Register or log in. Our newsletter keeps you up to date with all new papers in your subjects. Request a new password via email. Contents and structure of the term paper 2. A historical introduction into Grammar Teaching 3. A study on the Teachability Hypothesis 4. Different options in Language Teaching 5.
Contents and structure of the term paper Learning a new language always implies learning its grammar. A historical introduction into grammar teaching: Sharwood Smith ; 52 3. Second Language Acquisition The main focus in the Second Language Acquisition is the learner, whose language acquisition is influenced by many different factors. Pienemann ; 7 [ Report on Grammar and Language Teaching. Task-based-language-teaching and its use in heterogeneous classes. Foreign Language Teaching and Learning in Bangladesh.
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Current Language Teaching Approaches. Creative Writing in Foreign Language Teaching. The contribution of Universal Grammar to second language acquisitio Productive word-formation adjectives in foreign language teaching English as a Foreign Language in Japan.
A Case Study of Factors Af Language teaching and language learning - Methods in a course book The role grammar plays can take many dimensions. Some of the roles discussed in this paper are its ability to convey unambiguous meaning, having the capacity to create an infinite set of sentences and a substantial enabling skill. Additionally, grammar forms an important subject in almost all the syllabuses all around the world.
Be it English grammar or any other grammar, be it a native or a bilingual, a person can not write or speak eloquently bereft of this key factor. The research entails many aspects of grammar and its functions. The first part is composed of a definition of grammar from three different perspectives.
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The second part deals with the role grammar play in the process of acquiring and polishing the language. A question we rarely ever ask ourselves when we speak our native language. When we contemplate this question, the first answer that comes to our minds is a set of rules that govern a language. Yes, it is true, but there is more to grammar than that.
Grammar is a system composed of many interconnected components that ensure accuracy and meaning. It is the art of writing and speaking a language correctly. Just as the latter, grammar is a living entity that evolves and undergoes a great deal of change over time. Grammar of the 19th century is by no means the grammar of today. These changes are due to several factors such as time, culture, literature and so on. Grammar differs from one language to another and from one person to another.
Non-native English speakers may presume that the English language has less complicated grammar in comparison to French or Spanish and that grammar, as a concept, to a Spanish speaker, may not be the same to a German or a Japanese speaker. Nevertheless, grammar, from a linguistic point of view, is the same in terms of complexity in all languages and they all share the same universal components.
Although the grammatical structure or the arrangement of words would differ, yet its role remains imperative and instrumental in all languages. This distinction is primarily on account of the extent of knowledge one possesses over the field or the orientation one has chosen to pursue.
As for a linguist, he would tackle the linguistics components of language such as phonology, semantics and so on. Grammar is a tremendously vast field which could be approached from a myriad of ways. In this part of the research we shall see how each of the aforementioned persons perceive grammar and in what ways their views are different? They give grammar an over general definition which makes it lose its significance.
Nevertheless, these sort of simplified definitions come in handy when it comes to teaching native children or new learners of English about the basic concepts of grammar. Namely, it encourages children and especially the adult learners, who usually quit due to the complexity of the grammatical rules, to embrace it and learn its rudiments until they reach a level where they could grasp more intricate notions.
Complicating grammar right from the start would only result in developing an aversion for the language and hence alienate the learners. They delve into more intricate details and tackle advanced components which would seem bewildering for the non-specialist. Some of these entities grammarians approach in view of grammar are like word class, clauses, part of speech etc and how they merge together to form accurate and meaningful sentences.
Furthermore, grammarians have primarily two or rather three approaches in which they conceive the role of grammar. The first approach is the descriptive approach. The latter describes how a language is used. As for the second approach, it is the prescriptive approach. In this approach Grammar provides rules for correct usage.
The last approach is the generative approach. It provides instructions for the production of an infinite number of sentences in a language. Grammar is a branch of the vast field of linguistics. The role of grammar Grammar plays a substantial role in governing the use and application of language.
It gives the user the structure to build complete and meaningful sentences.
The importance of grammar in second language teaching and learning | zakaria dalil - theranchhands.com
The role of grammar can take many dimensions and varies according to the situation and context in which it is used. It names the words and words groups that make up sentences as well as the way in which they can be accurately put together. Grammar also plays an important role in the writing and reading processes. One cannot write efficiently and professionally without this instruction. It would be nearly impossible for the writer to articulate his thoughts and make them intelligible for the reader.
How would he be able to express the future perfect or doubt without knowing grammatically how? In addition to that, without grammar, one can not even read without misunderstanding the meaning. If the reader has to go back and re-read a sentence several times because they are not quite sure what it means, it spoils their reading experience and they are quite likely to misunderstand the point or even to give up and not read any further.
