EF6 August 2 Sunday morning message to my wonderful students

“You have learnt something. That always feels at first as if you have lost something.”

George Bernard Shaw, Major Barbara

 

    Hi everyone,

    We have been working hard learning about the three types of sentences: simple, compound, complex. We have studied the basic structures of these sentences. Also, we have explored a lot of details about how we can use these sentences, including subjects, verb forms, phrasing, capitals, punctuation, etc.

    It is a good foundation which you can use for the rest of your life in English.

    I know that many of you are frustrated because although you are learning these new styles and understand them, you are still having problems writing them when it comes time to write a paragraph.

    This is what I think is happening: It is not enough to learn new things. You also have to unlearn old things that are wrong.

    In our case, you can’t just learn new English sentence styles. You also have to unlearn old styles that you have been using, but that don’t work.

    Many of you are doing well in class when we do exercises. You can write the new styles that we have been learning. You have proven that class after class. However, when you write paragraphs you fall back on your old sentence styles that don’t work.

    You have to leave these old wrong sentence structures behind. They don’t work. They will never work. Even if they seem ok to you, they aren’t. If a teacher is telling you again and again that they are not right, you should think about doing something different and new.

    In class we learned what works. Learn the new styles and use them. They are the way forward for you.

    Best,

    Al