gram q

[howsmyenglish]

Fearlessly sitting on my balance pillow (timer set to 20 minutes, as the internet suggests!) I dare to ask you another English-related question. They will get less, I promise! It's just because I'm on the first chapters that I have so many questions. The instructions don't change that much in further chapters (and let's pretend that the grammar explanations don't get more complicated either, just for now).

So here we are explaining to students the basics of what is a pronoun and what is a verb. There are several ways, in which we do this. ONE of them is by adding an explanatory phrase in brackets. For the verb, that phrase is "action word". For the pronoun, "stand-in word". My question is re the latter. Does "stand-in word" make the word pronoun more understandable? (Considering that we've already said that a pronoun is a word that "stands instead of a noun".) Or does it just add unnecessary complexity?

Comments

[thewayne]

You might take a look at the definitions and examples of those word classes in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page. Language gets complicated fast.

[howsmyenglish]

Hey. With all due respect and that... but that's just insulting. You don't think someone who has enough experience and knowledge to actually write a new textbook for teaching a language, i.e. someone, who thinks they have enough new and important material to contribute to academic knowledge - you really think someone like that needs to be pointed to the Wikipedia Main Page?

Thanks for telling me language can get complicated. With the five languages I speak fluently and over a dozen more that I've studied and am able to understand I hadn't noticed that.

[thewayne]

slinks off to corner for a time-out

[thanatos_kalos]

I think it adds unnecessary complication, yeah. You could put '(stand-in for the noun)' next to the word pronoun once or twice after you've defined it but after that it's probably not necessary unless you're reintroducing the topic in a later chapter. :)

[howsmyenglish]

Oh, sure, I only meant that it would be done like that once.

[thanatos_kalos]

:)