Working Grammar

7/25/2019 Working Grammar

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/working-grammar 1/113

An introduction for secondary English teachers

Sally Humphrey

Kristina Love

Louise Droga

Working

Grammar

Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaideand associated companies around the world



vi Working Grammar

While the texts have been selected and exercises designed for teacher professional

development purposes, some may, with appropriate modification, be adapted for use

with students. You could either adapt the structure of the exercises and use your own

relevant texts, or use the texts we have provided for modelling purposes with students

in the classroom.

The texts used in this book All of the texts in this book have been either written or read in the secondary English

curriculum of the various schools we have worked with. We hope that these authentic

texts, and the language work around them, resonate with teachers. We have focused

largely on texts which are highly valued by teachers as these illustrate the powerful

work of grammatical resources most effectively. Because the system of grammar we are

using can also account for student development, we have selected texts used across the

years of the secondary English curriculum, and across the range of genres (narratives,

expositions and response texts), as sites for building knowledge about language. These

texts include student-constructed and published texts, both written and spoken.

We are deeply grateful to the students, teachers and published writers of thesetexts for so generously making them available to us in this book. These texts are model

texts in so many ways, and we invite you as teachers to use these for your own purposes.

Other useful features of this book Some of the model texts used throughout the book are included in appendix 1,

while others are available at Pearson Places.

Key grammatical terms in each chapter are set in bold at first occurrence and

linked to an index at the back of the book, so that you can easily find the relevant

pages when looking to revise your understanding of a key term. You may find

yourself referring back more regularly to chapters 3, 4 and 5 in particular,

since these chapters cover much of the grammatical groundwork. References and a list of further reading resources are included at the end

of the book.

Pearson Places is the online destination that allows you to access

current educational content, download lesson material, use rich

media and connect with students, educators and professionals around

Australia. With over 30 000 resources online and constantly evolving,

Pearson Places is the only place you’ll need for your digital solutions.

www.pearsonplaces.com.au



In this chapter, we provide an overview of the work of grammar in its secondary English

context. In so doing, we review past traditions of grammar and explain the principles of

language underpinning contemporary views.

A brief history of ‘grammar’ teachingSince the turn of the twenty-first century, English teachers have seen a renewed interest

in the role of language in appreciating, creating and critiquing texts. In this recent

‘linguistic turn’, grammar is no longer seen as a set of prescriptive rules but rather

as a description of how patterns of language choice construct meanings in different

contexts. This contextual view of grammar links English teachers of the twenty-first

century with rhetorical traditions dating back to the ancient Greeks and Romans.During the Roman republic and in ancient Athens, oratory was the supreme

political skill. The rhetorical structures of public spoken language were highly organised

and rigorously analysed for how they could be used to convince, to move, to inform or

to entertain communities, whether this be in politics, the temple or the marketplace.

In examining how language was organised to achieve these powerful social purposes,

the Greeks and Romans actually catalogued many of the rhetorical tools of the trade.

For example, they identified the ‘rule of three’ (involving repeated patterns of words,

phrases or sentences), much loved by orators such as Cicero and extensively used by

politicians since. One memorable example is Caesar’s ‘I came, I saw, I conquered.’ See

Higgins (2008) for an overview of other such rhetorical tools.

Grammar andits environment

in English



In chapters 4 and 5 we were concerned with resources for building worlds across key

text types in secondary English. We associated these resources with the experiential

function of language. In chapters 6 and 7 we shift our focus to resources associated with

the interpersonal function of language. In this chapter we deal particularly with those

resources which allow writers and speakers to express and grade feelings and opinions

in narrative, text response and exposition genres.

The two main sets of language resources we focus on are evaluative vocabulary

and grading resources. We will first revisit the building blocks of grammar, which we

introduced in chapter 3, looking now at the evaluative work of particular word classes

(adjectives, adverbials, verbs and nouns). We will then examine how evaluative meanings

may be graded to intensify feelings and opinions. Finally, we look at how writers and

speakers express their feelings and opinions in implicit ways, using combinations

of evaluative vocabulary and grading resources to build empathy, discernment andsuspense across phases of text.

