Tuesday, May 02, 2017
Grammar is a child's game for adults
English
Grammar, Dynamic and all
Abstract:
English is a living language and as such it has a
living grammar. That’s this living grammar I tried to capture in this textbook
or description. It is in French, except of course the quotations and examples.
The ordering party at the time of research and writing wanted it in French.
But a grammatical description of a language cannot
help you with speaking the language, at times not even with reading it. Beyond
the grammar you may learn and understand you have to develop a practice of the
language. Nowadays I am only working with advanced students who are engaged in
advanced careers in medicine or in hi-tech, for instance Artificial
Intelligence. Up to last year I also worked in the very specialized field of
payroll and pay slip management.
The best method for “self” learning and teaching is to
look for means to be in contact with oral and written English on a very regular
basis and to be able to practice written and oral expression in English. Today
with modern communication, the Internet, email and the telephone, smart or not,
one can have that constant contact with English, oral and written, reception
and production.
That’s
what I practice with the students I work with. I propose for example triads of
activities based on documents available free in open source, both written (news
articles and various reports) and oral (podcasts, news programs, films), and
each stage of the triad (that has three stages) leads to a 1,000-1,200-word
essay and a one-hour telephone conversation on tasks, topics set from the very
start.
We
can also add to this regular work two extra activities when possible.
One
full five-day week of daily 30-minute telephone calls on a document chosen by the
student (three times) or the teacher (twice) alternatively and provided to the
student or to the teacher in the morning for the afternoon or the evening from
Monday to Friday.
The
last possibility if it is feasible is a three-or-four-hour one-on-one every six
weeks on special documents or special topics on the documents of the current
triad plus a podcast or a film.
The
topics are chosen by the student and are OK’d by the instructor who is first of
all an author (the triad itself) and then a facilitator for speaking and
writing. All can be done at a distance. I insist on the telephone for direct
oral communication and not skype because the telephone is a lot more difficult since
communication and understanding have to take place without any visual contact,
and the telephone is an essential means of communication in many professional
fields.
I
am available for any help or guidance for such a project to be discussed and
set up if feasible. A proper contract is discussed and signed by the student on
one hand and the Association la Dondaine which is the master mind of such an
activity (dondaine@orange.fr) on the
other hand.
Research
Interests:
Languages
and Linguistics, Distance Education, Self-regulated
Learning, Teaching
English As A Foreign Language, English Grammar, Face-to-Face Communication, Distance
Learning, The Internet, Self
Assessment in Language Teaching, and Telephone
VIRTUAL
TRAINING
TRIAD ONE
I./ SCHEDULE
[…]
II./ TASKS
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# posted by Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU @ 2:27 PM 
