Grammar rules, doesn´t it?

WORKSHEET

Ganna Matichyna, Academic Director

gmatichyna@booksservices.co.uk

1. Expand these newspaper headlines into complete, grammatically correct sentences.

a. FREE EYE TEST OFFERED TO ALL OVER-65s

b. SHARK ATTACK VICTIM BACK AT SCHOOL
c. LOG TRUCK CRASH DRIVER NOT GUILTY
d. DOLPHINS HELP MUTE BOY SPEAK
e. CRACK DOWN ON SPENDING, SCHOOLS TOLD

These headlines have two meanings. Expand each one twice to show both meanings clearly.

f. GARDEN GROVE RESIDENT NAÏVE, FOOLISH JUDGE SAYS

g. COMPLAINTS ABOUT NBA REFEREES GROWING UGLY
h. SISTERS REUNITED AFTER 18 YEARS IN CHECKOUT LINE AT SUPERMARKET

2. Write headlines for these article summaries. How concise can you make them without losing
the meaning of the story?

a. The government has announced plans to cut spending on the military.

b. The captain of a tanker involved in an oil spill off the coast of Portugal has been
found guilty of negligence.

c. The parties involved in the stalled peace talks in Cairo have agreed to resume their
discussions.

d. An unidentified man, who fooled bank staff into thinking the banana he was carrying
under his jacket was a gun, held up a city bank this morning and made off with over
$15,000.

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“Grammar is often a generic way of referring to any aspect of English that people object to.”
Jeremy Butterfield

Grammar as a Process vs. Grammar as a Product

“I, the teacher, will cut the language into lots of little pieces – called GRAMMAR – so that you, the
learner, will be able to reassemble them in real communication.”
But the learner fails to understand why those little pieces, now stuck back together, still (quite
often) fail to successfully produce sentences.
There is a difference between GRAMMAR and GRAMMARING, and GRAMMARING can’t always
be inferred from GRAMMAR, as the description of used language is not the same as the language
being used

Prescriptive Grammar

 describes when people focus on talking about how a language should or ought to be
used.
 tells you how you should speak, and what type of language to avoid.
 is commonly found in language classes, where the aim is to teach people how to use
language in a very particular (“proper” or “correct”) way.

Descriptive Grammar

 focuses on describing the language as it is used, not instructing how it should be used.
 tries to describe how the mental grammar can cause certain ordering of words, rather
than saying that the surface form is faulty due to prescriptive rules.
 Linguistics usually takes this approach to language.

Different types – or procedures - of communicative activities to help reinforce grammar. The

pedagogical processes for many of these activities intersect with one another, which is why we
present them here in a cycle, not simply as a list.

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Transfor
ming Sequencing

Elaborating Gap filling

Reconstructing

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