People can speak and understand the speech of others; it is hard not to feel awe at that, for what lies behind speaking and understanding is the most complex system made by man. The complexity is coded in the mind of each speaker, yet it remains, for the most part, unexploited in schools and colleges. People in education tend to take for granted what students know already, and to focus on what they do not know. This is a dangerous policy for it produces a mean caricature of education; if we are to have an attitude of humility towards what we do not know may we not also glory in what we do know? It is dangerous also because it is inefficient. To learn something it is necessary to be able to fasten on to it by already acquired knowledge and skills. Without this process new knowledge would merely be stored without being assimilated.
In language study there is a unique opportunity to translate this theory into meaningful educational practice. All speakers have a profound familiarity with the language they speak. This familiarity is implicit rather than explicit; a speaker of English ‘knows’ the grammatical rules which allow him to say, ‘It’s a great big fat red thing.’ but not, *‘It’s a red big fat great thing.’ (*indicates a sentence which is unacceptable in a language.) But that does not mean he could say what the rules are. The question is, how can the implicit knowledge of these rules be used? This book tries to explore some ways of answering that question. The place to begin this exploration is with language used by students, and for that purpose I shall discuss the following essay, written by a student early in an ‘O’ level course.
Market Day in Winter
Bad weather never prevents market folk from doing business. It was a cold day and the snow was falling rapidly. Heavey traffic on the road caused the snow on the road to go slushy. Shop roofs were caped with an inch or more of snow. Snow clung to the glass of 5 windows and reminded me of views on christmas cards.
People walked quickly round the stalls of the market and only stopping to buy goods and not to look. Children in prams cried because they were cold and getting wetter by the minute. Water from snow flowed off the canvas of the stalls roof to collect in 10 puddles. However the market folk did’nt seem to mind the bad weather. They exhibited their goods with magnificent gestures and had mock arguments to draw attention to themselves.
The stalls were packed with every kind of fruits and vegetables on could think off, but the bad weather did nothing to highlight 15 their grandness. Another stall was packed with antiques but trade was slow as bargin hunters were few and far between.
The hat and glove stall was doing a tremendous trade, has many shopers did not anticape the wintery weather the afternoon brought.
20 At the bus stop dozens of people queued for buses that had been delayed. The queues of people resembled walls, they were all tighly packed together dressed in long overcoats and each holding an umbrella.
Building in the distance became faint due to the heavy snow fall 25 and only their outlines could be seen. People walking up the streets resembled dark objects without any real shape.
Adults were not amused by the weather but for a short time children playing did received some excitement from the snowball fights, which were going on in the park, adjcent to the market 30 place.
The essay contains several errors of spelling and grammar of the type often marked by teachers ‘careless’. This kind of semi-moral judgement is often used because a teacher does not fully understand the nature of an error. To understand an error as representing what a student cannot do it is necessary to understand what he can do, so let us look at this.
Before I begin this part of the discussion I need a generally understood method for bringing out the structure of sentences and phrases; I need a means of grammatical description. In giving a (simplified) set of categories for such a description I shall define the categories by distribution. That is to say, classes of words are defined according to the position in which they occur in a sentence. Words which occur in the same kind of position will count as members of the same class. So, for example, the occurrence of ‘the’ or ‘a’ in a sentence signals the fact that at some later point a noun will occur. So a definition of ‘noun’ might include the characterization, ‘a non-adjective occurring after “the” or “a”.’ (This assumes we have already defined ‘adjective’.) There are a lot of problems in defining classes of words this way, but it is a much more accurate method than the ‘notional methods’, which involve defining classes of words in terms of their general meaning. Thus, ‘a noun is a naming word’, ‘a verb is a doing word’. These definitions work perfectly well for someone who can already differentiate nouns and verbs, but they are no use to anyone else. For example, does not the word ‘run’ in ‘Run to the shop’ name the act of running? And is not ‘movement’ a doing word par excellence? For more detailed discussion I would refer the reader to any of the introductory books on grammar mentioned in ‘Further Reading’ at the end of this book. My proposed classes of words are:
N (Noun) Any word which can occur in the context (T) – V
Any non-adjective occurring after ‘the’ or ‘a/an’
Any non-adjective occurring after an adjective
V (Verb) Any word which can occur with a past tense marker (often -ed)
Any word which can occur with -ing
A (Adjective) Any word which can occur between ‘the’ or ‘a/an’ and N but not before plural -s
T (Determiner) Any word which can occur before N or A but not before V
P (Preposition) This class of words is small enough to be defined initially by listing (‘in, on, to, with …’)
wh- (Relative pronoun) Any of the following words occurring between N and V: which, who, that, what, where, when.
These definitions are based on Harris (1946). They are not intended to be watertight; they are intended to suggest the lines on which a full characterization might be done. Again I urge the reader to more specialized works to fill in the gaps.
Let us look first at the student’s noun phrases. These are sometimes of great complexity. I shall list the structures he uses, with examples of each:
| (1) | N or TN |
| business (line 1) | their grandness (line 15) |
| the snow (line 2) | an umbrella (line 23) |
| (2) | AN or TAN |
| bad weather (line 1) | a cold day (line 2) |
| magnificent gestures (line 11) | the bad weather (line 14) |
| (3) | NN or TNN (The first noun modifies the second). |
| shop roofs (line 3) | Christmas cards (line 5) |
| the bus stop (line 20) | the snowball fights ( = T(NN)N) lines 28–9) |
| (4) | ANPTN |
| heavey traffic on the road (lines 2–3) |
| (5) | TNPN |
| the glass of windows (lines 4–5) |
| (6) | NPNN |
| views on christmas cards (line 5) |
| (7) | TNPTN |
| the stalls of the market (line 6) |
| (8) | N wh- V (V stands for the whole of the complex verb; here ‘had been delayed’). |
| buses that had been delayed (lines 20–1) |
| (9) | T(NN)N wh- VPTNPTNN |
| the snowball fights which were going on in the park adjcent to the market place (lines 28–30) |
| (I am counting ‘adjacent to’ as a preposition, even though it is not a single word, because single-word prepositions can substitute for it. e.g. ‘the park near the market place’). |
All human beings in the process of learning how to use language have to feel their way experimentally towards its rules. In the light of the above data it would not be implausible to suggest that this student is experimenting with the English noun phrase. Linguistic analysis alone cannot give us a direction for teaching; but when this analysis is coupled with a statement of principle a direction for practice can follow. In this case, for example, believing that we should ‘start where the student is at’ tells us nothing about what we can actually do. And merely having some tools for linguistic analysis gives us no clues about what to do with them. To adapt Kant, principles without methods are empty; methods without principles are blind. With both, however, we can begin to develop useful lines for classroom practice. For example, the student has included several NN constructions. These are particularly interesting to teachers and students who are concerned with exploring language, since even a brief examination of them brings out the enormous complexities that are concealed by seemingly simple constructions. Here is a possible lesson guide for such an exploration:
Session 1
The NN phrases used in the essay should be listed and used as a core for obtaining a larger set of NN phrases. This may be done by asking the class for words that can fill the gaps created by deleting a word from each of the NN phrases. Thus:
| Fill each blank with a noun: |
| bus — | — stop |
(If students are unfamiliar with the term ‘noun’, or find that they are not sure what counts as a noun and what does not, the teacher might introduce a simple test, stipulating that each word suggested for the blanks should also be able to fit in ‘It’s a/an —’. So ‘company’ and ‘door’ would pass the test, whereas ‘large’ would not.) The resulting phrases might include ones similar to these:
