Teacher Discussion Forums

Anybody have an opinion about Ron Cowan's "The Teacher's Grammar of English"? http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/cata ... 0521007559

I like his explanations of "prepositional verbs" and "infinitive complements".

Geoffrey Pullum over on Language Log links to some "excoriation" of the book you've mentioned, Ouyang:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1871

English Jack is blocked here in China because the word "blog" occurs in his domain name. I can't get a VPN working right now, but the links have certainly piqued my interest.

(Just to say, in case anyone was worrying that he might still be needing help with it, that I copied and pasted the stuff that Ouyang was wanting to read over to him via an email! ).

What bugs me about Pullum trashing grammar books is that the idea really seems to be that we all use HIS book as the ultimate authority (and no no no to an "English academy" instead of this obscure authority). And of course his book is too hard for most people, precisely because it tries so hard to avoid the mistakes that are seen as sins in other books and gets right into the whirlpool of every difficulty and tries to take us on the inevitably bamboozling journey in a logical progression, as if people were going to read the thing like a novel.

Or maybe the Lord of English has brought out an introductory guide I'm not aware of?

I remember that when he was savaging the female Australian grammarian who committed some unspeakable errors a while back he claimed that it was easy to look up aspects of grammatical usage (in order to get the terminology right) . Do you think so? Where do you go?

I thought Brett Reynolds' criticisms didn't take into account that Cowan's book is specifically for EFL teachers. For example, Reynolds doesn't understand the priority of getting students to ask each other questions.

beginning with questions seems to me to be a particularly odd choice

Some of his criticisms seem unfair,

as far as I can tell, it doesn't even discuss the fact that some verbs take adjectives as predicate complements and some don't

Chp. 12 includes a section "Positions of Adjectives" in which attributive and predicative adjectives are compared.

However, Cowan's approach is definitely unusual in places. Reynolds questions the usefulness of identifying ergative verbs,

Anyhow, I agree that giving them the label ergative may not be very helpful since dictionaries don't use it.

The classification was new and interesting to me. I questioned Cowan's thematic roles of prepositions when I encountered them, (e.g. location, source, & goal vs. my place and direction) but I really haven't given it much thought.

Reynolds doesn't address the parts of Cowan's grammar that interest me, and his admission that

To be fair, I haven't even had a look at the sections at the end of most chapters on "problems that ESL/EFL students have with..." and "suggestions for teaching..."

shows that he is not really interested in the primary goal Cowan had in writing the book. So, I haven't really taken a careful look at all the criticisms Reynolds makes.

Anyway, I appreciate fluffy's help and this thread, which I hope to make better use of someday when I have access to the books it lists.

woodcutter wrote:Or maybe the Lord of English has brought out an introductory guide I'm not aware of?

Surely H&P's A Student's Introduction to English Grammar counts? (Though I thought you were aware of it!).

I remember that when he was savaging the female Australian grammarian who committed some unspeakable errors a while back he claimed that it was easy to look up aspects of grammatical usage (in order to get the terminology right) . Do you think so? Where do you go?

Well, Ferguson (a grammarian?!) could certainly have done with looking up a thing or two, or better yet, reading at least one whole book, any book really, on grammar (even SFG, you'd've thought!) before attempting to write anything of her own.

There's actually been a number of ETAQ debacle-related documents recently posted by Pullum on his bit of the web (seeing as ETAQ no longer want to play frisbee-boomerang with that nice Mr Huddleston):
http://ling.ed.ac.uk/grammar/otherstuff.html

This one's for Woody and Heath!*
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1847 ... sib_rdr_dp
(Matthiessen et al, Key Terms in Systemic Functional Linguistics. Continuum 2010)

*Actually, that should really be 'This one's for Sally and Geordie!'.

fluffyhamster wrote:This one's for Woody and Heath!*
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1847 ... sib_rdr_dp
(Matthiessen et al, Key Terms in Systemic Functional Linguistics. Continuum 2010)

*Actually, that should really be 'This one's for Sally and Geordie!'.

Can you recommend a title for in-depth coverage of SFL, focusing on textual analysis (ultimately with the aim of applying somehow it to reading / writing in the classroom)? The text you linked above looks very interesting but I was wondering if you knew of anything with the abovementioned focus

Hi JMA! Hmm, I'm not sure that I'm the best person to make such a recommendation (I've only really browsed SFG stuff) - perhaps do a search for author 'geordie' and read the threads he started or contributed to, as I recall some books being mentioned and/or recommended on them. Then again, SFG almost by definition concerns (has to concern) itself with texts and textual analysis, so really any book you might care to get will have a fair number of examples and analyses drawn from a variety of authentic texts (and usually there is an analysis of at least one reasonably extended text). Of the two SFG books I have that would seem more suited to your apparent purposes (I have more than these two, but...*), I'd say that Thompson's Introducing Functional Grammar might be the more interesting and individual (and ultimately perceptive?), but that Bloor & Bloor's The Functional Analysis of English probably provides the better (more straightforward) foundation in the "basics" of SFG generally.

