The same with mythological sixteen grammar tenses so widely exploited and even abused by modern teachers – they often assess their students knowledge by their ability to use these 16 tenses, their ability to identify them and to memorize these tenses by their terminological names which really does not make any sense at all.

I always try to explain to my students that actually there are only two tenses in which we exist – past and present, and in an indicative mood we express it either by “something happened”, or ”something is happening,” “or something happens”, and that’s all, because even “something will happen” cannot be included into an indicative mood because it is not tangible, it is only a supposition.

If I say that “I will do it”, there’s no real tangible action, this is only my promise or my intention, there is only my attitude towards this action which cannot be defined as “indicative” but rather ”modal’ equally with “I can do it”, “I may do it” or “I must do it”.

Only such expressions as “I do it, I am doing it, I have done it, I did it and I was doing it ” can be included into indicative mood and it is much better to memorize general notions like PROMISE, PROCESS, RESULT, ABILITY, PERMISSION etc instead of all these future indefinite, present continuous, present perfect and all that stuff.

Anyway, if it is impossible to avoid all these grammar terminology, then it is advisable to find some reasonable compromise between academic grammar and artful interpretation of these rules by giving practical examples of their usage.

Vietnamese pilots and cabin attendants can also find such good interpretations in many modern English textbooks.

I have used many interpretation techniques during my classes for pilots but their description is so far in Russian on my site.

I will try to summarize everything in English later.

Instructor/Trainer Alexander Khodovets