Un-raveling some of the mysteries

Explicit teaching of grammar can sometimes be a problem for native English speakers. Most of us learn our first language - mother tongue - implicitly. That is, we make subconscious conclusions and decisions about the rules of our language. Think back on your observations of how some of the babies in your lives mastered spoken language. Remember those cute mistakes. Mis-cues such as "I eated my cookie," and "I hided my toys, " are really smart errors based on Baby's conclusion that if I can hide my toys today, then, yesterday I hided them. Obviously what happens before now must take an -ed ending, right!?

The problem for most speakers of a first language is that we don't actually learn the RULES that govern the grammar of our language. Therefore, when people who are native speakers of our language ask us why we say something the way we say it, we cannot always tell them WHY.

Use this section as a resource when you wonder about how to answer those inevitable questions that students bring up about grammar and language. The material is intended to be teacher friendly. It my not necessarily be material that can readily be taught to students. A student who does not approach language learning with an academic perspective may not necessarily be interested in knowing about the eight parts of speech. It is, however, useful for us to know that parts of speech exist and how to name them if the need arises. Just for fun check out this powerpoint that discusses the different parts of speech.
  • Parts of Speech (343 KB)
    • speech.ppt