Professional Documents
Culture Documents
cc 1
A NEW METHOD OF
TEACHING
ENGLISH
TO LEARNERS FROM
NON‐ENGLISH SPEAKING
COUNTRIES.
By
Israel Jayakaran, Colonel (Retd)
www.jayakaran.co.cc 2
Israel Jayakaran is a post graduate Electronics and
Communication engineer from the Indian Army. After his
retirement, he had taken to English in order to keep himself
occupied. Has done considerable research on English grammar and
has evolved a new and novel method of teaching English to learners
from non‐English speaking homes and countries. Has written several
English grammar books in his new method to suit various levels of
learners right from school to Under graduate level.
www.jayakaran.co.cc 3
For more details and direct class please visit
www.jayakaran.co.cc
www.2tion.com
www.jayakaran.co.cc 4
A NEW METHOD OF TEACHING ENGLISH TO
LEARNERS FROM NON‐ENGLISH SPEAKING
COUNTRIES.
By
Israel Jayakaran, Colonel (Retd)
Introduction
www.jayakaran.co.cc 5
Whatever. And they are likely to bubble with a new confidence as
well.
What worries a learner most of the time is the “grammar part” and
seldom the meaning part. Once he/she masters the grammar part
and how to frame it in various tenses, they will be absolutely happy in
writing out or speaking out a sentence with total ease.
6
The grammar part will have 3 sections like this,
Tom has kicked
| | |
Subject Auxiliary Verb
And the Meaning part will have OBJECT/ COMPLEMENT which may be
in any combination. Both O and C will contribute to the meaning
of a sentence.
This is an Universal formula and holds good for any Simple sentence
in any tense in the English language.
For each tense, the S+A+V part will be different. The O/C part is
independent of the grammar part. The O/C part of one sentence
7
could be attached to the grammar part of another sentence and vice
versa.
A sentence need not have the O/C part at all. But, while the
S+A+V part will give some small meaning, it is the O/C part that will
reveal the full meaning.
Categories of sentences
8
WHEN,WHERE,WHY,HOW(How many, How much, How far, How long,
How often) (named as ” Interrogative Adverbs”). A General question
will always start with one of these Interrogative words.
(5) Positive answer (a1)= S+A+V+O/C (Tom has kicked / this poor
street dog.)
9
We must introduce the structure of the 7 categories at the
earliest. These 7 formulae hold good for every Simple sentence
in every tense, both in Active and Passive voice, and once these are
memorized, a student will be able to compose a Simple sentence
on his/her own very confidently.
Types of sentences
According to me, the English language uses only “3 types of
sentences.” They are, Simple sentence, Complex sentence and
Compound sentence. A Complex sentence will have 2 Simple
sentences with one conjunction. A Compound sentence will have 3 or
more Simples and 2 or more conjunctions. A compound sentence may
have clauses also in place of one or more Simples.
This paper has been devoted primarily to Simple sentences.
Once a learner masters the Simple sentence, he/she would have no
problem learning about the other two varieties.
10
Parts of speech
For all this, there are only 32 auxiliaries in the language and
they are used both for Active and Passive voices. Auxiliaries are of
two kinds: Pure auxiliaries (or Universal Auxiliaries), whose job is only
to partner/help a verb in any of its 3 forms(21) and Auxiliary cum
Verbs (11). Auxiliary cum Verbs abbreviated as A.V (A dot V) are
11
basically auxiliaries but we can use them as Verbs in which case, it
acts as its own auxiliary simultaneously. These 11 are 2‐in‐1 words.
The A.Vs are: AM, IS, ARE, HAS, HAVE, WAS, WERE, HAD, DO, DOES
and DID (11).
But, the English language seems to use some ‘action less verbs’ as
well. They are.
AM, IS,ARE,,WAS and WERE. They happen to be A.Vs. Examine the
following sentences for any activity in them:
(a) Where is my house?
(b) Are these pencils yours?
(c) Amn’t I your neighbour in this colony?
(d) Was your essay any better than mine?
(e) How were your friends in studies last year?
