That's not the point, PhD. My point is the effort one makes as a teacher for the students. Simply telling them to google is a bit cheap, isn't it? You could perhaps thell them to google and if they don't find anything or understand, then the should come back to you. Would be much better.

For the bit on grammar: Teaching only grammar without being able to use it properly in the four practical language skills is quite useless but was en vogue in the era of the Grammar-Translation period dating back to the 19th century and covering the first half of the 20th century. Old-fashioned teachers may teach grammar without the four language skills but you cannot teach the four language skills without grammar. Traditionally trained native Chinese English teachers still might do excatly that if they haven't attended workshops introducing them to more recent approaches in ESL teaching. As far as I can perceive, there has been a tremendous change in the latter respect over the last decade; even Chinese textbooks for Chinese as a foreign language reflect that change.

The 'google it' was meant to be 'tongue-in-cheek' In reality when I am pressed to distract from my oral teaching by some clever-clogs question from a smarty-pants student, I deal with it by saying 'well, that's important but as I have a lesson coming up shortly covering exactly that, so we won't deal with it now.' That lesson plan becomes elusive.

You're very knowledgeable, I'll say that.