Stephen van Vlack Sookmyung Women s University Graduate School of TESOL Approaches to English Grammar Syllabus - Fall 2017 Week 1; September 1 Introductions to the course, to the materials, instructor, assignments, and everything else. Discuss the summer reading project. 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 and what we do in our own teaching. Homework: Get all materials. Finish summer reading project Read Yule (1998), Chapter 1: Introduction Read Willis (2003), Chapter 1: What is taught may not be what is learnt: some preliminary questions Week 2; September 8 Summer reading project due Yule (1998), Chapter 1: Introduction Willis (2003), What is taught may not be what is learnt: some preliminary questions 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 Yule book will use to teach us grammar, including a move away from structural towards functional grammar. Lastly, we will look at some exercises and see if they are of value in the Korean classroom. Turning to Willis (2003) we will briefly discuss some of the ideas presented about learning/teaching and structural elements of language. Homework: Read Thornbury (1999), Chapter 1: What is grammar? Read Nunan (2006), Chapter 1, What is grammar? Week 3; September 15 Thornbury (1999), Chapter 1: What is grammar? Nunan (2006), Chapter 1, what is grammar? Go over what the traditional view of grammar entails, as explained by Thornbury and Nunan. We will review the components and parts of grammar and how each of them are seen to work. We will then go over different aspects of grammar and how they can be approached in the classroom. Homework: Read Thornbury (1999), Chapter 2: Why teach grammar? Read Willis (2003), Chapter 2: Grammar and Lexis and learning Read Yule (1998), Chapter 2 (pp. 23-52)
Week 4; September 22 Thornbury (1999), Chapter 2: Why teach grammar? Willis (2003), Chapter 2: Grammar and Lexis and learning **Student presentation 1 Yule (1998), Chapter 2: Articles Go over some of the main arguments that have been put forth for the importance and centrality of grammar in the second or foreign language curriculum. We will also introduce the idea of lexis and explore how grammar and lexis are one complementary system. This will lead into our presentation on articles. We go over some of the ways in which we can think about using articles in English. We will try to do this not by just looking at a set of rules, but rather looking 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 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 (1999), Chapter 3: How to teach grammar from rules Read Willis (2003), Chapter 3: Developing a teaching strategy Read Yule (1998), Chapter 3 (pp. 52-84) Week 5; September 29 Thornbury (1999), Chapter 3: How to teach grammar from rules Willis (2003), Chapter 3: Developing a teaching strategy **Student presentation 2 Yule (1998), 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, at best, only partially true. Really, we will be looking at topdown approaches to teaching grammar. We then shift our attention to a model for dealing with lexis in the classroom based on the idea that there are no rules. 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 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 (1999), Chapter 4: How to teach grammar from examples Read Willis (2003), Chapter 4: The grammar of structure Read Yule (1998), Chapter 4 (pp. 85-122) Week 6; October 6 (Holiday class to be rescheduled) Thornbury (1999), Chapter 4: How to teach grammar from examples Willis (2003), Chapter 4: The grammar of structure **Student presentation 3 Yule (1997), 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 at some of the more basic structural elements of language and English in particular as we try to review ways of approaching these specific structural elements. 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 (1999), Chapter 5: How to teach grammar through texts Read Willis (2003), Chapter 5: The grammar of orientation Read Yule (1998), Chapter 5 (pp. 123-154) Week 7; October 13 Thornbury (1999), Chapter 5: How to teach grammar through texts Willis (2003), Chapter 5: The grammar of orientation: the verb phrase **Student presentation 4 Yule (1998), Chapter 5: Conditionals First, we review the different possibilities associated with teaching grammar in context and specifically through texts, predominantly reading ones (In opposition to the lexical approach which favors listening). Then, we will take a careful look at the verb phrase in English not from a rule-based perspective but from the point of view of cognition and orientation. Finally, 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. Work hard on your project. Week 8; October 20 Reading Week! Homework: Read Thornbury (1999), Chapter 6: How to practice grammar Read Willis (2003), Chapter 6: Orientation: Organizing information Week 9; October 27 Midterm Project due!!! Thornbury (1999), Chapter 6: How to practice grammar Willis (2003), Chapter 6: Orientation: Organizing information 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. In Willis (2003), we look in a more comprehensive way at the way that information is ordered and how this affects the meaning of an utterance, which is something discussed in various places in Yule (1998) as well. Homework: Read Thornbury (1999), Chapter 7: How to deal with grammar errors Read Willis (2003), Chapter 7: Lexical phrases and patterns Read Yule (1998), Chapter 6 (pp. 156-186) Week 10; November 3 Thornbury (1999), Chapter 7: How to deal with grammar errors Willis (2003), Chapter 7: Lexical phrases and patterns **Student presentation 5 Yule (1998), Chapter 6: Prepositions and Particles 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 specific look at some of the lexical structures in language and how we might be able to teach them. The difference between
prepositions and particles based on how they behave in phrasal verbs is our student presentation this week. 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 (1999), Chapter 8: How to integrate grammar Read Willis (2003), Chapter 8: Class: The interlevel Read Yule (1998), Chapter 7 (pp. 187-210) Week 11; November 10 Thornbury (1999), Chapter 8: How to integrate grammar Willis (2003), Chapter 8: Class: The interlevel **Student presentation 6 Yule (1998), Chapter 7: Indirect Objects 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 the idea of different classes of lexical items and how the recognition of lexical class in an important aspect of teaching grammar. This will be followed by ways of using concepts of lexical class in the language classroom. We then have the students tell us about the basic forms that are associated with indirect objects and the types of verbs that 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 (1999), Chapter 9: How to test grammar Read Nunan (2006), Chapter 2, Grammar for beginning learners Read Yule (1998), Chapter 8 (pp. 211-239) Week 12; November 17 Thornbury (1999), Chapter 9: How to test grammar Nunan (2006), Chapter 2, Grammar for beginning learners **Student presentation 7 Yule (1998), Chapter 8: Infinitives and Gerunds 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 attention to a brief discussion of how to teach grammar to beginning level students. Some of this will be review and will give us a way of applying what we have learned so far to beginners. 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 Nunan (2006), Chapter 3, Grammar for intermediate learners Read Willis (2003), Chapter 9: The grammar of spoken English Read Yule (1998), Chapter 9 (pp. 240-270)
Week 13; November 24 Nunan (2006), Chapter 3, Grammar for intermediate learners Willis (2003), Chapter 9: The grammar of spoken English **Student presentation 8 Yule (1998), Chapter 9: Relative Clauses We first take a short and rather interesting visit to the world of intermediate level learners and the ways we can help them use grammatical knowledge to further develop their overall proficiency in the language. We then take a look at some of the differences between the structures used in spoken and written contexts. This is of particular use here because it is an awareness of this and the ensuing control over these different modes that help propel language users to higher levels. Students will tackle one of the greatest problem areas for nonnative 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 Nunan (2006), Chapter 4, Grammar for advanced learners Read Willis (2003), Chapter 10: A final summary Read Yule (1998), Chapter 10 (pp. 271-297) Week 14; December 1 Nunan (2006), Chapter 4, Grammar for advanced learners Willis (2003), Chapter 10: A final summary **Student presentation 9 Yule (1998), Chapter 10: Direct and Indirect Speech We will start out by looking at how teachers can work to help their students fine-tune their knowledge of use and structure to allow for the variability required of an advanced level language user. We then review the work presented in the summary of Willis (2003) 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. Homework: Read Nunan (2006), Chapter 5 Week 15; December 8 Nunan (2006), Chapter 5, Key issues in teaching grammar In this last week of the course we take a quick look at the key issues in teaching grammar, as proposed by Nunan (2006). We will review these trying to integrate ideas from Thornbury, Willis and our own experience as teachers and users of language. Course wind-up and review. Homework: You must be kidding!! Week 16; December 15 Make up week! Final Project: The final project is to be done outside of class. Please do not fail to complete it on time and hand it in at the symposium on December 23 rd.