half full, half empty problems
Last night in my adult ESL class, a student brought up a couple consecutive word problems that I found to be very interesting.
The first was the difference between by and until within the context of due dates and time constraints. Without realizing it, in English we use these words intuitively, exchanging each one depending on whether the verb we are using expresses a continuous action or an isolated, discrete action.
For example, “I will be on vacation until the end of January.” This act of “being on vacation” is a continuous one, whereas in this sentence: “Have the report done by the time I get back from vacation,” the report’s doneness is a discrete action, an isolated point in time. However, the supervisor can also say “You have until the time I get back from vacation to get the report done.” In this case, the supervisor is pointing to the ongoing amount of time and/or opportunities for work on the report rather than the due date. These options for assigning timeliness are governed by grammar, and in this way I see grammar as an expressive force, empowering speakers to convey world views.
A second source of grief for students was choosing between the words while and during.
The thing to remember here is that during is a preposition (indicating one’s position in the midst of an ongoing activity) and is usually followed by an article (or possessive pronoun) + noun.
During the vacation, we decided to get tattoos.
While is different because it is used in a structure of subject + verb.
While we were on vacation, we decided to get tattoos.
I’d love to hear how teacher readers and other folks have thought about how to instruct these distinctions.