Most important grammar?
I am doing a research on teaching grammar. I’m trying to find out if there is an ideal way of teaching grammar items to EFL/ESL learners. One of my research questions is:
“Which grammar items are considered ‘core elements’ of the English grammar?” In other words: which grammar items are the absolute base on which the rest of the grammar is built?
An example of a ‘core element’ would be the present simple of ‘to be’: am / is / are. You need to know these to be able to ‘build’ other grammar, such as the present continuous.
Examples of grammar items that I would not consider ‘core elements’ are the past perfect passive or the differences between certain conditional sentences. These are for advanced learners and not really essential for being able to understand / communicate in English.
I hope you now know what I mean by ‘core elements’.
My question to you: which grammar items do you consider to be ‘core elements’ of the English grammar, and why?
Top answer
Difficult question, as answers will certainly vary. If you've studied a foreign language yourself, you can rely on that experience. For English: subject-verb agreement; at least 250 common, everyday verbs; thorough understanding of negative and interrogative formations in the simple present; prepositions (crazy things, but one must begin at some time perhaps studied in "sets" with a few examples of each); basic word order S+V+O (difficult for speakers of language for whom it may be even the reverse); for speakers of Asian languages they need to start very early in learning to "close" syllables that have a final consonant sound - very difficult when leaving a language with open syllables that all end in a vowel sound, and are often mono-syllabic.
- Difficult question, as answers will certainly vary.
- If you've studied a foreign language yourself, you can rely on that experience.
- For English: subject-verb agreement; at least 250 common, everyday verbs; thorough understanding of negative and interrogative formations in the simple present; prepositions (crazy things, but one must begin at some time perhaps studied in "sets" with a few examples of each); basic word order S+V+O (difficult for speakers of language for whom it may be even the reverse); for speakers of Asian languages they need to start very early in learning to "close" syllables that have a final consonant sound - very difficult when leaving a language with open syllables that all end in a vowel sound, and are often mono-syllabic.
- These seem to be some "core elements" to me, though not necessarily exclusive to others.
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