Grammar and Linguistics for Language Teachers

This unit aims to help university students to develop a better understanding of the grammar and linguistic skills needed to effectively teach English. The unit introduces university students to discourse level features of language, and functional and descriptive grammars. It also covers areas such as word classes, tense and aspects of various sentence structures.

The unit connects with professional experiences and supports university students to articulate and reflect on important questions related to their study. This unit will also provide university students with opportunities in which to investigate personal, school-based, theoretical and socio cultural explanations of experiences in educational settings. In addition, university students will examine teaching and learning principles that underpin the creation of safe and secure classroom environments.

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this unit, students will be able to:

1. Analyse, appraise and reflect on theories of language construction from a linguistic perspective including systematic functional grammar;
2. Articulate the foundations of linguistic analysis;
3. Adapt appropriate meta language to discuss the linguistic features of a range of texts (oral and written); and
4. Apply this knowledge in language teaching and learning practice.