ESL to Where?

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Two days ago I was covering for a teacher for an ESL class/ lower intermediate level. It was very interesting text book which had many questionable points that were raised by smart students who were early adults (youth).

Here’s one of the pages that carried question marks:

First this is the definition that we found online for that painting:

Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy is a painting by the British artist David Hockney. Painted between 1970 and 1971, it depicts the fashion designer Ossie Clark and the textile designer Celia Birtwell shortly after their wedding at which Hockney was Clark’s best man. Hockney and Clark had been friends since the early 1960s. One of their cats sits on Ossie’s knee (the cat in the painting was not in fact Percy — this was the name of one of their other cats — but Hockney thought Percy made a better title than Blanche, the cat he painted). The work is in acrylic on canvas, and measures 2170 x 3084mm in its frame. The painting featured in the final 10 of the Greatest Painting in Britain Vote in 2005, the only work by a living artist to do so. The painting is in the collection of the Tate Gallery.

The first question from Temel was: “How come that the painting carried different names under the Mr. and Mrs. shouldn’t it be Mr. and Mrs Clark or Percy only? It was a good question, but Percy was the cat sitting on the husband’s knee.

The second comment was: “Why do we say the cat sat on the man, should it be on the man’s lap or leg?” because as you noticed in the first exercise there was a fill-in-the-blanks where you have to choose “on”; nothing else would be acceptable.

The third was mine under the Speaking section, it was stated that “when we describe a picture we usually use there is or there are”. Actually we can not generalize this. It could be many other alternatives.

The fourth was about combining the present tense with “there is or there are”. I think you would disagree with me on how that phrase was put to the students, because their next question would be: “how can we combine the present continuous tense with the present tense (as with “there is/there are”). It is never combined. They can be together in the same sentence but it is not called combination or combined.

That was one of the classes I taught with brilliant youth full of questions and eager to learn everything about English language, so we should help them the right way. Do you agree? I hope you do.

Thank you for being here, and keep digging into our topics. Pls feel free to send us your comments or your correction for any misspelled words. Any participation will be appreciated.