No action/movement whatever! So, can’t we say then that the tenses
that use these A.Vs would be the action less varieties. These 5 action
less ‘auxiliary cum verbs’ are used in only two tenses. I propose we
call them PRESENT tense (with AM,IS,ARE) and PAST tense (with WAS,
WERE). More about this a little later.
12
Tenses
Many books have bulked the PRESENT tense and SIMPLE PRESENT
and call them “Present tense”. I beg to differ. While one is an ‘action
less tense’, the other is an ‘action‐oriented tense.’ They cannot be
grouped together.
13
In the same way, there is a clear distinction between PAST tense
and SIMPLE PAST tense.
This is how the language uses in all 16 tenses – 2 action less and
14 action based.
We have already noted that a normal Verb will reveal the nature
of the activity. Someone must be performing this activity. That
someone is the Subject. So, we can look at the Subject, not only as
one having a simple Noun but also as the “Doer” of an activity. This
activity must be directed upon something; some Noun of person or
Thing only. That something is the Object.
14
How to identify O and C
Put the test question after S+A+V along with any other word(s)
found in the sentence, if necessary, to identify the end words.
15
The main word in an Object will be a Noun (of a Person or Thing)
which may be supported by words of all parts of speech except A and
V.
Sentence analysis
“Analysing a sentence” means, breaking it into S,A,V,O,C
components.
HE,SHE,IT IS IS
16
WE,YOU,THEY ARE “
HE,SHE,IT IS “
3. Simple present tense (with A+V)
I,WE,YOU,THEY DO Present
HE,SHE,IT DOES “
WERE WERE
I,HE,SHE,IT WAS WAS
17
I,WE,YOU,THEY HAVE BEEN Cont. verb
18
16. FIP continuous (with A+V)
The FIP tense uses only Universal auxiliaries. We use this tense “to
talk about an action we wanted to do in some past time but didn’t do
it. ” Isn’t it strange that we have been using this tense in our
conversation (incidentally in all Indian languages as well) and yet have
not given it a suitable name! Even the British and American authors
have not. I propose that we call it by the name “Future in the Past
tense (FIP).”This is a new name from my side. Here are some
examples:
(a) We couldn’t have attended your party yesterday because there
was heavy snow on our route.
(b) We might have caught the culprit but he was too strong for us.
(c) Some of us need have got used to giving evasive answers.
19
Some comments about use of Simple Present and Simple past tenses
20
S A V O C
Remembering,
Spoke = DID + speak
Reached = DID + reach
Wrote = DID + write
21
category in an y tens without using the auxiliary the auxiliary. Could
it then vanish in a1 category?
What we have covered so far concerns only the S+A+V part and
how to write Simple sentences in all the 16 tenses.
Now, three elements could enter the O/C part and enrich our
sentences making them look sophisticated in style.
Infinitive
What is an infinitive? It is a Present form verb with the preposition
“to” as shown below:
Run ‐ “to run”
Finish ‐ “to finish”
Thus, the English language has as many infinitives as the number of
Present form verbs.
22
can do two or three actions, one after another, we should use
infinitive‐verbs only for the second and subsequent actions like this,
Infinitive‐verbs in Emphatics
We can use the infinitive‐verbs to make very powerful a1 or a2
categories along with A.Vs in the Subject section, as shown below:
(a) I am / not to meet you ever again.
S A.V Infin. V O C(t)
(b)John is / to report to me at 1400 hours.
(c) The students are / to sit in the class by 0800 hours.
(d) The Headmaster has / to give a proper explanation to his
superiors.
23
(e) All teachers have / not to take any leave during this month
(f) Wasn’t Krishna / to take part in the debate yesterday?
(g) Our team had / to abandon the trek programme due to heavy rain.
While we have used the A.Vs in the three tense families, we may
use in the S+A+V part the normal verb HAVE along with some
selected auxiliaries, for the action oriented tenses in the three
families, like this,
(h) Some of us don’t have / to be present in the meeting today.
(i) Roja doesn’t have / to sit for this test.
(j) Joe did have / to speak in yesterday’s debate.
(k) You will have / to take me to a movie this evening.
