Linguistics: Grammar and Language Teaching

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Table of Contents

Background
Chosen Text
Analysis of the Text
Sentence or clause level grammatical features
Learning activities based on the text
Conclusions
References

Background

Teaching the language as the second one is one of the most difficult tasks of contemporary teacher. Different factors should be taken into account: social, psychological, the factor of language surrounding.

It should be noted that studying the second language requires background knowledge and understanding the typical rules and system of grammar and phonological structure of the language (Herrell, 2007, p 55).

In practical aims of teaching the second language the task of grammar learning is to form spelling skills in productive and receptive forms of speech activity.

Communicative purpose of teaching grammar allows formulating the basic requirement for the amount of grammatical material to be studied: it must be sufficient language using as a means of communication. In addition students should be ready to speak about the text they have read or retell it using the grammatical structures of it. (For example as in the text chosen for this work – Passive and Active voice.)

The need for restrictions on language, including grammar material is determined by the following factors.

In terms real opportunities there is no possibility for all students to master the grammar of this particular language because of its difficulties in formation of grammatical skills.

Recently, the view has spread about the importance of the non-arbitrary memorization of grammatical phenomena in the speech, making the alleged excessive focus and special work on grammatical phenomena.

In this case there is improper execution of two processes: memorization and mastery of grammatical phenomena. Memory is one of the stages of mastery; the latter is possible only in the result of special, targeted exercises.

If you bear in mind that the creation of grammatical skills has spent considerable amount of time to perform the exercises, then it would be difficult to master all the phenomena foreign language to the point of autoimmunization. There is a need for defining the very significant limitations in the selection of grammatical material and, above all those grammatical phenomena that students must master actively – in the productive and receptive modes of speech.

Making higher the demands to the volume of active grammatical material, as evidenced by the practice affects the quality of its mastering in negative way: the students are not good in the most basic phenomena of morphology and syntax.

There are the main principles of selection of the grammatical minimum material.

In the active grammar least are included those phenomena that are absolutely necessary for productive types of speech activity.

The main principles generally accepted in the selection of active grammatical least are considered the following:

The principle of the prevalence in common language
the principle of sample,
the principle of exclusion synonymous grammatical phenomena.

In accordance with the first two principles of active minimum include only those grammatical phenomena, which are predominantly used in the spoken language and in a wide range of vocabulary. All other grammatical phenomena are learned lexically.

According to the third principle active minimum includes only one phenomenon of the whole number of synonymous – neutral in stylistic terms. This principle is the specification of the first two and consists in limiting the grammatical means.

To passive grammatical minimum refer the grammatical phenomena, the most commonly used in written modern speech and which students need to understand while listening and reading.

It is obvious that the passive minimum can be longer than the minimum amount of active.

The main principles of the selection of grammatical phenomena in the passive minimum are included:

The principle of spreading in written speech;
The principle of polysemy.

According to these principles, the most common grammatical phenomena of literary type are included, which have several meanings. The organization of the grammatical material is very important in the teaching the second language. It determines to a large extent, the success of the grammatical side of various types of work.

Grammatical material should be organized functionally, i.e., so that grammatical phenomena are organically combined with the lexical and communicative units of no less than the sentence. A sentence, thus, is the original unit, which is the unity of the sentence structure (i.e., the regular sequence in the arrangement of the principal members), the morphological forms of the elements of this structure, intonation and rhythmic design is defined by its communicative function and context.

One of the main problems of organization of grammatical study of the material consists of uniting the two sides of speech – the content (especially lexical) and grammatical (formal).

In the methodological literature there is an attempt to resolve the problem of mastering the formal and content side by a phased sequence of mastering materials in a complex organization: the first (the structural and thematic) stage, students learn grammar material (structures and morphological forms) to the previously studied thematically related vocabulary. The second (thematically, structurally) stage is focused on the new vocabulary on the subject on the basis of previously learned patterns. The third (intertopical) stage the conditions for creativity and the right using of earlier lessons are created.

