Working Grammar

(1)

An introduction for secondary English teachers

Sally Humphrey

Kristina Love

Louise Droga

Working

Grammar

Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide and associated companies around the world

(2)

The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10% of the pages of this work, whichever is the greater, to be reproduced and/or communicated by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that that educational institution (or the body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act. For details of the CAL licence for educational institutions contact Copyright Agency Limited (www.copyright.com.au).

Reproduction and communication for other purposes

Except as permitted under the Act (for example any fair dealing for the purposes of study, research, criticism or review), no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, communicated or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission. All enquiries should be made to the publisher at the address above.

This book is not to be treated as a blackline master; that is, any photocopying beyond fair dealing requires prior written permission.

Publisher: Catriona McKenzie Project Editor: Andrea Davison Editor: Ingrid De Baets Designer: Nikola Kyle

Copyright & Pictures Editor: Suzy Freeman Cover design: Nikola Kyle

Illustrator/s: Bruce Rankin Printed in Malaysia

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Author: Humphrey, Sally.

Title: Working grammar : an introduction for secondary English teachers / Sally Humphrey, Kristina Love, Louise Droga. ISBN: 9781442539440 (pbk.)

Notes: Includes index.

Subjects: English language--Grammar--Study and teaching (Secondary) Other Authors/Contributors: Love, Kristina. Droga, Louise.

Dewey Number: 428.2 ISBN 978 1 4425 3944 0

Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd ABN 40 004 245 943

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Mary Macken-Horarik for her conceptual input in the early stages.

The publishers would like to thank Stephen Clark, Daniel Groenewald and Helen Kent for their review of the manuscript and the following for permission to reproduce copyright material.

Allen, Christopher: pp. 11, 76. Allen, Emily: p. 67.

Balcomb, Jennifer: pp. 34, 50, 105, 108, 109, 114, 129, 134. Balcomb, Rosemary: pp. 36, 39, 43, 79, 137, 150, 152, 153, 156, 157. Bancks, Tristan: ‘Adaan’ from Picture This! 2, Pearson Australia, 2009, p. 40.

Best, Lewis: ‘Call to Action’ from TakingITGlobal, www.tigweb.org/youth-media/panorama/article.html?ContentID=6168, pp. 45, 96, 116, 117, 120, 138.

Brown, Kristine: pp. 12, 13.

Cavallari, Saro Lusty: ‘The Tres Malum’, pp. 16, 28, 31, 35, 44, 73, 80, 114, 126. Clark, Margaret: ‘Monkey Man’ from Picture This! 2, Pearson Australia, 2009, p. 127. Collins, Paul: ‘The Sudden Snow’ from Picture This! 2, Pearson Australia, 2009, pp. 34, 129.

Dubosarsky, Ursula: ‘Like a Long-Legged Fly’ from Picture This! 2, Pearson Australia, 2009, pp. 22, 25, 129, 132.

Fairfax: ‘A Young Refugee’s Plea for a Better Future’ by Nooria Wazefadost, Sydney Morning Herald, 21 June 2004, pp. 74, 90. Gleeson, Libby: ‘Roses’ from Picture This! 2, Pearson Australia, 2009, p. 127.

James, Belinda: ‘Review of The Plague of Quentaris’, p. 32.

Metzenthen, David: ‘Snapshot’ from Picture This! 2, Pearson Australia, 2009, pp. 50, 127. Phelan, James: ‘I am Alone’ from Picture This! 2, Pearson Australia, 2009, p. 118. Thompson, Chris: ‘Review of Swerve’, Viewpoint, issue 16, Summer 2009, pp. 43, 70, 72.

Every effort has been made to trace and acknowledge copyright. However, if any infringement has occurred, the publishers tender their apologies and invite the copyright holders to contact them.

Disclaimer/s

The selection of internet addresses (URLs) provided for this book was valid at the time of publication and was chosen as being appropriate for use as a secondary education research tool. However, due to the dynamic nature of the internet, some addresses may have changed, may have ceased to exist since publication, or may inadvertently link to sites with content that could be considered offensive or inappropriate. While the authors and publisher regret any inconvenience this may cause readers, no responsibility for any such changes or unforeseeable errors can be accepted by either the authors or the publisher.

(3)

Introduction

This book has been designed as a professional resource for English teachers, both practising and pre-service. It can also be used as a set text and framework for course development in secondary English teacher education. Working Grammar provides an introduction to or refresher on grammar, particularly the kind of grammar used to explore and create the texts of secondary English in the twenty-first century, and the kind of grammar that underpins the Australian Curriculum for English.

The reference to ‘working’ in the title signals our two-pronged approach to grammar: as a set of resources that work to build meanings, and as a set of understandings that teachers can exploit in working with the spoken and written texts of subject English.

The book has three main purposes:

to outline a view of grammar as a ‘tool kit’ of resources

to provide English teachers with opportunities to practise their understandings of this functionally oriented view of language

to model how a purposeful view of language can be used in classrooms.

How to use this book

We suggest that you work through the book sequentially, since each chapter builds on insights from previous chapters.

Chapter 1 gives a brief history of grammar teaching and outlines the principles of language underpinning this book.

Chapter 2 illustrates how this model of grammar does its own ‘work’ in three of the text types or genres commonly used in subject English.

Chapter 3 provides an overview of the building blocks of language at word, group, sentence and text level.

Chapters 4 and 5 focus on those aspects of this functionally oriented grammar concerned with building the ideas of English. These chapters cover the experiential function of language.

Chapters 6 and 7 focus on those aspects of the grammar used to build relationships between reader/writer or speaker/listener and between characters within texts. These chapters cover the interpersonal function of language.

Chapters 8 and 9 focus on those aspects of grammar concerned with helping students create well-structured texts and to identify how other speakers or writers organise their texts. These chapters cover the textual function of language. Chapter 10 explores how this grammar can be used to track development in students’ texts as they progress through the years of secondary school.

Chapters 3–10 contain exercises that can strengthen your understanding of various aspects of the grammar covered. You can complete these on your own, many of them in the book itself, perhaps using an additional exercise book for more refl ective responses. In a school context, there is considerable value in working through the exercises with other teachers, either in faculty or year-level groups, while considering the implications for your particular teaching situation. At tertiary level, student teachers can work through the book independently, or lecturers may fi nd it useful as a set text. Answers to the exercises are provided at the back of the book.

