Grammar

In the first part of Chapter 6, after an explanation of what is meant by inflectional morphology, the morphology of English nouns, adjectives, pronouns, determiners and verbs is described. It is emphasised that English has lost most of its noun-phrase (NP) morphology and is therefore highly reliant on a relatively fixed word order to show functional relations within the sentence.

In the second part of the chapter, the term syntax is explained before attention is focussed on the noun phrase (NP), verb phrase (VP) and adverbials (Adv) as sentence constituents. The different sorts of verb complementation are described in detail and illustrated by examples. The focus then switches to sentence classification in terms of assertive sentences (statements), interrogative sentences, imperative sentences and their corresponding negative forms. The way main and subordinate clauses combine to transform simple sentences into compound and complex sentences is demonstrated. Mention is also made of minor sentences, that is, non-finite structures which function as an utterance.

The third part of the chapter is devoted to a survey of approaches to teaching grammar. After an introductory discussion of the pros and cons of explicit grammar teaching, the idea of acquiring grammar in the classroom is introduced. Four ways of teaching grammar are focussed on and critically assessed: the deductive approach, the inductive approach, the genre approach and the lexical approach. Mention is also made of cyclical rather than linear approaches to grammar teaching: already touched on in Chapter 4. Awareness-raising of grammatical items encountered in texts is briefly dealt with, and, finally, grammar games and songs as ways of practising specific areas of grammar are given some attention.