Re: Comments on grammar ppt -- Discourse and Grammar

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Date Posted: 18:27:52 09/26/09 Sat
Author: Cristina Monteiro
Subject: Re: Comments on grammar ppt
In reply to: Luciana, Milene, Vagno, Helen 's message, "Comments on grammar ppt" on 13:43:13 09/25/09 Fri

It is essential to consider that sentence-based view of grammar is not the most important aspect of communicative competence, since grammatical choices made by a speaker depend on meaning, situational contexts and discourse context.
As teachers we can see clearly how grammatical knowledge is more critical for discourse production (writing and speaking) than it is for discourse reception (listening and reading).
It is interesting to see how English and Thai languages differ: Thai often prefers lexical repetition in contexts where English uses ellipsis or referential forms to express cohesive ties.
Another point is regarding word-order in English, which is quite predictable syntactically, but suffers variations that are pragmatically motivated and depend on context for their interpretation.
I strongly agree that it is more challenging to use discourse-based teaching techniques with beginners due to their limited knowledge of the target language.
Working the grammar rules inductively is certainly the key to successful learning.
In my classroom I often use stories, poems and songs lyrics to present and practice grammar in discourse, and I can assure you that the results are excellent.

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