Grading: resources for intensifying attitudes and building suspense 80

Grading adverbials 80

Graded core vocabulary 80

Indirect grading resources 81

Combinations of evaluative vocabulary and grading resources 83

Resources for persuading others: rhetorical language 85

Modality: expressing degrees of possibility and obligation 86

Using modality of possibility to temper opinions 87

Additional grammatical resources for expressing modality 88

Using modality of obligation to temper recommendations 90

Citation: reporting and challenging the words and ideas of others 93

Using citation to support or challenge positions 96

Contrast and concession 97

Comment and viewpoint expressions 99

Interaction of rhetorical resources across texts 99

Resources for creating well-organised ‘crafted’ texts 102

Modes of communication: spoken and written language 102

Organising and signalling information 105

Text openers 107

Paragraph openers 108

Sentence openers 113

Resources for building cohesive texts 123

Reference 123

Resources for reference 124

Tracking reference 128

Ellipsis and substitution 131

Lexical cohesion 133

Text connectives 136

Developing language, literature and literacy across secondary English 141

Development in the early years of secondary English 142

Development of experiential resources 142

Development of interpersonal resources 146

Development of textual resources 147

Interaction of grammatical resources 148

Development in the senior years of secondary English 149

Development of experiential resources 151

Development of interpersonal resources 154

Development of textual resources 157

Bringing it all together 158

Answers 161

Appendices 185

References 199

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 these texts 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

(5)

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’ teaching

Since 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 identifi ed 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 and

its environment

(6)

2 Working Grammar Grammar and its environment in English 3

Most recently, there have been renewed calls for the reintroduction of a more sustained approach to the teaching of rhetoric in the English curriculum—see, for example, Green (2009) and Sawyer (2009). It is clear that, as English teachers, we are now poised to incorporate the best of what history has offered us into a system of grammar that is robust and explicit enough to do the work of the contemporary English curriculum. Such a grammar underpins the new Australian Curriculum for English, where students are to understand how Standard Australian English, as dynamic and evolving, works in its spoken and written forms. This grammar provides a systematic knowledge about the patterns of English usage and grammar at the levels of the word, the sentence and the extended text, and about the connections between these levels (see Maryin & Rose 2007). This is a contextual view of grammar, where language functions to enable us to interact with others, to express and develop ideas, and to comprehend and create coherent texts. It is this view of grammar as a set of resources that underpins this book.

The grammar introduced in the following chapters makes explicit the grammatical structures and patterns of key text types in secondary English. An explicit focus on the grammar of these text types offers enormous support to students who are confused about the basic structures and language features of English texts. While some students may have been implicitly ‘taught’ versions of these structures and language features in middle-class households, those students who have not had access to this sort of cultural capital do not learn by osmosis the conventions which are valued both in the wider culture and in the examination system. The acquisition of these conventions cannot be left to chance and must be explicitly taught at school, if they are to be learnt at all by certain groups of our students.

Grammar teaching in the

early twenty-fi rst century

Many English teachers we have spoken to are excited by the new Australian Curriculum and its invitation for them to revitalise their own knowledge about language as they contribute to a study of English as ‘dynamic and evolving’. Their students will have the opportunity to develop an explicit understanding and appreciation of the nature of the English language and how it works to create various kinds of meaning. While supporting them in developing emerging textual practices, this will also reconnect students with older traditions of rhetoric as they learn to use language to inform, persuade, entertain and argue. This rhetorically oriented grammar also provides a means for students to appreciate the capacity of Standard Australian English to evoke feelings, and to organise and convey information and ideas. Teachers are particularly excited by the opportunities to explore what kind of language resources modern orators use to rouse public sentiment. They are looking for a metalanguage that helps them identify the rhetorical tools used, for example, by Kevin Rudd in his Apology to the Stolen Generations. One such tool is grammatical parallelism, most evident in Rudd’s choice of adverbial phrase (underlined) at the beginning of each sentence in the extract below.

For the pain, suffering and hurt of these Stolen Generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry.

To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry.

And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry.

With the invention of the printing press in the fi fteenth century, and the further codifi cation into writing of the spoken word, this interest in examining the structures and functions of oral rhetoric was extended to the written mode. Until the nineteenth century in English-speaking cultures (and still in some parts of the United States), rhetorical studies were a central component of the school and university curriculum. Students would study models of exemplary spoken and written texts, learning to emulate and modify these according to their own purposes.

In the nineteenth century, with the expansion of mass education, attention focused on the structures of written language rather than on those of the oral mode, resulting in a narrower focus on children’s acquisition of alphabetic and syntactic knowledge— see Christie (1990) for a very interesting account. In breaking written language into its various parts, attention to the overall meaning and organisation of the text was gradually lost. Because they were cheap and easy to reproduce, prescriptive grammar books proliferated by the early twentieth century (Christie 1990). These were based on the sentence structures (or syntax) of written ancient Greek and Latin, languages whose structures differed from English in some fundamental ways. For example, the infi nitive form of the verb ‘to go’ is one word in Latin, leading to the rule that infi nitives should not be split in English, and thus rendering Captain Kirk’s rhetorically powerful line ‘to boldly go’ ungrammatical!

By the mid-twentieth century the separation of grammar and rhetoric was complete. As a result, grammar became a set of drilled rules about sentence structure that did not contribute meaningfully to students’ own writing development. In the 1970s and 1980s, three key movements arose which represented a powerful backlash against this decontextualised and impoverished model of ‘traditional’ school grammar: ‘whole language’ (Goodman 1967), ‘personal growth’ models of English (Dixon 1975) and ‘process writing’ (Graves 1981). These all put student learning processes and growth at the centre of their pedagogy, but offered no model of language to guide the teacher. As a result, many teachers were trained during this era with no explicit knowledge about language (KAL), leaving them without suffi cient resources for diagnosing or supporting their students’ language development. This was particularly problematic for teachers working with students from communities with fewer of the ‘valued’ literacy resources to draw on, and those learning English as an additional language.

By the 1980s, a group of educational linguists (Christie 1990; Derewianka 1991; Rothery 1994) began to explore what kind of KAL would allow teachers to intervene more supportively in their students’ literacy development. The earlier work of these educational linguists revealed that teachers’ knowledge about language does contribute to students’ literacy development. The model of grammar proposed was largely developed by linguists Michael Halliday (1994) and James Martin (1993). There was a reconnection with rhetoric, in that the model was comprehensive and fl exible enough to explore the characteristics of spoken and written texts and how these achieve particular purposes in particular social contexts. This more rhetorically oriented view of grammar has since informed much of current educational practice across Australia. It is a grammar which views language as a set of resources for enabling students to construct and read the varied texts of their contemporary world, while connecting them to the classic texts of the past. It is a grammar which allows students to appreciate and critique the powerful texts of their time, including those which galvanised social change by using rhetorical strategies that reconnected with Roman and Greek traditions of oratory. Two such texts are former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd’s Apology to Australia’s Indigenous Peoples of 13 February 2008 (commonly referred to as ‘Apology to the Stolen Generations’ or more simply as ‘Apology speech’) and US President Barack Obama’s election night victory speech of 4 November 2008.

(7)

of literature. We introduce three key text types of English as important contexts for further exploring grammar, outlining the typical structure of some key story genres, argument genres and text response genres. We hope that the texts and exercises we offer for your professional development will provide models that you can adapt for your classroom use.

Principles of language underpinning this book

The view of language that underpins this book is concerned with how we use language to make meaning. This is a social view of language, based largely on contributions from systemic functional linguistics (Halliday 1994; Halliday & Hasan 1976; Martin 1993). These principles about language, text and context, as outlined below, allow teachers to fully engage with the language strand of the Australian Curriculum for English.

Language is infl uenced by the context of use

The texts we use and the meanings we make with language are influenced by a number of factors outside language—those associated with the context in which language is being used. Features of the context which may influence and shape our language use include:

the cultural context—This refers to the broad cultural practices associated with different countries or ethnic groups but also to the institutionalised practices within groups such as schools, sporting associations or internet chat groups. Western and Asian ways of telling a story, for example, may vary, but so too might stories told in a blog, compared with those told in a public book reading.

the sociocultural context—Language also varies according to the different orientations or backgrounds of groups within cultures. Sociologists and linguists have noted, for example, that factors such as socioeconomic status, gender, age and ethnic background have a great influence on language choices. A letter to the editor by a teenage boy in the western suburbs of Melbourne about the need for more skate parks may use very different language choices to a letter on the same topic written by a middle-aged, middle-class woman.

the specific context—Aspects of the specific or local context, such as the activity we are engaged in, the nature of the interaction and the channel of communication, also have a great influence on language. A person might review a film using one set of language choices when speaking with a friend, and a very different set of language choices when writing a review for the school magazine.

Language is functional

Language enables us to get things done. We use spoken and written texts to achieve different goals or social purposes. For example, we use stories to entertain, arguments to persuade and text responses to analyse a literary artefact. Texts that share the same social purpose and have many of the same features are called text types or genres.

This notion of function relates not only to whole texts, but to language itself. The language we use in different text types serves a number of functions simultaneously. Halliday (1994) describes these functions as:

the experiential function—the way we use language to represent our experiences of the world

English teachers also want a grammar that allows them to go beyond identifying discrete structural features to one which allows them to explore how language choices combine in texts such as Rudd’s to work their rhetorical magic. For example, along with the repeated choices of complex adverbial phrases at the beginning of each sentence in the excerpt above, Rudd has used the rule of three and repetition (we say sorry), which amplifi es or ‘turns up the volume’ of the apology. The choice of the personal, inclusive pronoun ‘we’ is also effective in sharing the responsibility of the apology with parliament and ‘more broadly’ with the people of Australia. We will explore these powerful rhetorical strategies later in the book.

Many English teachers are daunted by the signifi cant challenges involved in learning a more extended system of grammar than they have had access to in the past. For older teachers, the word ‘grammar’ conjures up memories of stultifying lessons in parsing and analysis, red pen on a composition and their own keen awareness of the gap between the ideal and the real in actual communication. For younger teachers, it suggests mysterious, often unfamiliar knowledge about rules of agreement or structure which they reach for in moments of student diffi culty with a sentence.

Many English teachers have undertaken their own teacher training or high school education in an era when there was a deliberate avoidance of explicit teaching of grammar. Some of these teachers may even recall negative experiences in learning traditional grammars at school, in particular the frustration of learning about parts of speech and sentence-based grammatical rules which didn’t relate to the literary or everyday texts they studied or taught with. As a result, they may have avoided teaching and learning with any form of grammar. Some English teachers may continue to use the simplifi ed forms of these traditional grammars which have featured in various textbooks, fi nding that they provide some insights into sentence structure, however fragmented and shallow. Yet another group may argue that while grammar has always been part of ‘core business’ in English, it should be taught ‘at the point of need’ rather than systematically built into their curriculum planning.

Exercise 1.1

At this stage, you might like to take a moment to reflect on, or discuss with a colleague, your own experiences of learning and teaching grammar. Which of the groups mentioned earlier would you locate yourself in?

Whatever your prior experiences with learning and teaching grammar, we have designed this book so that it can meet a range of various teacher needs. In the remainder of this chapter, we outline the key principles of an expanded system of language, as this reconnects both retrospectively with older traditions of rhetoric and prospectively as it underpins the Australian Curriculum for English. We introduce this grammar as a system of choices which arise out of four key contextual factors:

our purpose for using language (the genre or text type) what we are talking/writing about (subject matter or field) with whom we are interacting (audience or tenor)

the role played by language (mode and medium).

We illustrate how working with this view of grammar can help English teachers support their students not only to understand the structure of English as a language, but to develop their students’ literacy (in terms of comprehending, evaluating and creating written and multimodal texts) and engage in a more informed appreciation

(8)

6 Working Grammar Grammar and its environment in English 7

Implications of a social view of language

for teaching and learning

The social view of language described earlier has three important implications for teaching and learning about language in the secondary English curriculum:

1 The development of students’ spoken and written language does not take place naturally, but is supported by key experts in their educational communities. Teachers who are aware of how language is structured to achieve distinctive purposes can better support students in appreciating and creating the increasingly complex range of texts they encounter in secondary English.

2 Access to a metalanguage—a language for talking about language—allows teachers to be explicit about how language functions when modelling or jointly constructing texts with students. This metalanguage is a particularly important tool kit for describing and critiquing the language resources used by speakers and writers to construct different versions of reality in the texts they produce. 3 The model of language and context applies to multimodal texts as well as those

based on words alone. We live in exciting multimodal times, where technology offers us the opportunity to represent meanings not just through spoken and written words, but also through intriguing combinations of words, images, animations, hyperlinks and sound, to name but a few modes. The written or spoken word is central to meaning-making in all the modes studied in English, and this is the system we have focused on in this book. However, the model outlined above provides essential tools which can also be applied to multimodal texts—see, for example, Kress and Van Leeuwen (2006).

the interpersonal function—the way we use language to interact with others the textual function—the way we use language to create well-organised and cohesive texts, both written and spoken.

The words we choose and the way we organise them within texts refl ect these functions and help the text achieve its purpose.

Language is a system of register choices

The language system is a network of grammatical and lexical (word) choices which can be seen as a tool kit with which we can make particular meanings in particular contexts. We draw on different areas of the language system (or different tools) depending on whether we are representing:

the field—what’s going on, who’s involved and the surrounding circumstances. This set of choices is related to the experiential function.

the tenor—the roles, relationships and feelings involved in interacting with others. This set of choices is related to the interpersonal function.

the mode—the different modes or channels of communication, whether these be written, spoken or multimodal. This set of choices is related to the textual function.

These three factors of fi eld, tenor and mode combine to shape the register of a spoken or written text in its specifi c context. The term ‘register’ has long been used by English teachers to refer to different ways of speaking or writing, determined by such things as class, gender or age. For example, in the fi lm Educating Rita, Rita initially uses only a colloquial and everyday register of English but develops in addition a more specialised and formal register through the interactions, topics and modes of her study at university. Throughout this book, we use the concept of register to refer to the combination of grammatical resources which create the fi eld (the what), the tenor (the who) and the mode (the how) of a text as it achieves its particular purpose (or genre). The relationship between these aspects of context (fi eld, tenor and mode) and the grammatical systems drawn on (the experiential, the interpersonal and the textual) is represented in fi gure 1.1.

Aspect of context Language function

Field Experiential

Tenor Interpersonal

Mode Textual

(9)

Having briefly situated a contemporary functional view of grammar within a historical context, we will now illustrate how this model of grammar does its own work in three of the text types commonly used in secondary English. In doing so, we hope to model how English teachers can make grammar ‘work’ to develop their students’ literacy (in terms of comprehending, evaluating and creating written and multimodal texts) and to engage them in a more informed appreciation of literature. We introduce three key genres of English—narrative, text response and exposition—as important contexts for further exploring grammar.

For a number of years now, the concept of genre has been an important one for English teachers as they help their students to structure well-formed narratives, text responses and expositions. The word ‘genre’ conjures up slightly different things for different people, ranging from a description of the mode in which a text is designed (e.g. an email, a speech, a newspaper report) to a classifi cation of a particular type of text (e.g. fi lm noir, detective fi ction). In this book, the word ‘genre’ is used synonymously with ‘text type’; that is, as a relatively predictable form of spoken, written or multimodal text that has evolved in a particular way to do particular jobs. By the time they reach high school, students are required to identify the features and purposes of a range of different text types and be familiar with the typical stages and language features of text types, such as narrative, expositions, debates and reviews of literary works.

The key genres of

English: a context

for exploring

grammar

Our view of genre then is as a particular organisational and grammatical structure that achieves distinctive social purposes in various forms of spoken, written and multimodal texts. Genres are shaped by the specifi c contextual factors of fi eld, tenor and mode, as discussed in chapter 1. The genres that students are required to interpret and produce in subject English provide a useful starting point for looking at patterns of grammar and meaning.

Genres and stages: a focus on narrative

Narratives, one of the story genres, explore human experience in order to entertain,

move and instruct their readers, listeners or viewers. They create a possible world in which unexpected things happen to individuals and where readers become involved in the conflicts or problems these characters confront and resolve. Narratives can teach through vicarious participation in the experiences of these possible worlds as characters attempt to resolve problems and reach a desired state, whether that be peace, triumph, wisdom or happiness. In order to achieve these purposes, narratives in western English-speaking cultures tend to have three essential stages:

orientation, where some background to the characters and setting is provided complication, where some problem is identified

resolution, where the problem is resolved.

Text 2.1 is a short narrative, written by Jack, a Year 8 student, with these three stages labelled.

Text 2.1: Jack’s narrative, ‘Never again’

Orientation Dad, Grandad, my friend Sam and I had planned the trip up North for months and now it was a reality. We’d packed the combivan with everything we were likely to need—surfboards, fi shing and camping gear, loads of goodies to eat and, to Mum’s amazement, even sunscreen!

Complication The trip was uneventful till we hit the border. Sure, the screeching of the fanbelt outperformed Grandpa’s snoring, but that was just background noise to a kid like me who grew up in a

household with seven others. After only fi ve hours on the road, Sam, who was an only child, went bright red in the face and started shaking violently. I thought he was pulling my leg until he let out an almighty scream. ‘Mr Kirk, stop, right here!’ That’s when we realised that Sam was a chronic claustrophobic and couldn’t bear high-pitched sounds. His mum hadn’t warned us that travelling in a noisy, cramped, overcrowded and badly tuned Volkswagen was likely to bring on an episode! Resolution We arranged for Sam to take the train home—he said he’d prefer that to travelling one

more metre in the confi ned space of the noisy Volksie. As I helped him with his backpack, he whimpered, ‘Sorry I didn’t tell you. I thought I had this licked.’ He ran towards the station in a cloud of red dust, at a speed I didn’t think him capable of. We’re still friends, but we stick to quiet outdoor walks these days!

The components of well-formed narratives do not always occur in the order above, and innovative storytellers often play with the staging of the story and with reader expectations in creative ways. Narratives do not need to start with an orientation, for example. We often read stories which open with the complication in order to engage the reader immediately in the action, as indicated in fi gure 2.1 on the next page.

(10)

10 Working Grammar _{The key genres of English: a context for exploring grammar} 11

Complication Orientation Resolution

Figure 2.1

Longer or more complex narratives will also have these stages repeating, so that we have a series of mini-complications and resolutions which accumulate progressively as shown in fi gure 2.2.

Orientation Complication 1 Resolution 1 Complication 2 Resolution 2

Figure 2.2

Some narratives, such as fairy stories, are more fi xed and predictable in structure than others because of the relative lack of change in their purposes. Most genres, however, are dynamic and change over time as the purposes they were established to achieve change. They also vary in structure depending on the cultures in which they variously function. Teachers can make explicit the stable and variable structures of a range of narratives across different times and cultures, thus offering valuable scaffolding for students struggling with creating or identifying a range of narrative structures. By modelling the ways that other writers have modifi ed or played with such structures, we can also open up further creative possibilities for our students.

In appendix 1, we have provided a model of a more intricate narrative than text 2.1: ‘The Tres Malum’, written by Saro, a Year 7 student (page 185). We use extracts from Saro’s text (as well as from published narratives) throughout this book to make explicit the key structural and grammatical resources which are typical of this genre.

Genres and stages: a focus on text response

Another genre often required in secondary English is text response, where students discuss the aesthetic, moral and social value of a range of texts. In responding to literary texts, students identify what defines an author’s individual literary style, or compare texts in terms of aspects such as their subject or theme, characterisation, text structure, plot development, tone, vocabulary, sense of voice or narrative point of view. In this section we examine one type of text response, a review, where a single text is interpreted and analysed as a literary artefact. Here, students are required to select examples, quotations and textual references that support their interpretation of the text. To do this effectively, they need to be supported in the structure of the valued forms of such responses and their key language features.

Reviews are staged in ways that allow their purposes of describing and evaluating to be achieved, with the following three stages being common:

context, which provides background information such as author, illustrator, artist,

type of work and a brief synopsis

text interpretation, which analyses elements of the text, such as the main

characters and key incidents, stylistic features and staging

judgement, which provides an evaluation of the text by expressing an opinion.

These stages are illustrated in text 2.2, a review written by Christopher, a Year 8 student. The text has been divided according to its structure, and the stages named according to how they function to achieve the text’s purpose of reviewing.

Text 2.2: Christopher’s review of Theodore Taylor’s The Cay

Context The book The Cay by Theodore Taylor is set in the Caribbean, during World War II. It is a story about survival and friendship with a powerful message about racial prejudice. Phillip, an 11-year-old boy, and Timothy, a wise 11-year-old negro sailor, fi nd themselves stranded on a sandy coral cay after their freighter was hit by a German torpedo. Phillip has been left blind after he suffered a serious blow to the head. He must learn to put aside his prejudices and trust Timothy. Timothy becomes Phillip’s eyes and teaches him vital survival skills.

Text

interpretation: themes

One of the themes that stands out in this story is survival. When faced with a life-or-death situation, survival soon becomes their only concern. After a serious dose of malaria Timothy realises that he has to train Phillip to survive on his own. He knows that their chances of rescue are slim and that he will not always be there for Phillip.

Two other themes are fear and courage. These go together because being courageous means overcoming your fear. An example of this is when Phillip climbs the palm tree for the fi rst time or when he fi rst explored the island with his cane. After Timothy dies, Phillip again shows tremendous courage when he begins to put his life back in order and when he goes looking for lobsters in the waterhole.

Text

interpretation: stylistic features

The story is written in a narrative style, with Phillip as the narrator. There is a mixture of Phillip retelling the events and direct speech between Timothy and Phillip. For example, ‘I frowned at him. “I don’t think I can help you, Timothy. I can’t see any rocks.”’ The way the writer spells Timothy’s speaking gives you an idea of his accent and how he pronounces words. For example, ‘young bahss’, ‘we ready Phill-eep’, ‘dis be a western starm’.

The writer uses detailed descriptions to create a vivid picture in the reader’s mind of the scenes as well as the action. For example, ‘There was nothing but blue sea with occasional patches of orange seaweed’ and ‘The rain sounded like bullets hitting on the dried palm frond roof.’ Some of the descriptions are also when Timothy is ‘painting’ pictures for Phillip. ‘Describe the sky to me. He said it was fl aming red and that there were thin veils of high clouds.’

Judgement I found this book an exciting and thrilling novel. The writer made me want to keep reading and reading until I was fi nished. Many of the scenes kept me in suspense. I could feel the characters’ emotions and as I was reading could clearly see the main themes beginning to emerge.

As English teachers, we can support our students by providing them with a metalanguage to investigate distinctive aspects of the text they are responding to, whether this be its theme, it style or its use of language. The nature and structure of text responses become more complex in the senior years of English, where students are required to establish a stance on a question or opinion on aspects such as themes, ideas, issues, effectiveness, entertainment value, intellectual value and literary merit. We explore this structural complexity, and the associated increase in grammatical complexity, in chapter 10. Appendix 1 contains further models of text responses written by students across the years of secondary English and we use extracts from these as well as from published text responses throughout this book to illustrate how grammar works.

(11)

Genres and stages: a focus on exposition

Expositions are one type of persuasive text, where arguments are provided in support

of a single position. The distinctive functional staging of expositions in Anglo-Western culture is more or less a linear arrangement of thesis, supporting arguments and

reinforcement of thesis. This staging serves the key purpose of expositions as persuasive

texts, some of which persuade the reader/listener to think in a certain way by accepting a theory or position (e.g. that needle injection facilities improve the rehabilitation of drug addicts), or to persuade the reader/listener to act in a certain way (e.g. to petition local government to establish an injection facility for drug addicts).

Text 2.3 is an exposition on graffi ti, written by a Year 9 student, Kim. It has been divided into its different stages, which are named according to how they function to achieve the text’s purpose of persuading people to think in a certain way.

Text 2.3: Kim’s exposition, ‘Some graffiti should be seen as a form of art’ Thesis Almost every week there is an article or letter in the newspaper on the subject of

graffi ti. Usually, the writers are complaining about quick and careless scrawls done on public or private property. This form of graffi ti should not be considered art, but other more complex and skilful forms should be. More advanced forms of graffi ti brighten up our suburbs. These forms take great artistic skill to design and carry out. If they were recognised as art, young artists would have better opportunities to develop their skills and this would benefi t the community.

Supporting arguments

It is important, fi rst of all, to distinguish between the different types of graffi ti. First, there is the ‘tag’, which is the stylised writing of the graffi ti artist’s name. Then, there is the ‘throw-up’, which is bigger and more time-consuming than the tag, but generally just big bubble letters in two colours. Lastly, there is the ‘piece’ (short for masterpiece), which takes considerable time and effort to execute. Unfortunately, most of what we see on our streets is tags and throw-ups and really just vandalism. Pieces, on the other hand, are usually done by people who see their work as art and themselves as artists.

