ISSUES IN GRAMMAR

1. ISSUES IN GRAMMAR PREPARED BY: NURLIYANA NOR HAZIQAH NUR AL FHATIHAH

2. MISMATCH BETWEEN FORM AND FUNCTION • There is no one to one correspondence between form and function • It is very often possible to use a number of different forms to express a similar function.

4. For example: • I am going tomorrow - present continuous • I go tomorrow - simple present tense • I will go tomorrow - simple future tense • I will be going tomorrow – future perfect continuous

5. EXCEPTIONS TO THE RULE • There are many exceptions to the grammar rules. • For example; when students has learnt that the past tense of a verb is formed by adding –ed to the root words but they will become confuse with past tense form such as read, began, went and sat. • This is because of the regular and irregular verbs.

6. REGULAR VERB - change their form very little. • For example: The past tense and past participle of regular verbs end in –ed. walk walked walked • IRREGULAR VERB – we sometimes need a dictionary to help us write the different forms of irregular verbs. • For example: see saw seen

7. INTERFERENCE FROM THE LEARNERS’ OWN LANGUAGE • The influence from children’ mother tongue will give impact on their grammar. • Example 1: • The rules of SVA in English does not have a parallel in BM or Mandarin.

9. Example 2: • In BM, a sentence with although, in it also have a but. • For English, we can’t put although and but together in a sentence. • Most of the pupils write: • Although he is clever but he is lazy. x • He is clever but he is lazy √

10. Example 3: • The third person singular(he, she, it) is not distinguished for gender in BM and Mandarin.

11. LACK OF MOTIVATION • Grammar learning requires multiple repetition and this is BORING • It also requires the perception of rules which may be difficult and abstract for some children. • Therefore, very few children enjoy learning grammar.