Speaker
Description
The presenters will demonstrate that English grammar, made comprehensible to the learners by explaining the empirical nature of grammatical principles, can reduce the learners' burden to learn English. This rational way of learning grammar will help the learners who have learned somehow to listen or speak by means of communicative approach, to brush up their English for better reading or writing.
In many Asian countries, English is taught as a foreign language. In this EFL environment, English is learned in a communicative way. Of course, this helps the learners in the initial stage, but if the learners need to read or write advanced English, a good command of grammar, together with expanded vocabulary, is essential. However, English grammar nowadays is still taught in the framework of traditional grammar, which, based on the 19th century prescriptive grammar, merely sets grammatical rules with no explanation of whys. Therefore, the learners have no choice but to cram themselves with a host of rules without understanding or asking themselves why. This grueling, but fruitless way of learning is a heavy burden to the learners, and the rules learned by heart will not last long.
The presenters will demonstrate a way of making grammar comprehensible to the learners by adopting some principles of the current scientific studies of grammar, such as generative or cognitive grammar: with an instance of two kinds of modifiers, adjectival and adverbial and by focusing on adjacency.