Evaluative vocabulary Evaluative vocabulary refers to a set of resources which express positive and negative

feelings, judgements and opinions. Writers and speakers use different types of evaluative

vocabulary depending on the purpose of the text, what is being evaluated and how they

want their readers and listeners to respond.

Resources forexpressing and

grading attitudes:evaluative language



84 Working Grammar

As students progress through the years of secondary English, it is expected

that they will be able to draw on more nuanced selections of vocabulary that express

th i l ti h th thi b b t th i th i h t ’ f li th i



their evaluations, whether this be about their own or their characters’ feelings, their

judgements of each other or their assessment of things or phenomena in their worlds.

Exercise 6.9As a final exercise for this chapter, revisit text 6.9 from exercise 6.7 with the view to creating a more

evocative and engaging text. Use combinations of implicit and explicit evaluative vocabulary and both

direct and indirect grading resources so that the audience is more effectively invited to:

empathise with characters so that they care what happens to them

discern the actions and responses of characters as they face or, indeed, cause problems

enter the mood of par ticular settings and circumstances.

Implications for English teachingIn this chapter, we have explored how evaluative vocabulary can be applied in orderto achieve the distinctive purposes of narratives, text responses and expositions. We

have suggested the value of providing students with frameworks that categorise such

evaluation resources into:

those that focus on feelings (affect) of characters, narrators and/or readers

those that focus on judgement of characters, narrators and/or readers

those that focus on appreciation of aspects of the text as a literary artefact.

We have outlined the importance of drawing on combinations of such evaluative

resources for different purposes, the importance of grading them (either by amplifying

or diminishing them) and the importance of degrees of explicitness in expressing

various evaluations.This framework can help students identify how writers combine their

selections of evaluation resources across key stages of their narratives, text responses

and expositions, and to what effect. It also provides considerable support for the

development of students’ own writing, as teachers use it to diagnose which resources

students have difficulty with and how they can support students to broaden their

evaluative repertoires. In chapter 7, we will further explore interpersonal resources,

focusing on the rhetorical devices used to persuade and position audiences to accept

opinions in expositions.



As students move through secondary school, a great many of the texts they encounter

have a persuasive purpose. This is particularly the case with the expositions and text

responses produced for assessment purposes. For the most part, writers and speakers of

these texts must not only demonstrate their knowledge of issues and texts, but persuade

their audiences that their position on issues or their interpretation of texts is valid.

While persuasion cannot be successful in secondary English without authoritative and

reliable evidence, it is also very important to present that evidence, and the positions and

arguments which build on it, in ways which ensure it is ‘heard’, accepted and believed.Effective, persuasive writers and speakers negotiate with real and imagined

audiences, anticipating a range of possible responses and engaging in different ways

with what those responses may be. This persuasive work of both spoken and written

texts has been described in terms of the effect it has in creating a dialogue with the

audience. Persuasion depends for its effectiveness on a set of language resources known

as rhetorical devices. Rhetorical devices interact with other interpersonal resources such

as the evaluative vocabulary and grading systems explored in chapter 6 to influence the

opinions of readers, listeners and viewers and, ultimately, to align audiences with the

position of the speaker or writer.

Resources forpersuading others:

rhetorical language



122 Working Grammar

Teachers can explicitly model, for example, how effective writers and speakers

(such as all those cited in this chapter):

have arranged their texts into topics and subtopics, which clearly organise

information into coherent chunks in ways that are considerate of their readers’

and listeners’ needs



use text openers in expositions to preview the arguments to come, thus providing

their readers with a ‘cognitive map’ of the text

use abstract nouns, and in particular semiotic abstract nouns (e.g. findings,debate, arguments, phrase), in their text openers to alert the audience to the

core business of reflecting on meanings in text responses

use paragraph openers to help readers follow the development of expositions

and text responses. These sentences typically pack general information into

complex abstract noun groups, while more concrete language is typically used

to unpack more specific details in the body of the paragraph

use simple sentence openers which carry forward information from other parts

of the text to remind the reader of the topics and their relationships before

providing new information about them

use complex sentence openers or marked grammatical themes in the form of

adverbial groups or dependent clauses at the beginning, rather than end, of

sentences as a deliberate means of adding emphasis and focus

organise their sentence openers across a text (or stages or phases within the

text) in ways which achieve the text’s function, by using chronological, linear or

zigzag patterns.

