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Problems with Grammars There are some well-known problems with English grammars. 1. Some and any Michael Lewis has written extensively on the 'some for positive sentences and any for negative sentences and questions' rule. These rules have such obvious exceptions [see box right] that they are clearly misleading overgeneralisations and as such they are not suitable for any serious pedagogical grammar. 2. a few vs few Similarly the 'a few for positive and few for negative ideas' 'rule' is equally problematic. This perfectly normal sentence breaks this rule: 'Few people come here at this time of the year. It's so peaceful and quiet.' Few means 'less than a few'. There is often a negative connotation but it depends on the context. Few does not have a core negative idea. 3. used to Grammars often characterise used to as meaning 'something which happened in the past but does not happen now'. Consider this situation: 'I used to live here when I was a child. I'm glad to be back [living here]. Used to says nothing about now. You can create examples where it seems that it does say something about now but that is a feature of the example - not used to. Used to means something happened in the past and then stopped [for whatever reason]. It may have started again or it may not. The co-text or context [not used to] will make this clear. Features of Current Pedagogical Grammars Most pedagogical grammars (and this includes coursebook grammars) published by British, American and Australian publishers are derived from larger and more complex reference grammars of English, combined with some grammatical organisation peculiar to English language teaching [like the order verbs are presented to learners] and they have been designed so that native speaker teachers and non-native speaker teachers of English can explain English grammar in English and because of this they have a number of well-known weaknesses. The clearest such weakness is their treatment of tenses. Despite the fact that time and tense do not have a simple relationship, student grammars and learning materials are still written as if they do, as was noted many years ago by Broughton among others [see box right]. As part of our re-imagining of English grammar we will completely divorce the idea of tense from time. Tense does not equal time. Tense is not about time. At all. Weaknesses of Current Grammars 1. The realities of English grammar have been simplified into so-called rules so they can be taught in English. 2. Concrete rules are preferred to abstract ones – thus most verb grammar is anchored to the idea of time having a past, present and future, and tenses also being past, present or future. This is a relatively easy concept to teach but more difficult to learn and use, as it is, as Broughton noted, fundamentally flawed. 3. Simplistic and abstract timelines are used to illustrate these past, present and future verb form meanings: Apart from the flaw of correlating past tense with past time etc, these timelines are conceptually difficult for some learners, even visually orientated ones. 4. Despite the simplification of grammar into concrete terms, complex metalanguage is used to describe grammatical items eg auxiliary verb; dummy auxiliary etc 5. Rules are mostly of use rather than meaning. The first natural question about a word is 'What does it mean?'; even words used to signal some sort of grammatical meaning are also words and have a meaning (with very few, if any, exceptions). This natural question is not answered in most grammars. 6. Certain forms have long lists of these 'use' rules which are difficult for a learner to operationalise. 7. Explanations of use are sometimes laborious and unhelpful: the present perfect is used for an action or state which began in the past and continues into the present, or an action which has been repeated in the past, or an action completed very recently or one of some present relevance. Rules have lots of exceptions – because they are simplified. 8. Rules are often modified or challenged by these 'exceptions' in later books in coursebook series, which can lead to student confusion, disbelief or cognitive dissonance. 9. Certain grammar areas – notoriously the noun phrase - are largely neglected.
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