Knowing about grammar also helps us understand what makes sentences and paragraphs clear and interesting and without it any language will be totally coarse and ugly to deal with, not to mention that the language would eventually become completely illegible and nonsense. Grammar, as Chomsky put it, is a set of finite rules which, if learnt and mastered, can generate an infinite set of sentences. This is also one of the attributes of grammar. With a sufficient vocabulary, one can give utterance to any thought that crosses his mind.
To exemplify, tourists who choose to spend their vacation somewhere abroad, they usually buy a small tourist book with all the basic ready-made sentences needed for communication. However, that book is only usable for 1 or 2 weeks and there comes a time when the tourists need to say something that is not in the tourist book. Usually people disregard the usage of grammar to communicate when there is enough contextual input. Single words or motions would do the job. It would seem inappropriate and rude. Moreover, Grammar also serves as an enabling tool for articulating complex thoughts.
Baby- talk is fine to a certain point, but there comes a time when you need to express more complicated concepts and meanings for which simple words are not enough. To do that, rule of syntax and morphology must be employed. And last but not least, grammar is considered to be a prerequisite factor for effective communication.
The role of grammar in communication comes in organizing words, clauses and phrases into meaningful sentences. The exchange of theses sentences results in a conversation. In this respect, the importance of grammar here resides in making it possible for each person to say exactly what they want to and be able to understand the other. It serves as a mechanism against ambiguity and confusion. On the other hand, however, when grammar is lacking in a conversation, there is a good chance for misunderstanding and disagreement.
Imagine going to a foreign country and using a dictionary of the local language to communicate. You may pick the right word but the way you put them together can be funny, maybe even dangerous. If you are not understood, then the whole point of the conversation is lost. The roles grammar play are multiple and diverse.
In this part of the research, however, we will focus on in what way or rather the extent to which grammar is an enabling skill, how it is a sentence-making machine and the role it plays in conveying meaning 1. One of the primary and uppermost traits grammar has, as mentioned above, is that it enables the user to process and produce correct sentences, be they spoken or written. The skill in question is an indispensible factor for the user to function properly in each of these areas speaking, writing, listening, and reading. A decent mastery of grammar can make it easier for the person to communicate and articulate his thoughts coherently.
What follows is an attempt to demonstrate the role grammar plays in each of these areas. Similarly the strength of any spoken language lies in its grammar. Human interaction and communication are based on mutual understanding. Therefore, a good command of grammar is vital for effective communication.
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A correct use of grammar on all occasions will make people perceive you as a well educated person. The second skill in which grammar monopolizes a great role in is writing.
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Grammar governs the mechanisms of writing and ensures that it can be easily understood by all. A person may have splendid ideas and distinctive perspectives which would make great changes in the world. Had the greatest writers in history like Dickens or the Indian spiritual leader Gandhi been terrible users of grammar, their ideas would not have reached the world and would not have lived decades after their demise.
To exemplify the status grammar has in writing, syntax governs word order in a sentence. Imagine reading an English sentence in which words are arbitrary placed. It would clearly be impossible to understand. Punctuation also helps the reader to pause or switch to a new thought. So often we find errors of punctuation and syntax that change the meaning of the sentence; we then need to go back and re-read, perhaps several times, in order to find out what the writer actually meant, a waste of time and effort. The function of grammar does not extend only to the written and spoken forms; it rather exceeds that to be also an underlying component in listening and reading.
Among the multiple functions grammar has, its ability to convey and clarify meaning is the most important. Communication constitutes a central part of human activities, and meaning is a pre-requisite factor for the former to occur. There are many ways in which grammar determines the meaning of the sentence. Each grammatical rule serves a particular purpose. Conjugation to express an action in a certain time, modals to express obligation, probability and certainty, even the intonation while speaking says a lot about what the person wants to say.
In addition to this, correct grammar enables us to articulate the same thought in so many ways and in so many different structures. One way in which grammar brings about meaning is the way it brings the words together. Words grouped together randomly have little meaning on their own. Words may have lexical meaning at the word level, but they convey no grammatical meaning as a group. However when a special order is given to these words, grammatical meaning is created because of the relationships they have to one another.
The subject verb agreement, or to take another example the difference between the past, present and future forms of verbs. The meaning of a sentence is determined partly by the meaning of the words of which it is composed and partly by its grammatical meaning. Punctuation is also another way in which grammar contributes to meaning. When having a face-to-face conversation, we use intonation, voice patterns and body language to express exclamations or questions. Punctuation has also the capacity to change the meaning of a sentence.
Making mistakes at the level of punctuation leads to ambiguity. This sentence for instance: This sentence could be punctuated to have an utterly different meaning. While in the first sentence, women are worth nothing without men, the second is the total opposite. Punctuation is a powerful tool.
The role of grammar in language teaching
It helps maintain consistency and ease understanding. Being punctuation a sub- branch of grammar, this shows the importance and influence grammar has over meaning in particular and language at large. To delve into more details regarding the role of grammar in conveying meaning, we must have a look at the linguistic branch that is concerned with meaning. The latter is the study of the meaning of words and sentences. The discipline in question studies the interpretation of individual words. People pick up the meaning of words subconsciously at first, but then as they grow more adept with language, more complex meanings emerge.
