Grammar

Grammar:

Grammar describes how we combine, organize and change words and parts of words to make meaning.

We use rules for this description.

Sentence: A group of words, usually including a subject and a verb, that express a statement, question, or instruction

· Clause: A group of words which contain a subject and a finite verb.

· Phrase: A phrase does not contain a finite verb and does not have a subject-predicate structure.

· Word: The smallest of the Linguistic Units

· Morpheme: The smallest meaningful unit in a language.



Grammar also describes how words are formed. English uses prefixes and suffixes to create new words. They are added to base words to make new grammatical units such as tenses, parts of verbs, the plural of nouns, possessives.

Important Concepts

Grammar rules describe the way that language works, but language changes over time, so grammar rules are not fixed.

Teachers need to keep up to date with what parts of the language are changing and how

Grammar rules traditionally describe written language rather than spoken language.

Learning some grammatical rules and terms makes language learning easier for some learners. Other learners – e.g. young children- may not find them useful at all.

Just learning grammatical rules and structures doesn’t give learners enough help with learning how to communicate.