MA- should a good MA have no linguisitcs/lang analysis?

Rolly · Post by **Rolly** » Fri Apr 29, 2005 7:52 am

Recently, I have looked into studying an MA in TESOL. I was a little suprised to see one univeristy offered the MA with no linguistic or language analysis module at all. I was quite looking forward to brushing up my grammar as I am relatively new to teaching. I just wondered why? Is it too traditional in TESOL/EFL to be studying how the language works and pay more attention to methodology and psychology.
I am the only native speaker at my college and the Chinese teachers often ask me quite tricky grammatical questions which I find difficult to explain. I think I need to study more grammar but it is useful for my future in the profession?

Sally Olsen · Post by **Sally Olsen** » Fri Apr 29, 2005 7:45 pm

Just go through this thread and see the range of answers given here and you will learn a lot. I would also recommend "The English Verb" and anything on Systemic Functional Linguistics, particularly anything written by Beverly Derewianka.
I guess that it depends on the places you want to teach in the future and what you are looking forward to teaching. I would ask at your institution what kind of things they are looking for in a Master's degree. I hear that the Australian courses are well respected.

woodcutter · Post by **woodcutter** » Sat Apr 30, 2005 7:52 am

Since I'm applying for the Australian on-line course I'm delighted someone thinks it is well respected.

I don't think so, though! Since so many App.Ling MAs are distance learning, they tend to be very theoretical and include lots of grammar, and somewhat lacking in practical content. They are therefore looked down on. Especially those from Oz, which are short and may lack a dissertation. I'm surprised if such an MA course doesn't offer grammar - perhaps it is residential?

In general, the courses are perhaps too cerebral. I know someone who is taking the UK Open University course and has been launched straight into Halliday's functional grammar. He doesn't see how it will help him in the classroom. Nor do I really, it always seems to me to be a vaguely pointless exercise in applying fancy labels.

Sally Olsen · Post by **Sally Olsen** » Wed May 04, 2005 5:25 pm

I haven't figured it out yet either but there are some textbooks developed for beginner's using Systemic Functional Linguistics and the ones I have seen are good. They are from Australia of course. Beverly Derewianka has really made things down to earth and practical for the classroom and not just a bunch of labels. I think that the main idea, as far as I understand, it to look at language as it functions or works in society rather than at particular sentences or words or grammar. It uses real writing and speaking as examples and shows how they connect to each other as a whole rather than doing substitue exercises and drill and kill exercises that don't mean a lot to the students. Beverly has a course that is very practical and is giving it at UBC in Vancouver this summer for three weeks. I think that Collerson might be a little bit more easy read than Halliday too or things from Hallidays wife or son.
I have heard about the Australian Universities over and over from students and employers in Asia and I think even on the thread on Dave's about where to study. I think that you have to have theory along with practice too though and it is a shame that most courses don't consider that. I suppose the practice of writing an essay about how you would use what you learn in the course is close. Everything we do is a combination of theory and practice and you can make it as practical as you want for yourself. I know that I go back about once a month and read through my course notes and some of the papers just to remind myself of what I might do.

woodcutter · Post by **woodcutter** » Wed May 04, 2005 11:10 pm

I don't disbelieve you Sally, but could you give me a solid example of a situation in which "functional grammar" might help a student of English make better progress?

I mean, sure, study language "as it is used in society". But why go to such trouble to label it all?

Stephen Jones · Post by **Stephen Jones** » Wed May 04, 2005 11:32 pm

I mean, sure, study language "as it is used in society". But why go to such trouble to label it all?

Because if you don't label it you can't agree what you're talking about.

And the point of learning formal grammar is that the teacher understands it, and thus is capable of deciding how he is going to present something to the learner.

woodcutter · Post by **woodcutter** » Thu May 05, 2005 10:48 pm

Yes, but what has Halliday brought to the party? I have plenty of labels flapping around my head which I have learnt from traditional grammar. Why do I need to add those which deal more heavily with semantic issues, which are even more tricky to whip into meaningful rule bound form that the usual stuff we find in our ESL textbooks. (That being why most people never bother with them.)

I find it difficult to imagine that any student contstructs sentences with Halliday's grammar foremost in their minds. Do you mean to say, Stephen, that Halliday's stuff is something I should know, but not actually teach?

Stephen Jones · Post by **Stephen Jones** » Fri May 06, 2005 8:01 am

Do you mean to say, Stephen, that Halliday's stuff is something I should know, but not actually teach?

