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 activities
Second language teaching:
Audiolingual method
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Behaviorist view
Patterned response drill
Focus on specific grammar point
Inductive: learn structures through drills,
not explicit instruction of rules
• Immediate error correction
• Focus on form over meaning
Second language teaching:
Content-based methods
• Language through content
• ESL: academic reading challenges
– Passive – de-emphasize the subject
– Comparatives and logical connectors (if…then;
not only…but also) – separated from each other
– Modals – indicate subtle differences in meaning
– VP with PP – additional information
– Relative clauses – additional information
• (p. 239 vs. p. 247)