Explicit awareness of how these organisational resources can work to make

a text’s structure coherent provides students with a valuable tool kit for organising

information clearly in their own writing. Students can be encouraged to identify each

of these features in their written drafts and reflect on whether their choices make

their meanings readily available to their intended audiences. They can also be shown

explicitly how to use this tool kit to identify the organisational structures used by

other speakers and writers and to evaluate their effectiveness. We invite you to adaptthe pedagogical strategies modelled throughout this chapter in age-appropriate ways

in order to support your own students’ development of coherent, well-organised texts.



In chapter 8 we identified some differences in spoken-like and written-like languageand explored the role of text, paragraph and sentence openers in signalling the way

language is organised into a number of meaningful units. In this chapter we examine

the role of a number of other resources which help written and spoken texts to ‘stick

together’. These are known as cohesive devices—resources which connect ideas within

and between sentences. As with the various types of openers examined in chapter 8,

cohesion is particularly important for students learning to craft the written-like texts

valued in secondary school. Written texts are typically more distant from the context in

which they were created, and writers cannot rely on readers already sharing knowledge

of the ideas in the text.

Cohesive devices discussed in this chapter include reference, ellipsis and

substitution, lexical cohesion and text connectives. We introduce each of these in turn

and then look at how they interact with other textual resources to create cohesive text.

ReferenceReference refers to grammatical resources which introduce and keep track of the people

and things being talked about in the text. As the following extract from Christopher’s

review of The Cay illustrates, people and things are typically introduced through noun

groups but then are referred back to through pronouns (he, she, it, they, them).

Resourcesfor building

cohesive texts



Throughout this book, we have considered how English teachers and their students

can benefit from a view of grammar as a set of resources that help people express

and exchange knowledge, attitudes, feelings and opinions in well-crafted texts. We are

confident that the knowledge of language built by working through these chapters has

deepened your understanding of how the subject of English achieves its powerful andmultifaceted purposes. Because of our focus on examining grammatical resources within

the context of texts used in the secondary English curriculum, we are also confident

that the tool kit we have presented will allow teachers to better support their students

in building a rich yet flexible repertoire for creating, appreciating and critiquing texts.

In this last chapter, we explore further how knowledge of grammatical resources

might help teachers track their students’ development during the secondary years of

schooling. Focusing on student development will enable teachers to:

review key grammatical concepts and the three areas of meaning or meta-

functions—the experiential, interpersonal and textual functions of language

explore how resources from each of the metafunctions interact to achieve

particular purposes and to respond to changes in context examine how texts produced by students at higher levels draw on a greater

repertoire of language choices and demand more linguistic tools than those at

earlier levels.

In the first part of the chapter, we will focus on the patterns of linguistic resources

in student texts at different developmental levels of subject English. We will initially

explore key areas of development in the early secondary years and then the more

complex grammatical resources needed in the senior years.

Developinglanguage, literatureand literacy across

secondary English



AnswersExercises 3.1 and 3.2Note: the third row in each table presents only one of many possible ways in which the groups can

be expanded.

Martin li ed in this cara an ith his randmother



Martin lived in this caravan with his grandmother.

Noun group Verb group Adverbial group Adverbial group

Martin, a very troubled

young man,

had been living in this cold, damp and

decrepit caravan

with nobody else but his

grandmother for company.

His grandmother slept in the little bunk bed

Noun group Verb group Adverbial group

His weary and aged grandmother had been sleeping in a tiny, cramped bunk bed behind the stove

and Martin slept on the floor in a rolled-up mattress.

Conjunction Noun group Verb group Adverbial group Adverbial group

was sleeping on the cold, hard f loor in a thin, dusty,

rolled-up mattress.

