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Lesson 1
Chapter 1
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Transcript:
Hello. You know it's sad but true that grammar is often misunderstood. But because we
teachers teach something as we understand it, naturally it's very important that we
understand grammar. In this lesson and this course, we'll see that grammar is actually
an incredibly rich system for making meaning in a language. We'll begin this lesson by
considering seven definitions of grammar, all of which I'll draw on later in this course.
We'll also see that grammar consists of both patterns and rules. And we'll talk about
why second language learners benefit from appropriate teaching of patterns and rules
that they receive in the classroom. Grammar and its teaching are important. By the end
of this lesson, you'll see why!
Introduction
Welcome to this course—Teaching Grammar for ESL/EFL! My name is Diane Larsen-Freeman,
and I'll be your instructor. I am very pleased to be teaching this course because it combines two
subjects that are important to me—grammar and teaching ESL/EFL students.
Grammar is a subject that many people misunderstand, and that's something we should all be
concerned about because if we don't see fully how grammar contributes to communication, then
our students won't either. When students misunderstand grammar, they'll often develop a
negative attitude toward studying grammar.
Most people have strong feelings about grammar. Many fear it, some love it, but few are neutral.
Those who fear it might be concerned that they don't know all the grammar rules that they think
they should know. Many have never studied grammar seriously before and are afraid this will
make them appear ignorant in front of their peers. Others might have memories of homework
assignments returned with an overwhelming number of red marks highlighting their grammatical
mistakes.
Others study grammar enthusiastically because they think they need to understand it to be
successful second language learners. Knowing grammar rules makes some students feel secure.
They think that once they master the rules, they'll know what is correct and what isn't. Others may
think of grammar simply as the ordeal they have to go through in order to communicate effectively
in another language.
While all these feelings are quite understandable, one of my goals for this course is to
demonstrate that while grammar is necessary to learn, mastering it doesn't have to be such a
struggle. In fact, studying grammar can be enjoyable. While it's not our job as teachers to
entertain our students, it is important to engage them. If students are bored while they're studying
grammar, they'll have a difficult time learning. On the other hand, when they're engaged, learning
is easier. This course will help you create engaging grammar lessons.
Before we get too far along, let me tell you a little bit about myself. I have spent many years
teaching English to ESL/EFL students, working with ESL/EFL teachers, and thinking about and
writing books on English grammar and its teaching.
What I hope to do in this course is to challenge the way you think about grammar as you
experience its contribution to communication for yourself. You might believe that grammar is a set
of unchanging rules about structure, but you'll soon see that it's actually much more flexible and
dynamic than that. It's also a rich resource for creating context and meaning in communication. In
other words, learning grammar is essential for effective communication.
In this first lesson, we'll begin to examine the nature of grammar by going over seven common
definitions of the word grammar, all of which I'll draw on later in this course. This will help us
arrive at a broad view of grammar that we can use throughout the course. We'll also discuss why
teaching grammar is so important. By the end of this first lesson, you'll have a broad
understanding of grammar and why we teach it.
In order to be a skillful grammar teacher, you'll also have to be the manager of your students'
learning. So throughout the rest of the course, we'll look at how students learn grammar and
examine how students acquire grammatical structures as we discuss learning styles and
strategies.
Finally, we'll talk about how a broader understanding of grammar can be useful in developing an
approach to teaching. We'll look at how to create engaging activities, whether or not to use
grammatical terminology with students, and how to give them feedback when they make
mistakes. There's a lot to learn, but the rewards are great. In the end, you'll see what fun teaching
grammar can be. I hope that by the end of the course, you will come to a greater appreciation of
the power of grammar.
Let's begin. Please turn to Chapter 2.
Lesson 1
Chapter 2
The Many Definitions of Grammar
It may surprise you that there are at least seven definitions of grammar that people use in
language teaching and learning. At one time or another, the term grammar has been used in the
following ways:
1. An internal mental grammar allows speakers of a language to understand and to create
new sentences. This is the kind of grammar that we develop as we acquire our native
language.
2. A prescriptive grammar contains rules about what is and what isn't acceptable in any
given language. For example, a prescriptive English rule says, "Do not end a sentence
with a preposition."
3. A descriptive grammar tells us how people actually use a language, not how they are
supposed to use it. You'll notice that English speakers sometimes end sentences with
prepositions.
4. A linguistic grammar is a grammar associated with a particular linguistic theory. Some
linguistic grammars are more concerned with describing grammatical structures. These
are called formal grammars. Other linguistic grammars are more concerned with the use
of grammatical structures. These are called functional grammars.
