According to Michael Swan, when teaching grammar, we should reject nothing on doctrinaire grounds: * deductive teaching through explanations and examples, * inductive discovery activities, * rule-learning, * peer-teaching, * decontextualised practice, * communicative practice, * incidental focus on form during communicative tasks, * teacher correction and recasts, * grammar games, * corpus...
There are several grammarians and linguists that are always exciting to read and listen to, and Steven Pinker is definitely one of them. His article in the Guardian revisits 10 most important grammar rules. It is surely worth reading Steven Pinker’s The Sense of Style: the Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century is published next month (Allen Lane, £16.99). To order it...
GRAMMAR – the singular “they”
SOURCE
The basic tag questions are general English, shared by British and American: informational: ‘You don’t wear glasses, do you?’ (I’m not sure, but think you don’t. Am I right?) inclusive: ‘It’s a nice day, isn’t it?’(It obviously is – I’m not really asking, but just making polite remarks so you can join in the conversation). emphasizing: ‘I made a bad mistake, didn’t I?’ (This is a soliloquy. I’m...
