English Syntax Kutztown University of Pennsylvania英语语法库茨敦宾夕法尼亚大学.pptVIP

English Syntax Arguments against traditional prescriptive grammar teaching L1 grammar is acquired without explicit instruction or corrective feedback Students have difficulty learning and retaining concepts from traditional grammar “There is no relationship between grammar study and writing” (Krashen) “The teaching of formal grammar has a negligible or…even a harmful effect on the improvements of writing” (NCTE) So why do we still teach grammar? Some arguments in favor of teaching grammar (from Larsen-Freeman) Canadian French immersion programs – limited accuracy in French syntax and morphology Less salient grammatical features or those not crucial for comprehension are not acquired Self-reinforcing nature of peer interlanguage *”me llamo es” Form-focused instruction converts “input” to “intake” Destabilize an incorrect rule Descriptive grammar Deep structure vs. surface structure Structural ambiguity Different structures of the same sentence Order of words Word categories Grouping of words - constituents Optional and obligatory constituents: NP ? (DET)-(Q)-(ADJP)-N-(PP) Recursivity: output feeds input: Potentially infinite sentences Function of words/groups [PP] – ADJ or A; [NP] – DO or IO Dependency relationships Hierarchical structure: tree diagrams Compound and complex sentences – relationship between parts of sentences Writers begin with simple, then compound sentences and later learn to subordinate ideas Subordinate clauses function as A, ADJ, N A: “after, because, if” (describe when, where, why, how) ADJ: “who, which, that” (follow N; restrictive/nonrestrictive) N: “what, whatever, that” Shortening complex sentences doesn’t make reading easier (?) Sentence combining activities Reading Word recognition view: use semantic/ context clues to determine word meaning Sociopsycholinguistic view: use syntax as a cueing system to predict patterns A phev was larzing two sleks Make predictions based on word function Go followed by locative (where) Cloze