This applies to all of what you have picked up about English grammar or would learn on a linguistics course. It obviously applies to everything discussed on this forum.

The teacher needs to understand the structure of the language he is teaching. The question of how he uses that knowledge to improve the skills of his L2 learners is a different matter. There is certainly no reason why the pedagogic grammar (which is a predictive grammar) should follow the same pattern as the descriptive grammar the teacher has mastered, though there will eventually be problems if it strays too far. Indeed I would go so far as to say that one of the main problems in EFL is the tendency for teachers to use a grammar that falls between two stools; it confuses the students and does not give a coherent description for the teacher.

Now, back to the real world. I have a copy of one of Halliday's main books lying on my desk at work, with the overdue notice from the library on top. I've read the note from the library but not the book

On the other hand I have been using Quirk and Greenbaum as my primary reference for English grammar for 25 years, and apparently they follow Halliday's terminology in many respects.

One of the main problems we have with English grammar is that we have ditched the Latinate framework but have not come to an agreement about what should replace it.

Nevertheless there are definitely certain concepts that are missing in the 'pot pourri' used by English textbooks and which are of obvious use. Try and explain the possessive in English without the concept of the gender chain for example. You might end up giving an explanation that approximates to it, but how much easier to actually have it explained.

And 'theme' and 'focus' are absolutely central concepts. They make explaining the passive easy. Picasso painted 'Guernica' is a sentence about Picasso. 'Guernica' was painted by Picasso is a sentence abut Guernica. Moreover it makes it clear why 'They've cooked dinner' cannot be transformed into *Dinner has been cooked by them.

Moreover they come to the rescue in hidden ways. Plenty of times people explain why we say 'me' in the phrase 'It's me' but it's only when you are teaching a Spanish speaker with a penchant for awkward questions that you are asked why we don't say *'I'm me'. The reason this sentence is ungrammatical in English is that the theme of the sentence can't be the same as the focus. The theme here is the dummy theme of 'the thing that exists', not 'I'.. (French is the same 'C'est moi'; in Spanish we say 'Soy yo' because the pronoun subject is normally omitted).

And why so we say ’What's that?’ with the contraction but 'What is it?’ without the contraction, and never *'What's it?' The answer is that 'that' is semantically strong enough to take the stress of the focus all on its own, but 'it' is not.

Some time ago Metal56 linked to an article by a teacher at the British Council in Estonia, who had basically published online a rehash of Lewis combined with attacks on Swann and some added inaccuracies of the author's own devising. I attacked the paper as being 'hopelessly amateurish' and drew the wrath of Larry, but if the guy had the least formal training he would never had claimed that the 'to' in I want to see you went with 'want' and not the following verb phrase. He was attempting to refute the idea that there was something wrong with the split infinitive, but in doing so, made an ass of himself. Linguists have assigned various categories to the 'to', including that of a defective auxiliary verb, but there is no doubt that it goes at the beginning of the Verb Phrase, and the best description is probably that of a marker (the CGEL suggests a subordinator) coming before the head of the VP 'see you'.

You may have plenty of labels flapping around my head but I would suggest a spring clean may well be in order. and even a trip to the shop to get some new ones.

woodcutter · Post by **woodcutter** » Fri May 06, 2005 8:29 am

I am not attacking formal grammar or formal training, and certainly not Swann(sic), who does a fine job while telling his numerous white lies. We cannot avoid the complexity and confusion of it all, if we wan't to explain why we put so much red, sorry, purple ink on the students work. I do not, therefore, see the relevance of the "Metal 56" paragraph. OK, you say Halliday was an influence on better known grammarians, but his "functional grammar" still occupies a separate set of unloved textbooks to the usual kind.

I am questioning the value of this special grammar, this "functional grammar", which is outside the scope of most ESL textbooks. It seems to me that this very semantic based grammar leads us into dubious statements which merely reflect, clumsily, what all human beings can grasp without making up terminology.

As far as I can see, we all know that when speaking, we pick a topic, and give information about it. You can call that subject/verb. You can call that theme/rheme. Maybe theme/focus, but since those are near synonyms, that is a confusing way to do it (this movie has a completely different theme and focus. Eh?). Anyway, that's why we don't say "I am me" - it doesn't say anything. (Kindly explain when "soy yo" would be used in context!) If you want to fend off the question "who are you" in a silly way, you might say "I am me", however. It isn't a grammar thing.

