Biography of Raymond Murphy

The first edition of the Intermediate version was published in the year: Murphy, an English teacher for foreigners in Oxford, wrote it on the basis of his own materials. At the moment, the first Russian edition of Essential Grammar in Use is being prepared. The author came to Moscow at the invitation of the British Council. Reimond Murphy Author of the most popular Cambridge University Press: according to his textbooks, about 20 million students and self -taught learned English grammar - what is it at all to explain English grammar?

Most of all I like to give information using a minimum of words. There are some things that are really difficult to understand and explain. For example, take the future continued Future Continous. How to understand the term itself in general? Form in English: I Will BE DOING SOMETHING. It is used in two ways. The first way is simple. We can say “I Was Working Yesterday at this Time” “I worked yesterday at that time”, “I am working Now” “I work now”, “I Will Be Working at this Time Tomorrow” “I will work at that time tomorrow”.

And this is understandable. This is a normal way to use Continious. And then someone says the following. For example, your friend travels, and you call him or write to him and say: “What Time Will You Be Arriving? Even "What Time Do You Arrive? All these options are possible. But they said “What Time Will You Be Arriving? Why do we use the future future here? We, native speakers, use this design quite regularly - and still it is not easy to interpret it.

In general, if you suddenly find the answer, please tell me, please! Because well, how to explain this to the student? I can’t learn the Future Continous by explanation and then start using it, such as “Nate a little verbs, a little nouns, let's work.” At first, nothing is clear, you need to master much more examples so that the structure sounds naturally. That is, when you heard the Will BE Doing several times in different contexts, the concept of “less decisively” will be filled with meaning.

For me, for my book, this is not quite a suitable style. If I taught, I would not focus on this at all. I would focus on examples when you use the future future, then ask someone to do something for you, for example: “Will You Be Seeing John Tomorrow? And if you hear a sufficient number of such examples, this will gradually become meaning for you. Learning a language is not a one -time thing.

This is not to say: "Here is a grammar." Boom, "this is how she works." Clicks with fingers. No, this is only the very beginning. This is a long, difficult and random process, because your brain needs to cope with all this, and sometimes the brain arranges a strike. Maybe he is not ready, he needs time. Are there any situations that you have taken from life? I did not go with the tape recorder and did not write down what the other people said, and my texts are pseudo -reutrated in the sense that I myself came up with examples that sound natural.

I wanted the language of the book to be as affordable as possible. You see, the language of explanation itself can be an obstacle, if it complicates it. Another potential obstacle is examples that interfere with the main purpose of the book. We must get rid of any inappropriate topics, acute and discussion issues. Therefore, there is no policy in the book, there is no religion, even atheism is not - this is also a kind of religion.

There is nothing unpleasant. It seems that in one of the examples in my books the hero once died - but that was 94 years old. In reality, I can well say something offensive or unpleasant, but I do not want to write offensive things in grammar. I would like to use the book at least insects, so politics is not suitable here. Also in the book there are no my favorite football teams, stars and generally famous people now-can you give an example?

He died, and all times of grammatical times must be changed! The same problem, for example, with football teams: there are good teams that suddenly began to play poorly. In general, the textbook is not a magazine, it should not have realities. I ask a young audience to read examples when reprinting the textbook - will the expressions that are no longer possible for them will meet there.

Although for the language courses the paradigm has shifted and more attention is paid to the skills of speaking. Nevertheless, such a problem is still relevant for a Russian person: he can know the grammar perfectly, but not be able to build suggestions and maintain a conversation. What advice could you give in such a situation? And also a stereotype that you described, obviously, has psychological problems.

Because such a person is likely to be afraid to make a mistake. That is, he analyzes each sentence before pronouncing it. Thus, the road to any brisk speaking is really difficult.It seems to me that you need to talk a lot with such a person, in particular, about this, to be a psychiatrist sometimes - that is, to make a person to be comfortable to be himself. Do you have a favorite film or series, a show that you would advise all the studying language?

Although I myself watch a little TV. Mostly foreign films and TV shows. I teach Thai, so I try to watch Thai soap operas and all that spirit. And they are terrible, honestly. Although I do not understand enough to fully monitor the plot, but this is fun. So it doesn’t matter what exactly people look, the main thing is that it gives pleasure. TV shows, documentaries, soap operas, football comments.

Is it possible to learn the language only with the help of such programs? Most people, it seems to me, prefer to study in the classroom. And then there is natural training: many go to the country of the language being studied, and it is there that their skills are truly come to life. I myself tried a couple of online resources to teach Thai-they were not a very high level, primarily due to the quality of sound and the like.

But, perhaps, this is not so different from the use of books: you still need to talk with someone, listen to someone and talk to him. But you can do something on Skype, of course. Apparently, I pumped. I would say that I like to read about languages, I would hardly use the word "linguistics". Have you ever asked you to write a book for them?

It so happened that Cambridge published my book. This is not a problem. Here my wife worked for OUP for 20 years. In all publishers, as in all large companies, there are always a lot of confidential information, so sometimes it is as if you serve in intelligence. But in general, Cambridge and Oxford are not something special, these are just two cities, and in one of them I live.

Tell your friends.