EnglishClub TEFL Forums (archived)

Hi everyone!

Today we were learning about the verb to get.

While studying this topic we came across these two sentences:

1. I am getting tired.
2. My English is getting better.

The students asked me why in the second sentence the comparative form is used and whether ''My English is getting good'' is also correct or whether it has a different meaning.

Please can someone help me and tell me, in a simple way as my students are intermediate, why in the second sentence the comparative is needed.

Thanks a lot for your help!

I'm a new teacher and definitely not an expert on grammar, but I wouldn't say that the comparative is needed. One can say, "You're getting good at this!" for instance. I would say 'getting better' was like a phrasal verb (though perhaps not technically speaking) for 'improving'. So when used in this way we have to use the comparative to show that's it's a kind of ongoing process rather than the process of getting from bad to good..

Haha, just my two cents.

"Get good" is correct, but rarely used. Check out this chart from google books
Asia SWTeaching pointed out, it is the process we are talking about (that's why continuous tense is used here, by the way). In this case it is a process of going from "poor/low level" English to "high level" English. It's more natural to say "better" because the process takes some time. What's more you can say "My English is getting better." even if you're not even close to being "good" .
In other words, "getting better" has much broader sense than "getting good".