Stephen van Vlack
Sookmyung Women`s University
Graduate School of TESOL
Approaches to English Grammar
Fall 2006
Syllabus
**I will be gone the first week in September. We will therefore be starting and finishing the class one week late.
Week 1; September 12
Yule, Chapter 1: Introduction
Introductions to the course, to the materials, instructor, assignments, and everything else.
Go over `Thoughts on Grammar` handout. Discuss some of the different ways in which grammar can be done. Discuss various approaches that have been traditionally been taken toward grammar. Go over the terminology that will be used in Yule (1998). From there will move onto a discussion about prescriptive and descriptive grammars and how we as teachers might want to think about this from a practical perspective. After that we will look at some of the central concepts that the book will use to teach us grammar, including a move away from structural to functional grammar. Lastly, we will look at some exercises and see if they are of value in the Korean classroom.
Homework: Get all materials.
Finish summer reading project
Read the handout by Ur, ̋Module 6: Teaching Grammar̋.
Read Lewis, Chapter 1: What is the lexical approach?
Week 2; September 19
Summer reading project due
Ur, ̋Module 6: Teaching Grammar̋
Lewis, Chapter 1: What is the lexical approach?
Go over what grammar is and how structures are affected by it. Review some of the major approaches to doing grammar in the classroom in a whole class discussion. Go over some of the major grammatical terms. We will also look at grammatical mistakes and how we. As teachers, can deal with them. Finally, we will go over different types of grammar practice with a special focus on what the lexical approach is and how it differs markedly from other approaches.
Homework: Read Thornbury, Chapter 1: What is grammar?
Read Lewis, Chapter 2 Understanding lexis
Week 3; September 26
Thornbury, Chapter 1: What is grammar?
Lewis, Chapter 2: Understanding lexis.
Go over what the traditional view of grammar, as explained by Thornbury entails. We will review the components and parts of grammar and how each of them work. We will then contrast this view with he view of lexis (and meaning) as a controller of grammar. In this way by contrasting two opposing but possibly collapsible views we will set the tone for the rest of the course.
Homework: Read Thornbury, Chapter 2: Why teach grammar?
Read Yule, Chapter 2 (pp. 23-52)
Week 4; October 3 (Holiday - class to be rescheduled)
Thornbury, Chapter 2: Why teach grammar?
Student presentation 1 - Yule, Chapter 2: Articles
Go over some of the main arguments which have been put forth for the importance and centrality of grammar in the second or foreign language curriculum. Go over some of the ways in which we can think about using articles in English. We will try to do this rather by just looking at a set of rules, look at the meaning of the sentences and the class and types of nouns that are being marked by the articles. We will go over such tricky concepts as new and old information as well as the new article, this, before surveying some exercises having to do with articles.
Homework: Read Thornbury, Chapter 3: How to teach grammar from rules
Read Lewis, Chapter 3: Lexis in the classroom
Read Yule, Chapter 3 (pp. 52-84)
Week 5; October 10
Thornbury, Chapter 3: How to teach grammar from rules
Lewis, Chapter 3: Lexis in the classroom
Student presentation 2 - Yule, Chapter 3: Tense and Aspect
We start out by looking at some models of how grammar can be taught by rules understanding at this point that any such rules are really just myth. Really, we will be looking at top down approaches to teaching grammar. We then shift our attention to ways of dealing with lexis in the classroom. We then go over the tenses of English, how they are formed, and what they mean. We will the turn our attention to the difficult concept of aspect. In order to do this, we will need to get inside the meaning of the situation and look at two different types of aspect; lexical and grammatical. We will then look at how both tense and aspect are used in diversely in different ways according to the context in which They are being used. We will finish off by looking at some activities which center around the use of tense and aspect.
Homework: Read Thornbury, Chapter 4: How to teach grammar from examples
Read Lewis, Chapter 4: The role of the L1 in the lexical approach
Read Yule, Chapter 4 (pp. 85-122)
Week 6; October 17
Thornbury, Chapter 4: How to teach grammar from examples
Lewis, Chapter 4: The role of the L1 in the lexical approach
Student presentation 3 - Yule, Chapter 4: Modals
This week we will be looking at more bottom-up oriented approaches to teaching grammar. Thus, we will be discussing what make good examples and how such examples can be used. We will also be looking ta how the students` knowledge of their L1 affects the learning of lexical grammar in their L2. We also look at one of the most interesting and most ancient verbal constructions in English; modals. We will start be dividing modals into two basic categories; simple and periphrastic. We will then move on to look at the inherent meanings and the usage of each of the simple modals and how these relate to the periphrastic forms. Finally, we will take a look at how negation works with modals before setting out to do a few more exercises.
Homework: Read Thornbury, Chapter 5: How to teach grammar through texts
Read Yule, Chapter 5 (pp. 123-154)
Week 7; October 24
Thornbury, Chapter 5: How to teach grammar through texts
Student presentation 4 - Yule, Chapter 5: Conditionals
First, we review the different possibilities associated with teaching grammar in context and specifically through texts, predominantly reading ones (In opposition the lexical approach which favors listening). Then, we will be breaking up conditionals into different groups based on how likely the situation they describe is to occur. We then explore the differences in basic meaning among all various conditional clauses. We will talk about how the conditionals are used according to the context they find themselves in. We will also talk about conditionals used in polite forms and will finish up by looking at some exercises with conditionals.
Homework: Be happy and don`t panic. Study for the exam.