5. A reference grammar is a comprehensive collection of the rules that apply to a particular
language. In other words, it is to grammar what a dictionary is to words.
6. A pedagogical grammar is usually a subset of the total number of rules, ones that have
been compiled for teaching grammar to language students. A pedagogical grammar
usually draws on a number of different linguistic theories. In other words, it's eclectic.
7. A teacher's grammar is also a pedagogical grammar, but it is usually more
comprehensive and detailed than a student's pedagogical grammar.
In this course, we'll consider an approach to grammar and its teaching that relates to types 6 and
7, but we'll also incorporate what we know about types 1-5.
Note that all of these definitions explicitly mention rules. Indeed, rules are what we most often
associate with grammar. Can you think of other associations? How would you complete the
following phrase?
Grammatical _________________________
Grammatical _________________________
Grammatical__________________________
What did you think of? Did you automatically fill in the blanks with words like rules, structures,
errors, drills, and exercises? Did you come up with others?
These associations aren't wrong, but they can give the misleading impression that this is all there
is to grammar. It's true that grammar is concerned with rules and structure, but those aren't the
only concerns. Grammar also is concerned with accuracy, but again, it's not only about accuracy.
Some of these associations also imply that grammar teaching has to be somewhat mechanical.
But there's much more to teaching grammar than drills and exercises.
People often associate grammar with prescriptive rules, too. A prescriptive rule tells us how we
should speak or write. For example, English speakers are told not to split infinitives or end
sentences with prepositions. These rules influence writing more than they do speaking, and we
don't necessarily follow these rules in everyday, informal language use. In fact, many prescriptive
grammar rules were created based on written texts.
There's a grammar of speaking, too. Certainly, for any given language, the rules of speaking and
the rules of writing overlap. But they aren't exactly the same. For example, speakers sometimes
put certain English adverbs at the end of a sentence, where they wouldn't go in a written form of
the sentence:
Speech: We have saved enough money almost.
Writing: We have almost saved enough money.
In this course, we'll challenge the idea that grammar consists solely of prescriptive rules that
students must drill in order to learn. This view limits our understanding of grammar. If our
understanding of grammar is limited or compromised, then our students won't get the quality
instruction they want and deserve. We'd lose out, too, because, as you'll see, studying grammar
can be absolutely fascinating—not boring at all!
Lesson 1
Chapter 3
Grammar as Rules and Patterns
Grammar rules can help to describe the grammar of a language. You can also describe it as a set
of patterns—sequences of words that are commonly used together.
Let's start with what first comes to mind when you hear the word grammar: grammar rules. For
example, "subject-verb agreement" is a common rule of English grammar that most people are
familiar with. This rule is limited because it only applies to present tense verbs, and only to verbs
that have a subject that's in the third person and is singular. It also applies to the verb to be in the
present and past tenses.
Singular
Plural
First person
I take
We take
Second person
You take
You take
Third person
He, she, it takes
They take
As you can see, the rule is to add an s to a third person singular present tense verb in
order to have the verb agree with its subject.
We walk to school every day, but he takes the bus.
If you don't apply this rule, you'll end up with an ungrammatical sentence. And by the
way, throughout this course, I'll use an asterisk to show you when something is ungrammatical,
like this:
*We walk to school every day, but he take the bus. (incorrect)
Of course, one problem with rules is that they always have exceptions!
Even this common rule of subject-verb agreement doesn't always apply to every situation.
Sometimes, a plural subject can take a singular verb. For instance, it's grammatically correct in
English to say or to write:
Ten miles is a long way to walk.
S
V
At the same time, it also is grammatically correct to say or write
Ten miles are being added to the highway.
S
V
Even though there are exceptions to rules, it's still important that we teach them. Once students
understand (and they will soon enough!) that rules have exceptions, the rules become helpful
"rules of thumb"—rules that don't always apply, but that apply often enough to be useful guides.
We just talked about exceptions to rules. It's also important to understand that even if you follow
the rules, you can create sentences that are grammatical, but are never used.
In the examples below, you'll recognize 1 and 2 as marriage proposals. Examples 3-6 are also
grammatically correct, but you might not be accustomed to hearing proposals worded this way. If
you used one of these proposals, you might not be successful!
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Will you marry me?
I want to marry you.
I wish to be wedded to you.
I desire you to become married to me.
Your marrying me is desired by me.
My becoming your spouse is what I want.