Semantics provides speakers with a structure to use when they need to slot words into sentences, creating meaning. A sentence making machine. As mentioned in the introduction of this part, grammar serves many functions and many purposes that pertain to the application of language. One of these functions is the sentence making machine. The latter is actually one of the cogent arguments that stresses on the importance of grammar instruction. This argument asserts that there is a limit to the number of items, such as words and phrases that a person can both retain and retrieve.
Grammar enables us to generate sentences based on the preconceived diction and structures we have in our mental repertoire. The latter claims that children are born tabula rasa. Namely, like a blank paper without any innate capacities to pick up their native language. Children imitate the sentences they hear and stimulus serves as a corrector when they make mistakes. Nevertheless, the nativist theory debunked the behaviorist on the ground that children are not born tabula rasa, but born with the language acquisition device LAD.
Furthermore, children do not imitate ready made sentences but they process what they hear in order to reach rules. A finite set of rules that would enable them to create an infinite set of sentences. This theory was proved to be true on the basis that is impossible for children to imitate all the sentences in a language and that by the year of five; they can produce sentences that they have never heard before, all due to the language acquisition device.
A French-speaking person has set the opacity parameter so that these elements must follow the verb; an English-speaking person has set it so that these elements must precede the verb. The two languages differ in a single overall factor that affects all these constructions - how they set the opacity parameter. A second parameter is called pro-drop. This reflects whether a language may leave out the subject of the sentence.
In Italian you may say "parla" with no subject expressed; in English you must have a subject as in "he speaks"; in Italian you can say "parla lui" with Verb Subject order, in English you cannot say "speaks he". Also in English you have to have a subject in 'weather' sentences such as "It's raining" and 'existential' sentences such as "There's a book on the table", while in Italian you do not.
This variation divides all the languages of the world up into two large groups, on the one hand those like Italian, which include Spanish, Arabic, and Chinese, on the other those like English, which include French and German. And this variation goes with other grammatical features in these languages, for example whether you can have Subject-Verb inversion in declarative sentences. So the knowledge of the first language in our minds tells us how to tackle opacity and pro-drop; to understand even simple sentences in these languages we need to know whether they must have subject and where the negative element appears in relation to the verb.
As children we have learnt what kind of language our native language is from the speech that we have heard; we have set the parameter in our mind to the values for a particular language. While these two parameters are examples from one particular theory of grammar, namely that known as Government- Binding Theory, they are typical of the kind of discovery that grammarians are making.
On the one hand they are producing a powerful description of what is going on in our minds; on the other they are telling us about 'obvious' things that stare us in the face in the languages we know, even if they were not covered by conventional ideas of grammar before. What this does this mean for our understanding of how people learn second languages and how they should be taught?
The overall lesson is that the learners' minds construct grammars for themselves; teachers cannot do it for them. Grammar is inside the mind and is a system of knowledge; it is not a set of rules or structures to be memorised or learnt as habits; it is an active system built up by the mind for dealing with all the sentences that it hears. Teaching provides the means by which students can build up this computational system in their minds. Whether the students and teachers have the goal of business communication in the second language or some other goal, they cannot escape from the fact that grammar is at the core of what they are doing and learning.
As well as the ideas about grammar put forward by linguists, those doing Second Language Acquisition research have also been coming forward with ideas about how people learn second languages. In particular it has been discovered that there are particular sequences of acquisition through which most learners go regardless of their first language. For example children go through a stage in learning the first language in which they leave the subjects out of their sentences; that is to say they treat all languages as if they were Italian rather than English.
Only after they have gone through this stage do English children start to discover that their language is different. So the sequence of acquisition for learners of English is usually first sentences without subjects, secondly sentences with subjects. Similarly in Second Language Acquisition people have been unearthing many sequences of acquisition of grammar. Negation for instance has a particular sequence starting with negative elements outside the sentence and going on to elements within the sentence.
Relative clauses seem to come in an order of difficulty; everybody finds certain types harder than others. Most famously the so-called grammatical morphemes of English such as "the", "-ing", and possessive "-s" occur in much the same order regardless of the learners' first language. One of the lessons for teachers is that learners' minds construct the grammars in their minds in a particular order.
Teaching can do little about changing the sequence of acquisition but has to work round it. There is no point for instance in correcting Italian beginners learning English when they leave out subjects; this is a natural stage they will go through. The language presented to learners has always come in a fairly conventional agreed order; in English, teachers have started with the present tenses and worked their way through the continuous and perfect till they reach the passive.
Because it fits in with teaching. Research into Second Language Acquisition can now provide a fair amount of information about the sequences that learners go through naturally so that teaching can now take this into account, though not necessarily by following it slavishly.
How else might this type of grammar be taught?