Odds and Ends and Rambling Thoughts

Yesterday began routinely enough. I was up at 7:00, checked my e-mail, and went out for the newspaper and coffee. I came back home and reviewed some written material and prepared some other materials. Then I headed downtown to Saint Vincent's Hospital around 11;00. No sooner did I get there than I received a cellphone call from my wife telling me that her car blew a radiator hose and antifreeze was spilled all over the place! Right after that call I visited a friend who was a patient in the hospital. I also had a brief conversation with a doctor over the phone and when I got off the phone with him, I thought about something that he said. He said that he thought there was too much "FILL IN THE BLANK" kind of teaching of English or "MULTIPLE CHOICE" type of teaching. That statement hit me right between the eyes. I said to myself, "I think the man is absolutely right." I have been asking this question of myself for a long time: Why is it that there is such a lag between a person from another countrys ability to speak English compared to his ability to write English? So, what is the answer to close the gap? We still need the English workbooks, that is for sure. But, we also need to supplement that kind of work with writing exercises of all kinds: dsily journals, notetaking, the term paper that is checked against google for plagiarism, and anything else that the teacher can dream up. The idea is this: GRAMMAR EXERCISES WITHOUT PRACTICAL PRACTICE IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH. It is like taking an illustrated book on how to ride a bicycle, reading it, but then not getting on the bike!..............
AND NOW FOR A GRAMMAR TIP; The words "SINCE" and "FOR" are usually dead giveaways that you need the Present Perfect Tense in your sentence. Use "since" when you mean a period of time from a certain point of time in the past up to the present. Example: I HAVE BEEN in the United States SINCE January 23, 1999. (Notice that I cannot use the simple past tense form "was". The word "FOR" is used when you want to tell the TOTAL time. Example: I have been in the United States FOR nine years. Whoever named the PRESENT perfect tense did a bad job!! It should be called something else because it describes an action that began in the past and continues up to the present. It may end today or continue into the future. You now should practice exercises that distinguish between the PAST TENSE and the PRESENT PERFECT TENSE. I will be telling you where you can find that kind of work....Bye for now.