Your statements about the passive are rather crude ones which can often be heard. However....

"They won't get away with it. Photos were taken!"
"They won't get away with it. People took photos!"

...are "about" one and the same thing, and perfectly interchangeable.

As to "what's it" I suppose I would say that we avoid it through convention - not sure. However, your explanation suggests we not only need a "focus" - we need a "strong" focus. Do students receive a long list of those??

Stephen Jones · Post by **Stephen Jones** » Fri May 06, 2005 4:10 pm

dubious statements which merely reflect, clumsily, what all human beings can grasp without making up terminology.

It is debateable how far humans can grasp anything without making up terminology. Many believe that language evolved not for communicative reasons but in order to structure thought.

The truth is that every field of intellectual endeavour requires its jargon. What is under discussion is whether the jargon you have picked up is adequate or not.

Maybe theme/focus, but since those are near synonyms, that is a confusing way to do it (this movie has a completely different theme and focus. Eh?).

You're not even trying here! Theme and focus are precise linguistic terms. To confuse that with their non-technical uses is ignorance or laziness. In everday life people think of a television and not a knife as being a machine, but in mechanics it is the exact opposite, just as in mechanics the student who goofs off to play football is doing much more work than the one who stays in the class and pays rapt attention.

As far as I can see, we all know that when speaking, we pick a topic, and give information about it. You can call that subject/verb. You can call that theme/rheme. Maybe theme/focus,

You certainly can't call it subject/verb. In the interchange
"Where did you go?"
"We went to the cinema."
it is nonsense to say that 'you' is the topic of the sentence and 'did go' the new information, and in the second sentence the theme is "We went" and the focus or new information is 'to the cinema'.

Anyway, that's why we don't say "I am me" - it doesn't say anything. (Kindly explain when "soy yo" would be used in context!)

Why doesn't it say anything in English but does so in Spanish ('soy yo', incidentally would be used in all contexts where in English you would say "It's me" or "It is I"). It's definitely grammatical and not a set phrase. When we answer the telephone in English we say "It's John here," or "This is John speaking", whilst in Spanish we say"Soy Juan".

Your statements about the passive are rather crude ones which can often be heard. However....

"They won't get away with it. Photos were taken!"
"They won't get away with it. People took photos!"

...are "about" one and the same thing, and perfectly interchangeable.

Because 'People' is a dummy subject. Exactly my point.

As to "what's it" I suppose I would say that we avoid it through convention - not sure. However, your explanation suggests we not only need a "focus" - we need a "strong" focus. Do students receive a long list of those??

In other words you're stumped so your saying 'through convention' in the vain hope it won't be exposed as a cop-out. We do need to tell students that they can't say "What's it?" are "What're they?" (unless we put contrastive stress on the 'they'). As they are the only two examples to come to mind, it is rather easier to give them the 'weak' list than the practically infinite 'strong' list.

As to "what's it" I suppose I would say that we avoid it through convention - not sure. However, your explanation suggests we not only need a "focus" - we need a "strong" focus. Do students receive a long list of those??

The relevance is clear; the source involved has produced a document, ostensibly for teachers, and has given a laughably false explanation because, like you, he prefers to roll his own explanations instead of actually studying the theory.

Sally Olsen · Post by **Sally Olsen** » Fri May 06, 2005 5:46 pm

This discussion is getting down to points of grammar that I am not comfortable with myself, let alone to talk to the student's about yet. I am still working through Lewis. What I have found with studying Derewianka is that I am finding out my own reasons for what I write and say. She has labels for sure but with it being a new area for me, I am really concentrating on what she means and how I can put it into practice. In some cases though she, and I suppose Hallidayians, go back to traditional grammar lables and then I am thrown because I am grammatically challenged.
I, too, often rebel and say why do I have to learn all these labels. There was a prof at Carleton that asked the ESL students to make up their own labels and that proved positive because they looked at "grammar" as research and something that was possible to understand. But as Stephen says, unless we have similar labels it is really hard to communicate. It is frustrating that each person has to learn the meaning of these labels for themself but as knowledge progresses we are able to cover more ground because we have studied the basics at younger and younger ages.
I am of two mind on studying these labels because they take so much time to learn and are yet another thing to teach in ESL/EFL situations and yet the studetns will come across them often, at least in the corrections that they receive. Does it make more sense to teach them or to just have student memorize what they can and can't say or write? I don't really want to just have them memorize and not understand so I am back to figuring out how to introduce SFL.
Just one practical example that I can think of woodcutter is in writing a recount or a story of what has happened. Derewianka points out the parts of a recount as orientation and sequence. There are certain verbs and adverbs used because of the requirements of making a recount. Discovering these patterns help the students tremendously when they go to write a recount.

