Debra Myhill’s Grammar Pages

Debra Myhill supports teachers in learning the grammar knowledge they’re now expected to teach to rather young children. As you know, it’s a challenge if you haven’t been taught it yourself!

A Level language students should be ready to take this little grammar test for teachers. Try it out; it’s the first .doc on this page: https://socialsciences.exeter.ac.uk/education/research/centres/writing/grammar-teacher-resources/grammaraschoice/grammarsubjectknowledge/

There are some *really* great materials on that page to help you polish your understanding of grammar.

It’s also interesting to look over all the other materials suggested for teachers to use: 

https://socialsciences.exeter.ac.uk/education/research/centres/writing/grammar-teacher-resources/grammaraschoice/

Passive Form

Okay, cringey video, but some good advice and interactive practice to help get to grips with the passive form. It's very easy in fact -- it's just a verb form! -- as long as you don't try to make sense of it through the everyday meaning of the word 'passive', or try to take short-cuts in identifying it.


The page here helpfully discusses alternatives that might serve similar purposes, too.


http://learnenglishteens.britishcouncil.org/grammar-vocabulary/grammar-videos/passive-forms

Simple, Compound, Complex and Minor sentences

Really clear explanation here, in the context of considering your own essay writing.


Missing is the fact that sentences can be compound and complex at the same time, or multiply compound and complex -- with many clauses coordinated or subordinated. It also disregards the 'minor sentence' -- that is, a word, phrase or fragment on its own, marked out as a sentence but with less than a full clause.




http://www2.ivcc.edu/rambo/eng1001/sentences.htm

A Neat Summary of Linguistics

Useful summary, at undergraduate level, of issues and descriptions addressed in the study of language. Pretty good revision reading, perhaps especially for A2s…

https://www.uni-due.de/ELE/NeatSummaryOfLinguistics.pdf

The definite article in decline...

Interesting, if somewhat dubious, research. The example given from the political speeches is inconclusive -- Obama is taking quite a different sort of opening tack from Washington. Perhaps it is broad rhetorical approaches that are changing; there's nothing inherently 'formal' about 'the', though it'd be informal to use a lot of ellipsis, which might include eliding the definite article. (For instance, if I'd started sentence two of his post 'Example give from political speeches...')

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jan/15/definite-article-radical-decline-last-century-research?CMP=fb_gu

5 Uses of Infinitives

Useful to read.

5 Uses of Infinitives
http://www.dailywritingtips.com/5-uses-of-infinitives/

4 Changes to English So Subtle We Hardly Notice They're Happening

For 'subtle', read 'grammatical rather than lexical'.

4 Changes to English So Subtle We Hardly Notice They're Happening
http://mentalfloss.com/article/51362/4-changes-english-so-subtle-we-hardly-notice-theyre-happening

Grammar May Be Hidden in Toddler Babble

In this study, very young children appear to be making little proto-word noises in the right places where closed-class grammar words should be. Interesting.

Grammar May Be Hidden in Toddler Babble
http://www.livescience.com/37502-grammar-may-be-hidden-in-toddler-babble.html?cmpid=514645

Appraisal and Systemic Functional Grammar

Alongside Alvin Leong's interesting and detailed set of systemic functional grammar pages, here is a useful-looking framework for analysing and assessing texts called 'appraisal'. The focus is on interpersonal meanings and speaker attitudes.

http://www.alvinleong.info/sfg/sfgappraisal.html

How to do CDA

One of many good pages on CDA from Strathclyde, giving some details and discussion of elements of language you can focus on when looking for the way texts wield power and seek to influence readers.


http://www.strath.ac.uk/aer/materials/6furtherqualitativeresearchdesignandanalysis/unit3/howtodocda-languageaspects/

Critical Discourse Analysis: A Primer

Good summary of CDA approaches, designed to use language tools to identify the power relationships in a text.

http://www.kon.org/archives/forum/15-1/mcgregorcda.html

AAVE, Creoles and double negatives

Interesting article exploring the status and nature of African American Vernacular English.

AIN'T NO REASON
A mother tongue spoken by millions of Americans still gets no respect.

By Lex Friedman.

http://the-magazine.org/12/aint-no-reason

Dialects and Grammar in the UK

A readable account of some key grammatical features in English. Useful both for A2s studying Language Variation, and for AS students writing their monologues.

Lessons from a survey of British dialect grammar* - RACO

Exercises in Pronouns

Excellent find from A2 student Rachel: a series of exercises to explore your personal pronoun usage and beliefs. Part of an Internet-based research project stemming from a book, The Secret Life of Pronouns.

http://www.secretlifeofpronouns.com/exercises.php

Reed-Kellogg Diagrammer

This is fun to play with. It only handles short, and complete, sentences. Try it out with these.

I suspect it'll have difficulty with this one, because there's a hidden 'that'.

http://1aiway.com/nlp4net/services/enparser/default.aspx

MyEnglishgrammar.com

Aimed at students of English as a foreign language, this website has lots of clear and simple discussion of core elements of English grammar. The practice exercises are mostly about remembering the words (so native speakers will find it easy) but they're still good practice and should help you remember what words are what class and which tenses are which.

http://www.myenglishgrammar.com/home.html

An Introduction to Functional Grammar on Vimeo

A series of videos — 15-30 mins each — talking through Halliday's systemic functional grammar. Really friendly and accessible with a nice Prezi presentation.

http://vimeo.com/46732234

10 Smart Language Errors Kids Make

Or, 'virtuous errors'. 

http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/153742

Google Ngram Viewer

The Ngrams web viewer has been updated. This amazing tool allows you to search for word frequencies in Google Books' huge archive of digitised text. You can choose British or American English, choose what period of English you're interested in, and search for several terms which will appear as different coloured frequency lines on the same graph.

New to the search engine is the ability to search by part of speech (word class), as well as other special functions as explained in the link below. They've updated the data to 2012 as well — but you can still find the old 2009 data. Choose your preferred data set from the drop down menu.

There's lots more advice and tips in the blog post:

http://books.google.com/ngrams/info

4 Punctuation Marks for Appositives

Okay; this is the sort of thing that gives grammarians a bad name. But if you want to be an effective writer, it's the sort of thing you should take an interest in. 

4 Punctuation Marks for Forming Appositive Phrases
http://www.dailywritingtips.com/4-punctuation-marks-for-forming-appositive-phrases/