Second Language Learning and Language Teaching

Structural grammar
Language teaching has also made use of structural grammar based on the concept of
phrase structure, which shows how some words go together in the sentence and
some do not. In a sentence such as ‘The man fed the dog’, the word ‘the’ seems some-
how to go with ‘man’, but ‘fed’ does not seem to go with ‘the’. Suppose we group the
words that seem to go together: ‘the’ clearly goes with ‘man’, so we can recognize a
structure ‘(the man)’; ‘the’ goes with ‘dog’ to get another ‘(the dog)’. Then these struc-
tures can be combined with the remaining words: ‘fed’ belongs with ‘(the dog)’ to get
a new structure ‘(fed the dog)’, not with ‘the man’ in ‘the man fed’. Now the two
structures ‘(the man)’ and ‘(fed the dog)’ go together to assemble the whole sentence.
This phrase structure is usually presented in tree diagrams that show how words build
up into phrases and phrases build up into sentences (see Figure 2.1).
What is grammar? 21
The
man
fed
the
dog
Figure 2.1 An example of a phrase structure tree
Structural grammar thus describes how the elements of the sentence fit together
in an overall structure built up from smaller and smaller structures.
Teachers have been using structural grammar directly in substitution tables
since at least the 1920s. A typical example can be seen in the Bulgarian course-
book English for the Fifth Class (Despotova et al., 1988) (see Figure 2.2).
They
I
You
can draw a
black
white
red
dog
car
rose
Figure 2.2 A typical substitution table
Students form sentences by choosing a word from each column: ‘I. . . can draw
a. . . black. . . rose’. They are substituting different words within a constant gram-
matical structure. Substitution tables are still common in present-day coursebooks
and grammar books, though more today as graphic displays of grammar, as
Chapter 13 illustrates.

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Such exercises have long been a staple of language teaching in one guise or
another. Structure drills and pattern practice draw on similar ideas of structure, as
in the following exercise from my own Realistic English (Abbs et al., 1968):
You can go and see him.
Well, if I go. . .
He can come and ask you.
Well, if he comes. . .
They can write and tell her.
Well, if they write. . .
The students replace the verb each time within the structure ‘Well, if pronoun
verb’, dinning in the present tense for possible conditions. Chapter 13 provides
further discussion of such drills.