Day 14 - caffeine and how many tenses are there in the English language?

Well today has been all about grammar. We observed our tutor give a two hour lesson on modal verbs and functional language for giving advice. A lively debate arose around the topic of etiquette for interviews with the students getting quite worked up about whether it was OK to chew gum and not say thank you. It was entertaining. This afternoon we looked at time and tenses and why English is so confusing. The fact that time and tenses don't always correlate is what makes it so hard. Present tense though can be used to talk about the past and the future

e.g. Sir Charles dies or The Chelsea Flower Show opens next week.

Is fascinating but the mind boggles a bit. We got asked how many tenses there are in the English language - the simple answer is two - past and present if you only look at word endings as the future tense is not inflected and you rely on auxiliary verbs. If you get technical though with combinations to the continuous, perfect etc. there are 8 but when you put in modal auxiliaries and the passive form there are 16. Yes, complex!

I saw dolphins near Llandudno on my way into school today - so special. Needed more than Ricoffy this morning and went via Bootleggers to imbibe caffeine. My friend Warren picked me up after class and we had a quick coffee and almond croissant at Baked in Bakoven on the way back to my Aunt and Uncle's this evening. There's an interesting debate going on at UCT on white privilege which is linked to the movement to have Cecil Rhodes' statue removed from Jammie Stairs on campus. Some people see it as an abomination but the land UCT is built on is part of Rhodes' estate that was bequeathed. Would have liked to have gone to the debate yesterday on the law campus.

OK need to finish my assignment on my reflections on my teaching and observations of experienced teachers. On a caffeine high - eeeek!
Til soon :)