Grammar

[rgs2001uk]

i am not a teacher, one of my thai neighbours, a university student, came to see me this evening with the following problem,

he has been given a letter, of course contents and instructions, one of the sentances stated, homeworks and future assignments are to be done etc etc.

he couldnt understand the plural use of the word homework.

as i said i am not a teacher, is this correct or should it have been homework, or in the context of this statement is it correct.

pls keep any replies in laymens terms, thanks.

[Mid]

first I've ever heard of it ,

had plenty of homework in my day though ..........................

[carnival1200]

i am not a teacher, one of my thai neighbours, a university student, came to see me this evening with the following problem,

he has been given a letter, of course contents and instructions, one of the sentances stated, homeworks and future assignments are to be done etc etc.

he couldnt understand the plural use of the word homework.

as i said i am not a teacher, is this correct or should it have been homework, or in the context of this statement is it correct.

pls keep any replies in laymens terms, thanks.

When i was at school i got homework almost every day.  My children attending school in the UK get homework 2 or 3 times a week!

Edited June 6, 2007 by carnival1200

[carnival1200]

i am not a teacher, one of my thai neighbours, a university student, came to see me this evening with the following problem,

he has been given a letter, of course contents and instructions, one of the sentances stated, homeworks and future assignments are to be done etc etc.

he couldnt understand the plural use of the word homework.

as i said i am not a teacher, is this correct or should it have been homework, or in the context of this statement is it correct.

pls keep any replies in laymens terms, thanks.

When i was at school i got homework almost every day.  My children attending school in the UK get homework 2 or 3 times a week!

My wife does the housework most days - but she never does the houseworks - get the picture

Edited June 6, 2007 by carnival1200

[Ijustwannateach]

Homework is an uncountable noun. It never needs an 's' to become plural. It is uncountable because it is unclear exactly what an individual unitary "homework" would be, in the same way that it is unclear what one individual "soup" would be- how many "soups" could you count in one bowl of soup? (but you could count the bowls!)

[rgs2001uk]

to everyone who replied, thanks for the explanations, i didnt know if it was an americanism, as the rest of the letter was written in american english.

thanks again for the help.

[Maestro]

...and please note: even if three different teachers each assign homework to a student, it is still homework that the student has to do, not homeworks. The only way one can indirectly make homework plural is to talk, for example, about “homework assignments”.

--

Maestro

[richard10365]

This is a great example to use in class when talking about countable and uncountable nouns. The children should be able to relate to this quite easily.

[ProThaiExpat]

Definitely not an "Americanism".

[Loaded]

what's the quantifier for 'homework'?

ie how do you make 'homework' countable?

'homework assignments' is a collocation and I guess now you can count them, but I'm thinking more of

water ---> a can of water

'can' being a quantifier for water.

homework ---> a ???? of homework

a load of homework

Edited June 7, 2007 by Loaded

[Petch01]

what's the quantifier for 'homework'?

ie how do you make 'homework' countable?

'homework assignments' is a collocation and I guess now you can count them, but I'm thinking more of

water ---> a can of water

'can' being a quantifier for water.

homework ---> a ???? of homework

a load of homework

What about 'a task of homework' and 'several tasks of homework'.

Petch01

[mijan24]

what's the quantifier for 'homework'?

ie how do you make 'homework' countable?

'homework assignments' is a collocation and I guess now you can count them, but I'm thinking more of

water ---> a can of water

'can' being a quantifier for water.

homework ---> a ???? of homework

a load of homework

We have/get a lot of homework-I have lots and lots of homework.

[Murf]

A plethera of homework?

A session of homework?

[Mid]

a lot

a little

[expatwannabe]

a lot

a little

a ton of homework

a plethora of homework

a shitload of homework

you get the picture

Edited June 7, 2007 by expatwannabe

[stevejones123]

'Homeworks' is perfectly correct, as are 'coffees', 'beers', 'teas' and even 'fried rices' in the right context.

When dealing with countable and uncountable you need to look at the context.

"Coffees" is the equivalent of "cups/mugs of coffee"; "homeworks" is the equivalent of 'homework assignments".

There are nine tokens for 'homeworks' in the British National Corpus, three in the sense which affects us here. It's not that common but still used. Google gives the use of the word on the Harvard University site, Brown University site, and the Sheffield University site.