Sometimes the lights were switched on in the house

Adverbial group Noun group Verb group Adverbial group

On the odd occasion, the sparse, harsh lights had been switched on inside the gloomy house

but nobody went in or out.

Conjunction Noun group Verb group Adverbial group

no brave soul dared enter into or out of that place.

Exercise 3.3

An anxious young man stood in the doorway

Noun group Verb group Adverbial group



184 Working Grammar

3 The use of ‘rather’ triggers the evaluation of More’s writing; however, it is important the reader

understands that the contrast is with Voltaire’s way of achieving satire in order to interpret the

evaluation as positive.

Exercise 10.11Examples of modality:

expository question— So, why would More propose an unachievable and, one could say, almost

dystopian society as ideal? modal verb of possibility (medium)— cannot

modal clauses— one could say (including modal verb of possibility); One answer is



y ( g p y)

Examples of grading: with all the contradictions; what More actually believes; More’s true beliefs

Exercise 10.12Note: modality = bold; grading = shaded; contrast = underlined.

More’s Utopia is not as obviously satirical as Candide. This is because it seems that

More set out with the intention of describing an idealistic society based entirely on

reason. However, it seems also that he found that reason left little margin for human

error, and so Utopia gradually descended into satire as he wrote it. More doesn’t

achieve satire in the same way as Voltaire, through exaggeration. Rather, he contrasts

Utopia’s values to those of Europe, thus commenting on Europe’s faults instead of

trying to find an ideal way of solving them.

The initial comparison with Candide (‘not as obviously satirical’) implies a negative evaluation as satirical

writing is highly valued in our culture. However, the use of grading (‘obviously’) opens space for this

view to be rebutted. Rosie then uses resources of contrast and concession to position the audience

towards a positive evaluation of More’s crafting. The modal clause (‘it seems’) allows her to speculate

without risking committing too much to her interpretation.

Exercise 10.13Paragraph opener related to thesis:

Voltaire’s Candide has no pretensions about being a serious text.

Paragraph openers related to techniques:

He uses exaggeration as a technique of expressing this.

Voltaire also gives general, exaggerated descriptions of life in the utopian

society El Dorado, where everyone is happy.

Another technique Voltaire employs within the text is his use of irony.



200 Further reading

Further readingACARA, 2010, Australian Curriculum for English.

Christie, F 2005, Language Education and the Primary Years, UNSW Press, Sydney.

Christie, F & Stenglin, M 2006, ‘Understanding English language and literacydevelopment’, A position paper commissioned by Kristina Love for the Graduate School

of Education, The University of Melbourne.

Christie, F & Soosai, A 2001, Language and Meaning 1 & 2, Macmillan, Melbourne.

Droga, L & Humphrey, S 2002, Getting Started with Functional Grammar, Target Texts,Berry NSW



Berry, NSW.

Eather, J 2010, creator of Writing Fun website containing resources on teaching withgenre.

Fang, Z & Schleppegrell, M 2008, Reading in the Secondary Content Areas: A Language-based

Pedagogy, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor.

Feez, S & Joyce, H 1998, Writing Skills: Narrative and Non-Fiction Text Types, PhoenixEducation, Sydney.

Frances, G 2008, Chambers Language Builder: Grammar in Practice from the Word to the Text,Chambers, Edinburgh.

Gibbons, P 2002, Scaffolding Language, Scaffolding Learning: Teaching Second Language

Learners in the Mainstream Classroom, Heinemann, Portsmouth, NH.

Hammond, J 1990, ‘Is learning to read and write the same as learning to speak?’,in F Christie (ed.), Literacy for a changing world, ACER, Hawthorn, Victoria.

Love, K, Baker, G & Quinn, M 2008, Literacy Across the School Subjects, DVD, The Universityof Melbourne.

Love, K, Pigdon, K & Baker, G 2005, Building Understandings in Literacy and Teaching,

3rd edn, CD-ROM, The University of Melbourne.

Perera, K 1984, Children’s Writing and Reading: Analysing Classroom Language , BasilBlackwell, Oxford.

Working Grammar

Documents

Transcript of Working Grammar