The final countdown: a Fulbright year in Review

I realized recently that my Fulbright year will be over before I know it. It hadn't really hit me yet, and I definitely haven't been counting down each second with dread the way I did in Zürich. Not because the year was worse (though it was about 110% different), but because I'm coming back. Honestly, I've had an amazing year here and I'm sad to see it coming to an end, but I'm having a hard time being too nostalgic because I'm so excited about being able to do it again next year! However, as this was a pretty special year, I don't want the end of it to go unnoted. So to commemorate the passing of my Fulbright ETA, for my last ten days, I will be counting down the top 10 things I've learned over this year.

 

Things I've learned during my Fulbright year: 

#10 - a lot about the English language.

That's right. I've been living in Germany since September, and while my spoken English may have suffered, I haven't felt so knowledgeable about English grammar since I was diagramming sentences in the 7th grade. In teaching a foreign language (especially when it is your native language), you begin to realize just how much of everything that you say is that way because of a rule. 

It's very easy to take fluency in a language for granted: "You say it that way, because that's the way it is. You just have to know it." 

Well, sometimes that's true - like knowing whether you pronounce the word "read" as "I like to read" or "I read that last week". But usually there is a rule.  Even if it is something as simple as conjugating a verb (he, she, it - das s muss mit!), or putting something in a particular tense.

 

Let's play a little game: make a sentence in the correct tense. I'll keep it simple, your sentence only needs the subject "I" and the verb "ask". Now see if you can put your sentence correctly in the following tenses:

• Present
• simple:
• progressive:
• Past
• simple:
• progressive:
• Present Perfect
• simple:
• progressive:
• Past Perfect
• simple:
• progressive: 
• Future
• Conditional I
• Conditional II

  
If you got these correct without looking it up*, you either payed really close attention in the 7th grade, teach 7th grade, have taught English as a foreign language, have learned English as a foreign language or majored in English.  I'll be honest, I had to be refreshed on the tenses and their exact rules at the beginning of this year. Not only how to use these tenses, but when to use them. Of course, as a native speaker, the answer is usually, of course I know when to use them... because I just KNOW.  But when a student asks "what is the difference between 'he bought a house' and 'he had bought a house'?" would you be able to answer?

 

Syntax was also a big one that, though I could spot and correct with ease, I found myself struggling to explain just why it was incorrect to say "I go tomorrow in the woods hiking" (In English, the word order follows "place-manner-time", while in German it is "time-manner-place"). Again, it is something that is obvious and natural to a native speaker, but when was the last time you stopped and said "I'm going hiking in the woods tomorrow because it's place-manner-time in the English language". 

 

So thank you, Fulbright ETA, you reenforced my knowledge of basic English grammar! 

*Answers: 

• Present
• simple: I ask
• progressive: I am asking
• Past
• simple: I asked
• progressive: I was asking
• Present Perfect
• simple: I have asked
• progressive: I have been asking
• Past Perfect
• simple: I had asked
• progressive: I had been asking
• Future: I will ask/I am going to ask
• Conditional I: I would ask
• Conditional II: I would have asked