There is much less of a strict line between countable and uncountable nouns than elementary EFL books suggest. Basically, if the speaker thinks of the word as representing a collection of discrete, countable entitites, then he will treat the word as countable. The question of whether a word is countable or not is not an innate function of the word, but is the reflection of the speakers attitude towards what that word represents.

Another thing to remember is language variety between individuals (ideolects). The fact that you may never say something doesn't mean others won't. So a native speaker can always be trusted when he says something is right but is not in a position to say something is definitely wrong, though in all but the marginal cases his judgement call will be correct. If you see something coming from another native speaker be very wary of dismissing the construction as incorrect.

[withnail]

There are 9 solutions for homeworks of which 4 refer to the name of a shop. On the other hand there are 807 for homework. Whilst certain nouns can be countable and uncountable i.e. coffees meaning cups of coffee or blends of coffee, there are instances where it is never correct to use the plural form. Homework is definitely one of them in this case.

As far as counting homework you could say homework assignments, or as I did when I was at school bits/pieces of homework. I'll admit the latter two sound a little childish, but then talking about counting homework it probably would be. A teacher might count them as essays or papers.

I do agree with the second half of what you say Steve about the strict line between countable and uncountable nouns, but I would suggest that 99% of English speakers in the world would agree that in this case homework sounds better than homeworks and I would certainly never teach it to a student.

Edited June 10, 2007 by withnail

[expatwannabe]

'Homeworks' is perfectly correct, as are 'coffees', 'beers', 'teas' and even 'fried rices' in the right context.

When dealing with countable and uncountable you need to look at the context.

"Coffees" is the equivalent of "cups/mugs of coffee"; "homeworks" is the equivalent of 'homework assignments".

There are nine tokens for 'homeworks' in the British National Corpus, three in the sense which affects us here. It's not that common but still used. Google gives the use of the word on the Harvard University site, Brown University site, and the Sheffield University site.

There is much less of a strict line between countable and uncountable nouns than elementary EFL books suggest. Basically, if the speaker thinks of the word as representing a collection of discrete, countable entitites, then he will treat the word as countable. The question of whether a word is countable or not is not an innate function of the word, but is the reflection of the speakers attitude towards what that word represents.

Another thing to remember is language variety between individuals (ideolects). The fact that you may never say something doesn't mean others won't. So a native speaker can always be trusted when he says something is right but is not in a position to say something is definitely wrong, though in all but the marginal cases his judgement call will be correct. If you see something coming from another native speaker be very wary of dismissing the construction as incorrect.

What BS. The only thing you're going to do is teach more Asians to pluralize uncountable nouns.

My all time favorite is shrimps - found in nearly any asian restaurant menu. And utterly wrong.

[Loaded]

... and then there's 'chicken'.

Countable or uncountable?

The answer is both but you need to change 'to be' plus pluralise the noun before you know for sure.

There is some chicken

There are some chickens

and as for 'fish' well....

[Mid]

please don't give the students homeworks ............................................

[PeaceBlondie]

Maybe this was mentioned here, but work is uncountable. Do you have any work for me? He did a lot of work today. Work is difficult. Therefore, the compound noun homework is uncountable. Maybe some schoolteacher north of Aberdeen or south of Corpus Christi assigns homeworks, but almost no other teacher ever has, I suspect.

[PeaceBlondie]

Clarification: there is a word works, used in the plural, as in public works. Not the same usage, however.

[Mid]

thanxs PB ,

homework is a good thing .

[ProThaiExpat]

To diverge somewhat, are there English teachers that are considered "liberal" and others considered "conservative"?

Would an English teacher that hears a few students use a grammatically incorrect word such as "homeworks" be inclined to "announce" that such usage was "common" and therefore acceptable while a "conservative" teacher requires authority, such as a recognized dictionary, to so "announce" a change from unacceptable to acceptable.

Languages "morph" all the time and my question is, is it up to the dictionary writers to determine when a previously unacceptable use of a word become acceptable?

Prior to the invasion of Japan by the U.S., a very popular stew type dish was named Skiyaki (spelled as spoken). When was spelled in Romaji it is spelled Sukiyaki. G.I.s pronounced the first u, when using the word for this popular dish, while the "u" is dropped in proper Japanese. Today, most Japanese under sixty, use the G.I. pronunciation and so do the dictionaries.

