Language Matters

In this section of The ELT Notebook we look at areas of grammar, lexis, phonology and discourse which often confuse teachers. 

1. Articles and Classroom Activities

• Prepositional Verbs and Verbs Followed by a Prepositional Phrase: What's the Difference?
• Used to Do and Be Used to Doing
• On Contractions : Part One
• On Contractions : Part Two
• They, Them, and Their : Singular or Plural
• Identifying People
• Getting to Grips with Get
• Have Got : Part One
• Have Got : Part Two
• Even If and Even Though
• Understanding Will
• Will and Be Going to : What's the Difference?
• There is and There are
• Possessive, compound nouns, or "of" plus noun phrase?
• Plural uncountable nouns, anyone?
• An introduction to the features of connected speech

2. Input and Tasks / Tasks and Input

a) Grammar

• Analysing word class, phrase and clause elements
• Relative Clauses
• The English Verb system (1): Tense and Time; The So-Called "Conditionals"
• The English Verb System (2): Aspect
• The English Verb System (3a): Auxiliary Verbs 
• The English Verb System: (3b): Modality 
• The English Verb System (4) Question Formation 
• Comparatives and Superlatives

b) Discourse

• Cohesion and Coherence (1)
• Cohesion and Coherence (2)

c) Phonology

• Learning the Phonemic Script
• Phonological Features of Connected Speech
• An Introduction to Stress and Intonation

d) Lexis

• Beside/Besides
• Lexical Chunks (1)
• Meaning and problems for learners - along, down, through, over, behind

e) Miscellaneous

• Pot Pourri (1) (Tests your understanding of a variety of items)
• Pot Pourri (2) (Tests your understanding of a variety of items)
• Pot Pourri (3) (Tests your understanding of a variety of items)  
• Punctuation (1)

3. Genre Analysis

This section will gradually be built up to cover a variety of genres. We're starting with...

• Press Articles: Popular Science Articles / Human Interest Stories / Sports Reports  / Business News
• Reviews:  Book Reviews / Customer and Visitor Reviews / TV Programme Reviews
• Fiction:  Novels
• Non-fiction books and articles: Biographies
• Blog Posts: Travel Blogs
• Procedural Texts: Rules for Children's Games
• Publicity/Advertising: Holiday Accommodation Websites / Book Jacket Blurb
• Personal letters and emails: Complaints / Cover Letters for Job Applications
• Expert Advice: Job interviews / Proofreading

If you look at the different genres category by category, you'll notice that although the topics may be different, the same features often occur in all the sub-genres within a category. This shows that they are features of the overall genre rather than the topic itself, and would be liable to occur in many other specific sub-genres within the same category.

4. Terminology

And don't forget that in The ELT Glossary there are a lot more explanations of commonly used terms. See : 

• Terms connected with phonology
• Terms connected with lexis
• Terms connected with grammar
• Terms connected with discourse

But if there's an area of language which confuses you, and you'd like us to cover it, leave a comment or a question on our Facebook page.