A different way to teach grammar?

Sally Olsen · Post by **Sally Olsen** » Thu Jun 26, 2008 4:01 pm

Time to write your own. I'm sure it would be a lot better than what is available. Look forward to your thoughts on what you are going to do. I just couldn't get through TEV so bought "The First WORD: The Search for the Origins of Language" by Christine Kenneally. It is full of gossip about the big players - so far on Chomsky and is just my style of summer reading.

woodcutter · Post by **woodcutter** » Mon Jul 21, 2008 12:33 am

I wish you'd give us a basic introduction to how you approach teaching (simple) systemic functional linguistics Sally. You might get your hands bitten by someone or other, but I'd love to know exactly how you are explaining the basic concepts to the students, because as I have said, personally I don't feel I have really been able to grasp the basic concepts of that approach to grammar.

Sally Olsen · Post by **Sally Olsen** » Wed Jul 23, 2008 4:31 pm

OK. But I like Beverly Derewianka's stuff for easy explanations and it seems that Geoff Williams has a chapter of a book that is good and he is going to get it republished by itself. You could encourage him by emailing him at his address at UBC, Canada. Rhonha Fahey et al is a great primer. It is better to do it yourself on some pieces of writing that your students do. I will ask permission of my students to print their writing (anonymously) so I can show you what I do. Can I colour my words on this program? I guess if not I can use italics and bold and so on.

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Wed Jul 23, 2008 11:08 pm

Yeah, there are font color options when you post a message. You can highlight then select the color you want...a bit slow, but doable. Not sure if the palette will suit your taste or needs though, Sally!

Sally Olsen · Post by **Sally Olsen** » Fri Jul 25, 2008 3:59 pm

Having trouble contacting my students in Mongolia - it is Nadaam and that is a two week party worth seeing. Will try to get hold of some of my Commerce 299 students.

Lorikeet · Post by **Lorikeet** » Wed Aug 13, 2008 7:52 pm

For those who may be curious, I read The English Verb twice this summer, and took notes on it. I decided to use a combination that might make Lewis sick, but that's life when you throw your philosophy out for everyone to read!

I've got a class that meets twice a week in the Computer Lab and 3 times a week in a classroom. I'm going to use a Blog in the Computer Lab, and in one entry I will talk about Grammar; how we have different kinds of English, how teachers sometimes confuse students with rules that match one thing but not another, how teachers try to avoid examples that don't fit the "rule" and the fact that I read a book with some different ideas on teaching grammar that may or may not confuse them.

Then I took the bare bones of Lewis' ideas as I interpreted them (Two tenses, both used for things perceived as "timeless facts" by the speaker, one remote, primarily in time, the view of the speaker being the important thing for introducing retrospective and durative forms.) I'm adding some of the old examples I had of the use of Present Perfect, Past, Past Perfect, etc., and I am calling them "hints". I have various activities I will have them do, and I will be interested to see how it works out.

Mostly, these are students who have already "studied" present perfect, past perfect, etc., so a new way to look at it might either be interesting and refreshing or confusing and irritating. Time will tell.

Stephen Jones · Post by **Stephen Jones** » Wed Aug 13, 2008 8:24 pm

Please keep us posted on how it pans out.

Eric18 · Post by **Eric18** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 3:07 am

Good discussion. I enjoyed the reading tips.

By the way, the best grammar texts - in terms of accessibility and clarity - that I've found remain the Grammar in Use series and Communicative Grammar. I also prefer to only teach grammar as a supplement to reading, writing, and speaking. Many students seem to learn best by stumbling and doing rather than just filling in blanks, etc.

Contexts, tastes, and goals differ of course.

Lorikeet · Post by **Lorikeet** » Sun Oct 05, 2008 4:24 pm

Stephen Jones wrote:Please keep us posted on how it pans out.

Well, I finished the part of the class in which I was reviewing verbs. I used a bit of a combination of the "new style" and "old style" which would probably drive Lewis nuts. I tried (to the best of my ability, after having read the book twice over the summer, and taken pages of notes) to explain what I had understood. An extremely truncated version of the major points is as follows (remembering that I am now about 4 weeks away from when I was concentrating on it, and probably forgot some things, but I'm not cheating and looking it all up again.):

The choice of what form to use lies with the speaker.
The unmarked, simple, present simple (or whatever you want to call it) form of the verb is factual, from the speaker's standpoint.
The remote form can be used to be remote in time (past) or remote in politeness (being more polite, that is) or remote in possibility (if clauses, that is).
The -ing forms are used to show a period of time with a beginning and an end.
The have + past participle forms (perfect) are retrospective, where the person looks back from one point to something that happened previously. (I used this for present perfect, past perfect, and future perfect as well.)

