Wayne Trotman loves this new on-line course for anyone interested in spoken grammar
SPOKEN GRAMMAR:
A Guide for English Language Teachers Ken Paterson Sold by Udemy, San Francisco, USA
Before we begin, how well versed are you in the following terms: ‘Heads and tails’, ‘binomial phrases’, not to mention ‘lexical bundles’ and ‘synonymous language’? Lost already?
Don’t worry, this online guide is for you. In just twenty-two short, on-screen lectures delivered by the author, with the aid of continual advances in corpus analysis, the guide introduces techniques and material for teaching the newly-located items of grammar that appear in everyday conversation.
You’ll not only learn what they are, you’ll very quickly be able to implement them.
Following the introduction, which describes the course rationale and how it works, items are covered under the five headings: ‘word order and ellipsis’, ‘emphasis’, ‘vague language’, ‘marking spoken discourse’, and ‘response language’.
Examples of these have, of course, always existed in spoken English; it’s just taken a while for someone to sit down to label and categorise them. For which, language teachers should be very grateful.
Material is presented in dialogue format, spoken throughout by the author alone. This is perhaps a strength such online material has over the printed book. I should add, however, that lesson plans are available which may be freely downloaded.
A typical lecture, usually of five to six minutes, begins with dialogues for reading aloud, which are accompanied by noticing and commenting activities. These are followed by dialogue exercises such as gap-filling and transformations. Answers are then provided along with summaries of rules and useful language. Lectures end with role-plays and simulations in order to practice the grammar point under focus.
Space limits me to only a brief selection. For example, the ‘Heads and tails’ terms coined by those giants of English grammar study, Carter and McCarthy. One example of a head is: That guy who writes the reviews, he’s the one who lives in Turkey. This is stylistically superior to the much more conservative and coursebook-sounding, The guy who writes the reviews is the one who lives in Turkey.
“But why, one might ask, do we use heads and tails at all?”
But why, one might ask, do we use heads and tails at all? The answer is that heads allows you to say the important thing first, and ‘do’ the grammar later, while tails are often evaluative, for example, “Have you seen The Post? Great film”.
The guide also focuses on aspects such as declarative questions: Speaker A: I’ve been driving around looking for your house for hours. Speaker B: You got lost? Which is clearly more nuanced and idiomatic English than simply, Did you get lost?
The first part also includes ellipsis, the removal of unnecessary lexis, with which most students at a basic level are familiar. For example, Speaker A: Where’s that reviewer guy from? Speaker B: (He’s from) Izmir.
This guide would be useful on the electronic devices of all language teachers I know, and at any stage of their career, who have a distinct interest in teaching English as it is really spoken. For further details simply key ‘udemy’ into a search engine, which will take you to their learning platform.