If good graffi ti is seen as art and then encouraged, it has the potential to improve the look of our streets. Good graffi ti pieces are colourful, vibrant and attractive. In most cases, they are far more attractive than the walls they are painted on, which in the old parts of cities are often ugly, dull and uncared for. There are many examples of spectacular murals in the inner city. In fact, some have even become tourist attractions.

Recognising talented graffi tists as artists would give them the opportunity to further develop their skills. Since they cover very large areas, real graffi ti pieces require high-level artistic skill to design and carry out, and most are planned in detail on paper fi rst. Most of the best examples of graffi ti art can be found on walls where the artists have been given permission to do their work by councils or other organisations. This means they have the time to polish their work to a high, artistic standard. If this happened more, the whole community would benefi t.

Reinforcement of thesis

To sum up, there is more than one kind of graffi ti. The more basic forms are generally not art. However, the more complex examples of graffi ti are a form of art requiring considerable artistic skill. If these forms of graffi ti were recognised as art, they could make our streets more attractive and, at the same time, give talented young artists an opportunity to develop their skills further and contribute their skills to the community.

Writers and speakers often further structure their expositions within each stage in order to make their argumentative logic even clearer. English teachers can explicitly support their students in structuring not just the whole text, but the individual paragraphs of an argument. For example, teachers might advise students to structure their thesis stage in two phases, using a position statement followed by a phase in which they preview the arguments to come. They might likewise advise their students to structure each of their supporting argument paragraphs into two clear phases, one containing a point, identifi ed in a topic sentence, followed by an elaboration through example or illustration. In offering such explicit advice, teachers are providing valuable support for students as they struggle to shape their structure within, as well as between, paragraphs.

Kim’s exposition on graffi ti is presented again below with the phases within each of the stages labelled. (Note: the table below continues on the next page.)

‘Some graffi ti should be seen as a form of art’ Text structure Almost every week there is an article or letter in the

newspaper on the subject of graffi ti. Usually, the writers are complaining about quick and careless scrawls done on public or private property. This form of graffi ti should not be considered art, but other more complex and skilful forms should be.

Position THESIS

More advanced forms of graffi ti brighten up our suburbs. These forms take great artistic skill to design and carry out. If they were recognised as art, young artists would have better opportunities to develop their skills and this would benefi t the community.

Preview

It is important, fi rst of all, to distinguish between the different types of graffi ti.

Point SUPPORTING

ARGUMENT 1 First, there is the ‘tag’, which is the stylised writing of the

graffi ti artist’s name. Then, there is the ‘throw-up’, which is bigger and more time-consuming than the tag, but generally just big bubble letters in two colours. Lastly, there is the ‘piece’ (short for masterpiece), which takes considerable time and effort to execute. Unfortunately, most of what we see on our streets is tags and throw-ups and really just vandalism. Pieces, on the other hand, are usually done by people who see their work as art and themselves as artists.

Elaboration

If good graffi ti is seen as art and then encouraged, it has the potential to improve the look of our streets.

Point SUPPORTING

ARGUMENT 2 Good graffi ti pieces are colourful, vibrant and attractive.

In most cases, they are far more attractive than the walls they are painted on, which in the old parts of cities are often ugly, dull and uncared for. There are many examples of spectacular murals in the inner city. In fact, some have even become tourist attractions.

(12)

14 Working Grammar _{The key genres of English: a context for exploring grammar} 15

‘Some graffi ti should be seen as a form of art’ (cont.) Text structure Recognising talented graffi tists as artists would give them

the opportunity to further develop their skills.

Point SUPPORTING

ARGUMENT 3 Since they cover very large areas, real graffi ti pieces

require high-level artistic skill to design and carry out, and most are planned in detail on paper fi rst. Most of the best examples of graffi ti art can be found on walls where the artists have been given permission to do their work by councils or other organisations. This means they have the time to polish their work to a high, artistic standard. If this happened more, the whole community would benefi t.

Elaboration

To sum up, there is more than one kind of graffi ti. The more basic forms are generally not art. However, the more complex examples of graffi ti are a form of art requiring considerable artistic skill. If these forms of graffi ti were recognised as art, they could make our streets more attractive and, at the same time, give talented young artists an opportunity to develop their skills further and contribute their skills to the community.

REINFORCEMENT OF THESIS

Knowing what a typical exposition looks like allows teachers and their students to make comparisons with rhetorically powerful variations as they construct their own and evaluate other expositions. Like most other genres, expositions can be organised in more fl uid and less stable structures, according to their purposes. As English teachers, we may have observed the development of hybrid text types (e.g. infomercials, documentaries). The better our tool kit for examining the structures of these emerging genres, the more we are able to help our students identify how these text types achieve their persuasive power.

The kinds of expositions required also vary as students progress through the years of secondary English. Sometimes they may be required to construct expositions that use strong appeals to the emotions in order to persuade. At other times they may be required to construct more analytical forms of exposition, drawing more on the processes of ‘logos’ or logic, rather than ‘pathos’ or emotion. Teachers can make explicit the varying structures and language choices of these two forms of persuasion, thus reducing the amount of guesswork students might undertake to identify what’s required of them.

Throughout this book, we draw on a range of expositions written by secondary English students and by published adult writers, as these embody a range of structures and language features. We also use extracts from powerful speeches by contemporary politicians, including Kevin Rudd’s Apology to the Stolen Generations, delivered in the Australian Parliament in 2008, and Barack Obama’s victory and inauguration speeches to the American people upon his election as President of the United States. These speeches represent landmark moments in each nation’s development, and provide excellent sites for analysis of the power of language to unify sharply divided social groups through a reasoned and empathic rhetoric. As masterful orators, both speakers drew on rhetorical strategies that reconnected with Roman and Greek traditions of politics as oratory. See Love and Macken-Horarik (2009) for an elaboration of this discussion.

These speeches, along with many others, are part of an evolving tradition of political rhetoric and are dynamic in the ways they galvanise ‘people power’ behind an ethic of social inclusion, political justice and participatory democracy. The kind of grammatical analysis we offer in this book captures the complex achievement of texts such as these, while allowing teachers and students to appreciate how their speakers’ language choices combine in ways that move listeners so deeply. We invite you as teachers to use these texts and the examples of student and published expositions presented or referred to in appendix 1 for your own purposes.

