C. Meyer
Office: Wheatley 6-68
Office phone (with voice mail): 287-6748
E-mail: meyer [at] cs [dot] umb [dot] edu
To get this handout on line, go to: http://www.cs.umb.edu/~meyer/courses/apling629.html
Office hours: T: 5:30-7:00, Th: 2:30-4:00, or by appointment

Required texts and materials:

Andrea DeCapua, Grammar for Teachers (available in the UMB bookstore or from online vendors such as Amazon)
Additional readings (either on e-reserve in the library or available on the World Wide Web)

Course goals:

Apling 629 has three primary goals: (1) to briefly trace the development of English from Old English to Contemporary English; (2) to discuss in detail the grammatical structure of Contemporary English; and (3) to explore issues related to the teaching of grammar to speakers of English as a second language. This will therefore be a course in both language theory and language pedagogy.

Course requirements:

1. Regular attendance
2. Participation in class discussions
3. Familiarity with UMass-Boston's policies on plagiarism and academic dishonesty
4. Two papers (each counting 25% towards your final grade). The first paper will require you to examine a disputed usage in English; the second paper will require you to compare and evaluate pedagogical resources for teaching grammar to second language learners. Each paper will be 6-8 double-spaced pages in length.
5. Two take-home exams  (each counting 25% towards your final grade)

GT = Grammar for Teachers
All other readings are on either e-reserve or the WWW (to obtain an article on e-reserve, go here and then click 'accept' after typing in the course password, which I will give you in class).

Introduction

Sept. 10: Course policies and goals; introduction to the study of language.

The English Language--Past and Present--and the Rise of Prescriptivism

Sept. 17:  "A Brief History of the English Language"; Wallraff, "What Global Language?";  Irwin and Nagy, "Bostonians /r/ speaking:
A Quantitative look at (R) in Boston"; Wallace,  "Tense Present: Democracy, English, and the Wars over Usage"; Regional New England Pronunciations 

Talking About Grammar

Sept. 24: GT, "What is Grammar?," ch. 1, pp. 1-18; The Multiple Meanings of Grammar; Meyer, "Twentieth-Century Developments in Traditional Grammar" (on e-reserve); GT, "Morphology," ch.2, pp. 21-43; Hypertext Books, The Clause Rank: From and Function

Noun, Adjective, and Adverb Phrases

Oct. 1: GT, "The Noun Phrase," ch. 3, pp. 45-71; Charlotte Currie and Richard Beaubien, "Framing the English Article: The Influence of Time Frame on Article Use in Academic Discourse" (on-line); GT, "Adjectives and Adverbs," ch.4, pp. 83-118.

Verb Phrases

Oct. 8: No class, I will be out of town attending a conference

Oct. 15: GT, "Introduction to Verbs and Verb Phrases," ch. 5, pp. 121-160, and "Time, Tense, and Aspect of Verbs," ch. 6, pp. 165-202; Pinker, "Broken Telephone" (on e-reserve); Dennis Oliver, "Phrasal Verb Page" (located on Dave's ESL Cafe).

Oct. 22:  GT, "Modal Auxiliary Verbs and Related Structures," ch. 7, pp. 211-241; Meyer, "Corpus Linguistics, the World Wide Web, and Language Teaching"; Go here to get a copy of "Simple Concordancing Program," the concordancing program I will be demonstrating in class to illustrate one way to use corpora in the second language classroom. There are versions for Windows and Macintosh computers. Paper #1 due.

Prepositional Phrases/ Form and Function Revisited

Oct. 29: Grammar Book, "Prepositions," ch. 21, pp. 401-424 (on e-reserve); Tan, Fixed Expressions in EFL: The Case for Prepositional Clusters; "Form and Function", pp. 1-8,  Internet Grammar of English, Survey of English Usage, University College London; Kosur,  English Prepositions and Prepositional Phrases: The Six Main Functions of Prepositions 

Clauses and Sentences

Nov. 5:  GT, "Basic Sentence Patterns and Major Variations," ch. 8, pp. 245-276 and ch. 9, "Compound Sentences and Introduction to Compound Sentences," ch. 9, pp.281-315

Nov. 12:  GT, ch. 10, "Complex Sentences Continued: Relative Clauses," ch. 10, pp. 319-347 and "Complex Sentences Continued: Noun Clauses," ch. 11, pp. 353-379; Take-Home Exam #1 due.

Nov. 19:  GT, "Verbal Constructions," ch. 12, pp. 383-411.

Nov. 26: No class, Thanksgiving Holiday

Teaching Grammar

Dec. 3: "Experiential Skills for Future Grammar Teachers: Feedback from the ESL Classroom"; David Mulroy, "The War Against Grammar"; Truscott, J., 1998. “Noticing in Second Language Acquisition: A Critical Review”; Marianne Celce-Murcia, 1991. "Grammar Pedagogy in Second and Foreign Language Teaching." (on e-reserve); Marianne Celce-Murcia, 1992. "Formal Grammar Instruction: An Educator Comments." (on e-reserve); Stephen D. Krashen. 1992. "Formal Grammar Instruction: Another Educator Comments"; Macaro and Masterman. 2006. "Does Intensive Explicit Grammar Instruction Make all the Difference?" (on e-reserve).

Dec. 10: Stephen Andrews, 1999, "Why do L2 Teachers Need to 'Know about Language'? Teacher Metalinguistic Awareness and Input for Learning"; Rod Ellis, 1998. “Teaching and Research: Options in Grammar Teaching.” (on e-reserve); Byrd, "Grammar FROM context: Re-thinking the teaching of grammar at various proficiency levels"; Various authors, "Modules to Teach Grammar FROM Discourse"; Paper #2 due.; Take-home exam #2 will be sent out by email after class. Exam #2 will be due no later than 10:00 am on Monday, Dec. 21 (more details later)

THIS SYLLABUS IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE AT ANY TIME: This is the first time I've used Grammar for Teachers in this class. I'm therefore not exactly sure how long it will take us to get through the individual chapters of the book. So we may fall behind a bit as the semester progresses. However,  I won't change the due dates for assignments.