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SHORT ARTICLES

Year 7; Issue 3; May 05

Explaining grammar with metaphors

Simon Mumford, UK
When learning English students are faced with the task of remembering a
huge number of unfamiliar rules, many of which are full of exceptions and
irregularities. However there is much in the world that students are familiar
with. I suggest that by linking the unfamilar, i.e. what the language students
are learning, to the familiar, objects and processes in the world around
them, we can help them learn, by finding metaphors for language points.
Here's what I mean.
Metaphors for relative clauses
Omitted relative pronouns and stapling
Write two sentences on the board, one with the relative pronoun as the
object of the clause e.g. 'The man that I saw was crying', and the other, the
subject, e.g. 'The man that was crying was taken to hospital'. Point out that
the first has two pronouns, the personal 'I' and the relative 'that', whereas
the second had only the relative pronoun. Now take two pieces of paper and
staple them together twice. This represents the first sentence. Staple two
more pieces of paper together, just once. This represents the second
sentence. Now remove one staple from the first pair of papers and the
papers remain connected, but if you remove the staple from the second pair,
they become separate. Use this to show that where the relative pronoun
refers to an object in the relative clause, the pronoun can be omitted.
Reduced relatives and pencil sharpening.
In the sentence 'The man (who was) killed in the accident was my
neighbour', the words in brackets can be removed. By taking out the words
we make the sentence better, more economical, efficient and sharper, just
as sharpening a pencil removes something to make the pencil more
efficient. You could use this metaphor for other situations where words are
omitted, eg 'I can swim and (I can) run.'
Non defining (extra information) relative clauses and paper-clips
Clauses that add extra information, i.e. non-defining, need a comma.
Defining clauses, where the clause is part of the main sentence, do not.
Therefore we could say that the commas are a kind of paperclip, which
attach the extra information, just as you need a paperclip to hold an extra
piece of paper onto the first one. Emphasise this by writing example
sentences on pieces of paper: 'It's a long way to his house, which is deep in
the forest.' (written on two strips of paper, clipped together after 'house'. Put
the clip on the bottom, where the comma would be.) An example of a
defining relative clause is: 'I prefer the house which is deep in the

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forest.' (One strip of paper)

Some metaphors for spelling and other changes to words.
Doubling consonants and body building
We double the consonant on some words before adding the endings -er,
-est, -ed, -ing, e.g.rob-robber, stop-stopped. These are words that end in
consonant-vowel-consonant. We could explain to students that because
these are usually short (therefore light) words with only single vowels and
consonants, they need to put on weight and build themselves up before they
are strong enough to carry their new endings, which in some cases are as
big as the words themselves! Of course words with double
consonants, 'cold-colder', or double vowels,'Green-greener' already strong
enough!
Articles and titles
As a general rule, we use the article 'the' before nouns we are familiar with
and 'a' if they have not been mentioned before in a text. We could explain
these words as two titles, one for unfamiliar people and one for familiar. For
example, a child may refer to an adult as 'MrsSmith' if he does not know the
person, but 'Aunty Mary' to someone he knows. 'A' is the unfamiliar title,
'the' the familiar title. When we meet a word for the second time, or the first
time and it is already known to us, we can use the familiar form,v'the'.
Comparatives and family homes
Some comparatives are formed with the addition of the ending 'er' while
others add an extra word 'more'. Explain that smaller families can grow by
building extensions on their houses e.g. 'small' becomes 'small+er'.
However, long words are families that are already crowded because they
have two syllables or more (two or more branches of the same family living
together!) and they can only grow by building a second house: 'more'.
Metaphors to explain different verb forms and uses.
Question forms and chess moves
There are two main ways of making question forms in English. One is
reversing the order of the subject and verb: 'She can swim-Can she
swim?' The other is using an auxiliary, 'He likes ice-cream- Does he like icecream?' We can draw an analogy with chess. When the king is checked, the
player must move it out of check. There are two ways of doing this; moving
the king or moving something between the king and the piece attacking it. In
the first case, inversion, we change the place of the subject and verb. In the
second case we move something in front of the subject, the auxiliary verb.
So we can say that in questions, the subject must not be open to attack (i.e.
at the beginning of the utterance) and depending on the verb, modal or
main, it will be 'protected' in one of these ways.
Irregular verbs and prisons
Explain that while many verbs are regular, others are different because they

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'break the law'. So, you can put them in different 'prisons' according to how
much they break the law. Low-level offenders are words which double a
consonant e.g. 'stop-stopped'. Medium offenders have two different forms
e.g. 'hold-held-held'. Maximum security is needed for those with 3 forms
e.g. 'eat-ate-eaten', as they cause a lot of trouble. Of course the completely
unpredictable, e.g. 'be-was/were-been', need a special psychiatric unit to
themselves! This has a serious purpose; it shows that although past forms
are usually only classified as regular and irregular, there are degrees of
irregularity. You could draw a 'prison' as follows:
Class of prisoner
Danger to learners.
Example
Example
low risk
Regular but double final consonant.
stop stopped stopped
stab stabbed stabbed
medium risk
Irregular with two different forms.
hold held held
get got got
serious offenders
Three different forms. Habitual irregularity!
see saw seen
swim swam swum
psychiatric unit
Warning- very unpredictable behaviour
go went gone
come came come
Non-offenders, just visiting prison!
Completely harmless!
visit visited visited
walk walked walked
Action and state verbs and opening bottles.
The way we open wine and beer bottles can be used as a metaphor for
action and state verbs. Opening a wine bottle is a process that you can see.
You push the corkscrew into the cork then pull it out. It takes time. On the
other hand, a beer bottle is opened in a very short time. The bottle is either
in the open or unopened state, there is nothing in between. Similary some
verbs are processes or actions, e.g. walk, sit, write, while others are states,
e.g. think, love, know.

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Present perfect and scissors.

The scissors have two blades. They work by closing down and pressing
together to cut through paper. The present perfect similarly connects two
times, the past and present. The closing and meeting of the blades
represents a time period from the past to present.(one blade represents the
past, the other, the present.) The length of this time is not important. It could
be a few seconds, as in 'I have just finished dinner.' (a small snip of the
scissors) or it could be a long time, eg 'People have spoken English for
hundreds of years' (a big chop with the scissors). By contrast, in the past
tense, the blades never meet and the present tense is a knife with only one
blade.
Conclusion
With metaphors we can give students security by relating language to things
they know about, thus getting their attention by focusing on the familiar. We
could bring bottle openers, scissors, staplers, chess pieces, pencil
sharpeners and paperclips to class to help get the message across. By
letting students handle and use these as they are actually using the
language, the learning experience could become much more memorable.