Imagine a word that is used in one manner 99% of the time and a different manner 1% of the time. If I give my student only the first definition, then in daily life they will be 99% correct. I have noticed that when I also provide the exceptional definition, students overestimate its usage or have difficulty remembering the additional rule, so they are perhaps only 90% correct. Therefore, I think the student benefits from me withholding knowledge of rare exceptions. Do you agree? Is there a better way?
Depends on the level.
Don't bombard the elementary student with more information than they need.
Don't patronise the advanced student by assuming we should control their access to language.
Yes, my guess is that it was spoken by a British character in an American movie. It's a rather outdated and slightly upper-class 'English' way of talking, for example, to thank someone by saying something like 'That's awfully kind of you'.
That's why, when American writers are writing dialogue for British characters, they often give them these lines to say. Just as the uneducated characters' dialogue uses non-standard English like 'ain't', so do the posh British characters say 'awfully'. Especially if they're played by Hugh Grant!
@ Su.Ki.: I see,, this is why I like italki; I meet people like you who give me these cool info about the language & also about Hugh Grant ;)) By the way, I had to google "push" & it got the opposite meaning of what I thought,, thank you Su.Ki. :)
Great question. If I were a teacher, I'd just teach the student the way in which the word is used 99% of the time. Let the student discover on its own that one expression where the word is used differently.
I found myself in a similar situation when I was trying to explain the word "awful":
a) awful = bad (eg. I have an awful headache)
b) awful = general positive intensifier? (He plays the piano awfully well)
I estimate that the usage of this word leans heavily (maybe 70%?) towards "a" so I feel compelled to explain usage "b" as well. I don't do this very eloquently since at times, the word can have opposing/contradicting meanings!
First I want to say I'm not a teacher & I don't have students like you Philip, Yet living with foreigners who are learning my language in my country during my University studies, made them ask me about words' meanings all the time. Each Arabic word have so many meanings and I used to answer them with all the meanings I know for each noun or verb they ask about, even though I knew they'll have a difficulty to remember, but they used to ask about all the uses of the same word & I gave them what they wanted.
PS: You seem like a very sincere teacher Philip; I mean to think about the 10% possibility that they might not benefit from you because you withhold knowledge for their own good (,")
