The word grammar can be defined in a variety of ways. Compare your responses from the previous slide with the definitions listed on this slide. The following slides will provide detailed explanations for each of the definitions.
Students don’t need to be able to label parts of speech, but they do need many opportunities for meaningful writing, and when they have produced a good piece of writing, they are ready to put it in conventional form and enhance the rhetorical effects through careful organization and choice of examples. At that point, a lesson on subject-verb agreement, using examples from student papers, or a lesson on transitional words can be useful. This approach is quite different fromt randitional grammar teaching.
Some sentences in English are ambiguous, not because one of the words has two meanings, but because the sentence could be analyzed as having two different structures. Use the example to discuss the fact that the ambiguity is structural, not lexical. The words don’t have double meanings, but the sentence does.
Sentences express the same meaning even though the words appear in a different order on the surface
This notation means that a sentence (S) consist of a noun phrase (NP), and auxiliary verb (AUX), and a verb phrase (VP). The arrow can be translated as “can be expanded into.” A noun phrase can be expanded into a determiner, a quantifier, an adjective phrase, a noun, and a prepositional phrase. The parts of the NP go in the linear order specified by the formula. The abbreviatins for determiner (DET),quantifier (Q), adjective phrase (ADJP), and prepositional phrase (PP) are placed in parentheses to show that they are optional. Only a few NPs have all of these elements. Every NP has a noun, however, so the N is not put in parentheses. The rule for an NP contains two other phrases, ADJP and PP. Each of these also has an internal structure that can be defined. Adjective phrase can include an intensifier (INT) like very or somewhat. The INT is an optional element. An ADJP can have more than one adjective. Verb phrase must have a verb and can have one or more NPs, one or more PPs, and one or more adverb phrases (ADVP). An adverb phrase can include an intensifier and must include an adverb. Adjective phrase
Beginning writers often string together their ideas with and. They present their ideas as being equally important. as writers develop they learn to subordinate one idea to another. They structure their sentences to show that some ideas are subordinate to or dependent on other ideas.
This exercise demonstrates that there are different ways to combine sentences.
Since the focus is at the word level, little is written about they syntactic cueing system. Books such as Put Reading First include a discussion of the use of context to identify words. The authors refer to context clues as hits about the meining of an unknown word that are provided in the words, phrases, and sentences that surround the word. They go on to say that context clues include definitions, restatements, examples or descriptions. These are all semantic cues not syntactic cues. In discussing comprehension, the authors refer to the text as they discuss literal and inferential questions, metacognitive strategies and use of graphic organizers which does not involve syntactic cues.
A reader who has acquired knowledge of each of these verbs can predict other constituents that will occur in the sentence. For example a form of the verb to go such as went is usually followed by a prepositional phrase that indicates location. A verb like put is followed by an object and a locative. Give requires two objects because people give something to someone. Proficient readers have acquired knowledge of the kinds of words that will follow. This is not conscious knowledge. Cloze procedure: students are given a passage from which some words have been deleted and are asked to supply the missing words. Teachers can create passages with different types of deletions to help students focus on different aspects of syntax. Student can work together to figure out what words could go in the blanks. It is important for student to discuss why they chose the words they did. In the follow-up discussion a teacher could point out that the missing words are verbs and then talk with student about the clues that a reader could use to predict a verb in this context. What is important is for students to think about the cues that tell them what kind of word might fit a particular blank. Getting the right word is not important. What is important is developing a strategy to be used later during silent reading.
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