*For example, Graham Lock's Functional English Grammar: An Introduction for Second Language Teachers (previewable on Google Books: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=P0cTL9kmaEEC ) is more unrelentingly "grammary" (nitty-gritty) and a bit less "textual" (discursive-to-waffly?), and thus somewhat tougher going than the Bloors' or Thompson's work (though Thompson has taught SFG at least...not sure if he's done ELT/ESL/EFL), but the focus on teaching language-language teaching throughout (rather than in just one chapter or section on applications) could well mean that if and when you manage to finish the Lock you might be in a better position to apply "what you've learnt"!

Depending where you are in your learning about SFL I would recommend anything by Beverly Dereiwanka.

fluffyhamster wrote:Then again, SFG almost by definition concerns (has to concern) itself with texts and textual analysis, so really any book you might care to get will have a fair number of examples and analyses drawn from a variety of authentic texts (and usually there is an analysis of at least one reasonably extended text). Of the two SFG books I have that would seem more suited to your apparent purposes (I have more than these two, but...*), I'd say that Thompson's Introducing Functional Grammar might be the more interesting and individual (and ultimately perceptive?), but that Bloor & Bloor's The Functional Analysis of English probably provides the better (more straightforward) foundation in the "basics" of SFG generally.

*For example, Graham Lock's Functional English Grammar: An Introduction for Second Language Teachers (previewable on Google Books: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=P0cTL9kmaEEC ) is more unrelentingly "grammary" (nitty-gritty) and a bit less "textual" (discursive-to-waffly?), and thus somewhat tougher going than the Bloors' or Thompson's work (though Thompson has taught SFG at least...not sure if he's done ELT/ESL/EFL), but the focus on teaching language-language teaching throughout (rather than in just one chapter or section on applications) could well mean that if and when you manage to finish the Lock you might be in a better position to apply "what you've learnt"!

Hi Fluffy! I suppose I should clarify I was initially asking about discourse and genre analysis of texts, but am interested in grammar too. The fact is I have no clue as to how SF Grammarians go about parsing language, although I have no qualms with jumping in the deep end to find out I think I do have something of a feel for genre based approaches to writing and reading and would definitely like to read further in that respect. I will investigate your recommendations.

Sally Olsen wrote:Depending where you are in your learning about SFL I would recommend anything by Beverly Dereiwanka.

Thanks! Do you know if there is such a thing as a published compendium of different written genre templates for easy teacher reference and use? I`ve been wondering whether anything might have been published along those lines.

Hi Sally, I was considering searching and linking to some of your posts, but as you've made appreciably more than Geordie, but appear in his threads (and IIRC mentioning BD in them), I limited the search suggestion to JMA to just Geordie's posts!

Hi again JMA. The following thread (assuming you haven't already read it!) effectively compares mainstream ("traditional" yet modern and descriptive) with SF analyses in relation to sentences like Mary saw Peter walking his dog:
http://forums.eslcafe.com/teacher/viewt ... 0174#40174

I'm not sure if the basic parsing is ultimately so different (again, I haven't read nearly enough in SFG), but the functional and semantic labels that get attached to forms do seem to diverge a bit.

Then there's this:
http://forums.eslcafe.com/teacher/viewt ... 0986#40986

8th edition of the OALD is on the way:
http://fds.oup.com/www.oup.com/pdf/elt/ ... .pdf?cc=gb

And have you guys seen the natty free 'Teacher Support Plus' pdfs available from CUP? ("Here you will find free resources including pedagogical booklets and academic presentations designed for ELT professionals who wish to explore key aspects of language instruction"). There are eight in all, from authors including Michael McCarthy and Jack Richards.
http://www.cambridge.org/gb/elt/satelli ... port-Plus/

Hong Kong is doing a lot with SFL and have published a website for teachers. I am not sure it is available to all but if you contact Beverly she will probably give you access as she helped to design it. It has step by step lesson plans and such. Curriculum guides from the Australian schools are pretty detailed as well but she will know what is best. There are textbooks depending on the age of student you teach. As Fluffy said, Geordie gave the main websites for SFL. I personally like the workbook by Butt, David, Rhonda Fahey, Susan Feez, Sue Spinks and Colin Yallop (2000) Using Functional Grammar: An Explorer's Guide (2nd ed.), Sydney: National Centre for English Language Teaching and Research, Macquarie University. I also like books by Susanne Eggins.