woodcutter · Post by **woodcutter** » Sun May 08, 2005 1:14 am

OK, yes, there is always a point to trying to lay a descriptive framework over something, it always teaches you something. Is that something enough to make it worthwhile kicking an MA off with "functional" grammar (another dubious piece of terminology!) though? Transformational grammar also teaches us things, but I suggest that it isn't needed on the MA course beyond the very basics. There are also other more obscure grammars out there, such as the one "Prawn" advocated on this forum, and Stephen Jones had no time for.

Subject/verb was lazy, I meant "verb phrase" or "complement". However, to choose a term like "focus", which gives the impression of having an everyday meaning, is worse than making up a jargotastic word like "rheme", which tells at least tells the world that this concept is at bottom from the imagination of the linguist.

Soy yo then, as I suspected, means "it is me" and not "I am me" and the Spanish students are translating word for word. No Asian student has ever come up with "I am me", as I recall, so I don't think that it is the lack of a lecture on "theme" and "focus" that is the problem.

It's pretty easy to tell students not to say "what's it". I suspect a good number of your students tune out the "theme/focus" difficulties and internalize that. They probably shrug shoulders about the strange "they" situation you talk about. (Que? We need a focus, and it must be strong, and all focuses are strong but not "it", and also "they", but only sometimes. Que?)

As to the passive, it merely signifies a small shift in focus. The sentence "The Pope was bitten by a cat" is not about the Pope. It is about the pope, a cat, and no less, some biting. That's why "The Pope was bitten" probably means something else.

Sally, I discussed this with someone else and they also mentioned that it could be useful in long pieces of writing or storytelling. I'm afraid I don't really grasp how, from what you have said, however. Do we need "functional grammar" to tell us which adverbs are common when recounting an event?

Tara B · Post by **Tara B** » Tue May 10, 2005 3:33 pm

Some related questions that nobody I work with could answer for me--so I am depending on my AL buddies to save the day!

What is better teacher preparation, "practical grammar," or "language analysis"? (Is the first prescriptive and the second descriptive?) What is the difference between "language analysis" and a general linguistics class?

What is "discourse analysis" and how does it apply to ESL?

How many MA TESOL degrees are really just Linguistics degrees with a practicum tacked on to them? I am very interested in studying the linguistics of English, but not necessarily "Phonology" or "Syntax" or "Discourse Analysis" in the abstract. . . Is that really necessary?

Sally Olsen · Post by **Sally Olsen** » Tue May 10, 2005 7:44 pm

I think that woodcutter must teach a great deal of what is in SFL (Systemic Functional Linguistics) without putting it under that title. I don't know what the difference would be in the end to the student except that they would have terms that other people are using in the academic fields. If they are not going on in their studies, perhaps that is not necessary. But it seems that there are people out there who are trying to make things better for students who are learning English and they are in the SFL field. They have conferences, are writing books and textbooks. If you want to learn about what they are doing you need the terms that they use. It would be the same if you were a doctor, a lawyer, etc.
I found the whole dicussion of Beverly Derewianka to be very useful for my students and would suggest that you might read her book to find out if it would be useful to you. It is not just that you are saying that they use adverbs of place or location and time in recounts but that there is pattern that is easily found in real writing by real people in real situations and if they want to do well in those situations they have to discover the patterns. Good students seem to do it without thinking but I am always on the side of the poorer students who need things more laid out and obvious and she certainly does that.
I know a little about discourse analysis and that is a fascinating field to discover power relationships behind the writing. It can't hurt.
I would imagine the topics you are inclined to take are based on your interests and that no course is better than the other in the end. If you are interested it will help your teaching but if you find it too technical and picky you might be better to take something like discourse analysis and curriculum planning and so on. To each his own.

woodcutter · Post by **woodcutter** » Tue May 10, 2005 10:40 pm

Sally, you are probably right. We all teach some aspects of all the things which have grand technical sounding titles.

Therefore I would like to see them published under the title "Extra titbits to add on to the more usual, more useful grammar!"

That way, Tara will not have to worry so much about dividing up the great blamanche of academic language analysis.