Week 8; October 31
Midterm Exam
Homework: Read Thornbury, Chapter 6: How to practice grammar
Read Lewis, Chapter 5: Organising lexis
Read Yule, Chapter 6 (pp. 156-186)
Week 9; November 7
Thornbury, Chapter 6: How to practice grammar
Lewis, Chapter 5: Organising lexis
Student presentation 5 - Yule, Chapter 6: Prepositions and Particles
The first thing we will talk about is the different ways of trying to get students to practice grammar and why we want to do so. The difference between prepositions and particles based on how they behave in phrasal verbs is our student presentation. Following that, we will go on to consider different types of prepositions. We will look at the basic meanings of those prepositions before turning our attention to particles. We will look at the basic meaning of particles and will look at how they are used in differing contexts. Finally, we will look at some different exercises for prepositions and particles.
Homework: Read Thornbury, Chapter 7: How to deal with grammar errors
Read Lewis, Chapter 6: Exercises in the lexical approach
Read Yule, Chapter 7 (pp. 187-210)
Week 10; November 14
Thornbury, Chapter 7: How to deal with grammar errors
Lewis, Chapter 6: Exercises in the lexical approach
Student presentation 6 - Yule, Chapter 7: Indirect Objects
We will start out by looking at the rather frustrating but necessary area of error and how we can identify it and deal with it. We will then take a very practical look at some of the specific exercise types which can be used in the lexical approach. We then have the students tell us about the basic forms that are associated with indirect objects and the types of verbs which call for such structures. Having done that, we will look at the basic meanings associated with those structures ands constructions and see if we can somehow link that to the idea of information structure. The feature of linguistic distance will be looked at before we delve into a series of exercises.
Homework: Read Thornbury, Chapter 8: How to integrate grammar
Read Lewis, Chapter 7: Adapting activities in the lexical approach
Read Yule, Chapter 8 (pp. 211-239)
Week 11; November 21
Thornbury, Chapter 8: How to integrate grammar
Lewis, Chapter 7: Adapting activities in the lexical approach
Student presentation 7 - Yule, Chapter 8: Infinitives and Gerunds
We will first take a look at how to integrate grammar with some of the other components of language. Again, this is undertaken from a rather traditional point of view and might be seen as being too little too late. We will also go over and review 45 different activities proposed by Lewis for how we can create a lexical focus from regular classroom materials. Student presenters will then go over the different constructions associated with infinitives and gerunds and what kind differences we find in meaning based on those structural differences. From this will come a discussion dividing up the structures. We will discuss the noun-like characteristics of gerunds and the verb-like characteristics of infinitives as one way of distinguishing between the two. We will then break some main verbs into groups before discussing the effects of linguistic and conceptual distance. Lastly, we will do some exercises on this.
Homework: Read Thornbury, Chapter 9: How to test grammar
Read Lewis, Chapter 8: Classroom reports
Week 12; November 28
Thornbury, Chapter 9: How to test grammar
Lewis, Chapter 8: Classroom reports
We first go over some of the basic approaches to testing grammar. Many of these will be familiar to the students as we are already rather adept at doing such things in Korea. We then turn our full attention to several of he excellent reports supplied by teachers who have tried to implement certain aspects of the lexical approach in their own classrooms. These reports should give a more clear view of some of the specific things teachers can do to improve their students knowledge of lexis even if they do not buy fully into the lexical approach itself.
Homework: Read Thornbury, Chapter 10: How NOT to teach grammar
Read Lewis, Chapter 9: Language content
Read Yule, Chapter 9 (pp. 240-270)
Week 13; December 5
Thornbury, Chapter 10: How NOT to teach grammar
Lewis, Chapter 9: Language content
Student presentation 8 - Yule, Chapter 9: Relative Clauses
We first take a short and rather comical visit to the world of negative examples and go over some of the things teachers should not do in teaching grammar before reviewing from a lexical point of view some of the areas which lexis touches and which needs to be further developed in our students. Students will tackle one of the greatest problem areas for non-native speakers of English. We will start out by drawing attention to the antecedent and the relative pronoun. We will look at a wide variety of constructions and many different cases of different structures and meanings which fall within this category will end of by discussing the meanings in context before trying to do some exercises.
Homework: Read Lewis, Chapter 10, Teachers and teacher training
Read TeaGraminCon, Chapter 4: Toward a Perspective on Error
Read Yule, Chapter 10 (pp. 271-297)
Week 14; December 12
Lewis, Chapter 10, Teachers and teacher training
TeaGraminCon, Chapter 4: Toward a Perspective on Error
Student presentation 9 - Yule, Chapter 10: Direct and Indirect Speech
We will start out by looking at how teachers could be better trained for dealing with lexis and lexical issues focusing on some specific techniques which should be developed for teachers to be effective. We then review errors from another point of view before comparing the differing forms of direct and indirect speech. We will then take a look at functional differences of direct speech and other contextual differences. We will then explore differences between differences in written and spoken forms. Lastly, we will deal with quotatives before trying to do some exercises on this. It seems fitting that we tackle errors and testing in grammar at the same time as they are traditionally both important components of grammar assessment.
Homework: Read Lewis Chapter 11
Week 15; December 19
Lewis, Chapter 11: What next?
In this last week of the course we take a quick look at what all this focus on lexis means and what we can ultimately do about it.
Course wind-up and review.
Homework: You must be kidding!!
Final Exam: The final exam will be a take home exam. Please do not forget to do it and hand it in no later than December 22nd. (Date subject to change)