A mysterious email

[Wendalyn Nichols]

Well,
Presuming this is legit, the confusion is pretty typical of non-native
speakers. I was an ESL/EFL teacher (in both the US and England) for 12
years, and the present perfect was always the hardest thing to explain. I
think their tone is more typical of frustrated people who don't quite have
the fluency they wish they did; there's nothing really conspiratorial there.
Their fundamental mistake is to equate a very specific past-time adverbial
like "yesterday," which locates an event at a specific point in time, with
a more general past-time adverbial, like the phrase "in/over the past few
years," which continues the action into the present. Their example
sentence, "He has worked there in the past few years," might be produced by
a native speaker who wasn't being all that careful, but a more grammatical
statement for pedagogical purposes would be "He has worked there
occasionally over the past few years."
There is a very helpful discussion of the sticky nature of the simple past
versus the present perfect, and its particular problem for ESL/EFL
students, in Celce-Murcia/Larsen-Freeman's book, The Grammar Book: An
ESL/EFL Teacher's Course (Heinle & Heinle, 1999).
If you like, you can send me the full message, and I'll respond if it looks
like it would help.
Wendalyn Nichols

At 10:46 PM 10/5/04, you wrote:
>Below is the beginning paragraphs from a baffling email I received earlier
>this week, and a couple of paragraphs from further into the message.
>
>It all has an oddly paranoid tone to it.  Assuming it to be on the level,
>if anyone supposes that they can help, I will send them directly or post
>to this list the full text.
>
>GAT
>
>George A. Thompson
>Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
>Univ. Pr., 1998.
>
>This is not an advertisement. This message seems rather long, but its size
>is just a few bytes, much smaller than that of a small picture. We've
>spotted your address in a web page and now write to you for help.
>Unfortunately, our previous websites were shut down by their hosts, so we
>may have lost contact with you. I didn't know why they did it. We were
>just talking about the ABC of English. Is it even a taboo? We have now
>built our own web site, and we hope to receive your message, again.
>
>
>To the one who may help us
>
>Teachers of English in need of help: A discussion over a concealment
>
>We are a group of English teachers in Hong Kong, with Chinese as our first
>language. We are in a very embarrassing situation that grammar books have
>created for us, and we hope that you may lend a hand. We will sleep much
>more easier at night if we can solve this problem, which has long existed
>but we didn't quite take it seriously. These years, however, the question
>or scandal has been passing around fast and it is difficult for us to
>handle. Please allow us to explain the situation here.
>
>It is well known that, according to grammar books, we don't use present
>perfect tense when there is a past time adverbial mentioned:
>e.g. *I have seen him yesterday. (ungrammatical)
>Nearly every grammar book reminds us of this important rule, so we have
>accepted it without question. It is the essence from their experience.
>
>Because of this rule, however, we Chinese usually use simple past tense
>with "in the past few years", for this time adverbial is as past as you
>can possibly define what is past:
>e.g. He worked there in the past few years.
>We cannot interpret the adjective 'past' as referring to present or future
>time, can we? From schools to even government departments, we usually
>choose only simple past tense for such time adverbials as within the past
>four years, during the past three weeks, etc. It is as simple and logical
>as can be.
>
>However, gradually, English native speakers strongly reminded us we shall
>use the present perfect essencewith such time expressions:
>e.g. He has worked there in the past few years.
>At first we didn't believe this. We argued ferociously against them how
>possibly could present perfect tense stay with past time expressions? They
>told us frankly that they actually don't know much better than we do. In
>teaching, they use last instead of past, to bypass the embarrassment. But
>if so, I think it is more than an embarrassment. It is still cheating,
>deliberately.
>
>Their arguments were weak (for example, explaining "past has a relation to
>present, so it is present"). Most important, they couldn't even show us a
>grammar to support themselves. There wasn't any grammar book that has
>talked about this kind of examples, bearing time adverbials like in the
>past few years. At last, we thought they were irrational and pulling our leg.
>
>But as we carefully read foreign newspapers and magazines, we notice that
>it is true that time adverbials like within the past five years, during
>the past four weeks are permissible to stay with present perfect tense.
>With searching machines on Internet, we also know it is predominately so.
>On the other hand, past is as common as last. Surprisingly, however, no
>English grammar sources whatsoever on the web have ever reminded us of
>this exceptional use. How could this happen? Now the trouble is, how can
>we explain to our class? As you see, a teacher cannot tell his class that
>"I heard someone said this strange usage on Internet and I believe in him.
>But I have not any grammar book to support me, and the usage violates our
>common knowledge in using English tense." Put it simply, we need a grammar
>book saying so and supporting us. Is this asking too much?
>
>***
>
>The whole thing is a scandal. We trust in grammar books and they're all
>cheating us. Most important, it is not about a trivial point. The thumb
>rule in English tense is valid only by hiding away the unflavored
>evidence. Now according to their grammars, we have to cheat our students
>in return, and some of us don't even know it. Woe comes to those teachers
>who know this concealment silently.
>
>Our jobs as English teachers are now at risk. What if our schools find out
>that we don't even know the basic part of English -- tenses? We suggest
>you post your answer to the following free forum:
>
>http://fine.serveftp.org/forum
>
>***