Why questions?
by Shun Tang
English native speakers write and speak good English, there is no doubt about that. We have to admit they have an instinct to understand the tenses which they have to use in every sentence. However, grammarians have a very bad way of explaining their instinct of using them. Do we know there are some problems in today's tense explanation? Small ones? Big ones? However, there seems to be no problems at all if the contents in a grammar book can be trickily organized. They work, because students of English do not care for tenses anymore. They always get vague answers and feel embarrassed for not understanding the explanation. They hardly have any idea that even grammarians have a failure to look clear at the explanation about tenses. Students want to skip this basic yet most difficult part of English. At such level as they learn tenses, they always lose courage to ask.
I am a Chinese studying English in Hong Kong. I have spent many years in searching a more proper explanation to English tense. By contrasting English with Chinese language which carries no varieties of tense, I have finally found the answer, a theory much closer to the true use of tense. Yes, there is a good and logical explanation for using them.
However, few will accept my finding. There are many reasons for this. The biggest problem is my low abilities to express myself in English. Furthermore, since most people still do not know if there are unsolved problems in tenses, why shall they take in one more explanation? Therefore, now I have to leave the answer behind, and turn to the questions about this basic part of English. Here you will see if there are really tense problems, and see how does a grammar book work, so as to make you believe what they say.
A website for English study has once maintained that the Present tense is used to express permanency, and habit. Months later after a few discussions on the subject of permanency, they have now improved themselves and say that the Present tense is used to express something at present, something 'regular'. Their illustrating examples, however, have been wholly changed also. In order words, they always select meager examples to support what they have wrongly concluded. As we see here, since the examples for the Present tense are ample, they may change their tone of voice very easily. But it is not the same for grammar books. Once printed, a grammar will show the problem forever if it really has one. Grammar books are the targets we are getting at. They corroborate the existence of our questions.
Of course, grammarians see the problems by themselves. By finding the common points they have put in their books, and the points they all are desperately avoiding, no one will deny that they want to maintain a theory in common. We will show you just that. You will not believe that grammars nowadays still have to make use of rare or misleading examples, and hide away many frequently-used ones, in order to keep the current tense theory going. They go so far that they are close to cheating.
Don't believe me so easily. Maybe there is really no problem at all in our daily used language. Maybe the truth is not the way I mention to you. Bring out all the grammar books we can find. And please kindly give me your opinion.
Please click on one of the questions.
Introduction:
Why do English tenses have problems? (please click)