1. Present continuous for temporary and present simple for permanent. Somewhat idealised. The perception of permanence or life choices might mean this statement works: 'After their marriage broke up, there was no money for her to move out, so they live in different rooms in the same house. She wants to move out though, but it won't happen for a while.' As does this statement: 'Sorry about the mess during the renovation... This is how we live.' The mess feels permanent. Continuous form for temporary habits. Generally true, but the present simple + a time expression can be used too in spoken grammar. For example, 'Just for one day, you are nice to your grandmother'. This is the present simple as an order. 'For the next few months, I live there until something better comes along'. Here the speaker is communicating resignation and sadness. Also, the 'always + participle' might be used to describe interesting or curious behaviour, eg. 'He was always making people laugh'.. I noticed that she was always looking to one side... Present progressive to describe something true in recent past, present and expected to end is quite idealised, e.g,. 'They are trading under a new name now'.. The time adverbial 'now' indicates the newness of the name and there is no reason to assume that it won't continue. The point of the sentence is to emphasis the activity.

- What generalizations do published materials make about the use of the passive voice?  'we aren't interested in what someone did, but in what was done to someone'. This is true sometimes and also quite false at others: 'Mr Jones was arrested for murder'. > Mr Jones was found to have abducted his victims and then keeping them in his basement dungeon while forcing them to watch The Sound of Music on endless repeat. Here the passive 'was found to have' is really a formal way of distancing the repugnant act by introducing a bit of a gap in the sentence. Also there is ambiguity about the usefulness of adding 'by... '. Passives are introduced with 'the original subject can drop, but there is not much discussion about when to use 'by'. 'I was given this ring by my late grandmother'. The focus of the passive structure is to put some distance between the late grandmother and the action. This is also, IMO, quite a natural spoken sentence. The victims were made to listen to endless repeats of The Sound of Music by a man who believed he was the reincarnation of Julie Andrews. Here the 'by' is pretty important. Other generalisations that don't generalise is 'the passive is used in formal writing'. 'My wallet got nicked last night' is in an informal register. 'My son got done for drunk driving'. 'He gets to sit with the top people'. This does not mean 'get' is a verb of intention, such as 'He tries to sit with the top people', but it could be misunderstood as such. get + pp and gets to > are colloquial and also remind me of the Japanese form of the passive which is used to indicate a clear benefit or disadvantage to the object. Also, 'I was given this ring' and 'This ring was given to me' are explained with the idea of the indirect object, which is a really hard concept because both 'the ring' and 'I' appear in the first position. Students might wonder what 'I was given' means. - How do you teach the passive voice in the classroom?  My experience in Japan informs the way I teach this. Japanese grammar allows ANY verb, whether transitive or intransitive to go into the passive. There are also three ways of talking about the passive, including the delightfully named 'suffering passive'. I cannot remember all these fully, but the main problem that Japanese speakers had with the English passive is word order and also having problems with the lexis, eg. 'I born in 1970' and 'My grandfather was died'.

You see different views of the landscape at different heights. At the ground level everything is very detailed (process). At medium altitudes some features start to blur into one thing... a row of houses with separate doors and windows becomes a line. At high altitudes you see big broad strokes of the landscape, which encapsulates things that are seen as discrete lower down > Product. Grammar and vocabulary. Morphological changes in the word form is a lot of grammar. I don't think there is NO grammar and all meaning is conveyed by word forms because word order and punctuation change meaning and when that is wrong you get word salad.

1. The subject of a sentence always comes before the verb. (Except in questions where the auxiliary is first and also 'Not only did she work a full time job, she studied in her free time'. Need to explain that the auxiliary verb is not really a verb. 2. Don’t use contractions in formal writing. Possible exception: a quote from a witness in a police report, 'She said 'I've gone and done it'. 3. We form the Simple Past by adding -ed after the verb stem. For instance, “watch” becomes “watched”. There are irregular verbs, eg. to be> was/were Have > had, not have. 4. The Present Simple is used to refer to states or regular or habitual actions. Telling a joke 'A man walks into a bar'.. 'The cattle are lowing, the baby awakes... no crying he makes'. 'awakes is a moment in the story'.

Take a moment to consider these two perspectives on grammar: grammar as “product and grammar as “process”. Grammar as product is when a learner accurately reproduces the target structure. The idea of the 'chicken nugget''; something commoditisable. The goal of the activity is reproduction or duplication within a pretty narrow set of constraints. Grammar as process is when a learner uses grammar to achieve a communicative goal. The difference is that the first is about finding examples that can be modified, eg. 'Please + monitor the wound' v. 'Please provide any help with household chores' v 'It would be appreciated if you reassured Mr Jones and provided a management plan'. However, is this overdescribing the thing that is requested? What do you think is the difference between these two perspectives? How does it affect the way we view and teach grammar? Grammar as process is where we accept that there may be at least one context-relevant grammar rule and learners are likelier to internalise the use of that rule when they have a level of interest and motivation in the thing that grammar enables. ☺️