Grammatical skill is a grammar-synthesized act committed in skillful parameters and ensures adequate morphologic-syntactic processing unit at any level of speech.

In grammar skill there are the components of a private action:

the choice of the structure, an adequate idea of the speaker’s speech (in this case);
speech processing unit, which fills the structure in accordance with the rules of the language and a time parameter;
assessment of the correctness and adequacy of these actions.

Apparently, the structure of our consciousness are associated with particular communicative tasks: for each task there is a functional nest structure. But the challenges – that’s not all. The fact that the speaker chooses any particular structure, has been depended on specific conditions: the interlocutor, the relationship with him, sentiments, culture, etc. (Herrell, 2007, p 59).

The choice of structure can be described as a functional skill. But there is a formal side – the right organization. The accuracy in terms of the language and speed of speech depends on it. This side (organization) is closely linked to both lexical subskills by skill-challenge combinations of speech and, indeed, design the structure based on them, depending on their level. That is why it is possible to develop the grammar skill only when it is based on the lexical units that the student knows enough freely.

It is a well-known fact that grammar skills differ from each other as far as different types of verbal communication are (speaking, reading, listening, writing).

Under the grammar skill of communication it is usuall understood the use of automated grammatical phenomena in the spoken language.

Grammar skills which ensure the correct forms and their use are the morphological skills (for example, forming the personal endings of verbs). Those skills, which are responsible for correct automatic arrangement of words in all types of sentences are defined as syntactic speech skills.

Morphological and syntactic skills are more analytical (discursive) due to the fact that they have the specifics of the written kind of speech.

Since the perception and understanding of oral or written text happens with the active or passive, with knowledge of the language material, receptive grammatical skills are divided into receptive-active and receptive-passive and skills of reading and listening.

There is another type of skills, which in the psychological literature refers to the “intellectual”, or “intelligent”: linguistic discursive analytical grammar. They are formed on the basis of grammatical knowledge and used as the background component which is mainly in the written speech, rarely speaking. Language skills help to control the speaker the performance of speech acts, and if it fails the performance provides a correction of inaccuracies.

The operation of the grammatical part of speaking is happening as follows:

the speaker chooses a model, an adequate idea of their speech. The choice, of course, occurs unconsciously.
the speaker draws up the speech unit, which is filled by the model.

The two operations – the choice and design – are synthesized in the grammar in a single operation, displaying the skill of the speech itself.

Chosen Text

History of London

The history of London as a permanent settlement goes back almost 2000 thousand years. The city’s story is an interesting one, its destiny is closely connected with that of the British Isles. London has no known founder. Legend tells of a King Lud, after whom Ludgate hill and Ludgate Circus are named. A scratched and weather-beaten statue of mythic monarch, flanked by his supposed sons. Can still be seen, tucked away beside the church of St Dustan in the West of Fleet street. A quite place, where few people go.

London has no specific foundation date either. Shortly after the Roman conquest of 43 AD the invaders understood the strategic significant of the river Thames, flowing through the flattest, most productive part of their new province, its estuary providing easy access to the European mainland. With the fall of Roman administration Londinium was abandoned in the fifth century. As farming people the invading Anglo-Saxons who gradually pushed the Roman – British westwards, had no taste for city life and preferred to found villages which are now London’s suburbs or satellites such as Fulham, Matcham, Ealing, and Barking.

The Norman invasion of 1066 was marked by one construction of the mighty Tower of London, sited both to protect London Bridge from Invaders coming upstream and located from corner to corner of the city’s eastern wall, to impress its inhabitants as a symbol of personification of personification power. London as much as anywhere else in Europe was devastated by the epidemic of bulbonic plague, known as Black Death, which carried off a third of the population in 1348 – 1349.

