Teacher Discussion Forums

There's a new edition out of that ol' fave of mine, the Oxford Dictionary of English Grammar , BUT the new additional author (Bas Aarts), presumably called in to do his worst, has seen fit to remove the phonetics entries*, and in their place add doubtless a fair amount of syntactic stodge from the C...

Well we're calling it a sentence but it's a bit abbreviated and note-like. It could even conceivably be just a noun phrase containing a reduced relative clause (i.e. other clauses could come before or after it: ... X ... ). Hard to say out of context!

Sorry for not addressing your question of subordination. My understanding is that 'as per doctor's orders' is an adverbial (the whole could be replaced with e.g. 'correctly'), and it isn't a clause (further clause) but rather just an element (a phrase) in yes a simple sentence. The "complexity" (tha...

Dictionaries don't analyze it further than labelling it an idiom, while in grammars (e.g. the LGSWE, pg 75) it is listed simply as a complex (i.e. multi-word) preposition. I don't think it is worth trying to break it down beyond that, so you'd probably be best just trying to think of synonyms e.g. a...

You're very welcome, W.O.C! The books I mentioned in my last post should be plenty for reference purposes, so now I'll suggest more practical, actual activity-related stuff. You might want to get a general methodology guide (that covers "everything": how to teach sounds, words, grammar, speaking, li...

Welcome to the forums! :wink: Student grammar practice books such as Murphy's Grammar in Use series are a painless way of familiarizing yourself with the essentials and seeing how they can be contextualized (i.e. are used in basic situations). I also like Swan & Walter's How English Works , and some...

The frequency dictionary is made and printed to the same dimensions and high quality as the comprehensive grammar, but uses an Arial-like rather than Times New Roman-ish font. There are a few typographical quibbles though - the headword characters are printed in bold, which could make the more compl...

Hi LSK! :wink: I have Routledge's frequency dictionary for Chinese, and might get around to writing my own review of it one day if I find any points not covered by or worth expanding beyond what's in the following two reviews: http://linguistlist.org/issues/21/21-2576.html http://www.benjamins.com/#...

Do we give undue to importance to grammar teaching? is incorrect - it should be just 'undue importance' (with no intervening 'to'). The Macmillan ED has a pretty good breakdown of the items concerned: http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/undue - " ADJECTIVE [ONLY BEFORE NOUN] ..." ...

Definitely a "first mention" context. Even any subsequent referring back probably wouldn't involve 'the', so as to avoid repetition (A: There was a show of hands. B: How did it /?the show of hands/ the vote [note the noun in that last option has changed to a synonym providing variety] go? What was d...

Hi, and welcome to the forums. I can't tell you how to report this stuff as I don't know quite what your assignment requires (and I wouldn't be willing to do too much even if I did know LOL). I can tell you however that it is common in most grammars to contrast canonical/unmarked word order with non...

Here are some instructions I wrote for somebody once on how to use the BNC@BYU: At first it's a bit tricky to operate/enter the POS (Part of Speech) tag selections, so for now as an example you might like to just copy and paste the following into the 'SEARCH STRING' box and then click the 'SEARCH' b...

I also like humour - funny pictures (e.g. I once drew a picture of Sadako from Ringu, but with fluffy bunny slippers on), little improvised jokes (e.g. a fly is buzzing around the classroom, I say "Oh, my pet!" and beckon it [back] towards my armpit, its home :) ), and so on. I also had fun making u...

Many thanks for posting this article - I might repost it e.g. over on the Job Discussion forums sometime. I have Folse's book, but it's nice to have a potted summary, especially to direct others to. Welcome to the forums, by the way!

Thanks for mentioning the Börjars & Burridge. I recall seeing it in Japan, but it was probably a bit too pricey an import, and at the time only the First Edition and lacking the Glossary, for example.