A Certain Traditional View

Tryons expeditions into the world of music and poetry are not fanciful dreams. Like Drake, like a Genoese pirate, like a bootlegger he brings back from these argosies packs of authentic stuff, alcohol at 90 degrees. - JEAN VARDA (1935)

Developing fresh thinking about TEFL and the problems and issues teachers and learners really face must always take heed of a certain traditional view of the English Language which, under the inspiration of classical linguistics, subdivides the whole area into many parts.

However, students need to have transmitted to them a synthetic, positive and holistic outlook at all times. However difficult English may be, the teacher should never breathe a word of this to the student, just as a really good classical music

teacher (I think here of Felicity Lott) by his or her own brilliance inspires the best students to want to be and as seemingly effortlessly! as good as he or she. The very best even allow that possibility.

There will be times when many will want pieces of you but only ever offer up the whole, writes Rod McKuen; and did not Lao Tsu declare: Once the whole is divided, the parts need names?

Wyndham Tryon (1884-1942) as my illustrations show certainly took that path. Too bad the effort cost him his sanity and almost his posthumous posterity.

I have followed James Jenkin and Mire Crawford (of the Anglo-Irish TEFL Training Company, i-to-i) in a number of webinars which they have recently presented; and thereby occasionally challenged, I aim here to describe here what strategies I would come up if faced with similar teaching scenarios to the ones they evoke; as well as giving reasons for any different approach, le cas cheant

The first seminar concerned talking about the future in English. James began with three sentences learners might say: My flight will be at five; I will meet my sister after class; I will buy a new laptop but in my view surprisingly, he claimed that these sentences were faulty; and showed an overuse of will; and that it was better or desirable to say, My flights at five; Im meeting my sister after class; Im going to buy a new laptop.

The usages these foreign students have employed are, however, to my mind perfectly OK: and will get them by easily in many, if not all, situations; and into no trouble; and shall, going to and will are also all pretty well interchangeable in many contexts; and more or less a sign of having a good command of English:

sufficient, indeed to suggest that one has via ones utterances a command over the future, and can talk about it. Native speakers always warm to and respect such growing confidence in a foreign learner.

James cites Ill have a cheeseburger and Im going to study law in order to contend that what separates the two is that the second implies that a plan has been formulated, but not the first. However, does not going to really reflect an intention which may have been formulated on the spot or may have been in the speakers mind for some time? Does the use of going to in fact imply the existence of a plan, suggesting limits on the temporal arena within which the thought arose? Id say its more about volition: indicating a desire which may be fulfilled (or maybe not) in a near or far distance from the moment of utterance. Ill have a cheeseburger, means, Ill have one right now, or, I want a cheeseburger, please: its essentially an order to the waiter.

What this suggests to me is that I might more profitably teach not the future as such but firstly, typical conversational exchanges in a restaurant scenario; and secondly, examine the likely scope and subject-matter of a talking about oneself conversational scenario

Which we might characterize, to innovate slightly, as Smalltalk Level 1, 2 or 3. Depending, really, on the degree of complexity, detail, and linguistic or semantic focus in the information which the speaker decides to give

The timeline which James quoted, which might inhibit the forward movement of the ideas in a fluid class situation or seem intimidating, can thus be circumvented.

Of course if the chart were drawn quickly and explained lucidly and speedily it might in fact enhance; but the temptation to move on to abstractions always carries with it the risk of getting bogged down on details, and thus losing the plot

The next part of the presentation introduced a dichotomy between I think itll rain later and Look, its going to rain! The distinction between the two is perhaps not so much that the first is based on less evidence than the second (both surely arising from consulting the weather conditions?) but lies in the immediacy of the upcoming inclement weather in the case of the second example.

Does Im going to see a doctor tomorrow and Im seeing a doctor tomorrow give us information about what the doctor knows? Id suggest, rather, that they are two almost equivalent ways in which the speaker informs us of his imminent plans presumably in the context of a (higher-level) conversation about ill health, which could be, again, a focus for more contextual examples generating just such future tense usages

Finally, although, My train leaves in half an hour indicates of a timetabled happening being referred to, I would prefer to teach this within the presentation of a spectrum of different tense usages (for example in a scenario relating to a leave-taking) rather than to teach it along with the other futures, so that a richer mnemonic context will have been implanted.

The scenario maybe turns on the wider context of Predictions and Promises and (in the case of Im meeting my sister after work) that of how to talk about upcoming and imminent obligations.

I might suggest, for example: Youve broken my crayon! Dont worry, I will get another one for you! (we might call this a scenario of Promised Compensatory Action). The future promise here occurs, as it often will, in close conjunction with a catalyst sentence in the present perfect, leading to statements being made using will (or its short form) in respect to consequences of the first sentence happening to triggering events in the upcoming near future.

The classic scenario for this would be taking in an item for repair, which famously occurs in one of the later Conversations in Kernel Lessons Intermediate. The train scenario is also there, in the humorous dialogue about the talkative old lady never leaving on trains that depart from Platform 13! Shades of Harry Potter avant la lettre

Such wider contexts are readily available in quite a few textbooks, or can be invented. Frequent jumping about from tense to tense, and from verb form to verb form will be quite common, and can be expected.

An excellent occasion for finding cheek by jowl shall, going to and will is, naturally, the radio or TV weather forecast. The forecaster might say: I am afraid we are in for some rough weather over the weekend. I shall start with Scotland. A ridge of cold air will move in over the North Sea on Tuesday night, and were going to see temperatures falling rapidly between the Aberdeen and Newcastle in the early hours of Wednesday and so on. The tenses jump about: present, future with shall, future with will, future with going to: such variety is so typical of normal spoken English.

Another good context for, My train leaves in half an hour or, My train will leave in ten minutes is the famous movie, Brief Encounter which, though sometimes archaic in speech, is full of just such English suspense and talk of imminent intention! Too bad there are no subtitles; but to transcribe the films dialogues would be an excellent exercise to make me really think about the varying dialectic that drives verb usage in ongoing, natural, reasonably modern English informed by a narrative and slotted into a situation. That Ill maybe do with some class, dont know where, dont know when (that song also giving us an excellent example of the use of the future!) Jamess crisp presentation of his personal take on the problems of the future has been stimulating and helpful, and as one his customers I am grateful for the concise input and amicable encouragement of his talk, as I reflect on my past teaching practice; and plan maybe some new strategies for the future

Wyndham Tryon (1883-1942) Fraga Spain (1925-29 ?) Tate Gallery, London