The English Verb by Michael Lewis

Subtitle: An Exploration of Structure and Meaning

(Book Review)

Why I Read This Book

            I read this book as part of my ongoing commitment to try and read 10 pages a day of something related to professional development.

The Central Argument

            This book is written for English teachers, and is undoubtedly only of interest to them.

            However if you are an English teacher, I think you’ll find this book very interesting and informative.

            Basically, Michael Lewis says that we English teachers have been teaching the verb tenses all wrong.

            For one thing, we teach each tense as if it were a series of uses, each unconnected to each other, and then a series of exceptions to each of these uses. This has the effect of just confusing and discouraging our students.

            As Michael Lewis says on page 13:

            Most student grammars, and textbook syllabuses, are based on a catalogue approach to grammar. Different points are covered one by one in separate paragraphs or units. Each paragraph is independent of the others. There are two difficulties which result from this.  Firstly, students are given the impression that they are attempting an impossible task; as soon as they have finished one paragraph, or one use of a verb form, they are presented with another, and another, and another… .  Rarely, if ever, do they see the parts they are learning as coming together to form a coherent whole. Not surprisingly, such a catalogue approach, giving an impression of impossibility, de-motivates students.  The second problem is that each paragraph is, in a way, an exception to the previous paragraph. Students may, for example, learn that the present continuous is used for an action going on at the moment of speaking (this is a dangerous half truth…), and then they learn that the present continuous can also be used for the future. Nobody take times to explain that there is a reason for this, and that indeed the two uses are fundamentally the same….This “catalogue and exceptions” approach must depress students. Instead of encouraging a feeling of progress as they learn more language, it gives them a feeling that the task is becoming more and more impossible.

            I’m guilty of having used the “catalogue and exceptions approach” myself.  (Although in my defense I was following the prompts of the textbook I was teaching out of at the time.)  But I have, for example, taught the present perfect as a catalogue of unconnected rules such as:

1) An action that started in the past and is still continuing now (“I’ve lived here for 6 years”),

2) An action that finished in the past and has an impact on the present (“They’ve eaten all the food”), and

3) To describe an experience at an indefinite point in the past (“I’ve been to Paris.”)

            I then, of course, often have to deal with all the exceptions to these rules, such as why many sentences which also appear to fit these 3 rules would use the past simple or present simple.

            Secondly, Michael Lewis argues, we English teachers often tell students there is no real difference between some verb forms (for example “I have lived here for 6 years” versus “I have been living here for 6 years”). 

            And when students have questions about why this is, English teachers often just reply that English is an illogical and confusing language.

           

            This, says Michael Lewis, is all wrong.

            For one thing, difference of form implies difference of meaning.  (If “I have lived here for 6 years” meant the same thing as “I have been living here for 6 years”, then there wouldn’t be 2 different ways of saying it.)

            Secondly, verb tenses, properly understood, should not be a series of rules for separate uses.  Instead, each verb tense has one single unifying meaning which applies to all its different uses. 

            English grammar is not illogical or confusing, but instead perfectly logical once you start to understand what the unifying characteristics of each verb tense are. 

            According to Lewis, one of the things that people often misunderstand about verb tenses is that they don’t refer to objective time, but to the speaker’s psychological perspective of time.  So for example “I have lived here for 6 years” and “I have been living here for 6 years” are both perfectly correct, but each indicates that the speaker has a different psychological perspective on the action.

            Each verb tense represents a different subjective view of time, and all of the different uses of a particular verb tense can be connected back to this same view.

            For example, the present perfect can be used in a number of different situations, as listed above, but all the usages have a unifying characteristic—each use indicates that the speaker is looking back at a past event from the perspective of the present.

            Once this is understood, the series of “rules” which we English teachers give about the present perfect are not really “rules”, but simply hints to help the student identify in which situations the present perfect is likely to be used.

My Reaction

          As Michael Lewis states, much of what is in his book is different to the way English teachers traditionally approach verb tenses, and it was also a different approach to me.

            However, what he said made so much sense to me that I quickly became a convert to his way of thinking.  

            (I’m doing somewhat of an injustice to this book by summarizing it in only a few paragraphs.  It takes Michael Lewis 180 pages to fully develop his argument, so it’s hard to do it justice in a summary.  But if you read through the whole book and all the examples he gives, then it makes a lot more sense.)

            Nevertheless, since I’m not an expert, I’d like to hear some other opinions on the matter.  Michael Lewis frequently criticizes the way other grammar books have described verb tenses, which leads me to believe that there is an area of disagreement between experts, and I’d be curious to hear what rebuttals the other authors would have. My limited knowledge is such that I’m not even sure if Michael Lewis represents the majority view or minority view in the field.

           

In the Classroom

            In the beginning of the book, Michael Lewis makes clear that his intention is to educate the English teacher, not the students.  “In the early discussion of examples the reader must not think My students will never understand this—that is not the intention of the book.  The first intention is to ensure that teachers understand how the main building blocks of the English verb work.” (p. 8)

            This message is reiterated at the end of the book:

            “I have attacked many traditional classroom explanations in this book. I can think of nothing more unsatisfactory than that teachers should now take the explanations offered in this book and present them to their students!

