| Forum Home > English Grammar > How can I improve my grammar? | ||
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Site Owner Posts: 10 |
Can anyone give some suggestions on how to improve my grammar? | |
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Member Posts: 6 |
How to improve your grammar? By reading Grammar Books, especially those which focus more on grammar for communication than on accuracy or correctness. I don't think there is another way to improve grammar ... unluckily, in everyday conversation grammar rules are not taken into consideration very much | |
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Site Owner Posts: 10 |
Thanks Adriana for your post. Good adive. I would also add practice as much as you can with others and with native speakers if possible. With regards to "Spoken Grammar" I sort of agree with you. Spoken grammar is ubdoutedly different to written grammar but I would argue spoken language still has to follow the same basic grammatical rules. Here is a quote from a web page that I found on the topic. To the question 'Is there a special grammar of spoken English?', any of the three following answers might be offered:
The first answer does not need to be taken seriously, although it is surprisingly persistent in the mind of the folk grammarian. It is inherited from the age-old tradition associating grammar with the written language, and it is bolstered by examples such as the following, which, like others which follow, is from the Longman spoken corpus: No. Do you know erm you know where the erm go over to er go over erm where the fire station is not the one that white white. It is true that often spontaneous spoken language does seem to be grammatically chaotic
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Member Posts: 6 |
I would give answer 2. There is no special grammar for Spoken Emglish. Grammar rules are just the same for Written and Spoken English. But Spoken English is affected by all the variations a language has, and all the situations the speakers are involved in. Remember Sir Randolph Quirk? The Common Core of the language and all the variations? So, in my opinion, Spoken English seems to have its own grammar but, in fact, it doesn't. It's just changed according to the region you live in, the relationship between the speakers, the speakers' social background, the style, and some other varieties. But the "Common Core" remains the same. Definitely, my answer would be number 2 - (Maybe I'm being a little structured here). I can assure you that my own language (Argentinian Spanish) seems to have two different grammars, but it's not like that. The rules are the same for both Spoken and Written language or else, teachers at schools would be teaching different grammars and, in fact, they are not. | |
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Site Owner Posts: 10 |
Well I am glad we agree, that both written and spoken English and any language for that matter must have grammatical rules, and yes ultimately they are the same. All tenses in spoken and written English are the same. Words do not suddenly take on new meaning. However students do get confused because spoken and written language are different. I think it is helpful to explain to students some of the reasons why written language is different. Here are some reasonsI have thought of maybe you can think of more. 1) Written language is planned and thus is more structured; Spoken language is spontaneous and is therefore less structured. Spoken language adopts features or tools to help use cope. e.g. em, ah, for allowing time to think, Oh yes, ah, for agreeing etc
2) Written language is normally a monologue unlessit is a script from a play, thus it contains the views and ideas of one personor at least it one coherent text. Spoken language can be between many people. Thus it can involve “overlapping” when one or more people are speaking at the same time. Turn taking the rules as when to speak and when to listen. This canbe very hard for students as each language has their own turn taking rules. e.g. Spanish or Latinate languages tend to have much more “overlapping” people are expected to speak over each other to join the conversation. In English you should wait for the other person to stop talking and then “it is your turn” In Japanese for instance a pause of one or two seconds is needed between speakers.
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Member Posts: 6 |
Let's not forget two features of Written language that spoken language does not have: cohesion and coherence. In my opìnion, the example given by the Longman Spoken corpus is a perfect example of the lack of these two features in Spoken English. As a Teacher of Grammar, I'd never dare say a language has two different grammars. | |
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