Teaching/Learning the concept of Borrow/Lend & Boring

[Taiwan_Student]

This question could be in the "teaching English section" but I believe that you must know and understand the grammar of your target population and, heck I'm trying to learn Chinese too.

The word borrow and lend are the same in Chinese. So, most of my students and some friends say things like "I can borrow you my pencil". "Please borrow me your pencil".

If the words for lend and borrow are the same, please give me some examples that explain how you can tell the difference..
How would I say.. "Can i borrow your pencil", "Could could you lend me your pencil"

Also it seems the word for "boring" and "being board" share the same word so kids often say.. "I'm so boring", when they should say "I feel so board." Please show me how to compare and say... "This movie is boring?"
Please use Chinese characters if you can . Thanks...

[Tiger Mountaineer]

I sincerely hope you have not been teaching your students to write, "I am board."

[GuyInTaiwan]

Give them lots of real examples so they just pick it up through input. Explicit grammar instruction simply won't stick. After all, isn't that what they've been doing for the past however many years?

As for boring vs bored (not board, that's a plank or wood, or to stay somewhere), it may indeed be that your students are boring! Plenty of mine are! Anyway, again, explain it through real examples. Let the context speak for itself. The irony is that nothing is going to be more boring than a twenty-five minute explanation of the nuances between "bored" and "boring".

The question you have to ask yourself is this: If they've received hundreds of hours of explicit grammar instruction already and they still don't know any of this, is the problem that they just need even more of that (explicit grammar instruction), or that a paradigm shift is required? If you and they truly believe it's the former, then that's pretty straightforward. It's not hard to just keep doing the same thing.

Logically though, that would seem to be absurd given the results so far, at least to me. The opposition to admitting this has less to do with the veracity of such a claim though and more to do with people's resistance to change, and that's probably a much harder thing to change than ever learning the correct usage of "bored" and "boring" or "borrow" and "lend".

[GuyInTaiwan]

I sincerely hope you have not been teaching your students to write, "I am board."

It wouldn't surprise me. I'm going to a workshop this weekend run by a foreign teacher here. The handout is riddled with bad English. Getting the particulars right should be fundamental in any profession. However, it's doubly important if you're pushing change.

[Taiwan_Student]

Whoops, a little Freudian Slip
"I'm board" or I should say I am turning into a board. I know that teaching the grammar or the Chinese translation may not help them past the initial "shaking of the head" and the "I know". This is for me...

Teach how to say "I'm bored" in Chinese as oppose to "I'm boring" Thou that may be true, for some students, it's not something you announce.

I also would like some examples in Chinese using Lend and Borrow. My guess it that it would use the word give to clarify things.
Like... You give me borrow. Or I give you lend.

[E04teacherlin]

Examples in Chinese won't help you. In Chinese it is the same. You need examples in English where it is different.

[Tempo Gain]

You can explain lend as "借出....借給別人的借" and borrow as "借來....從別人借的借" but it's just an explanation. Use the English words in class a lot--that's pretty easy to accomplish with those two words.

I ask "WHO is bored?" or "WHAT is boring?" when that mistake crops up, and repeat the answers a few times once they've said it. People can be boring too of course, but that scenario doesn't seem to crop up much. like a 99%/1% situation.

[ironlady]

A good mnemonic for Chinese students is to tell them that boring ends in -i-n-g, which corresponds to 對別人 (three syllables). Bored ends in -ed, which corresponds to 自己 (two syllables).

This won't help for acquisition of the words, but it will help when there is an opportunity to stop and edit or think about it.

[ehophi]

I give two or three humorous examples and show them part of the internal logic behind the distinction. The matter is really its extraction from sentences, which is what people generally don't catch.

"The angry bears frighten the small children. The small children are frightened. The angry bears are frightening."
"Dead animals disgust you. You are disgusted. Dead animals are disgusting."
"The new baseball pleases John. John is pleased. The new baseball is pleasing."

All that remains is to outline the silliness of the opposite picture. How could dead animals be disgusted? What do frightening, small children or frightened, angry bears look like? How could a new baseball be pleased?

If you have adults, use dirty examples, like:
"John's strong fingers arouse Mary's hoo-hah. Mary's hoo-hah is aroused. John's strong fingers are arousing."

[ironlady]

I give two or three humorous examples and show them part of the internal logic behind the distinction. The matter is really its extraction from sentences, which is what people generally don't catch.

"The angry bears frighten the small children. The small children are frightened. The angry bears are frightening."
"Dead animals disgust you. You are disgusted. Dead animals are disgusting."
"The new baseball pleases John. John is pleased. The new baseball is pleasing."

All that remains is to outline the silliness of the opposite picture. How could dead animals be disgusted? What do frightening, small children or frightened, angry bears look like? How could a new baseball be pleased?

If you have adults, use dirty examples, like:
"John's strong fingers arouse Mary's hoo-hah. Mary's hoo-hah is aroused. John's strong fingers are arousing."

It makes sense to YOU to say "How could a baseball be pleased?" but it doesn't make sense if you are a person who doesn't distinguish between the meaning of "pleased" and "pleasing" in the first place.

I also trust you are not serious about using dirty examples in a place like Taiwan. Maybe for an all-male class with a male teacher, where the foreigner is perceived as being (whatever), but that wouldn't fly in most other situations.