Metodología de la Enseñanza de la Gramática

Unit 1What is Grammar?

By Julio Vangel Pérez

What is Grammar?

Grammar may be roughly defined as the way language manipulates and combines words (or bits of words) in order to form longer units of meaning (Ur, 1998).

Grammar is a description of the structure of a language and the way in which units such as words and phrases are combined to produce sentences in the language (Richards, Platt and Webber, 2003).

Grammar is the way in which words change themselves and group together to make sentences. The grammar of a language is what happens to words when they become plural or negative, or what order is used when we make questions or join two clauses to make one sentences (Harmer, 1987).

What is Grammar?

Grammar is the description of rules that tell us how a language’s sentences are formed.

What do Morphology and Syntax have to do with Grammar?

What is Grammar?

Some definitions of Morphology and Syntax…

Morphology:System of rules that cover the formation of words.

(Thornbury, 1999)How words are formed. (Nunan, 2005)

Syntax: System of rules that cover the order of words in a

sentence. (Thornbury, 1999)How words are combined. (Nunan, 2005)

What is Grammar?

Grammar is the study of the syntax and morphology of sentences. We can also call it the study of linguistic slots and chains, the way words are chained together in a particular order, as well as what kinds of words can slot into any one link in the chain.

Example:

In conclusion, grammar has to do with the ways in which units of language combine together to form sentences.

1 2 3 4 5

You are in bed.

He is at home.

Mom is not at school.

Why Grammar?

Thornbury (2005) interviewed fellow colleagues at the OUP [Oxford University Press] Teacher’s Club on the subject of teaching grammar and this is what they had to say:

• “A lot of people can speak foreign languages fluently, but very few of them can speak foreign languages perfectly. Grammar is very important, because it helps people to use language much more correctly.”

• “I think you can get away with a communicative approach to teach English—remember little children in native [English] speaking countries don’t study grammar and learn the language.”

• “Grammar should, no, must be learnt. I have students from different secondary schools and to start talking isn’t so difficult.”

• “Sometimes you get the feeling that the students won’t dare open their mouths unless they know a grammar rule! Grammar should only be taught on ‘a need to know basis’ and should be taught in context.”

• “I totally agree that grammar is very important for the basis of a good learning in English and other languages. From the basis we can learn all the rest. But we need to pay attention that nowadays students want even more dynamic classes, where conversation is of top interest.”

Why Grammar?

The Case for Grammar

The Case against Grammar

The sentence-machine argument

The knowledge-how argument

The fine-tuning argument The communication argument

The fossilisation argument The acquisition argument

The advance-organiser argument

The natural order argument

The discrete item argument The lexical chunks argument

The rule-of-law argument The learner expectations argument

The learner expectations argument