All six of these sentences are grammatical, but only the first and second examples could be
called conventional. So it should be clear that, as important as grammar rules are, they aren't the
whole picture. Acceptable language isn't just grammatical, it's also conventional.
Corpus linguistics helps us to understand conventional patterns in language. Corpus linguists
gather large numbers of instances of written or spoken language, and then search them for
language patterns. These days, computers make discovering
patterns much easier! Computer searches often reveal that a grammatical sentence has a basic
form with variations. For example, the following three sentences are both grammatical and
conventional ways of apologizing for being late in English:
1. I'm sorry to keep you waiting.
2. I'm so sorry to have kept you waiting.
3. Mr. Smith is sorry to keep you waiting all this time.
A corpus linguist would look for the pattern in these three examples. The corpus linguist would
say that each apology begins with an apologizer, symbolized by X in the pattern below. The
apologizer is followed by some form of the verb to be. In the first two sentences, the form is am,
and in the third sentence, it is is. The be verb is followed by an intensifier, such as the so in
sentence 2. The intensifier is optional in an apology. Notice that in sentences 1 and 3, there's no
intensifier.
Next comes some form of sorry to keep you waiting. Finally, it seems that some phrase can follow
waiting. In sentence 3, for example, what follows waiting is the phrase all this time, symbolized by
Y. The parentheses show that the intensifier and the phrase Y are optional.

X be (intensifier) sorry to keep you waiting (Y)
The purpose of analyzing an example like this is to show how important varying patterns are to
language. In other words, if we stick to the idea that grammar only consists of a set of rules, we'll
be ignoring the findings from corpus linguistics that show that language is fundamentally a set of
recurring variable patterns.
These patterns can also be fixed, where the words and their order are always the same. Fixed
patterns are often referred to as formulas. For example, you might use the following formula if you
want to tell someone that you understand what he or she is saying.
I see what you mean.
However, as we saw with the apology above, patterns don't have to be fixed. They can also vary
in the words that make them up. For example, you could use the following pattern with different
words to mean a rate or amount of something over time:
one by one, day by day, bit by bit
Of course, while most of these patterns follow the rules of grammar, not all do. Let's look at this
example:
by and large
This fixed phrase or formula is an exception, in which the preposition by is followed by the
conjunction and and the adjective large. Its word order doesn't follow any rule of English grammar
which I am aware of (or should I say "of which I am aware?").
Another important point about grammar is that it doesn't operate just at the sentence level. You've
seen many examples of how it applies to sentences, such as the subject-verb agreement rule, but
grammar also applies below the level of sentences by determining the order of words in the
pattern day by day.
An example of how grammar operates above the level of the sentence is the rule that calls for
using a pronoun to replace the second mention of a noun phrase. This rule can operate above
the level of the sentence, in that it can connect two or more sentences.
My sister has never loved peas. When she was little…
Now that you understand that grammar comprises both rules and patterns, we can go on to see
why teaching grammar is necessary.
Lesson 1
Chapter 4
Why Teaching Grammar Is Necessary
If I seem to be making grammar more complicated than you thought, you might understand why
some researchers argue that we shouldn't even teach students grammar. They say that grammar
is too complex and that even if we give students the rules, they won't be able to apply them in
real time.
Some suggest that it's better to teach a second language similar to the way that people acquire
first languages. They say that teachers should create situations where the meaning is clear to
students and then the students will figure out the rules on their own—implicitly—just as children
do when learning their native language.
Let me highlight the problems with this position.
Critical period: First of all, research in second language acquisition suggests that there's a
critical period for learning a language. It begins at birth. After it ends, usually around puberty,
students experience limitations when learning another language. Such limitations are often
apparent in the accents that people have when speaking a second language.
Research also suggests that older learners have a harder time learning grammar implicitly, the
way that younger learners pick it up by experiencing the language. Older learners may need
explicit instruction in the grammar of the second language in order to learn it. Of course, younger
learners may also benefit from explicit instruction in grammar when it comes to the academic
language they have to use in school.
Conditions of learning: Second, many older learners don't have the luxury of time necessary to
acquire a second language fully. Children spend thousands of hours immersed in their native
language. Often the language they're learning is anchored in the here and now. In other words,
the context makes the meaning clear. This isn't always the case with
older learners who are asked to report on events that aren't part of the
immediate context. For example, they might be asked to talk about what
they did the previous weekend or what their plans will be for the next weekend. Adults are also
more intellectually mature and want to be able to express complex opinions and thoughts.
