Spoken language

Practising spoken grammar, Ken Paterson, 13.45-14.15, Monday 18th April

Spoken grammar is basically spoken English that includes discourse markers, interjections, ellipsis, headers and etc.

An important question is “why should we teach it?”
It is an easy and economical way of interaction. Additionally, spoken grammar which gives students extra linguistic choice is useful and interactional as it is stated by Ken Paterson.

Most of the teachers know these issues, but they do not think spoken grammar is teachable. Contrary to popular belief, Ken Paterson proves that it is teachable!

He gives a perfect example to explain it and asks teachers to write these two sentences on the board, analyse them and decide which one seems more natural with their students:

This DVD player, is it the cheapest in the shop? (with header)
Is this DVD player the cheapest in the shop?

Another technique is to use the texts/dialogues of the textbooks and analyse them with the students.

We raised our awareness about the essential part of the language that is not taught and took some creative activities with us!