ISSUES IN GRAMMAR

PREPARED BY: NURLIYANA NOR HAZIQAH NUR AL FHATIHAH

MISMATCH BETWEEN FORM AND FUNCTION

There is no one to one correspondence between form and function It is very often possible to use a number of different forms to express a similar function.

TENSE SIMPLE PRESENT

FORM he she + verb +-s it

EXAMPLES

FUNCTION

He always reads the The "simple vacancies in the present" gives newspapers. expression to ... - a repeated action that often happens First he reads the vacancies in the - to a list of facts. newspapers, then he does his work.

The moon goes round the earth and - to an "eternal the earth goes truth". round the sun.

For example: I am going tomorrow - present continuous I go tomorrow - simple present tense I will go tomorrow - simple future tense I will be going tomorrow future perfect continuous

EXCEPTIONS TO THE RULE

There are many exceptions to the grammar rules. For example; when students has learnt that the past tense of a verb is formed by adding ed to the root words but they will become confuse with past tense form such as read, began, went and sat. This is because of the regular and irregular verbs.

 REGULAR VERB - change their form very little. For example: The past tense and past participle of regular verbs end in ed. walk walked walked
IRREGULAR VERB we sometimes need a dictionary to help us write the different forms of irregular verbs. For example: see saw seen

INTERFERENCE FROM THE LEARNERS OWN LANGUAGE

The influence from children mother tongue will give impact on their grammar. Example 1: The rules of SVA in English does not have a parallel in BM or Mandarin.

English I drink Saya minum

Bahasa Melayu

He/she drinks
We/you/they drink

Dia minum
Kita, awak, mereka minum

 Example 2: In BM, a sentence with although, in it also have a but. For English, we cant put although and but together in a sentence. Most of the pupils write: Although he is clever but he is lazy.
He is clever but he is lazy

 Example 3: The third person singular(he, she, it) is not distinguished for gender in BM and Mandarin.
Bahasa Melayu Dia seorang penjaja English He is a hawker

Dia pergi ke pasar

Ia terjatuh

She went to the market

It felt down.

LACK OF MOTIVATION
Grammar learning requires multiple repetition and this is BORING It also requires the perception of rules which may be difficult and abstract for some children. Therefore, very few children enjoy learning grammar.