Grammar instruction can help them do this.
Students want to study grammar: Sometimes teachers give grammar lessons because their
students want them. As I mentioned before, some students like the security of knowing the
grammar rules even though knowing them may result in a false sense of security because of all of
the exceptions. Nonetheless, students often insist on grammar instruction, and accommodating
their request has positive consequences for instruction.
Transfer: Of course, one of the major differences between first and second language acquisition
is that learners have already learned their first language. While they've been successful and
demonstrated that they know how to learn a language, they've also developed a particular way of
thinking and expressing themselves in their first language that's different from their second
language.
The way learners think and express themselves in their first language can sometimes interfere
with learning a second language. Learners may transfer the rules of their native language to the
second language, sometimes resulting in ungrammatical sentences, such as when a native
speaker of Chinese says, "I am student," leaving out the "a." Explicit grammar lessons help
students understand the differences in the grammar between the first and second languages.
Second versus foreign language: English is an international language, spoken natively in many
different countries of the world. In countries such as the United States, Canada, and Britain,
English is considered a second or additional language to those who speak a different language at
home. There are also many countries, such as India, Malaysia, and Singapore, where English is
one of several languages spoken natively.
In other countries, English is rarely used outside of the English language classroom. In such
places, English is said to be a foreign language, not a second language. While second versus
foreign language isn't an easy distinction to make these days (there are parts of the United States
where the language of the community is more likely to be Spanish than English), in places where
English is truly a foreign language, exposure to English is likely to be limited outside of the
classroom. Thus, learning English needs to be efficient, and proper instruction can do that. Of
course, students may encounter English outside of their classrooms, through pop music and
videos, but not in a way that allows them to discover the grammar of English.
Motivation, attitude, aptitude: Little is said about motivation when it comes to learning a native
language. Children with normal faculties and with normal exposure to their native language will
acquire it.
However, that isn't the case with all second and foreign language learners. Not all of these
learners are successful in acquiring a new language. Motivation, attitude, aptitude and the
combination of these and other factors greatly influence students' ability to acquire a language.
Such factors can be influenced positively by appropriate instruction.
There's no doubt that some motivated, positive, and gifted language learners will succeed
whether grammar is taught or not. However, most teachers see their mission as teaching all their
students and getting them to the most advanced level of proficiency they can possibly achieve.
Our job as teachers is to help all our students to learn, not just the gifted ones! Furthermore, our
job is to accelerate the process for all learners. Even if students can learn language outside of the
classroom by themselves, we should be helping students to learn faster than they would on their
own. The key, though, is to teach grammar effectively. This is what I'll help you to do in this
course.
Lesson 1
Chapter 5
Summary
In this lesson, you learned about the definitions of grammar and why teaching grammar is
important. First, we discussed the seven different definitions of grammar and we examined some
common associations with the word grammar. The common associations aren't wrong, but they
only tell part of the story.
Then you learned about grammar as a set of rules and patterns. We talked about helpful rules of
thumb, as well as why these rules have exceptions. We also discussed convention, which is why
you might never use a perfectly grammatical sentence that follows all the rules, like a marriage
proposal phrased as, "Your marrying me is desired by me."
We also touched on the fact that grammar operates at levels below and above the sentence level
in speaking as well as writing. At the very least, we need to consider a definition of grammar that
allows it to refer to a set of patterns that exist in language, not only to a set of rules that guide
accurately written sentences.
Grammar may be more complicated than you thought, but that doesn't mean you should avoid
teaching it! We talked about six reasons why it's necessary to teach grammar. English is complex
and students need to notice the differences between it and their native language. That means
that teachers bear all the more responsibility for helping their students learn grammar. To do this,
you need to understand grammar fully, as well as how students learn it, and what instructional
options you have. We'll talk a lot more about all of it throughout this course.
We often teach grammar as forms that have meaning, but students don't might not understand
when or why to use particular structures. They wind up overusing them, underusing them, or
using them inappropriately. Students need to understand that there are three dimensions of
grammar—form, meaning, and use—and that's what we'll discuss in our next lesson. See you
next time!
Next Steps
After every lesson in this course, you can test your knowledge by
taking a short, multiple-choice quiz. To access your first quiz, click
the word Quizzes at the top or bottom of any page in this
classroom. When the quiz form comes up, select Lesson 1 Quiz.
