Evan- TS#7 (Bruce)

    Following our previous session, Bruce was keen to work on clauses. Our work was cut short so after briefly looking over the relative pronouns we got to work on some example sentences containing noun clauses. So these clauses can take a few forms: a subject, an object (both direct and indirect), an object of a preposition, and finally a subject compliment. What was most difficult about this session was impressing the subtle differences in each type of clause. For example, a subject vs. a subject compliment. While knowing what a subject is, he struggled to realize that a compliment is only restating what the subject is. By the way, try to describe the composition of a thing to an English learner without using the word "is", not fun. He eventually began to understand the function of "is" as a descriptive actor, although I'm sure my flimsy descriptions weren't much help. One of the things that trips me up is how exactly to communicate ideas through English to a non-native speaker. Like, what exactly are the connections these learners are trying to make in their minds? How does English function correlate to their native language? I suppose that ought to be irrelevant, but still, I cannot help myself. What I found myself doing was breaking down a sentence into its most basic of parts, the subject, the verb, so forth. I did this to describe the actions and roles each part of a sentence plays. A noun clause does nothing (intrinsically) new in grammar, it recycles a lot of old ideas but is represented as a phrase rather than a single thing. Afterward, looking at a few more examples, Bruce was able to describe what functions the phrase was performing in the sentence, seeming far more capable.

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