5 Minutes in English-Sir-Lower, Episode # 2

This new newspaper takes you through the twists and turns of the English language and the shortcomings in its teaching, which makes the French mostly speak English!

In the Group of Linguists Durain School English-Sir-Lower The most dangerous monsters of the English language, with their harsh and good humor, are the attacks of the readers of the information tour for you. Together we will defeat them one by one. Enjoy!

Monster of the Week: Right Now!

This is one of the biggest jokes in the history of English teaching. Even today, we print out some of the lost teachers and tens of thousands of manuals and distribute them to the brave college students who never asked for anything, presenting the present as the “period of the present.”

Be clear and concise: as its name implies, The present is the past tense. And this is not provocative. Dear readers of Tours, who are as clever as squirrels, you will not escape the fact that the complement of the English name is systematically placed before the name. So “police car” is not “police car” but “police car” and “door handle” is not “handle door” but “door handle”. So “present tense” can be said to be “correct” first, i.e. past tense. CQFD.

“But why the hell does the word ‘event’ end ?!” Because it is so simpleEquivalent to our pastBut the action we are talking about can only be used if it has a connection (more or less) with the present tense.

“Hey Grandpa, what is the action associated with the present from the past?”

“You are going to see my baby Rabbit : This little nuance is not due to the lack of French language, we allow ourselves to be defeated!

For example, if you tell your friend “Look at her haircut, she went to the worst hairdresser on tour” (“Check her haircut, she’s gone to the worst hairdresser on tours.”), Going to the hairdresser is a thing of the past, but the effect of this action is visible in the present and thanks to a verb in the present (“bar”).

Another example is, “Have you ever smoked roulette?” (“Have you ever smoked rivets?”) The word “already” makes a connection between an imaginary past action that is not accurately dated, and the moment this sentence is pronounced: this action may occur now or even in the future, because the roulette will always be and will always be so. There is a lot to do (there are many carpet smokers, each with their own).

“No thanks, I ate” (“No thanks, I ate.”) Another obvious example is that nowadays we refuse a good fusel from the tours because in the past we filled our stomachs a little too early (even if it’s wrong, even if we want to escape from the beach).

When the exception is presented as a rule …

Some students, when they come to our school, fortunately know that it is a thing of the past.

This is not wrong, but very exceptional because it is inextricably linked to the use of three specific expressions: From or for how long. In the absence of any of these three terms, this statement is incorrect. In French, there is no specific fusion time, but a magic word: From. Now, to make matters worse, what does the French language do when it uses that word from a definite sentence? It combines the current verb, filoute:

• I have been living in Tours for 20 years (“I have lived in Tours for 20 years”)
• My sister has known Raphael since 1542.My sister has known Raphael since 1542.)
• How long do you travel by ship? (“How long have you been sailing on the Cher?”)

The problem is, often in English lessons, we start by presenting the current correctness with this “exception” and the students suddenly retain two things that will cause them many problems later:

1 / “It is translated as present tense in French, so it is present tense” (“as its name implies”, LOL)

2 / “It describes an action that is currently being pursued” (most of the time this is not the case, as the examples above show very simply with the hairdresser, rivets and fuselage.

When you learn a foreign language, you often forget one important thing: one language is not designed to conform to another..

So, when we say “from, how long” the present tense is “present”, we keep an eye on the straw of Saint-Maur: for the English-speaking, it is true that 20 years lived on Tours. It is a matter of the past, because even though we still live there, the size of the past is more important than the few seconds we pronounce this sentence. Even when you say “I have ten minutes waiting for you”, the amount of the past is too much (exactly 9 minutes and 57 seconds).

Just because French grammar uses the present tense “from” does not mean that there is no past tense: when you say “I live on tour” it is 100% present tense, while when you say “I lived 20 years tours” it is currently 0.0001%. However, the verb is in the present tense. They are two different linguistic concepts, and you have to accept it as it is.

Well, we’re leaving you, all of which whetted our appetite, and we did not eat anything for hours … Damn! In negative sentences, French uses “from” with the past tense, and it loses its Latin language!

See you soon for new adventures. Next chapter: The Inquiry System. We’re going to laugh even better.

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English-Sir-Lower is a 100% Durain language school founded in 2003, offering courses in English, French (Language and Literature), French Foreign Language, Spanish and German. Beginners, dummies, average and strong, 9 to 99 years old, individually or in pairs (small groups of 3 or 4 students are offered for school, college and high school students). 2nd place in tours Fran பிரான்ois Cicard, by appointment only. 02.47.05.34.68 / [email protected]