Once you've taken the quiz, apply what you've learned by doing
this lesson's assignment. The assignments that accompany every
lesson in this course will reinforce and expand your learning. To
access your first one, click Assignments at the top or bottom of
any page in the classroom. Then, scroll down to the section for
Lesson 1.
Also, since learning something new usually raises questions, every
lesson in this course comes with a Frequently Asked Questions
(FAQs) section. You'll find the link that goes to this lesson's FAQs
by clicking the Resources link at the top or bottom of any page in
this classroom.
Within the Resources link, you'll also find the course index, which
many students like to print and use as a detailed table of contents.
Also, you'll find books and other resources that I've found helpful
and would like to pass along to you in the book recommendations
and recommended resources sections. These aren't required, but
they're excellent sources for further learning.
Lesson 2
Chapter 1
Play Video
Transcript:
Hello. Grammar structures are usually thought of as forms in a language, the s on the
end of a plural noun, for instance. While there are indeed grammatical forms such as
the plural s, there's more to grammar than its form! In this lesson, you'll learn that
grammar structures have meanings, and they have uses as well. This is very important
to understand because grammar does not relate only to accuracy. It also relates to
meaningfulness and appropriateness. Many times grammar is taught as forms that
have meaning, but what students are not taught is when or why to use particular
structures. They wind up overusing them, underusing them, or using them
inappropriately. It's the three dimensions of grammar—their form, meaning, and use—
that I'll introduce you to in this lesson.
Introduction
As we discussed in Lesson 1, grammar consists of rules, but it's wrong to associate grammar
exclusively with rules. For one thing, rules can generate sentences that we'd never actually use.
That's why we observed that grammar also deals with patterns.
However, even knowing about both rules and patterns is inadequate. This is because rules and
patterns relate to grammatical form or structure—the fact that a verb agrees with the subject of
the sentence in person and number, for instance. But saying that grammar relates only to form or
structure is also insufficient. In fact, in the previous lesson, we saw that the form-based rule of
subject-verb agreement couldn't account for the differences between the two following sentences
because in both cases their verbs agree with their subjects. The difference is in the way we think
of miles. Can you tell what it is?
1. Ten miles are being added to the highway.
S
V
2. Ten miles is a long way to walk.
S
V
In sentence 1, the subject is made up of more than one mile, so using a plural verb is correct. But
in sentence 2, the subject comprises a single unit, a hike, so the singular form of the verb is
correct. This contrast between seeing the miles as many individual units or all together illustrates
the fact that grammar relates to meaning as well as to form. How grammar connects with
meaning is an important focus of this lesson.
Even adding meaning doesn't help us to explain grammar. For example, neither form nor
meaning explain the difference between these two sentences:
3. A teacher is hardworking.
4. Teachers are hardworking.
Both forms are accurate —their word order is correct and their subjects agree with their verbs.
Both sentences refer to teachers in a general way, so the meaning isn't very different. But English
speakers often prefer sentence 4 over sentence 3 because they can follow it with they (the plural
subject pronoun form) instead of he (the singular masculine form).
3a. He works long hours.
4a. They work long hours.
In other words, people will choose to use sentence 4 in order to avoid having to use a form they
consider sexist (he) or untrue (not all teachers are male) in the statement that follows. This
decision relates to the dimension of use, which is the third dimension of grammar. In this lesson
we'll talk about all three dimensions of grammar, including form, meaning, and use.
Lesson 2
Chapter 2
Form, Meaning, Use
Before we jump in, let's quickly define the three dimensions of grammar:
Form: This is what gives structure to grammar. We have three types of grammatical form—
grammatical morphemes, word order patterns, and function words.
Meaning: This consists of two types. One type is grammatical meaning, such as the -ing that
signals that an action or event has duration. The other type is lexical, such as the dictionary
definition of a function word, such as a preposition.
Use: This has to do with choosing between grammatical structures that have more or less the
same meaning, with one being more contextually appropriate.
One way to capture the idea that grammatical structures have forms, meanings, and uses is to
draw a pie chart with three wedges, one for form (which deals with accuracy), one for meaning
(which relates to meaningfulness), and one for use (which deals with appropriateness). The
arrows connecting the wedges indicate that the three dimensions are interconnected and that
each dimension is always present. Nevertheless, as you'll see later in this course, the three
dimensions present different challenges to students. Because students learn them differently,
teachers should teach them differently.
Take, for example, the English non-referential there. We call it non-referential because it doesn't
really refer to anything. It occupies the subject position in a sentence. The true subject of the
sentence, the one that determines the form of the verb, follows the verb, usually some form of the
verb to be. For example, in sentence 1 below, the true subject of the sentence is a pencil, so the
verb is is singular. In sentence 2, the true subject of the sentence is pencils; so its verb is the
plural are.
