This past Wednesday I help Joey
with some of the exercises in her English book. We were covering whether to use
the “to” infinitive or the gerund. We covered the differences in use in class,
but when confronted with the material in her book I found myself floundering
for answers. It was suddenly made alarming clear that inherent use of a language
absolutely does not equate to an ability to explain it. I looked to my phone
for advice, but all I received were muddled results that would have taken a
good while for me to interpret and simplify into a message that was clear and
level appropriate enough for Joey to understand. For lack of better options I began
to get technical. This did little to alleviate the confusion, and after winding
around objects, gerunds and infinitives for a while I think we were both more
discombobulated than anything else. We abandoned the infinitive-gerund debacle
with my word that I would do some research and get back to her during our
meeting on Friday with some concrete answers. The rest of the time was spent
covering passive voice, which was a lot easier both for me to explain and for
her to understand. Following the simple formula she got the answers relatively
quickly. The only issue was verb tense, which she often self-corrected or readily
amended when I alluded to her mistake.
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