I’ve been writing about teaching have/ have got*, and despite using the form myself I’ve started with a strong recommendation to not teach “have got” if at all possible. It might be just because I haven’t taught in Europe for 10 years, but the inclusion of mainly/ purely British English forms when there is a perfectly good alternative which is standard in America and most of the world increasingly annoys me, especially when that possible “world standard” form is understood or even used in the UK too. The new young learner course Super Minds* is also littered with vocabulary which I would suggest is at least two levels higher than the rest of the book due to being purely British English. I’ll put some examples here when I’ve next got the book to hand, and in the meantime you can add your own pet hates below:
*Articles and review coming soon
Hey Alex, I agree with you about teaching forms that are specific to one variety of English, but is ‘have got’ really that rare in the US? I just did a corpus search on collocations with have and found it to be quite common, with thousands of examples from news broadcasts. I also remember having this conversation with an American teacher I used to know, who insisted nobody in America used ‘have got’. We then started talking about the weekend, and straight away, “well, I’ve got a birthday party tomorrow..”. I wonder if anyone else has had this experience?
Thanks for the great site, all the best!
Good point, but the fact that it is so unclear in American English seems like another reason not to teach it – how can you possibly explain its usage?? When there is a clear American (and arguably ELF) standard that is also acceptable in British English, why would any book under Upper Intermediate level spend a second on it??
I use similar arguments to defend the teaching of British uses of Present Perfect. American uses aren’t clear and British uses are both consistent and easy(ish) to explain, so I have no problem with them being in textbooks (as long as teachers aren’t correcting “Did you do it yet?”)
Another one is “lorry”. I recently read someone complaining that “truck” is taking over in the UK, so why we would still teach “lorry” I really don’t know
And “film” for movies.
Of course, all this could just be because I want to be able to use Americanisms that I’ve been picking up after 12 of the last 16 years abroad without feeling guilty about it…
Hey Alex, interesting point to make – but shouldn’t we teach everything? For learners of English as a foreign language, I find it essential to prepare them for anything they might encounter in an English-speaking environment. It admittedly takes time and effort and can be confusing at times, particularly for young learners, but it all works out as students reach intermediate level in my experience.
Hi Alex, I work in Germany and I’m becoming more self conscious about teaching overtly British English too. I’m happy to go with truck, apartment, vacation and even elevator, I don’t think of these terms as American English, more International English.
I think there’s a big difference between teaching lexical items (“lorry”, “flat”, maybe more important ‘bonnet” and “boot”!) and teaching structures like “have got” which as you say Alex “have got” perfectly good alternative, simpler and more widespread in the English-speaking world. Let’s keep it simple at least until the higher levels!
With vocabulary, a partial solution I often use nowadays is to prepare worksheets with both versions, the one I consider less useful being in brackets, e.g. “truck (= lorry)”. This gives higher level and keener students in the class something to learn and lower level and less keen students something to help them understand the word. I’ve also started doing similar things with other synonyms, so I won’t mention the British/ American distinction unless I think it is useful for that group of students.
In terms of needing to teach them everything as Christina suggests – no, because:
- We have limited time in the classroom and so need to prioritise
- They won’t learn everything, so why try to teach everything
- If we can get them to the level where they can enjoy content in English (BBC downloads, graded readers, whatever), they’ll pick stuff up without us ever having to teach it
Here’s another: never teach “Yours sincerely/ Yours faithfully”, just get them to use “Sincerely yours” (or more emailly equivalents like “Yours”)