The genres of English: a framework

We have now explored the structures of three of the key genres that students both interpret and produce in secondary English—narratives, reviews and expositions. Note, however, that these three genres also belong to larger ‘families’ of genres:

Narratives are part of the story family, which includes recounts, biographies and autobiographies. Narratives come in various forms, including novels, short stories, poetry, plays and film.

Expositions are part of the argument family, concerned with persuasion in its various forms. In exposition, writers and speakers persuade by putting an argument for or against an issue, appealing variously to emotion or to reason. Other argument genres include debates, which present two sides of an issue, and discussions, which consider a proposition from a number of different perspectives before arriving at a recommendation.

Review is part of the text response family, where writers and speakers describe and evaluate various aspects of a literary, media, performance or artistic text. Other text response genres include interpretations, which provide personal opinions and reactions to a text, and expository responses, typically in the form of an essay arguing for or against a thematic issue.

The three genre families of subject English, with their various more specialised genres are represented in fi gure 2.3.

Narrative Recount Biography/ Exposition Discussion Debate Review Interpretation Expository

Autobiography response

Story family Argument family Text response family

Genre families in English

Figure 2.3

Teachers and students will draw on various genres from the story, argument and text response families at different year levels and in different contexts of subject English. These genres are thus important sites for exploring grammar, and we use examples from each of these families in subsequent chapters. In the next section, we briefl y illustrate how grammar ‘works’ in an extract from a narrative written by a Year 7 student.

(13)

Genres and grammatical features

The Australian Curriculum for English not only encourages teachers to use structural guidelines to support students in interpreting and creating texts for imaginative, informative, evaluative and persuasive purposes, it also outlines how these text types draw on distinctive patterns of grammatical features.

Throughout the following chapters, we look closely at a wide range of these grammatical features and examine the way in which they function to make meaning in narratives, text responses and expositions. A snapshot of this kind of linguistic exploration is given in table 2.1, where we briefl y illustrate some of the grammatical features of an extract from a narrative, ‘The Tres Malum’, written by Saro, a Year 7 student. The extract (text 2.4) is one of the complication stages of Saro’s narrative.

We will use three different ‘lenses’ to systematically explore how a range of grammatical resources build important experiential, interpersonal and textual meanings in text 2.4. An experiential lens allows us to focus on the grammatical resources which help build the fi eld of the text; an interpersonal lens allows us to focus on the grammatical resources which help build the tenor of the text; and a textual lens allows us to focus on grammatical resources which help build the mode of the text.

Text 2.4: Extract from Saro’s narrative, ‘The Tres Malum’

Nirvin was on his way to the school that he worked at and was beginning to crave coffee so he went to the local café. When he got there he was turned off by the very weird combined smell of coffee beans and cheap deodorant. Today was particularly unwelcoming as every person in the café was huddled together watching a news report on the old television in the corner. Soon Nirvin too found himself drawn to the television set. ‘… although the bodies had no fingerprints on them, a small carved marking was found,’ said the reporter, as Nirvin started to become more interested in the story.

Now Nirvin was sweating as he had seen the symbol and the letter and he knew that this was not the doing of a mad mortal but symbolised something much grander and dangerous. It was the return of the Tres Malum.

Viewing this short text using the three lenses (the experiential, the interpersonal and the textual) at the same time, we can see how Saro has made language choices from three grammatical systems that together help him to construct this complication stage in his narrative. Not only do Saro’s language choices work together, as we illustrate in table 2.1, but they also accumulate (gather force) across his various orientation, complication and resolution stages, building dramatic tension as his narrative achieves its distinctive purpose of entertaining. He may not have made these choices consciously, but his and his teacher’s knowledge about the potential of these grammatical systems to build particular kinds of meanings will help him considerably in his future writing.

In chapters 3–10, we explore each of these grammatical systems in more depth, using texts such as Saro’s alongside other texts.

Experiential lens:

focuses on grammatical resources which build the fi eld of the text

Nirvin, the school, coffee, café, Tres Malum proper and common nouns name people and things

the very weird combined smell of coffee beans and cheap deodorant, the old television in the corner, a small carved marking

long noun groups provide atmospheric detail

went, got, was huddled, worked, was sweating action verbs in the past tense represent ‘happenings’

said saying verb reports speech

to the local café adverbial phrase describes setting

Interpersonal lens:

focuses on grammatical resources which build the tenor of the text ‘… although the bodies had no fi ngerprints on

them, a small carved marking was found,’ said the reporter

dialogue introduces characters’ voices

crave, turned off, knew sensing verbs represent ‘inner worlds’

weird, cheap, particularly unwelcoming words that show attitudes

Textual lens:

focuses on grammatical resources which build the mode of the text

Nirvin was on his way to the school that he worked at and was beginning to crave coffee so he went to the local café.

compound sentence connects multiple ideas

It was the return of the Tres Malum. simple sentence gives dramatic effect

Today, Soon, Now sentence openers signal time

(14)

Sentences, clauses and groups: structuring language for use 19

As we saw in chapter 2, language is organised to achieve various purposes, and its users draw on experiential, interpersonal and textual choices according to the context and the register required in a particular situation. In this chapter we look more closely at this organisation as it informs teachers’ knowledge of the building blocks of language.

The building blocks of the English language

We refer to the terminology of familiar grammars as we examine the different levels of the English language. These levels, or systems of building blocks, range from the largest to the smallest, as listed below:

text

paragraphs sentences clauses

word groups and phrases words (vocabulary or lexis)

parts of words (morphemes and phonemes) letters (alphabet).

The smallest of these components (letters) combine to produce constituents of the next level (parts of words) and so on up the scale. Our focus in this book is on those grammatical structures crucial to an understanding of how language is organised to make meaning in the texts of secondary English. The levels that we are most interested in, and how they are constituted, are illustrated in fi gure 3.1.

Sentences,

clauses and

groups: structuring

language for use

Word Word Word Word Word Word

Group Group Group

Clause

Figure 3.1

Building blocks: words

The smallest unit of meaning we focus on in this book is the word. You may already be familiar with some of the traditional grammatical classifications of words such as noun, verb, adverb and adjective. These are often referred to as ‘parts of speech’, although they are in fact a part of both spoken and written language. A brief summary of these word classes is given in table 3.1.