1. There is a pencil on the table.
2. There are pencils on the table.
As I have said, grammar is about accuracy. If I were to scramble the words in sentence 1, the
sentence would become ungrammatical.
*is a table pencil on the there (remember, I'm using the asterisk as a symbol to show you a
grammatically incorrect form)
This is because its word order (also known as syntax) is mixed up. Sentence 3 is also
ungrammatical. The true subject of this sentence is a pencil, which in sentence 3 doesn't agree
with the verb.
3.*There are a pencil on the table.
It isn't accurate in English to say *a pencil are… because the subject (pencil) and the
verb (are) don't agree. The form of the subject is singular and the form of the verb is
plural. So it's true that rules of word order and subject-verb agreement do relate to grammatical
accuracy. But that's not the whole story.
Let's compare the following:
4. There is a pencil on the table.
5. It is a pencil on the table.
There might not refer to anything in particular, but that doesn't mean that it contributes no
meaning. When it's in initial position in a sentence, as it is in sentence 4, the sentence asserts the
existence of something and often includes a phrase that tells us of the location of that something.
Asserting the existence is different from the meaning of sentence 5 with it in subject position.
Sentence 5 identifies an object, or distinguishes one object from another (It is a pencil on the
table, not a pen.). So there can indeed be associated with a meaning.
It's not uncommon for grammarians (people who study grammar) to talk about the form and
meaning of a grammatical structure. It's less common (but no less important) to understand that
there are also considerations of use in grammar.
Compare the following two sentences:
6. There is a pencil on the table.
7. A pencil is on the table.
Take a minute to see if you can figure out the difference between them. It's unlikely that they'll
both exist in English without there being some difference between them.
Both sentences are accurate in form because they follow the rules of word order and subject-verb
agreement. Both sentences are meaningful. In fact, both mean more or less the same thing—they
tell us about the existence of a pencil and its location. But as we just discussed, it's not likely that
two structures in any language will have the same meaning and the same use, so there must be
something distinctive about their use.
Well, imagine a situation where you need something to write with. You might tell someone, I need
something to write with. If the other person wishes to be helpful, he or she might say sentence 6,
but probably not sentence 7. Can you figure out why?
The answer is because sentence 7 implies that you should have known that a pencil was on the
table. If you'd known this, of course, you'd have simply picked up the pencil and not said
anything. So 6 is more helpful and polite than 7 in this situation. That's because the function of
there is to introduce new information—information that you wouldn't expect your listener to have.
The point is that a pedagogical grammar (a subset of grammar rules used to teach grammar to
language students) needs to explain not only how a grammar structure is formed and what it
means, but also when to use it appropriately.
As I've already suggested, one way to display the three dimensions of grammar—form, meaning,
and use—is to use a pie chart with the information about a grammatical structure in each wedge.
Let's look at the form, meaning, and use of sentences with there, and draw a pie chart with this
information.
Can you see how helpful the pie chart can be? You can ask the three questions—How is it
formed?; What does it mean?; When or why is it used? about any grammar structure. When you
do so, you have a complete picture of the grammar structure: how it's formed, what it means, and
when and why it's used. For the remainder of this lesson, we'll investigate these three dimensions
further.
Lesson 2
Chapter 3
Form
Let's first look more closely at form, or structure. There are three ways that grammatical form is
present in a language: through word order patterns, grammatical morphemes, and function
words.
The first way is word order. Linguists refer to this as syntax . There are three basic word orders in
human languages. English is an S-V-O (subject, verb, object) language. The subject precedes
the verb, which in turn precedes the object.
1. The batter hit the ball.
S
V
O
2. The ball hit the batter.
S
V
O
This word order tells us who or what did what to whom or what. The batter (who) did what (hit) to
what (the ball).
Other languages follow other sequences. For instance, Japanese is an S-O-V (subject-objectverb) language. In Japanese, the verb is last. Hebrew and Arabic are examples of V-S-O (verbsubject-object) languages—the verb comes first in a sentence. The particular sequence in a
sentence has implications for other word order phenomena. For instance, in S-V-O languages,
such as English and Spanish, prepositions precede their objects. In S-O-V languages,
prepositions follow their objects, so they're called postpositions instead.
