Ha ha, I am sorry the sentence 'I am a red girl' is not a correct English
sentence either. Please check with a native English speaker! Yes, you are
right we have to ask student to make it clear what she really meant by this
sentence. Coincidentally this sentence does not work in English. So let us
imagine if a girl said 'I am a red girl' in English. Definitely the English
teacher will ask: 'what do you really mean? Do you mean you are a girl in
red? ' By correcting this, the student learnt the correct expression. Same
in Chinese, if I were a teacher I would have said to the student: 'ni shi
hong de/ ni chuan hong se de.' This is what I meant by semantics and we
should teach them the authentic Chinese not merely grammatically correct
ones. I am not against teaching grammar in fact I love teaching it as it
makes my life much easier. But from my many years of teaching experience
told me that British learners don't really appreciate grammar rules as we
Chinese people do. Therefore I think we should keep it a certain point. A
simple sentence like this cannot be judged merely by the rules of grammar
we should put it into the correct context.
Another thing about 'nonsense': in fact many other sentences you have
listed in the email are not nonsense at all but I would like to say they
are childish. What I meant by 'nonsense' is that our native speakers don't
really say like this though they are grammatically correct. For instance: a
Chinese student learnt an English sentence: 'Tom wants to drive a car. So
he made a sentence next day: 'I want to learn to drive an airplane'
According to your standard, this is grammatically correct and it should be
accepted. I believe even people in the street would like to correct this
sentence.
Many thanks for your response.
best wishes
Qiao
--On 09 November 2007 09:50 +0000 george zhiyuzhao
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> I am surprised that you argued about speaking nonsense when we talked
> about grammar that we use to explain to teachers.
> Be honest, there are a huge number of nonsense Chinese sentences if you
> think in this way, but grammatically correct, for example: zhe ge
> xuesheng shi houniao. (This student is a migratory bird.) This can be
> nonsense, or even a perfect sentence in context of a passage, so is wo
> shi hongse nvhai. Also, jintian lundon youwu, suoyi xianzai cai lai is a
> nonsense Chinese sentence as well, which is No.2 in sentence patterns,
> p144 , Chinese for GCSE book3, and it is grammatically wrong without
> context by the way.
> I don’t think teacher made that wo shi hongse nvhai but students. If
> students, we should encourage them to make it clear and get it clear
> within context if necessary and this sentence will be very good example
> for teaching; if teacher, it can not be nonsense anyway.
> If your pupils are over than year10, that won’t be nonsense. Just two of
> many possible, ‘I come from red-China; my hair and cloths all in red; I
> am a red-girl.’ And, I think you can get more like that. ‘Grammatically
> correct’ is an achievement, especially for younger foreign speakers.
> I did explain with some grammar items to the teacher who ask for grammar
> views. I will feel sorry, if it has confused you. and thank you for
> discussions.
> george> Date: Thu, 8 Nov 2007 22:11:01 +0000> From: [log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: Your views> To: [log in to unmask]> >
> I am surprised that you all said that this sentence could be accepted >
> because it is 'grammatically correct'. How about semantics? Do we
> actually > say it like this in Chinese? (Surely this is not a good
> English sentence.) > Are we teaching our children to speak nonsense so
> long as it is > grammatically acceptable? I think everyone knows in
> languages there are > many exceptions to the rules of grammar so we as
> teachers should not over > emphasis the use of grammar in our teaching
> especially to our young > children. Most English children, as far as I
> know, are already very > confused by their English grammar so we should
> keep our grammar as simple > as possible. Unfortunately not many English
> people nowadays know the term > of 'predictive' except linguists. I think
> we should teach our learners not > only grammatically correct but also
> semantically sound Chinese sentences. > This is only my personal view,
> please let me know your comment. Many thanks > for your attention.> Qiao>
> University of Sussex> > --On 07 November 2007 23:18 +0800 Cheryl Huang
> <[log in to unmask]> > wrote:> > >> > Grammatically correct. If a
> student make a sentence such as this. I> > would accept it is a correct
> sentence, especially for the primary school> > pupils. (And give the
> pupil a good thumb up for the effort!) And it(the> > sentence) would work
> when talking about pictures, stories or some comic> > situations anyway.
> One might like to help them rephrase it to make a> > clearer context.
> Otherwise, it is nothing wrong to make a sentence that> > might seem a
> bit silly in a native speaker's ears. To my view, it is> > fine! For more
> able pupils, one can help making the sentence with more> > details, such
> as ÎÒÊǺìÉ«Í··¢µÄÅ®º¢. or ÎÒÊÇ´©ºìÉ«Ò·þµÄÄǸöÅ®º¢£¬ ...> > Let's not
> forget languages are also about creativity.> >> > Cheryl> >> >> > Date:
> Wed, 7 Nov 2007 14:24:08 +0000From:> >
> [log in to unmask]: Re: Your viewsTo:> >
> [log in to unmask]> >> >> > Dear Colleagues, I
> think you have already made that a bit complcated. if> > just talked
> about grammar, there is nothing with context of the sentence.> >
> ÎÒÊǺìÉ«Å®º¢. is grammatically correct, sub+ predicate + object, but> >
> maybe has many meanings which can not be changed to ÎÒÊǸöºìÉ«µÄÅ®º¢×Ó¡£>
> > also, there is nothing with numbers of characters as your explanation.>
> > hope it is helpful. george> Date: Wed, 7 Nov 2007 11:51:14 +0000>
> From:> > [log in to unmask]> Subject: Re: Your views> To:> >
> [log in to unmask]> > Dear Isabella,> > In my> >
> humble view, '¡£' would be idiomatically better. > > Generally - from
> the> > top of my head - if the colour adjective has one only character,
> you may> > use it right before a noun, eg, ºìÅ®º¢; °×³ÄÉÀ. If there are
> two or more> > characters, you would like to use É«µÄ as a sort of
> suffix, eg,> > ÉîÀ¶É«µÄ³ÄÉÀ.> > However, there are exceptions -
> ÎÒ°®ÕâÀ¶É«µÄº£Ñó... or> > the repetitive form: À¶À¶µÄÌìÉÏ°×ÔÆÆ®¡£> > If
> there is a metaphor> > character before the colour, ie, Ñ©°×, »ðºì etc,
> then µÄ is commonly> > used: »ðºìµÄÄê´ú.> > It would be easier if you
> could provide a context,> > then the choice of words would be far more
> precise.> > We are talking> > about Modern Standard Chinese, not
> hangovers from Classical Chinese of> > course. ÎÒÊǺìÉ«Å®º¢¡£> > ×£ºÃ¡£>
> > Cc> > -----Original Message----->> > From: Mandarin Chinese Teaching> >
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Isabella>
> > Teng> Sent: 2007Äê11ÔÂ6ÈÕ 21:06> To:> >
> [log in to unmask]> Subject: Your views> > > > I> >
> would appreciate it very much, if you could give me any comments, in> >
> terms of accuracy, on the sentence below. > > I also put the pinyin down>
> > in case you cannot read the characters: W¨¯ sh¨¬ h¨®ng s¨¨ n¨· h¨¢i.>
> >> > This is just a single sentence, there is no context with the
> sentence.> >> > > > > Thank you in anticipation.> > > > Isabella Teng> >>
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