Thus, we can make use of all the A.Vs to make powerful positive
or negative statements. Have you noted that all the above sentences
are ‘future looking’ types wherein no action has taken place? We can’t
use the Emphatics for any past cases. For instance, the following
statement cannot be put in the Emphatic form:
“We didn’t see this man last night”.
24
In all the cases, the infinitive Nouns pass the object test. But,
make sure that the end word is the infinitive; only then we can treat
them as nouns. If there are any words after the infinitive, the
infinitive noun will turn into an infinitive‐verb.
Study the following example,
25
“To give is better than to receive”
We can combine these two into a single Simple sentence like this,
“Every playing team has a Captain to lead it in
action.”
(c)The thief flourished a knife at her. (d) The thief frightened the
housewife.
26
Gerund
What is a ‘gerund’?
27
Gerund‐verb
Can we use a gerund with the force of a verb? Opinions differ
but I say, we can.
(d) Don’t all parents advise their children against fighting with
other children??
(dd) Don’t all parents advise their children not to fight with
others.
28
Where we are unable to replace a gerund by an infinitive verb,
we should treat them as gerund‐noun‐object.
Summarising,
(a) We can use a gerund‐noun‐subject in any tense unlike the
infinitive‐noun‐subject.
(b) A gerund‐noun‐object will come immediately after S+A+V.
(c) If there is a preposition as a partner to a gerund, we may call it a
gerund‐verb if
we can replace it by an infinitive‐verb.
(d) A gerund‐verb will come like this,
S+A+V+ O or C+ gerund‐verb + O/C
Participle
What is a participle? A Participle is also a connector which can
convert two Simple sentences into a single Simple sentence.
29
“playing” here is a participle because it appears after O1(or C) . If it
is a gerund, it would have appeared immediately after S+A+V. It is not
a verb because there is no Auxiliary partner to it. This is the
‘participle test.’.
Here are more examples:
(a) We saw a small boy carrying a monkey on his shoulder.
(b) When we went to the shop we could not spot anyone
standing at the counter.
(c) John normally doesn’t lie to anyone remembering his father’s
advice.
We can also start the sentence with the Present participle but
only in some cases, like this,
(cc) Remembering his father’s advice, John normally doesn’t lie
to anyone.
30
(c) The interview board selected John impressed at his style of
English.
. Perfect participle
We use the Perfect participle to show completion of two actions
one following the other. Its location too will be the same as in the
other two cases. Here are the examples:
(a) We went out for a walk having finished our dinner, around
2000 hours.
(b) Having struck a deal, we started our work on the important
project.
31
(e) The MPs felt unsatisfied with the Minister’s reply. (f) They
demanded a statement right from the PM
(3) Not satisfied with the Minister’s reply, the MPs demanded a
statement right from the PM. (Past parti method)
When one of the sentences is with A.V (i.e. Present or Past tense),
use the participle BEING like this:
(g) I am your close friend. (h) Haven’t I the right to know some of
your secrets?
(d) Being your close friend, haven’t I the right to know some of
your secrets?(Pr Parti method)
32
test of Manner.(TQ: HOW) An Adverb will describe a noun standing far
away from that noun.
Passive voice
As of now, the Passive voice teaching method appears to be all
right. Here, I have two proposals for consideration
The present day grammar books don’t even make a mention of this
fact.
33
(3)A) Smitha had been seeing too many movies lately.
(P) Too many movies had been being seen by Smitha lately
(4) (A) We will have reached New Delhi by tomorrow morning.
(P) New Delhi will have been being reached by us by tomorrow
(5) (A) We could have been eating our lunch for over 30 minutes.
(P) Our lunch could have been being eaten by us for over
30minutes.
Conclusion
The Author’s claim is that if we teach English through the
S+A+V+O/C formula method, the students would learn the language
much faster, find themselves on firmer grounds and also attain a kind
of mastery in the English language..
34
This is how Isaac Newton’s theory of gravitation and Galeleo’s
theory of the Earth going round the Sun, Einstein’s theory of
relativity, were accepted. and adopted..
www.jayakaran.co.cc
www.2tion.com
35