The population of London tripled under the Tudors, making it not only the nation’s greatest city but by far the greatest – almost a hundred times bigger than Stradford-on-Avon in which Shakespeare grew up before coming to the bustling Bankside as actor-manager at the Globe Theatre. By 1700 London’s population had passed the half million mark, ranking it with Paris and Naples as one of Europe’s three largest cities.

Analysis of the Text

Before speaking about the grammatical analysis of the text it would be appropriate to give the definition of the text itself. So, text can be considered to be the unique communicative phenomenon which has structural, semantic, compositional, stylistic and functional integrity and is characterized by some categorical peculiarities such as information, completeness, and integrity and so on.

The social purpose and context

The social purpose of the text is quite informative because it gives a wide range of information of historical content and in addition the author of the text tried to give the educative value of it. Informative and educative values are very close and interrelated. The text tells about the history of London and the early centuries of he development of he great city.

Audience

The text is aimed to give the information for people who are working on their education and who are just interested in history of Great Britain and London in particular.

Actually the text can be for different age-groups and as it was mentioned above it have informative value.

Register

The author of the text uses simple words to describe serious and great events in the history of Great Britain and London in particular. The author does it in order the text would be understandable for wide range of people. The sentences are quite simple and do not require re-reading for understanding the sense. The author uses a wide range of synonyms in the text, for example – city, settlement, place and so on. This helps to enrich the vocabulary of the reader.

Grammatical features at the level of the text

But before turning to the grammatical side and actual coherence of the text, there is some clarification of terminology needed, and the defining if the limits of the use of terms such as “coherence”, “cohesion”. First of all, there is an improper use of the terms which is considered sometimes to be synonymous in the sense of “coherence”, fairly widespread in the literature. However, it is possible to talk about the coherence of the text as a whole, i.e. as a property of the text, but also the cohesion of the text as a property of the sentence units, the types of connection between the elements of the text. Therefore, coherence is understood as the integrity of the text which consists of logical-semantic, grammar (especially syntax) and stylistic relevance and interdependence of its sentences. In other words, the coherence of the text is the result of interaction between the logical and semantic, syntactic and stylistic forms of cohesion, and coherence is the basis of logical and semantic cohesion of sentences. (Mason, 2009, p101)

In the modern use cohesion and coherence got their own spheres of influence, although not without some terminological confusion which is explained by the close relations of the two words. And so, in some papers the term of integrity of the text serves only as a synonym for cohesion and terminology match semantic coherence – coherence – is the wholeness (integrity), which is regarded as a special category.

So, it is possible to make a conclusion that coherence is greater than cohesion; it covers not only formal grammatical features of speech, and semantic-pragmatic (thematic and functional including) aspects of meaning and interactive connections within the text. (Mason, 2009, p100)

It is possible to state that the text given above is structures according to the laws of coherence. There is an introduction which introduces the early centuries of development of the city London, the main body of the text represent the most significant ideas about the history of London and the concluding part contains the information about London as one of the greatest cities of nowadays.

In the small volume of texts, especially in the so-called neutral language styles cohesion is fully integrate. In these texts, communications and intersectionality are often too obvious. Another case is in the texts of literature, where, on the other hand, cohesion is only a subsidiary tool of small segments, and link major pieces and parts which are not always easily captured.

The complexity of the integration process is exacerbated by the fact that in works of literature may appear irrelevant thoughts and reasoning. In order to bring them to the same denominator sometimes some efforts of analytical mind are required which are directed to the understanding of implicit conjugacy of such deviations.

It is necessary to conclude that the formal features (cohesion) are not determinative for the text, as insufficient to their selection as an independent unit. This means that the text is the unit not of the language system, but speech and communicative. It has its own laws of structure and functioning, as distinct from the linguistic units, although it is one of them. (Mason, 2009, p103)

Speaking about the types of cohesive relations it is possible to define four of them. They are reference, substitution, ellipsis, and conjunction.

The example of reference is : The city’s story is an interesting one, its destiny is closely connected with that of the British Isles.

