This action research examines experiences that students in a grade 10 EFL class had with redesigning a grammar-unit into a topic-based unit. Strategies were formulating significant learning goals and objectives, and implementing and reflecting on activities with three dimensions of Dee Fink's (2003) taxonomy of significant learning: the human…

Many English language learners (ELLs) require extra support to become successful writers. This book helps teachers understand the unique needs of ELLs and promote their achievement by adapting the effective instructional methods they already know. Engaging and accessible, the book features standards-based lesson planning ideas, examples of student…

Conversion, the deliberate transfer of a word from one part of speech to another without any change in its form, is a typically English phenomenon, conditioned but not caused by the extensive wearing-off of word endings and weakening of inflections. It has typically been treated as a syntactic matter, since no new words are produced, and its…

A glossary of commonly used grammatical terms that would be useful to students and teachers of French is presented here. Although not complete, it offers basic definitions in English of grammatical forms and functions as well as examples in French of each term defined. The definitions cover parts of speech, grammatical functions, sentences,…

Transformational grammar offers the most adequate system by which to meet the goal of grammar instruction, which is to increase the student's understanding of the nature of language. This grammar attempts to explain the mental processes underlying the production and understanding of sentences, to describe linguistic competence, to construct…

These two units of the Minnesota Project English curriculum employ transformational grammar in an attempt to make eighth-grade students aware of fundamental facts about their language. Concepts taught in the first unit are (1) that an infinite number of English sentences exists, (2) that a few basic transformations are the basis for a large number…

This comparative study of traditional and transformational approaches to the syntax of standard Russian proposes the superiority of analysis in terms of possible and impossible transformations, thereby revealing the existence of a level of linguistic form superior to that of simple morphophonemic description. Five classes of word-combinations of…

This study proposed (1) to verify that students of normal ability could learn structural and transformational grammar concepts presented in the format of linear programing, and (2) to test whether the students would apply the concepts in compositions so that their writing showed progress toward maturity. Participating in the experiment were 207…

This transformational approach to teaching German, initiated in the fall of 1965, describes an experimental course at McGill University consisting of 156 hours spread into 26 weekly installments of one laboratory and five lecture hours. Detailed in this article are: (1) a priori claims concerning methods, (2) theoretical assumptions about learning…

This series of three articles focuses on basic language skills involved in second language learning. The first deals with the importance of pronunciation. The author argues that proper pronunciation and intonation cannot be achieved without recognizing the value of repetition drills and correct speech models. The second article considers modern…

This paper is concerned with the syntactic problems raised by the grammatical phenomenon in Japanese that is called here the "complementizer." In the types of sentences under consideration here, S2 is a nominal clause. Such a clause acts as a noun phrase adjunct to the verb in S1. The noun clauses in question are often followed by a…

This paper examines the distribution of third person pronominal clitics in Catalan causative constructions (CC), suggesting that an analysis of CC and cliticization crucially involving head-movement (verb incorporation and determiner incorporation) can explain the phenomena. Such an analysis can also explain the optionality of clitic climbing and…

An argument is made for a theory of deep structure which does not neglect surface structure analysis. See FL 508 197 for availability. (RM)

The problem of determining the grammatical correctness, as opposed to semantic correctness, of the output of a generative system is discussed. (RM)

A process-oriented freshman composition instructor who stresses invention, drafting, and revision can simultaneously integrate a form of grammatical instruction. Various methods and strategies, both from experience and research on grammar from the classical to the contemporary era, suggest such a creative integration. First, the teaching of…