1. General English
Class 1
Chapter 1
The teacher’s grammar of English by
Ron Cowan

2. Introduction
• This course is designed for ESL and EFL
teachers
• A long tradition of Perspective English
grammar books aimed at teaching students
how to write in a certain style
• They contain rules, or guidelines for writing
"good sentences »

3. Introduction
• This course doesn’t teach these kinds of
perspective guidelines
• It describes:
• The different rules that produce grammatical
sentences in English
• The kinds of problems nonnative speakers have
learning these rules
• The ways teachers can help these students learn
and use these rules in speaking and writing

4. Introduction
• This opening chapter explains why a good
understanding of English grammar is necessary for
being an effective ESL/EFL teacher
• It defines the concept of grammar and demonstrates
what grammatical rules are
• It discusses sociolinguistic factors and information
structuring that affect the use of English grammar
• Explains why teachers need to be aware of these
principles
• This introduction lays out the organisation of the
chapters to be covered during this course

5. Why do ESL/EFL teachers have to know grammar
• To enable you to describe or teach the rules of
grammar to a language learner, you need to know the
rules consciously
• This will establish you an authority having
accurate, detailed information about English grammar
• Because you will be asked more questions about
grammar by your students and fellow teachers lacking
confidence about their knowledge of English
grammar, you must have an accurate, comprehensive
understanding of english grammar so that you feel
more confident as a teacher and gain the respect of
your colleagues and students.

6. Why do ESL/EFL teachers have to know grammar
• To equip you to recognise misleading or incorrect
grammar descriptions included in textbooks
• A good knowledge of grammar will also enable you to
evaluate a new textbook
• You will be better equiped to judge how well the
textbook is organised and how comprehensive the
coverage of individual grammatical topics is
• Some textbooks omit important aspects of grammar
that need to be covered
• You can then supply this mising information and even
prepare lessons that are more effective than those in
your textbook

7. Why do ESL/EFL teachers have to know grammar
• You will find that a clear understanding of English
grammar is a valuable aid in designing a syllabus that
meets your students’ needs (making them prepared for
national and international English proficiency tests
such as TOEFL, TOEIC, …….
• Because grammar is one aspect of adult lge learning on
which instruction can have a lasting effect.
• You can make a difference in your students’ ability to
speak and write grammatical English even if they are
no longer at the age where they "pick up" English
naturally

8. What is Grammar?
• It is a set of rules that describe how words and
groups of words can be arranged to form
sentences in a particular language
• Students will demand that a teacher tells
them "what the rule is » even if the teacher is
trained to encourage students to figure out
what the rule is on their own

9. What is Grammar?
• Phrase structure diagram or phrase structure
tree facilitates understanding how grammar
rules work and how the elements in a
sentence relate to each other

10. What is Grammar?
• In this course we use a combination of prose
descriptions and a simple bracketing system
that identifies important words and word
groupings within sentences

11. Grammar rules in English
• Dative movement
DO IO
• Alan sent {a long email message} to {Susan}
IO DO
• Alan sent {Susan} {a long e-mail message}
• Send, throw, give, lend
• Not correct, mention, report
• Certain restrictions are often required to insure
that a rule does not produce ungrammatical
results.

12. Factors affecting grammatical choices
• Grammatical competence does not guarantee
that a language learner will be able to
communicate effectively and appropriately in
every context

13. Sociolinguistic factors
• Setting
• Relationship between speakers
• Medium of communication
• Registers
• John was very chuffed (excited) to hear that you’d (you
had) picked up on this (noticed)
• A contraction, idiomatic three-word verb, a slang
indicates an informal, familiar, and personal context
• Changing words to excited …. Indicates a formal
context…

14. Information-Structuring Principles
• The given-new contract:
• Each new sentence that a native speaker of
English says or writes, given (previously
mentioned) information should appear before
new information (information that has not been
mentioned previously)
DO IO
• Give {a CD} to {him}
IO DO
• Give {him} a {CD}  If IO is mentioned in a
previous sentence

15. Language Change and Usage
• Some changes can be more generally noticed
and can have consequences for teachers and
these are going to be addressed in this course
• If I would have seen her, I would have said
hello
• Not correct but is more and more common in
American English even in formal contexts
• If I had seen her, I would have said hello
• Correct version of it…