The main purpose of this research is to argue the case for" A Communicative Pedagogical Grammar" based on an educationally informed approach to language learning. As a reflection of the central nature of grammar in the process of communication, the literature of the 90s has begun to express the need for pedagogical grammar which reflects real language communication. It is believed that this need can be met by the adaptation of McEldowney's pedagogical grammar which she began to develop 25 years ago in relation to the learning of English. The hypothesis is that the nature of the grammatical description and methodology followed is central to the concept of teaching grammar communicatively. In other words, the pedagogical description should be discourse based and the methodology should reflect the role of grammar in real life communication. Therefore, this thesis is making the argument for McEldowney's approach to grammar learning and teaching on the basis that her framework integrates grammar and lexis in a piece of discourse. It also integrates learning tasks and these tasks are designed in such a way that they increase learners' awareness of the role of grammar in communication: i.e. grammar exists to enable us to mean. The thesis is divided into six chapters. Chapters One and Two outline the development of the main stream language learning grammars, syllabuses and methodologies under the central headings to be found in the literature - "structural", "situational", "functional" and "communicative If • Chapters Three to Six present McEldowney's "discourse-based" approach to language teaching and learning and argue for her communicative pedagogical grammar which sees grammar as a tool of communication which is integrated into pieces of discourse and taught through an integration of the language skills of listening, reading, speaking and writing. The main argument of these chapters is that the majority of syllabuses (structural, situational, functional, communicative) and the grammar books and coursebooks of the 90s still basically treat grammar in the same way as it is treated in a formal descriptive grammar. They do not on the whole consider authentic grammatical usage as a means of illustrating the normal communicative behaviour of linguistic form and the type of description they use leads to many learning problems of the sort that McEldowney's approach seeks to solve.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:488054 |
| Date | January 1997 |
| Creators | Imssalem, Nuwara Mohammed |
| Publisher | University of Manchester |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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