I warned my students that I was going to use some ideas from a book I'd read over the summer. I gave them what was my understanding of the main ideas. I also included what I called "tips" which involved some of the old "rules" that we had for the various tenses. I used both names (the remote form, or past simple, for example) because I am not their only teacher and they have a history of years and years using the old names.

Some of them were no doubt lost, but I had several who really ate it up and liked the idea of looking at familiar things in a different way. I think it was helpful in teaching the Present Perfect and Past Perfect. I really liked the "retrospective" idea, and that made teaching the future perfect a little easier to teach than before.

After the section on verbs, I moved on to modals, but I had more trouble understanding Lewis's explanation of modals, so I didn't use it much. However, I was able to use it to explain the can/could will/would differences, and showing that remote forms were used in a "more polite" context made a lot of sense to some of my students, one of whom explained it made sense for the first time.

Bottom line, if I have to teach the same material to the same level students again, I think I might do it the same way. Grammar is just a way of looking at the corpus of English and trying to make it understandable, as far as I'm concerned. Remember, this class is our highest level class (non-credit community college adults) in our school, and would probably be considered upper intermediate. Some of them have been around as long as 15 years, and some were highly educated in their own countries.

Thanks to you guys for introducing me to Lewis. While I don't follow all his ideas (particularly with modals) and probably couldn't explain things well without referring to a lot of notes, the "remote forms" idea explains a lot more than traditional grammar, as far as I am concerned. I will probably read the book again.

In the meantime, between reading the book and thinking about grammar, and learning to blog so I could do a blog with my class (It's a CALL class too.), I was unable to prepare my class a semester ahead like I usually do. I got about 4 weeks ahead before I ran out of time, so I am quite busy this semester writing and finding material. (I don't use a book.) That will explain why I haven't posted more here, although I still pop in to read what everyone else says.

--Lorikeet

woodcutter · Post by **woodcutter** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 4:23 am

I still think the big flaw is that you can't use past tenses of main verbs when simply being polite - unless you put them in a conditional clause. So isn't it easier to just say that past tenses are past tenses except when in such a clause?

JuanTwoThree · Post by **JuanTwoThree** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 4:48 am

"Did Sir want anything else?"

"I was wondering what your name was"

woodcutter · Post by **woodcutter** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 11:58 pm

Excluding mental states.....

You can't say "Gave me a drink please", and if it was only about "remoteness" there is no good reason why.

Stephen Jones · Post by **Stephen Jones** » Wed Oct 08, 2008 9:16 am

After the section on verbs, I moved on to modals, but I had more trouble understanding Lewis's explanation of modals

That's because his idea of a core meaning for each modal is rubbish.

You can't say "Gave me a drink please", and if it was only about "remoteness" there is no good reason why.

'Give' is the imperative, not a tense.

woodcutter · Post by **woodcutter** » Mon Oct 13, 2008 12:50 am

Then you'll have to arbitrarily explain to people that imperatives cannot be "remote", even with 100 pretty pleases.

(French has a past imperative, which refers to the future. If you wish to rename that a remote imperative, I've no objection)

What is the arbitrary reason that you can't say "I went to the shop tomorrow", and that in unmarked sentences remoteness must be a non future "remoteness"? (and given that there are only three basic times, that leaves only the past)

JuanTwoThree · Post by **JuanTwoThree** » Mon Oct 13, 2008 11:10 am

The French "past imperative" is really a sort of future perfect imperative, and is no different from "Be gone by lunch-time" or "Have the letters written by tomorrow".

My take on all this is that there is a not-the-present form of the verb.It's either non-present because it's past, because it's "polite" or because it's irrealis (subjunctive if you prefer). We call it the "past" because that's the main explanation for non presentness, but that's just to give it a name. "Remote" is another name, rather more satisfactory than "past".

Otherwise I don't see how you can explain "Yesterday I thought about you" "I'd rather you thought about me tomorrow" "I was thinking of doing it tomorrow" " If I thought that, I'd be crazy" and so on.

They certainly can't be explained by saying "Yeah, well that's the past, innit? Doing a lot of non-past things, I'll grant"

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A different way to teach grammar?

Thanks for the reading tips