If you could only teach 10 grammar points

I'd be delighted if you would share my TESL-l response with other teachers. I truly believe we need to get grammar back into not only non-native speaker language education but native speaker language education.

Question:

If you could only teach 10 grammar points to a teacher who will NOT be an ESL teacher but who will have ESL students in class, which 10 grammar points would you focus on?

Here are my ten:

1. The concept of the simple sentence.

Making sure everyone understood the basics: subjects, verbs, objects, prepositional phrases, the three main-verb BE patterns and the basic question and negative forms.

2. The concept of modification.

How adjectives modify (slightly change the meaning of) nouns, adverbs can modify adjectives, verbs or whole sentences, nouns can modify other nouns, one clause can modify another, phrases can modify nouns

3. The concept of subordination

The concept of independent and dependent clauses which ties directly into items 1 and 2 above. A simple sentence is an independent clause, but within or with that clause you can have another clause (defined as a structure with a subject and a verb,the concept of which is learned when one is teaching the structure of a simple sentence).

4. The three types of dependent clauses: adverb, adjective and noun.

Adverb clauses show relationships between the idea in one part of a sentence and the idea in the other part of the sentence. Adjective clauses modify nouns. Noun clauses function as nouns.

5. The concept of coordination.

Parallel structure is a very important concept for English language users, especially since brevity and conciseness are values in English rhetoric. And for reading comprehension, students have to be able to see when words have been left out (ellipsis) in a parallel structure.

6. Pronoun reference.

I found that a number of my students with reading difficulties were often unable to find the noun a pronoun was referring to when I asked them to do so.

7. Verb forms.

Verbs carry so much meaning. They are the heavy lifters of English. And I'm not just talking about tenses. Passive verbs, participial adjectives, gerunds and infinitives, modal auxiliaries.

8. The concept of articles.

I think the most we can do is help students understand the concepts underlying article use and give them some guidelines.

9. Singular and plural

This includes subject-verb agreement, pronoun agreement, and the concepts of count and noncount nouns.

10. Prepositions.

They're everywhere! But it doesn't seem to me that prepositions are of vital importance. Yes, their misuse stands out like a sore thumb to native speakers, but rarely, it seems to me, does using the wrong preposition significantly interfere with communication.

I'd say the same thing about articles. In fact, when I was working with freshman English teachers who had 2nd language students in their classes, I counseled that preposition and article errors should merely be marked but not taken to mean the student had serious problems with English. Serious problems were, in my view, indicated by a lack of understanding and usage ability of basic sentence structure, modification, subordination, coordination, pronoun reference and verb forms.

(Whether or not a student knows that terminology is irrelevant as long as he or she demonstrates through usage ability an understanding of the concepts those terms represent.)

Again, I'm delighted you're sharing what I wrote with others. I'm a die-hard grammar fan.

Best regards,
Betty Azar