Another way grammar takes form in language is through grammatical morphemes. A morpheme
is the smallest bit of grammatical matter with meaning. For example, plurality in English is marked
with an -s on a count noun. The -s is one of eight grammatical morphemes for English. There are
four grammatical morphemes for verbs, two for nouns, and two for adjectives.
8 Grammatical Morphemes of English
Verbs
Third person
Past tense(-ed)
Perfective aspect(-en) Progressive aspect(-ing)
singular present
tense(-s)
Nouns
Plural (-s)
Possessive(-‘s)
Adjectives Comparative(-er) Superlative(-est)
Let me point out a few things on this table. First of all, the dash before each morpheme in the
table indicates that this morpheme is attached to the word that precedes it. Morphemes don't
stand on their own. Second, what appears in parentheses symbolizes the common way that you'd
write this morpheme. In other words, the English plural is usually spelled with an s. But we know
that sometimes the plural is spelled es, as in boxes, and sometimes it's completely irregular, as in
oxen, not *oxes. We also know that we'd pronounce it differently depending on which noun it's
attached to.
Here are some example sentences with each of the eight grammatical morphemes in English
highlighted. Each of the eight grammatical morphemes contributes to the grammatical meaning of
the sentence. The verb morphemes tell us something about the time or some quality of an action
or event. The noun morphemes mark plurality or possession. The adjective morphemes allow us
to compare people or things.
Verbs
Nouns
Adjectives
He drives to work.
They have two cars.
John is taller than Mark.
Yesterday, he walked.
Mark's car is red.
Sue is the tallest in the class.
She has eaten her lunch.
She is sleeping.
Compared with other languages in the world, modern English doesn't have many grammatical
morphemes. Instead, English relies more on word order to signal grammatical relations.
The third way that grammar takes form in language is through function words. Function words are
words that fulfill a grammatical function. For example, a pronoun has the function of referring
back to a particular noun. They're usually short words, such as the articles a, an, and the,
pronouns, conjunctions, and prepositions. Unlike the major parts of speech (nouns, verbs,
adjectives, and adverbs), the function words (sometimes called structure words) are a closed
category, which means that new words are rarely added. The function words are underlined and
labeled in the following example.
A cat is under a chair, and
a dog is on
it.
Article preposition article conjunction article preposition pronoun
See if you can label the function words in the following sentence.
Debbie is reading a book, and she is listening to music.
Modern-day English uses prepositions to signal many grammatical relationships—relationships
that other languages convey through word order or grammatical morphemes. For instance, you
can sometimes use the most common preposition in English, of, instead of the -‘s to show
possession.
3. The arrival of the plane has been delayed.
4. The plane's arrival has been delayed.
Now that we've surveyed the three elements of form—word order, grammatical morphemes, and
function words—let's talk about the other two dimensions of grammar: meaning and use.
Lesson 2
Chapter 4
Meaning
When we talk about meaning in grammar, we're speaking both of grammatical meaning and
lexical meaning. Lexical meaning is meaning that you'd find in a dictionary. For example, the
meaning of the function word under is below or beneath. We'll talk more about lexical meaning in
Lesson 5. For now, let's talk about the grammatical meanings of morphemes, function words, and
word order.
For example, the meanings of grammatical morphemes include time (as expressed through
tense) and the quality or duration of an action (as expressed through aspect, such as ing), as you
can see in sentence 1.
1. Michelle was looking at the moon.
The verb was is marked for past tense (not with -ed because it's irregular), which tells us that this
action took place in the past. The verb look has an -ing to show that Michelle's gaze has
duration—that it took place over time.
2. Michelle looked at the moon.
Notice that if I had said sentence 3 instead, you'd still know that the action took place in the past
(here marked with -ed). But rather than the action having duration, it may have been that Michelle
took a quick single glance and then looked away. And, if I had changed the function word from
the in sentence 2 to a in sentence 3, you might have inferred that I wasn't speaking of the Earth's
moon, but a different moon.
3. Michelle was looking at a moon. (say, one of Jupiter's)
This may seem like a strange sentence, but notice the grammar—in this case, the function word
a—forces us to find a meaning for the words.
There are also grammatical meanings to word order patterns.
4. John sent Gretchen a package.
Underlying sentence 4 is the meaningful pattern X causes Y to receive Z. This pattern has a
general meaning that can be transferred to word order in other sentences.
5. Gretchen sent John a thank-you note.
In fact, you can even generalize this pattern to new verbs.
6. He faxed her a reply.
So you see that the grammatical forms of morphemes, function words, and word order all have
meanings, too. And as you know, you also need to consider the use of grammatical structures.
