I'm not sure that children need to know about "verbs" and "forms" per se, to avoid mistakes with them.  The pattern they learn has to do with associating the words with the meanings.  Brad seems to be saying the verbs are "ate" and "had eaten."  Those are the teacher's terms and not the child's.  In fact, arguably the verbs are "ate" (past or preterit form of "eat") and "had" (past or preterit form of the verb "have").  "Had eaten" is a verb phrase consisting of the verb "had" (past or preterit form) and "eaten" (a participle form of "eat").  This last form is really an adjective form derived from the verb "eat."  If we didn't have certain teachers messing with the children's minds, they might understand these concepts better.  But it don't think it has anything to do with them making "mistakes," maybe just with explaining to certain of their teachers what they are doing with the language.

From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Brad Johnston
Sent: Tuesday, March 17, 2009 7:16 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: learning grammar

Inbound message: These are pervasive patterns in English that children learn very early in life, well before they start school, and they rarely make mistakes with them.

This is, as nearly as anyone knows, not what happens. Children have to be taught that there is a verb form that is useful because it allows us to show that by the time one past event occurred, another past event had already occurred. "When the Queen arrived, they ate. When the Queen arrived, they had eaten".

They ate either after she arrived or before she arrived, depending on the verb form. This is the only example in the New York Times Style Book. 'The Queen' example was also sent to me by an English professor in England who opined that "it's the only way it can be done".

.brad.17mar09.



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