Theoretical Grammar: Introduction into Grammar Theories

Seven Ways of Looking at Grammar by Scott Thornbury Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lp8QSGcS0QI

Description What is grammar, and how is it internalized in the mind? Is it made up of symbolic code or of neural connections? Is it a sedimented trace left by previous conversations or an innate human capacity? Our answers to these questions obviously shape the way we go about teaching second languages.

In this talk, reviews some of the main models of grammar—often couched as metaphors—and looks at their implications for classroom practice. Thornbury is a faculty member in The New School MA in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) program and an author whose work has been published by Oxford University Press.

Introduction (00:05:45 – 00:13:37)

Vocabulary:

• “We are in a good company”: to be in a good company – to have done or experienced something bad which someone who people admire has also done or experienced. E.g. Don't worry, Einstein did badly at school, so you're in good company.

• prescriptive grammar – прескриптивная (нормативная) грамматика

• language maven – «знаток языка»)

• applied linguistics, applied linguist

• Wallace Stevens “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”

• a stanza – строфа, станс

• haiku – хокку

• proliferation (of theories)– theoretical pluralism, a rapid and often excessive spread or increase of theories

Points to discuss:

 Why wouldn’t the publisher like to change the award certificate with the spelling mistake for the one with the corrected spelling?

 What’s the ambiguity of the term “linguist”, according to the speaker?

1. Comment on the statement: “Today with corpus linguistics we have more data than we can handle”.

2. What do you think are the reason for the current proliferation of grammar theories? What effects might it have?

1. Grammar as rules (00:13:37 – 00:18:09)

Vocabulary:

• descriptive grammar

• grammar metalanguage – язык грамматического описания (grammar terms)

• elusive concepts – concepts that are difficult to perceive

• to make head or tail out of sth (the rules) – to get the idea of, to understand

• an accurate description

• spontaneous decision VS premeditated decision

• psychological reality – the individual psychological context

• “grammar-translation method of teaching”

Points to discuss:

1.Comment on the idea of the quote:

“It … does not follow that grammars that are descriptively adequate are psychologically real.”

Larsen-Freeman, D., and Cameron, L. (2008). Complex Systems an Applied Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 113.

2. Grammar as structures (00:18:10 – 00:22:42)

Vocabulary:

Charles Fries

structural grammar (based completely on corpus data)

substitution tables; slots and fillers

audiolingual approach

an amnesiac

Points to discuss:

1. There are three features, traditionally used for language units description – form, meaning and function. Which of them has been absolutised in Ch. Fries’s theory?

2. Describe the procedure of Ch. Fries’s analysis of the language data.

3. What are the drawbacks and limitations of the “patterns as habits” approach in language acquisition?