Dr. Deryn Verity, Professor of English, Osaka Jogakuin College
Email: verity@wilmina.ac.jp
3 credits - No prerequisites. Required Applied Linguistics (III) course for Group 17 onwards
Letter Grade (Pass/Fail option)

Advisement note:
This is an Applied Linguistics III course and is required for all groups from Group 17 onwards.

Dates	Time
September: Sun. 30th October: Sun. 30th November: Sun. 18th December: Sun. 9th January: Sun. 6th, 30th	Sundays: 10am - 5pm

COURSE DESCRIPTION:

This course will introduce you to some of the fundamental principles of English grammar. Following the textbook, we will approach grammar from a structural, semantic, and functional perspective; i.e., for each grammatical structure we will consider its form, meaning, and use.

The material we cover in this course is aimed at providing you with the diagnostic tools you'll need in your classes to identify and understand learner errors and make informed decisions on how to address those errors. By breaking language down into it's various levels such as morphemes and phrases, you should develop a sense of which general areas learners are having trouble with. For example-

• Beginning learners might overgeneralize final -s. But what are they really doing? On the one hand, they might not be able to distinguish singular and plural- maybe their L1 doesn't make this distinction. Alternatively, they might be overgeneralizing 3rd person singular -s. Or they might be doing both. How do you know? Your knowledge of grammar will help you identify whether the problem is with noun or verb morphology so that you can plan a lesson accordingly.
• Familiarity with English phrase structure rules will help you understand why no predicate material can occur in the sentence subject The man, as in *The in that house living man is Jake. You would then want to address the idea of the subject in English.
• Knowing that because is an adverbial subordinator and that because of is a prepositional construction which requires a noun object will help you explain why a sentence such as *The team lost because of they were exhausted won't work. This might lead to a lesson on adverbial phrases.

Being able to diagnose errors such as these requires a familiarity with the various aspects of grammar covered in the textbook used in this course. Being able to make a lesson plan and design materials to address these errors are topics which can be covered in the TC Methods and especially the Practica Courses. As such, this grammar course is designed to cover pedagogically relevant grammar, but not the actual teaching of grammar. Having said that, though, we will be happy to consider pedagogical issues such as why some of the forms we cover in class might be troublesome to learners. We can discuss such Òlearnability issuesÓ in class, and they will be included in homework and quizzes. There will also be opportunities to explore aspects of spoken grammar and discourse grammar if time permits.

CLASS FORMAT:

The class will be conducted in lecture and small-group formats. Part of each lesson will be a formal presentation of learning points and part will involve the completion of tasks in pairs or small groups. Whole class discussions will occur throughout the sessions. Groups of students will also conduct seminar presentations on the teaching points relevant to specific chapters.

PRE-COURSE ASSIGNMENT:

This will be posted on the TC-Infoweb once registration has been finalized.

READINGS:

It is important that you keep up with the assigned readings. You will be responsible for material in the text that is addressed in the objectives even if we do not have the opportunity to discuss all the details in class.

TESTS AND FINAL EXAM:

Three tests and a final exam will be given during the course. Each test will mainly include material covered since the previous test. A cumulative final exam will be given during the last class of the semester and will include material covered throughout the course.

HOMEWORK:

Homework assignments will be assigned throughout the semester. These will typically ask you to analyze sentences and learner errors in terms of one or more grammar points presented in the textbook.

REQUIREMENTS AND GRADING:

1. Test 1 (15%)
2. Test 2 (15%)
3. Test 3 (15%)
4. Homework assignments (20%)
5. Presentation (15%)
6. Final Exam (20%)

BOOKS TO BUY:

Celce-Murcia, M., Larsen-Freeman, D. and Williams, H. (1999). The Grammar Book. Boston, MA.: Heinle & Heinle Publishers.
Time restrictions will permit us to cover most, but not all, of the material in the text book.

BIO-DATA:

Deryn Verity has a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Delaware, where she studied with Dr. Robert Di Pietro and Dr. James Lantolf. Currently teaching at Osaka Jogakuin College, she has taught English, applied linguistics, and graduate courses in teacher education at the New School University, St. Michael's College, William Paterson University (USA), Osaka University, and other institutions in the United States, Thailand, Poland and Japan. She held a Fulbright Lectureship in TEFL/Applied Linguistics in the former Yugoslavia (Nis, Serbia, and Ljubljana, Slovenia), and has given teacher training seminars for the U.S. State Department's "Partners in Learning" program in Morocco and Jordan. An active member of local and national JALT meetings, she served as Associate Editor of the JALT Journal for three years. Her primary interests in the field of teacher education include language awareness for teachers, sociocultural theory, and second language pedagogy.