Use
Many grammar books deal with form and meaning. What they often overlook is use. They
consider use to be something different from grammar. But knowing a grammar structure involves
knowing not only how to form it and what it means, but also knowing when to use it. This is
especially important to recognize because knowing when to use a grammar structure is certainly
something that challenges language learners.
When it comes to use, here's the fundamental question to answer: What does the context
require? Various factors influence whether you'll choose to use one structure over another in a
context: Which information is in focus in the context? How formal is the situation? Is this grammar
structure used more in speech or in writing? And what level of politeness does this situation
require?
Using a grammar structure answers the question about when or why a speaker or writer chooses
one particular grammar structure over another when both express approximately the same
meaning. Remember the sentence we considered earlier:
1. John sent Gretchen a package.
You can preserve the same meaning by using a different word order but adding the function word
to:
2. John sent a package to Gretchen.
If these two sentences mean more or less the same thing, then the difference must have to do
with use. Which word order you use depends on which of the two—Gretchen or the package—is
the focus or new information in the sentence. In sentence 1, the focus is on package. In sentence
2, the focus is on Gretchen. A word order difference like this involves the dimension of use.
The formality of the situation is another factor that influences use. For example, a two-word or
phrasal verb such as put off might be more appropriate in an informal context than its single verb
counterpart, postpone.
3. The CEO put off the meeting. (informal)
4. The CEO postponed the meeting. (formal)
Whether you're speaking or writing will also influence the structure you choose to use. For
example, when you're writing, you might use relatively longer subjects than you'd use when
you're speaking.
5. Speaking: Robert quit his job. He left because he wanted to make more money.
6. Writing: Robert's quitting his job was because he wanted to make more money.
As for other factors, such as politeness, it's important to note that we have a number of form and
meaning combinations available for the same function. Choosing one is often a matter of
choosing something that's socially appropriate.
For example, you can choose between present and past forms of the verb in polite questions and
statements. You can make a question or a statement less direct and therefore more polite when
you put it in the past tense.
7. Who do you wish to speak to?
8. Who did you wish to speak to? (using the past tense makes this more polite)
Of course, you can make it more formal by using whom rather than who.
Using the future tense can also make a sentence more polite. For example, a
clerk might use the wording in sentence 9 with a customer rather than the
wording in sentence 10.
9. That will be a dollar ninety-five.
10. That is a dollar ninety-five.
I hope I've convinced you that grammar involves much more than form. The meaning and use of
structures are also important—we can't overlook any of them when we're teaching grammar.
Lesson 2
Chapter 5
Summary
In today's lesson, you learned that grammar has three dimensions: form, meaning, and use, and
we talked about drawing a pie chart as a good way to capture these three dimensions of
grammar.
We discussed morphemes, word orders, and function words, and you saw that these three types
of forms also can have meaning. Meaning can be grammatical (like using a tense marker to show
time) or lexical (the meaning you'd find in a dictionary).
We also considered use—the appropriateness of grammar structures within a particular context.
The question of use comes in when two grammar structures mean more or less the same thing.
In fact, the main point of this lesson has been that grammar doesn't only have to do with form—it
also deals with meaning and use. This isn't just true of grammar structures, of course. For
example, a word also has a form, meaning, and use. A word like friend, for instance, has the form
of a singular common count noun and the meaning of someone with whom you have a warm,
non-familial relationship. Remember the question of use relates to when you choose one form
over the other when the meanings are more or less the same. So, in the instance of friend, we'd
want to know when friend would be used as opposed to colleague, companion, associate,
acquaintance, pal, buddy, mate, etc.
Getting back to grammar, it's clear that knowing grammar affects more than being able to speak
or write accurately. Using word order, morphemes, and function words skillfully can make a
difference in how successful a person's communication is. Is it meaningful? Does it convey the
meaning I intend? Is it appropriate? Will my request be received the way I would wish?
And it's not as though everything about grammar is neat and predictable. Speakers have a great
deal of choice in the grammar forms that they use, and what they choose to use depends on their
message and how they want to present themselves. Is it any wonder why our students demand
we teach grammar?
As I hope you've seen in this lesson, I'd like us to take a broader view of grammar than others
have taken. In our next lesson, I'll also challenge another way that people usually think of
grammar. I'll make the case that grammar is much more dynamic than people usually suppose. I
refer to this dynamism as grammaring, and I'll tell you all about it next time. See you then!