Word class Description Examples Noun A naming word that identifi es people, places, things,

ideas or qualities

girl, Perth, book, freedom, consideration

Pronoun A closed-class word (i.e. no new words can be added) that stands for a noun that has been used before

it, that, he/she/they, those, them, this

Verb A word that indicates what someone or something does, says, thinks, feels, is or has, or what happens to them

eat, make, think, talk, is, has, loves, cause, bring

Adverb A word that gives extra information about a verb or adjective to indicate such things as when, where, how or in what circumstances

now, occasionally, soon, overhead, downstairs, underwater, slowly, carefully, exquisitely

Adjective A word that gives extra information about a noun, by telling more about the qualities or kind of person, thing, place or idea

wonderful, enormous, silent, impressive, frightening

Article A closed-class word placed before a noun to indicate which person or thing you mean

There are only three articles: a, an, the.

Preposition Another closed-class word placed at the beginning of phrases indicating time, place and manner

on, in, for, from, by, at, onto, above, after, to

Conjunction A word that links two clauses, groups or words and, but, or, then, if, also, when, because Table 3.1

While it is useful to identify a word in terms of its class, this tells us little about how these individual words combine to make meaning. It is the larger ‘chunks’ of language that form meaningful message structures. Let’s now move up a level to look at the important building blocks of groups and phrases.

(15)

Building blocks: groups and phrases

As outlined in chapter 1, traditional grammars tend to focus on classifying individual words. Functional grammars, on the other hand, focus on the work these words do. In the table below, we have labelled each word in the simple sentence ‘Sunlight shone through’ from two different perspectives: a class and a functional perspective.

Word Sunlight shone through

Class Noun Verb Preposition

Function Naming ‘who’ or ‘what’ Naming the ‘action’ Naming ‘where’

In this example, each function is represented by a single word. However, in most of the texts used in secondary English, these functions are often represented by groups of words. These groups are like expanded words—each contains a core element which can be joined by other words to make a unit or group that ‘sticks together’ in a meaningful way. Note below how each word from the example above has been expanded into a group that still functions in the same way.

Word Sunlight shone through

Group A golden ray of sunlight was shining through the leaves Function Naming ‘who’ or ‘what’ Naming the ‘action’ Naming ‘where’

The noun ‘sunlight’ has been expanded to make the noun group ‘a golden ray of sunlight’, which still functions to name the ‘who’ or ‘what’. The verb ‘shone’ has been expanded to make the verb group ‘was shining’, which still functions to name the process or ‘action’ taking place. Because groups expand in this way, they are often used as a basic unit to analyse meanings in texts, even if they consist of single words. For example, we would identify the single word ‘sunlight’ as a group because we recognise that more details could be added to it without it changing its function. Groups are more manageable units than words for analysing how texts make meaning.

Descriptions of the different groups and the word classes that typically form them are shown in table 3.2 below. These examples are taken from that part of Kevin Rudd’s Apology speech where he is telling Nanna Nungala Fejo’s story.

Type of group Typical structure Example Verb group

Used with a noun group to say what something or someone does

• Main element is a verb.

• May contain helper verbs (to do with tense or opinion) before the main verb.

• She loved the dancing.

• Her family had feared that day … • But which church would care for them? Noun group

Names ‘who’ or ‘what’

• Main element is a noun, often used with an article (the, a). • Often contains adjectives or

‘describers’ before the main noun. • May include further expansion

after the main noun.

• A pronoun can also do the same job as a noun group.

• Now the children would be handed over to the missions …

• … she insisted on dancing with the male tribal elders.

• They brought … an Aboriginal stockman on horseback …

• She stayed at the mission until after the war .

Type of group Typical structure Example Adverbial group

Provides extra detail about the events, i.e. when, where, how

• Adverb: the main element is an adverb.

• Adverbial phrase: a preposition combined with a noun group.

• The kids were simply told to line up … • Nanna Fejo and her sister stood in the

middle line … Conjunctions

Text connectives

• A conjunction links clauses within a sentence.

• A text connective links sentences or paragraphs.

• … they ran for their mothers, screaming, but they could not get away.

• A few years later, government policy changed. Now the children would be handed over to the missions to be cared for by the churches. Table 3.2

Identifying groups

The use of probe questions such as ‘who/what?’, ‘what is happening?’ and ‘where/when/ how?’ is a good way to help distinguish the function of groups.

Who/what? probe for noun groups

What is happening? probe for verb groups

Where/when/how? probe for adverbial groups

Students often have problems distinguishing between noun groups and adverbials. One reason is that, as we will explore further in chapter 4, noun groups often occur within adverbial groups. An adverbial group often combines a noun group with a preposition, as can be seen in the following examples.

Preposition Noun group

to a methodist mission

by train

until after the war

Adverbial group

Note in these examples that the preposition introduces the ‘where/when/how?’ In combination with the noun, it forms what is sometimes referred to as an adverbial (or prepositional) phrase. In some adverbial groups, as in the last example, two prepositions (‘until after’), not one, precede the noun group. (See appendix 2 for a list of common prepositions used to introduce adverbial groups.)

Exercise 3.1

Text 3.1 on the next page has been divided into clauses, with each new clause beginning on a new line. The clauses have also been divided into groups. Label each group following the example (the labels for the conjunctions have been provided), and underline any prepositions in the adverbial groups. The last row will be used for exercise 3.2.

Working Grammar

An introduction for secondary English teachers

Sally Humphrey

Kristina Love

Louise Droga

Working

Grammar

Contents

Introduction

How to use this book

The texts used in this book

Other useful features of this book

A brief history of ‘grammar’ teaching

Grammar and

its environment

Grammar teaching in the

early twenty-fi rst century

Principles of language underpinning this book

Language is infl uenced by the context of use

Language is functional

Exercise 1.1

Implications of a social view of language

for teaching and learning

Language is a system of register choices

The key genres of

English: a context

for exploring

grammar

Genres and stages: a focus on narrative

Genres and stages: a focus on text response

Genres and stages: a focus on exposition

The genres of English: a framework

Genres and grammatical features

The building blocks of the English language

Sentences,

clauses and

groups: structuring

language for use

Building blocks: words

Building blocks: groups and phrases

Identifying groups

Exercise 3.1