of 18
8/10/2019 Learning and Teaching of Different Types of Grammar
1/18
Learning and teaching of
different types of grammarTeaching English as a second language. Lecture 2
Tamar Mikeladze
Associate Professor
Telavi State University
8/10/2019 Learning and Teaching of Different Types of Grammar
2/18
Focusing questions
What is grammar?
How do you think it is learnt?
How would you teach it?
8/10/2019 Learning and Teaching of Different Types of Grammar
3/18
Keywords
prescriptive grammar: grammar thatprescribes what people should or shouldnot say
traditional grammar: school grammarconcerned with labelling sentences
with parts of speech, and so on
structural grammar: grammar concernedwith how words go into phrases, andphrases into sentences
grammatical (linguistic) competence: theknowledge of language stored in apersons mind
8/10/2019 Learning and Teaching of Different Types of Grammar
4/18
Prescriptive grammar
One familiar type of grammar is therules found in schoolbooks, for
example, the warnings against final
prepositions in sentences, This cantbe put up with. This is called
prescriptive grammar because it
prescribes what people ought to do. Modern grammarians have mostly
avoided prescriptive grammar
8/10/2019 Learning and Teaching of Different Types of Grammar
5/18
Traditional grammar
A second popular meaning of grammarconcerns the parts of speech: the fact that anoun is a word that is the name of a person,place, thing, or idea is absorbed by every schoolpupil in England. This definition comes straight
from Tapestry Writing 1 (Pike-Baky, 2000), acourse published in the year 2000, but whichdiffers little from William Cobbetts definition in1819: Nouns are the names of persons andthings.
Basic Grammar in Use (Murphy, 2002, 2nd edn). the technical terms in English subject pronouns,
possessive adjective, contraction andstatement
8/10/2019 Learning and Teaching of Different Types of Grammar
6/18
Structural grammar
Language teaching has also madeuse of structural grammar based on
the concept of phrase structure, which
shows how some words go together inthe sentence and some do not.
In a sentence such as The man fed
the dog,
8/10/2019 Learning and Teaching of Different Types of Grammar
7/18
Structural grammar
8/10/2019 Learning and Teaching of Different Types of Grammar
8/18
Grammar in the mind of the
learner By grammatical competence I mean the
cognitive state that encompasses allthose aspects of form and meaning andtheir relation, including underlying
structures that enter into that relation,which are properly assigned to thespecific subsystem of the human mindthat relates representations of form andmeaning. (Chomsky,1980: 59)
Grammatical competence communicative competencepragmatic competence
8/10/2019 Learning and Teaching of Different Types of Grammar
9/18
THE TYPICALGRAMMATICAL ELEMENTSIN BEGINNERS ENGLISHCOURSEBOOKS
Many of these items are the basis forlanguage teaching and for SLAresearch.
8/10/2019 Learning and Teaching of Different Types of Grammar
10/18
Structure words, morphemes
and sequence of acquisition What do you understand by a
structure (function) word?
What do you think are the main
characteristics of beginnerssentences in English or another
modern language?
8/10/2019 Learning and Teaching of Different Types of Grammar
11/18
Keywords
content words such as table or truth have meanings that canbe found in dictionaries and consist of nouns, verbs, adjectivesand (possibly) prepositions
structure (function) words such as articles the and a exist toform part of phrases and structures and so have meanings that aredifficult to capture in the dictionary
morpheme: the smallest unit of grammar, consisting either of aword (toast) or part of a word (s in Johns)
morphology and syntax: morphology is the branch oflinguistics that deals with the structure of morphemes; syntax isthe branch that deals with the structure of phrases above the level ofthe word
grammatical morphemes are morphemes such as -ing and
the that play a greater part in structure than content words such ashorse (lexical morphemes)
order of difficulty: the scale of difficulty for particular aspectsof grammar for L2 learners
sequence of acquisition: the order in which L2 learners acquirethe grammar,pronunciation, and so on of the language
8/10/2019 Learning and Teaching of Different Types of Grammar
12/18
Grammar can be:
1. a way of telling people what they ought to say,rather than reporting what they do say (prescriptivegrammar);
2. a system for describing sentence structure usedin English schools for centuries, based ongrammars of classical languages such as Latin(traditional grammar);
3. a system for describing sentences based on theidea of smaller structures built up into largerstructures (structural grammar);
4. the knowledge of the structural regularities of
language in the minds of speakers(linguistic/grammatical competence);
5. EFL grammar combining elements of (2) and (3).
8/10/2019 Learning and Teaching of Different Types of Grammar
13/18
Theodore Sturgeon story that combines
made-up content words with real
structure words So on Lirht, while the decisions on the
fate of the miserable Hvov were beingformulated, gwik still fardled, funted andfupped.
The same sentence with made-up structure words might haveread:
So kel Mars, dom trelk decisions kel trelkfate mert trelk miserable slaves hiv polst
formulated, deer still grazed, jumpedkosp survived.
Only the first version is comprehensible in some form,even if we have no idea how you fardle and funt.
8/10/2019 Learning and Teaching of Different Types of Grammar
14/18
8/10/2019 Learning and Teaching of Different Types of Grammar
15/18
Early acquisition of grammar
Content and structure words differ inmany ways, including the ways they areused in sentences and how they arepronounced.
Grammatical morphemes (structurewords and grammatical inflections) arelearnt in a particular sequence in L2
acquisition. L2 learners acquire the same basic
grammar regardless of the first andsecond languages involved.
8/10/2019 Learning and Teaching of Different Types of Grammar
16/18
Focusing questions
Do you find problems in followingcertain structures in your L2, or indeed
your L1?
Why do you think you find somestructures more difficult to follow than
others?
8/10/2019 Learning and Teaching of Different Types of Grammar
17/18
Keywords
movement: a way of describing some sentencesas being based on moving various elementsabout.
processability: sequences of acquisition mayreflect the ease with which certain structures can
be processed by the mind. sequence of development: the inevitable
progression of learners through definite stages ofacquisition.
the teachability hypothesis: an L2 structure
can be learnt from instruction only if the learnersinterlanguage is close to the point when thisstructure is acquired in the natural setting(Pienemann, 1984: 201).
8/10/2019 Learning and Teaching of Different Types of Grammar
18/18
Examples of movement in syntax
The multidimensional model sees movement as the key
element in understanding the learning sequence. The learner
starts with sentences without movement and learns how to move
the various parts of the sentence around to get the final form. Thelearner ascends the structural tree from bottom to top, first
learning to deal with words, next with phrases, then with simple
sentences, and finally with subordinate clauses in complex
sentences.