First time teacher questions about teaching grammar

dontcallme · Post by **dontcallme** » Thu Nov 06, 2008 6:21 pm

This is really embaressing and frankly unprofessional but I am struggling with grammar. I love travelling and communicating with people and TEFL seemed like the perfect way to do this.

I really want to be the best teacher I can be and happy to admit my understanding of grammar rules, sentence structures and most importantly explaining them is nowhere near the level it needs to be.

I've been teaching for a month now. My students mostly know their grammar rules off by heart but their vocabulary and using words in the correct context is what they struggle with. I've been giving lots of phrasal verb and speaking lessons and largely neglecting grammar. The last lesson I had today was a disaster and my students were asking about the sentence structure and I completely froze. I was tired and unprepared for this type of questionning and know I need to get my grammar knowledge up to the right level and as quickly as possible.

Any hints or tips on how to do this would be greatly appreciated. I have a grammar book but it doesn't seem to follow much of a structure so once I start re-learning certain parts of grammar it moves onto something else and I get very lost.

As a teacher I'm happy to admit this isn't good enough but I do want to be the best teacher I can be.

Lorikeet · Post by **Lorikeet** » Thu Nov 06, 2008 10:33 pm

I moved this to this forum because I know a lot of the posters here have some ideas about books you might want to get. You can also use the "search" function to see if you can find some of the old posts. I'm sorry I don't have time right now to look myself.

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Fri Nov 07, 2008 12:05 am

There's a 'Short Overview of English Syntax' available here:
http://ling.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/grammar/otherstuff.html

Huddleston & Pullum's A Student's Introduction to English Grammar is mentioned in one of the threads that I link on to from this following post of mine about ELT grammar books:
http://forums.eslcafe.com/job/viewtopic ... 107#698107

ouyang · Post by **ouyang** » Fri Nov 07, 2008 4:18 am

The three most important concepts for understanding English sentence structures are 1. sentence patterns, 2. sentence forms, and 3. sentence types.

If you search online for information about these concepts, you can learn most of what you need to know. Most grammars agree that there are four types of sentences: simple, compound, complex, and compound complex. Sentence form refers to difference between statements and questions. Many grammars list subject, yes/no, and object questions. They rarely list all English sentence forms.

There's a lot of contradictory information about sentence patterns. Two examples of sentence patterns are Subject Verb Object and Subject Linking Verb Complement. "He likes her" and "She is his friend". Many grammars can't decide if "She is happy" and "She is in the kitchen" share the S LV Complement pattern. The Subject Linking Verb Adverb pattern is actually omitted in many grammars.

EFL students often know more about English grammar than native speakers. However, if the grammar books which they have read made sense or were at least comprehensive, they wouldn't be asking you these questions.

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Fri Nov 07, 2008 9:42 pm

Would it really matter if 'in the kitchen' were called a complement rather than an adverb (or vice versa)? Why can't it be both? (Cue Ouyang teling us that one or the other can't be boil washed at 95 degrees and spun, or make you a nice cup of tea

). Then, we could burden Dontcallme with the vexed knicker-twisting question of whether the preterite should be called 'remote' (to cover its various uses) or "simply" 'past' (past simple tense/inflection). And let's not forget...(any more suggestions for issues/"issues" for the OP?

).

ouyang · Post by **ouyang** » Sat Nov 08, 2008 12:33 am

Well, it is both an adverb and a complement, but the point I was trying to make is that most grammars give simplified and incomplete explanations of sentence patterns. What if grammars focused on four parts of speech and downplayed the need to classify words that didn't form these parts of speech? Wouldn't that result in students being less clear about gramamar?

I don't think that verb forms are all that important to sentence structures, but verb combinations are. So, I should have included auxiliary verbs and verbals in my list of important concepts.

BTW, if you scan one of the articles linked from the syntax overview that Fluffy recommends at http://ling.ed.ac.uk/grammar/overview.html and scroll down to "5.6 Five canonical clause structures" you will see exactly what I was referring to. The 2nd structure "S-P-PCs" is specifically defined as having a subject complement, and the 4th structure is defined as having an object complement. "S-P-Od-PCo" Does that mean predicate adverb sentences are classified as the 1st structure?

I don't think it's clear from the article if a passive voiced version of the 3rd structure "The package has been delivered" forms the 3rd or the 1st structure. It certainly no longer meets the definition of the 3rd structure. How many "non-canonical" clause structures are there?

If grammarians can't put a number on this, why can't students form their own sentence patterns. Maybe, there are some patterns out there waiting to be used for the first time. Why can't they form new parts of speech as well?

Anyway, I'm not disagreeing with anything that Huddleston has written. I'm just saying that no one should be surprised that students are confused about sentence structures, given how they are typically presented. Consider how even fewer patterns are accounted for using the functional perspective http://www.ucl.ac.uk/internet-grammar/f ... ntpatt.htm

matbury · Post by **matbury** » Sat Nov 15, 2008 11:45 am

I'd recommend learning the same way that your students did. Just use the same kinds of books and remember - most of the time, you only have to be the next page ahead!

The best selling EFL/ESL grammar book of all time is this one: http://www.amazon.co.uk/English-Grammar ... 369&sr=1-1

It got me started on my CELTA course many years ago and I it's been very useful all through my teaching career.

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Sat Nov 15, 2008 1:45 pm

Hi Matbury! Murphy is certainly a good book, and gets mentioned a fair bit when posters are considering or have just completed initial training. I still find myself wondering however exactly where Dontcallme is teaching, and exactly what sort of questions his or her students are asking - if they're coming from some fairly large grammar (I'm thinking of the type that some learners pore over in Asia), then maybe the relative informality of Murphy won't suffice (that being said, even abridged Huddlestone isn't easy in places and could be slight overkill). But again, I agree that Murphy would make a good minimum (I think I mention it in one of the threads I linked to), and if DCM is working in your average language school then it will indeed be the same sort of stuff that students will have been exposed to.