This page is called " Grammar Lectures" page. It includes a lot of
interesting lectures in grammar. Let's read it to learn in order
to know, in order not to
recite or just memorize without understanding
or applicability.
Memorization supplies you with a short term knowledge
but applicability supplies you with a long term knowledge.
Grammar
structures are tools that contribute in
building proper communication, not just rules to learn by heart.
Grammar helps you to listen to, speak, read and write an academic
English language properly.
Grammar is the system of a language. People sometimes describe grammar
as the "rules" of a language; but in fact no language has rules.
If we
use the word "rules", we suggest that somebody created the rules first
and then spoke the language, like a new game. But languages did not
start like that.
Languages started by people making sounds which evolved
into words, phrases and sentences. No commonly-spoken language is
fixed. All languages change over time.
What we call "grammar" is simply a
reflection of a language at a particular time. Originally, the term grammar, grammatical, referred to the art of
writing, as compared to rhetoric, rhetorical, the art of speaking.
As
used today by many teachers and learners, grammar is loosely understood
to be a set of rules that govern language, primarily its morphology and
syntax.
But morphology and syntax are only two components of grammar.
Communicative language teaching has brought a renewed emphasis on the
role that semantics plays in the definition of language.
Communicative
language teaching is fundamentally concerned with 'making meaning' in
the language, whether by interpreting someone else's message, expressing
one's own, or negotiating when meaning is unclear.
I like to think of language learning from a top-down approach.
You look at the big picture first, and then as you go, you figure out
the details. This is similar in many ways to the strategy of guessing
based on past experience, also known as inductive reasoning, and it’s awesome.
A language is a set of valid sentences. What makes a sentence
valid? You can break validity down into two things: syntax and
semantics
I like to think of language learning from a top-down approach.
You look at the big picture first, and then as you go, you figure out
the details.
This is similar in many ways to the strategy of guessing
based on past experience, also known as inductive reasoning, and it’s awesome.
A language is a set of valid sentences. What makes a sentence
valid? You can break validity down into two things: syntax and
semantics
Syntax VS Semantics:
1-Syntax is the grammar.
It describes the way to construct a correct sentence. It answers the question: how do I construct a valid sentence? .
For example, "This water is triangular" is syntactically correct.
2-Semantics relates to the meaning.
It describes the meaning of the sentence. It answers the questions: is this sentence valid? If so, what does the sentence mean?
For example, this water is triangular does not mean anything, though the grammar is OK.
How ?
The term syntax refers to grammatical structure whereas the term semantics refers to the meaning of the vocabulary symbols arranged with that structure.
Grammatical (syntactically
valid) does not imply sensible (semantically valid), however. For
example, the grammatical sentence "cows flow supremely" is
grammatically ok (subject verb adverb) in English, but makes no sense.
Similarly, in a programming language, your grammar (syntax rules) may
allow ID EQUALS ID but the language may only allow the sentence if the
text matched for ID does not represent a type name (a semantic rule).
Learn
key concepts and strategies in grammar and style to help enhance
your writing and confidently respond to the demand of high levels of
literacy in the 21st century. How great to teach and learn grammar
through the lexical approach.
It enhances meaning, feeling and
practice. How nice for me as a teacher to elicit the rule from the
learners themselves after their drill and communication practice for the
real situations that contain the rule we want them to learn and master
