Spoken Grammar: a Guide for English Language Teachers

🎓 Course Title: Spoken Grammar: a Guide for English Language Teachers

Headline: Techniques and materials for teaching new items of spoken English

Excerpts from reviews of the course:

Modern English Teacher, May/June 2022 🌟 "It will help teachers develop the skills needed to understand and teach an evolving language field. Most importantly, it should go some way to helping language learners have a more realistic understanding of how authentic conversations take place and how they can have a place in them." (Mark Rooney, Monash University)

TESOLANZ Newsletter, July 2020 🌟 "Overall I found this a highly interesting course which opened my eyes to many lexico-grammatical points I hadn’t thought about before. In my opinion, it's essential for any teacher looking to enhance their students' spoken English abilities."

English Australia Journal, August 2019 🌟 "This course provides a much-needed focus on the practical aspects of teaching spoken grammar. It offers innovative approaches and materials that can be directly applied in the classroom."

Contents and Overview

The course is divided into five sections, each focusing on different aspects of spoken grammar:

1. Word order and ellipsis: Heads and tails; Declarative questions; Ellipsis.
2. Emphasis: Hyperbole; Interjections; Cleft structures and binomial phrases.
3. Vague language: Vague categories; Vague placeholders and quantities; Vague lexical bundles.
4. Marking spoken discourse: Adverbials; Discourse markers; Ways of using direct speech.
5. Response language: Response tokens and response questions; ‘So’ and ‘do’; Synonymous language and dependent clauses.

Course Format and Resources

Each section includes:

• A short video lecture covering lesson concepts, language explanations, naturalistic dialogues, and practice activities.
• A downloadable Word document with all the lesson materials, which you can customize for your own teaching needs.

Practice and Revision:

• Complete the student exercises before checking the answers.
• Teach some of the items while still in the course.
• Use the downloadable REVISION exercises at the end of each section.
• Take the ‘Test Yourself!’ challenge after completing all sections (available in Lecture 22).

Sample Lesson Plans:

Detailed sample plans with lesson stages, answers to exercises, and student worksheets are provided in Lectures 12, 18, and 22. These serve as a guideline for creating your own effective lessons.

Additional Resources

• PowerPoint Presentation on Spoken Grammar: Adaptable for presentations to colleagues or at local conferences/staff development events. (Available after Lecture 22)

Please note:

1. This course is exclusively focused on spoken grammar and does not cover other aspects such as verb tenses, which are already well-represented in existing teaching materials.

2. This course is designed for intermediate level learners or above who are serious about improving their spoken English proficiency.