LEARN ENGLISH – 3
Khaliqur Rahman
I’ve taught English for about five decades. During this period I’ve learnt a lot, as well. I have been able to develop a Pedagogic Grammar and we’ve found it to be very effective in bringing home a grammar point in the minds of the Learners.
They are made to understand that Grammar is the sum total of Core Grammar and Peripheral Grammar. Core Grammar is nothing but what goes with what and what replaces what and Peripheral Grammar is how, when and where. Also, making a sentence is like choosing clothes and dressing up, taking care of what goes with what, what replaces what and then the finishing touch of how, when and where.
Here, I’d like to share with you one of our lessons in the use of Articles. Through examples on the blackboard, interaction and recall, we manage to get from the Learners statements like:
Articles are words that go with nouns that are naming words. The Indefinite Article goes with a noun that is countable and singular. The Definite Article can go with all the three categories of a noun: countable singular, countable plural and uncountable. Sometimes, we have to make a statement ourselves when we know it is beyond them, particularly with our deft-nitions. For example: Articles are noun-focussing words. They bring nouns into focus. The definite article the, pronounced ðɪ or ðə, brings nouns into fine focus. The indefinite articles a and an bring a noun, countable, singular into broad focus.
Grammar Rules, thus, are discovered by the Learners themselves, of course with the minimum-maximum pushing and prodding by the Teacher.
TECHNICAL TERMS vs PLAIN LANGUAGE
We use what goes with what for syntagmatic relationship and what replaces what for paradigmatic relationship. For mid-level Learners, we use chain relationship and choice relationship, for syntagmatic relationship and paradigmatic relationship, respectively.
FOCUSSING WORDS
This is our attempt to take care of the use of the generic/specific dichotomies in Quirk’s Grammar and replace the terms generic/specific with the concept of focussing. Let’s look at these instances of language use:
What do you do? I am a teacher. Oh, well, one of you here has won the President’s award! O yes, I am happy to tell you, I am the teacher!
When he says I am a teacher. He is asking you to focus your mind on teachers and not on lawyers or doctors or engineers and he is one of teachers not engineers, etc. The noun teacher is thus brought into broad focus.
When he says I am the teacher, he is asking you to change your broad focus on teachers to fine focus on one teacher.
If someone says The first three teachers have won prizes, again, the speaker wants fine focus on the first three from the broad focus on all the teachers.
When you say Bring me the water in the fridge, you mean not any water but that water in that fridge. Fine focus.
In most school textbooks, the rule is : words beginning with a e i o u take an, by which it should be possible to say an after*, an eat*, an it*, an often*, and an under*. The asterisk * shows that these are ungrammatical.
Our rule, Indefinite Article ( A or An ) goes with noun countable singular, not only clinches the issue but also motivates them to learn more rules like this.
Learners in general are not familiar with the Sounds of English as in most schools in India, they start with the Alphabet. We’ll deal with the Sounds of English next week and improve upon our rule for Indefinite Articles further.
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