Ways of presenting English grammar

Ways of presenting English grammar

Contexts, prompts and methods used in grammar presentation in the language classroom:

Model sentences for oral practice + picture e.g. The butcher's got some meat. He hasn't got any lamb. Contrasting sentence pairs.

Question & Answer e.g. pattern practice drills of both the "meaningless" and "meaningful" variety.

Dialogues e.g. A. I'd like some bacon, please. B. I'm sorry, we haven't got any. Streamline Departures - Yes, dear. Did you get any bread?

Situations e.g. I'm going to pack / take a bus to….. Robert O'Neill's "English in Situations" See also the situations and conversations in Kernel Intermediate. Julia.

Demonstration e.g. prepositions of place - I'm going to put the cassette tape into the cassette player.

Texts e.g. The sun shines more in Spain than in England. Contextualization.

Grammatical explanations - e.g. "some" used when the quantity is definite for plural or uncountable"

Diagrams - e.g. Time Line for Present Perfect v Past Simple

Drawings

Translation

Grammatical explanations in student's mother tongue

Students' suggestions - e.g. activation of previous language knowledge through The Silent Way

Language bath - Suggestopaedia

 

Development of writing

By Kamil Wiśniewski, Aug. 12th, 2007

The oldest cave drawings representing important information were made 20,000 years ago and clay tokens with marks suggesting some writing attempts are about 10,000 years old, yet they are considered to be only the precursors of writing and not fully developed writing systems. The first systematic writing systems were developed about 5,000 years ago. Cave drawings are treated as a tradition of pictorial art as the history of writing systems starts with pictograms.

A pictogram is a drawing which is used in a consistent way in order to represent an object. Thus, a form such as might be used to represent sun. It is remarkable that thanks to the conventional relationship between the symbol and its referent users of different languages should understand the meaning of pictograms in a similar way, as with the contemporary pictograms in common use:

With time the sign representing sun might develop into a more symbolic and abstract form, like for example, and start to be used with several additional meanings such as ‘heat’ and ‘daytime’. Then, such a type of symbol is no longer a pictogram, but it is a part of a system based on idea-writing called ideogram. The difference between pictograms and ideograms is that the former represent their referent in a conventional way and the latter are more abstract and arbitrary, as well as less picture-like.

When a further development of the writing system occurred one symbol started to represent one word. A writing system based on arbitrary relationships between the written form and the object it represents is known as word-writing or logogram. The oldest logographic writing was used by the Sumerians about 5,000 years ago, yet because of the shapes they used as symbols their writing system is known as cuneiform. The arbitrary forms of logograms have no resemblance to the entities they represent which the example of cuneiform symbol for sun clearly shows: .

The next step in the development of writing was using symbols to represent the sounds of language. In rebus writing the symbol for an entity starts to be used as the symbol for the spoken word, subsequently used in any place the sound of the word occurs. In such a way it is relatively easy to reconstruct how this system worked. Taking the pictogram as an example, supposing it developed into the logogram meaning ‘eye’. In rebus writing it could be used always when the sounds which are pronounced when saying ‘eye’ are used as in ‘I’, or ‘cross-eye’. Therefore, you might refer to yourself as , or to the latter example as .

The last but one step of writing system development towards the most popularly used system nowadays is the syllabic writing. In syllabic writing (also known as syllabary) each symbol represents one syllable. The first fully developed syllabic writing systems were used by Phoenicians in between 3,000 and 4,000 years ago. The final stage of the evolution of writing systems so far is the inventing writing by use of an alphabet. An alphabet is a set of symbols in which one symbol represent one sound. Interestingly, the first alphabets of languages such as Arabic and Hebrew consisted only of sounds representing consonant. The history of the majority of alphabets used nowadays can be traced back to the Phoenicians and their writing system.

Finch G. 1998. How to study linguistics. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan. Yule G. 1996. The study of language. Cambridge: CUP.

Authentic Materials

Authentic Materials

The question of authenticity as applied to learners at different levels
AUTHENTICITY - REAL COMMUNICATION

EXAM TITLE: Some extremists argue that no language used in a classroom can be "real" because of the very fact that it is used in a classroom. Others would argue that classroom language is as real as any other language. In other words, the language teacher need not make any concessions towards authenticity. What in your view are the criteria that make the use of language in a classroom "real" and what kinds of activity do these criteria give rise to? (Question from David Jones' RSA Course in Stockholm).

It is probable that much of the criticism of "language used in the classroom" has arisen as a result of the limited view of language which underlies many syllabuses.

ادامه نوشته

Happy Teacher's Day

WHY GOD CREATED TEACHERS

When God created teachers,
He gave us special friends
To help us understand His world
And truly comprehend
The beauty and the wonder
Of everything we see,
And become a better person
With each discovery.

When God created teachers,
He gave us special guides
To show us ways in which to grow
So we can all decide
How to live and how to do
What's right instead of wrong,
To lead us so that we can lead
And learn how to be strong.

Why God created teachers,
In His wisdom and His grace,
Was to help us learn to make our world
A better, wiser place.

~Author Unknown~

به همه معلمان اساتید عزیزم دوستان و همکاران سابقم این روز قشنگ رو تبریک میگم.

To Teach or Not to Teach (Grammar)—No Longer the Question

To Teach or Not to Teach (Grammar)—No Longer the Question

There was a time, not so long ago, when virtually every high school English teacher who heard the word "grammar" could immediately recall Warriner's, diagramming sentences, and endless skill and drill exercises.

These teachers embraced the notion of prescriptive (also called traditional or school) grammar. Grammar was taught as a discrete set of rigid rules to be memorized, practiced, and followed.

During the height of the whole language movement, when teaching grammar in isolation became taboo, these teachers were left frustrated and baffled by the lack of grammar instruction in the classroom.

English teachers of later generations, on the other hand, joined the profession embracing ideas of descriptive (also called transformational) grammar. These teachers believed that grammar instruction should be matched to the purpose of the user. Teachers found descriptive grammar theories to be more flexible, reflecting actual usage and self-expression over "correct" structures.

Some people credit the descriptive approach with a general loosening of rules regarding grammatical structures that were once considered unacceptable, such as split infinitives.

ادامه نوشته

Boy Drowns in Neighbor's Pool

 

Boy Drowns in Neighbor's Pool

Hunter Smith, 5, drowned in a swimming pool after apparently wandering away from two teenagers, one of whom was his babysitter. Paramedics and hospital staff members spent several hours trying to revive Hunter. Police pulled the unconscious boy from the cold water of the neighbor’s pool about 3:20 p.m. Wednesday.

The babysitter was 16. The other teen was her boyfriend, 17. The boy’s parents had no comment about their son’s unfortunate death.

Police questioned both teens separately as to how the accident occurred. Their stories did not match. The girl said Hunter disappeared while she was using the bathroom. The boy said Hunter disappeared while he was using the bathroom. After further questioning and some searching around the house, the police determined that the boy disappeared while both teens were using the bedroom.

“They had actually put him in the bedroom closet, but were so busy with each other that they never saw or heard the boy leave the closet and the house,” an officer said. Charges might be filed against the teens for involuntary manslaughter and against the neighbor for leaving the gate to the pool unlocked.