A wide range of substitution can be represented by synonyms, what was mentioned above already.

Sentence or clause level grammatical features

The text is rich of the sentences in Active Voice : The history of London as a permanent settlement goes back almost 2000 thousand years, and passive one : its destiny is closely connected with that of the British Isles, what helps to create the grammatical variety in the text.

The text has the sentences which contain gerundial clauses : Shortly after the Roman conquest of 43 AD the invaders understood the strategic significant of the river Thames, flowing through the flattest, most productive part of their new province, its estuary providing easy access to the European mainland. The population of London tripled under the Tudors, making it not only the nation’s greatest city but by far the greatest… By 1700 London’s population had passed the half million mark, ranking it with Paris and Naples as one of Europe’s three largest cities.

It should be admitted that mostly simple sentences are used in the text. In general the simple sentence is a unit of speech which serves as a means of conveying the thought. The example from the text is: The history of London as a permanent settlement goes back almost 2000 thousand years.

Also it is possible to meet the compound sentences. In general understanding compound sentence is a sentence which consists of two or more clauses coordinated with each other. So, the example is: The city’s story is an interesting one, its destiny is closely connected with that of the British Isles. (Here it is possible to that two parts of the sentence are connected asyndetically).

Speaking about complex sentences it should be noted that there are many of them in the text, in general notion complex sentence is a unit of speech which consists of principal and subordinate clause. The example is: As farming people the invading Anglo-Saxons who gradually pushed the Roman – British westwards, had no taste for city life and preferred to found villages which are now London’s suburbs or satellites such as Fulham, Matcham, Ealing, and Barking. (Subject clause).

Learning activities based on the text

Description of learners and the purpose for learning English

The learners of English are the people who learn the language for their educative purposes and they are the citizens of Australia or any other foreign country.

The first thing for learning the second language is defining the purposes for learning. Sometimes they are caused by social or individual reasons. If the student is not confident about the character of the purpose and its character the function of explaining this should be performed by the teacher. There are several approaches to this (Herrell, 2007, p 55).

Activity approach assumes that people in the learning process should not just learn something, but learn how to do something.

At the forefront of this activity there is knowledge which is a prerequisite for the implementation of this activity (Herrell, 2007, p 55).

The task of learning is the formation of means of activity to ensure the results of training activities and facilitate the development of key competencies.

In the modern sense to know means to use the knowledge for carrying out certain activities, not just to remember certain knowledge.

The activities of the teacher are not just “transferring” the knowledge, but also:

designing learning activities,
Organization of training activities,
Management training.

A clear definition of the objectives of education is the basis:

for defining the content and teaching methods,
for enhancing the training of trainees, turning them into conscious participants in the learning process,
for assessing learning outcomes,

And finally – for the development of the individuality of a student.

Activities based on the text and grammatical analysis

What are the types of the sentences are there in the text?
Describe the specific features of the impersonal sentences, using the examples from the text.
Find the sentences of Active Voice in the text and explain the tense using there.
Find the sentences of Passive Voice in the text and explain the tense using there.
Define the morphological structure of the sentences.

Conclusions

Speaking about what grammatical features are there in the text it should be noted that this text is mainly for learning syntactical structure of English. So, I would incorporate the learning of Passive and Active voice because it is impossible to learn the language without these grammatical features. Also the learning about the grammatical type of sentence is very important.

References

Elliott Rebecca. (2006). Painless Grammar. Barron’s Educational Series; 2 edition.

Gebhard Jerry G.. (2006). Teaching English as a Foreign or Second Language, Second Edition: A Teacher Self-Development and Methodology Guide: University of Michigan Press/ESL; Second Edition edition.

Herrell Adrienne L. , Jordan Michael L.. (2007). Fifty Strategies for Teaching English Language Learners: Prentice Hall; 3 edition.

Mason C. P. (2009). English Grammar: Including the Principles of Grammatical Analysis: BiblioLife.

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