            I believe it is essential for teachers to have a clear and deep understanding of the central structures of the English language they are teaching. I do not, however, believe that explanation has anything other than a very small part to play in the normal school classroom. I beg the reader not to impose the rather abstract explanations of this book on their unsuspecting students.” (p. 180)

            On the other hand, some sections of the book, like chapters 2 and 21, are clearly marked to consider the classroom implications.

            So some parts of the book are clearly marked for the classroom, and some parts of the book are for the benefit of the teacher’s knowledge only. 

            Despite these clear demarcations at certain points, much of the middle of the book was a grey area for me where I was unsure if the information was intended for the classroom or not.

            As I’m writing these words, I’m unsure how much of the information in this book I’m going to try to take into the classroom.

            Among other practical considerations, many of the textbooks that are currently assigned to my students favor the “catalogue and exceptions” approach that Michael Lewis criticizes, and when the students have an assigned text it is often easier to just follow the explanations used in the textbook rather than spending the whole course trying to fight the textbook.

            Another practical consideration is that most of my classes are low level students with whom I do not share a common L1, and I’m not sure how I would explain complex concepts such as psychological time across the language barrier.

            (Actually Michael Lewis believes that teachers shouldn’t worry about explaining, since teachers should do as little explaining as possible.  Students should simply be given example sentences and should be encouraged to work out the rules for themselves through activities such as sorting exercises.  So this is one option I may be trying out in the future.)

            At any rate, I’m glad I read this book for my own benefit.  Whether I’ll find ways to integrate this knowledge into my own teaching in the future remains to be seen.

            Also, after having read this book, I am now feeling a little self-conscious about many of the TESOL worksheets I’ve posted on this blog.  (And, since I’m still currently working through my backlog of worksheets, this also applies to several worksheets that I haven’t yet posted, but that will be posted in the next few months.)  I worry that a few of the worksheets I’ve designed use the “catalogues and exceptions approach” such as this sheet here.

            I’m not going to take these worksheets down, but it is definitely something I’m going to be taking into consideration when I design worksheets in the future.

Other Notes

* Michael Lewis advises teachers to stop using a lot of the traditional grammar terminology for verb forms, because these terms are not accurate.  The present simple has nothing to do with the present (it can be used to describe events in the past or future as well), and the past participle has nothing to do with the past (it is used to form the present passive). Instead Michael Lewis advises using names like first form, second form, and third form for what has been traditionally called the present simple, the past simple, and the past participle.

            This is another reason Michael Lewis might disapprove of many of the grammar sheets I’ve posted on this blog.  For example, I’ve used the term “past participle” in a number of grammar sheets, (such as here, here , here , here , and here .)

            However, recently I have begun changing over to V1, V2, and V3.  I started this change even before I read this book—mainly because my younger students are unfamiliar with traditional English grammatical terms.

* As an example of how simplified grammatical rules can often mislead ESL students, Michael Lewis gives the example of “some” and “any”.  ESL students are usually taught that “some” is used in positive sentences, and “any” is used in negatives or questions.  But, Michael Lewis says, this is not true, and teaching this to students can lead to confusion when they encounter examples that don’t fit the pattern.

            While I was reading this book, I had the opportunity of using this information in class.  During a reading exercise, a student asked me why the word “any” was used in a positive sentence, and I was able to borrow Michael Lewis’s analysis to explain to that student that the rule he had originally learned was flawed.

* I’m not going to mention any names, but the textbook currently assigned to intermediate students at my school makes a real mess of explaining the difference between “will” future and “going to” future.  It’s such a complicated “catalogues and exceptions” list that it confuses us teachers just as much as the students.  (In the past, I’ve even resorted to making up a handy reference cheat-sheet of all the different uses of “will” and “going to”.  I kept this cheat-sheet near me during class so I was prepared for all the students’ questions.)

            I was therefore attracted to Michael Lewis’s much simpler description of the main differences between “will” and “going to”. (“Will” emphasizes the speaker’s judgment at the moment of speaking, and a connection between the present state of affairs, and a future that the speaker sees as inevitable given the current state of affairs.  “Going to” makes use of evidence leading up to and pre-dating the moment of speaking.)

* Michael Lewis argues that there’s no such thing as a present tense or a simple past tense in English.  Rather, what is usually called the present simple is used to describe timeless facts that the speaker sees as immediate.  This is why people will often switch into the present tense when telling a dramatic story—because those events seem psychologically immediate to them.

            In a previous book review, I questioned whether a task requiring students to describe pictures was a suitable way to elicit the past tense.  If Michael Lewis is correct about this, then I feel even more strongly about my criticism. If the speaker is looking at the pictures they are describing, then those events might seem immediate to them, and it would be natural to revert back to the present tense—even given a prompt about past time.

Link of the Day
Noam Chomsky - Current Problems in the Study of Language and Mind

Update: July 18, 2017
Video Review HERE