[ad_1]
1) This unit introduces the student to seven English adjectives that are used to describe and question linear dimensions of physical objects in space, and to state and question the age of something physical or abstract. That is, they have to do with space and time. The adjectives are long, wide, deep, thick, high, tall, and old ; they occur in a specification of such a dimension, an indirect or direct question about it, or – if ellipsis is inappropriate – a brief answer to the question. Thus we can have:
A1) The table is two meters long.
A2) Tell me [how long the table is]. The bracketed matter [….] is an indirect question.
A3) How long is the table?
A4) (It’s) two meters (long).
B1) The table is three feet wide.
B2) Tell me [how wide the table is].
B3) How wide is the table?
B4) (It’s) three feet (wide).
C1) The pond is eight centimeters deep.
C2) Tell me [how deep the pond is].
C3) How deep is the pond?
C4) (It’s) eight centimeters (deep).
D1) The ice is two inches thick.
D2) Tell me [how thick the ice is].
D3) How thick is the ice?
D4) (It’s) two inches (thick).
E1) The mountain is two miles high.
E2) Tell me [how high the mountain is].
E3) How high is the mountain?
E4) (It’s) two miles ( high).
F1) The woman is two meters tall.
F2) Tell me [how tall the woman is].
F2) How tall is the woman?
F3) (She’s) two meters (tall).
G1) That guy is eighty-five years old.
G2) Tell me [how old that guy is].
G2) How old is that guy?
G3) (He’s) eighty-five (years old).
Other measure words are used in how questions, but they don’t occur in a description of, or answer about, the item questioned:
How often do you see her?
* Twice a week often.
How many are still here?
*Five bags many.
How much did that cost?
* Thirty euros much.
How big is your apartment?
* It’s five rooms big.
Long, wide, deep, thick tall, high, and old are the only adjectives in the English language that are used as I’ve indicated , and knowledge of them is essential to anyone – be (s)he six-year-old or astrophysicist – who has to function in the real physical world of an Anglophone firm or country.
2) The instructor will have noticed that when a how + adjective question is answered, the answer often consists of a noun phrase made up of a cardinal number and a noun (phrase) :
How old is she?
Two (years old).
If the class members are really advanced students of English grammar, it might be worthwhile at this juncture to point out that attributive nouns in English (especially in North America) don’t usually inflect for the plural: A factory that produces automobiles is an automobile factory, not an automobiles factory; a person who edits books is a book editor, not a books editor; a bed of flowers is a flower bed, not a flowers bed; a brush for the teeth is a tooth brush, not a teeth brush. Even when a number greater than one modifies the attributive noun, the prohibition against plural inflection for such a noun applies: a plan covering five years is a five-year plan, not a five-years plan; a girl who is two years old is a two-year-old girl, not a two-years-old girl. (Year is not the grammatical head of the modifying phrase, old is, but year is a noun that is part of a phrase modifying the noun girl, so non-inflection still obtains.)
The students should be told that age is specified either with a simple cardinal number or with such a number followed by the phrase year(s) old; years old is usually ellipted because we know that the age of someone at least two years old is always described in terms of years..
She’s five years old
She’s five
But never
She’s five years or
She’s five old.
If year(s) is used, so must old be; if old is used, it must be preceded by year(s) [or, when appropriate, day(s) or month(s)].
And the instructor will of course add that human beings are tall or short, never high or low.
3) The instructor will also have noticed that the word used after how inquires about the position of something on a scale, and that the word itself is also the one used to indicate the position at the high, or farther, end of that scale. We say, not How young is the baby? but How old is the baby? ; How deep is the lake? not How shallow is the lake?; How long is the pole? not How short is the pole? Bring this feature of English to the students’ attention.
4) The questions in Par. 1) are complex, in that they require inversion of the subject and the (first) auxiliary and they also require the fronting of the sentence component that how constitutes or is part of. A lot of ESL texts that touch on such areas delay teaching them until the students are fairly well advanced, but a mother talking to (i.e. teaching) her baby doesn’t refrain from using advanced grammatical devices, and the real world that our adult students are thrust into doesn’t, either. The teacher might accordingly try introducing them early rather than late in the course.
5) The lesson(s) can be quite simple and straightforward. All that’s needed is a ruler or tape measure and a table or desk for length, width, and thickness; a container (cup, can ) for depth; the ceiling or a person for height (tall/high) ; and almost anything (town, building, person) for age. (My experience suggests that nouns used in linear space measurement – length, width, depth, height, etc. – should probably be saved, if possible, for another lesson, as should long and length as time- measure words) . These measure questions are pretty hard for learners, not because of the concept of dimension in space and time but because of the rather complex grammar of the English question system.
Begin the lesson with an order, and then a question, about the dimension you’re interested in:
Tell me how long that table is.
How long is that table?
This provides practice with direct and indirect questions {some grammarians call the indirect question a nominal relative clause}. When you get an answer – any kind of answer – model the correct appropriate response, both full and elliptical:
The table is five feet long.
(It’s) five feet.
Make every student measure and express all seven of these dimensions in both the English and the metric system. (Almost all rulers and tapes now sold in North America are marked for both systems.) I think you’ll find that the students have fun doing this – there are always lots of good-natured insults and deliberately confusing suggestions.
6) The instructor should always be aware of every device he or she is presenting. In this unit, the student is exposed to
a) The interesting syntax and semantics of the seven unique measure adjectives.
b) The inversion, in questions, of the subject and operator. (The operator is the auxiliary verb, or the first auxiliary if there’s more than one in the verb phrase.)
c) The fronting of how and the rest of the clause component it’s part of: How deep is the ocean?
7) In their deservedly famous Side by Side series, Steve Molinsky and Bill Bliss used a dialogue featuring a wh- word questioning the identity of a subject complement (What is your name?) and one questioning the identity of a prepositional complement (Where are you from?) in the very first lesson of the first volume of the series. It makes sense to start off this way for the reason stated in Par. 4): It’s the way people really talk.
By Hal Niergarth
[ad_2]