This is the type of morphing of a language of which I speak. By the way, Thai Suki is a unique Thai dish that doesn't resemble in any way Japanese Sukiyaki, even though the Thai name comes from the Japanese word and many think the dish was a bad copy of the Japanese dish.

Edited June 11, 2007 by ProThaiExpat

[withnail]

There are, of course, liberal and conservative teachers of English. However, I don't think that this particular topic serves as a good example of that. The use of the word homeworks is not at all common in my opinion and definitely needs correcting. Whether to correct it or not is another debate however as you can argue that it is more productive to correct only the target language being taught in a lesson, and that over correcting would be detrimental to the students progress.

Better examples would be starting sentences with conjunctions or the expression "loving it" (technically incorrect as it is a state not an action verb and shouldn't therefore be used in the present continuous tense). Both of these are now commonly used in English and you could argue needn't be corrected. Some people however might suggest that if you are going to learn a language you should learn to speak it well, and that as language teachers it is our job to maintain our language and try to prevent it from degenerating to the state it is becoming toady.

[wasabi]

Regarding Grammar, my English grammar is very good but this is due to the fact I'm a farang not because I know the rules well. How many of you English teachers actually know the rules that dictate grammar and how many just know it due to being a native speaker? Is it possible to teach English if you have solid grammar but only by instinct?

[mbkudu]

Regarding Grammar, my English grammar is very good but this is due to the fact I'm a farang not because I know the rules well. How many of you English teachers actually know the rules that dictate grammar and how many just know it due to being a native speaker? Is it possible to teach English if you have solid grammar but only by instinct?

Suppose so, until you have some kid ask you to explain what passive progressive is, or the difference between a transitive and an intransitive verb.

[expatwannabe]

Maybe this was mentioned here, but work is uncountable. Do you have any work for me? He did a lot of work today. Work is difficult. Therefore, the compound noun homework is uncountable. Maybe some schoolteacher north of Aberdeen or south of Corpus Christi assigns homeworks, but almost no other teacher ever has, I suspect.

Thanks for your wisdom, PB.

[withnail]

There's a difference between being able to apply English grammar and understanding how it works.

It is very important that a teacher has a working knowledge of English grammar for a number of reasons. Not so you can bore your students with structure and terminology but actually so that you can keep your lessons conversational and give good examples.

With no knowledge of how our language works teachers can still be good practice aids for students but they usually struggle to help students with their problems. I've seen many new teachers in this situation and they often waste a lot of time trying to explain fairly simple things or rather than appear stupid say the first thing that comes into their heads. Example: "Teacher, I don't understand why sometimes you say this, but another time you say this." Teacher (who doesn't know how to explain) says "Because in English we like to say things in different ways so sometimes we say this and sometimes we say this. The meaning is the same."

Another thing that new teachers do is, because they have started learning grammar but as yet do not have a good understanding of it, is over teach grammatical structure. They do this because to them the structure is the difficult part of the language, so they might teach a class of 12 year-olds how to form the present continuous tense but not when or why to use it.

It's amazing how many teachers here are convinced that it is not their job to teach grammar. To which my answer is "So you're a vocabulary teacher then."

Edited June 12, 2007 by withnail

[ProThaiExpat]

I certainly agree that teachers who are well versed in grammar and teaching techniques are valuable assets as long as they have the right attitude, I wonder why university level foreign languages have shifted over to teaching by the use of phrases and situational context rather than grammar.

I went through a full year of beginning Japanese at the University of Hawaii ,who has mostly Japanese native speakers as instructors and not a word was said about grammar. Granted, Japanese grammar is relatively simple compared to English grammar, but still I wonder about teaching phrases in a situational context. This was no light weight course as Hiragana and Katakana were expected to be learned and used in letter writing in the first semester and 150 Kangi were expected to be learned and used in the final exam at the end of the second semester. Vocabulary consisted of 500 words per semester.

If English was taught this way, the student would be taken though various life situations and given his English though phrases which utilized the vocabulary pertinent to the situation such as taking a train, shopping in a department store, going to a hospital, etc.

How does this phrase approach to teaching a foreign language strike the pros who read this? By the way, the text book used in the course was "hot off the presses" six years ago when I took the course.

Edited June 12, 2007 by ProThaiExpat