Stuff That Really 'Grinds My Gears...'

[ChuckV]

Well, I’ve always thought the basic (or main) verb tenses are past, present and future.

[jerwin]

subdividing past into perfect and imperfect is something you can do to present and future tenses as well. So why stop at four?

[Lucy_Gothro1]

My gears are BEYOND grinding right now…

Will someone PLEASE start paying me for something? I just tried to apply for assistance with my water bill, and this is the first thing that’s required to qualify:
“Required Documentation to upload:
Household income for last 30 days including today FOR ALL HOUSEHOLD MEMBERS (the household MUST have income to qualify)”.
Well, I HAVE NO INCOME!!!

I KNOW that I can’t be the only one, too! And all those caps in the quote - those are that of the program, not mine; I copied and pasted that first paragraph from the actual online application.

[ChuckV]

Well, there are sixteen total.

[kxkvi]

Here are some charts to make it “easier.”
https://www.easypacelearning.com/all-lessons/grammar/1198-12-verb-tenses-table-learning-english-grammar-tenses

[ChuckV]

Thanks, but my remit is purely to teach present continuous, so I’m going to simply avoid much comparison with the other tenses.

To explain further, the problem is that the PowerPoint claims that their are four main English verb tenses, past, now, future, and present. I think this makes my befuddlement much more clear. To be perfectly fair, this might be a very good way to teach beginning English grammar to native Chinese speakers. Perhaps this maps well to Chinese grammar and is a good way to start off. (My Chinese grammar is too poor for me to be certain either way.) Or it may be simply and completely wrong.

Since I just don’t understand the context of what they have been taught before, rightly or wrongly, I’m going to avoid the issue.

Two hours teaching only one verb tense. Loooooong class.

[jerwin]

past, now, future, and present

yeah, that’s confusing.

[Lucy_Gothro1]

I thought…the present WAS now?

[kxkvi]

Yeah, I was being facetious. I didn’t even realize there were 16, though I think I understand them all, and may have even used them all. Interesting how the brain can use complex things without being able to list them.

Now that we have time travel, we’ll need a whole slew of new verb tenses.

[ChuckV]

@Lucy_Gothro1

I thought…the present WAS now?

[smulder]

@jerwin

why stop at four

it verbs
it verbed
it will verb

it is verbing
it was verbing
it will be verbing

it has verbed
it had verbed
it will have verbed

it has been verbing
it had been verbing
it will have been verbing

it starts getting silly if we count it is going to verb as a separate tense and permute it with the others

[jerwin]

During the english enlightenment, many writers decided graft Latin grammar and spelling into English (islands). Latin never splits infinitives, German splits them almost as a matter of course.

[MarjaE]

We have present and preterite, and then use auxiliary verbs to create more tenses. Have, will, shall, be, been, did, etc. Not all apply in all dialects.

P.S. Of course have and have to have opposite implications. almost any present verb+to+present verb implies something in the future or potentiality…

[chgoliz]

I know enough Mandarin to know that verb tenses are the worst concept to try to teach Chinese students of English first!

[chgoliz]

@ChuckV

To explain further, the problem is that the PowerPoint claims that their are four main English verb tenses, past, now, future, and present. I think this makes my befuddlement much more clear. To be perfectly fair, this might be a very good way to teach beginning English grammar to native Chinese speakers. Perhaps this maps well to Chinese grammar and is a good way to start off. (My Chinese grammar is too poor for me to be certain either way.) Or it may be simply and completely wrong.

OK, so, to put it in very broad terms: you don’t have verb tenses in Chinese the way you do in English.

I go to the store yesterday.
I go to the store today.
I go to the store tomorrow.

So, your students won’t even understand what you’re talking about.

[ChuckV]

Well, they’ve had prior acquaintance with these concepts in English class, so they needn’t be completely lost.

I just heard from a Chinese friend that they do indeed teach that there are four main verb tenses in English. So, I’m just going to not worry about what they usually teach because I can’t relate to it.

[jerwin]

maybe there’s a “zero income affidavit” that you need to file?

[Lucy_Gothro1]

When they have “MUST” in all caps, they’re not messing around. ModestNeeds.org is the same way, as well as help from the MSU Extension program for property taxes; one has to have at least a part-time job to qualify for them.

And if I’m gonna work a gig-job, it’s going to be for ME, not for some company.

[ChuckV]

Bloody hell. Now I’ve got to pull together a lesson (simple past) with practically no prepare time. At least, if I want to get decent sleep.

Grumble, grumble…

[Nightflyer]

@Cynical

My S4 did the same thing, and it seems to be caused by the phone dumping the data that’s held in the RAM to the storage memory whenever the phone crashes or restarts unexpectedly. After a while it builds up and becomes huge (mine was several gig), but it’s in a hidden folder.

I couldn’t remember how I ended up fixing it so I Googled it again and the most familiar-sounding solution was to dial *#9900# and then choose the second option from the menu that pops up: “Delete Dumpstate/logcat.” I seem to remember that there’s a way to manually delete the data from a file browser if that doesn’t work but I think your phone might need to be rooted to do so.

A very late Thank You! on that info. Unfortunately Verizon’s disabled that number, so I’m doing research on ADB to see if I can do the same with that program. I think I can, but I’m going to research it a bit more first.