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TOPIC 12

ESSENTIAL MORPHOSYNTACTIC ELEMENTS IN ENGLISH.


ELEMENTARY COMMUNICATIVE STRUCTURES. PROGRESSIVE
USE OF GRAMMAR CATEGORIES IN ORAL AND WRITTEN
PRODUCTIONS TO IMPROVE COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE.

0 INTRODUCTION 2

1 ESSENTIAL MORPHOSYNTACTIC ELEMENTS IN ENGLISH


2
1.1. Morphemes
1.2. Words
1.3. Sentences

2 ELEMENTARY COMMUNICATIVE STRUCTURES PROGRAMMING IN THE FL.


AREA 7
2.1. Aspects of structures: formal, semantic and pragmatic
2.2. Elementary structures for socialization, managing information and expressing
attitudes

3. PROGRESSIVE USE OF THE GRAMMATICAL CATEGORIES IN ORAL AND


WRITTEN PRODUCTIONS TO IMPROVE COMMUNICATIVE
COMPETENCE_____________________ 8
3.1. Communicative Competence
3.2. Differences between oral and written language
3.3. Procedures of learning grammar
3.4. Teacher’s attitude towards error

4. CONCLUSION
5. BIBLIOGRAPHY / WEBGRAPHY

1
0 INTRODUCTION
The present essay aims to study THE MAIN MORPHOSYNTATIC UNITS AND HOW THESE UNITS can be used to
convey meaning at a basic level.

To explain this in depth we need to establish a relation between the topic and the educational law. Based on this,
according to the Organic Law 3/2020, 29 December, which modifies the Organic law 2/2006, 3rd of May, of
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education (LOMLOE), there are many good reasons for encouraging students to learn a foreign language. The
language is the instrument that allows us to communicate with others and to organize our inside world. And in fact,
developing the Communicative Competence is the aim of Foreign Language Teaching. Moreover, the curriculum for
Primary Education, in which the foreign language area is included, is stated by Royal decree 157/2022 of 1 of March
st

and the Decree 61/2022 of 13 of July (for the Community of Madrid), establishing the three main/basic Learning
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Knowledges: communication, interculturality and plurilingualism. It constitutes the minimum teaching requirement
for Primary Education including between them, objectives, and key competences such as: Social and Civic
Competence (SCC) or Linguistic Communication Competence (CLC). Thus, students should know how language is
organized and what meanings are implied with these structures to interact. As Francisco Mora said: “To learn is not
only to perceive and reach the meaning and its memorization, but fundamentally to associate perceptions or ideas
and to find meanings in them”.

Hence, in this topic, I will first develop the ESSENTIAL MOPHOSYNTACTIC ELEMENTS. The second part of the essay
will deal with ELEMENTARY COMMUNICATIVE STRUCTURES. The third part will discuss the goal of grammar and the
organization of the grammar teaching, proposing various techniques. Finally, I will give a brief conclusion of the topic
and I will show the bibliography that has been used for the development of this topic. Now that I have given a brief
introduction about the topic, I will begin the first part of my topic.

1. ESSENTIAL MORPHOSYNTACTIC
The ELEMENTS
scope of a linguistic description can be narrowed by confining it to a particular level of

analysis.

Language has different levels of analysis: phonological level (human speech sounds),
semantic level (meanings), morphological level (forms and morphemes) and syntactic level
(set of rules that specify with combination of words).

Morphosyntax uses criteria from both morphological and syntactic levels to study language.
Syntax is concerned to the way words combine to form sentences, while morphology deals
with internal structure of words. Essential elements of morphosyntax are morpheme, word
and sentence, which are analysed below.

1.1. Morphemes
 Morphemes are the smallest grammatical units. Example: un-friend-ly. We can
distinguish between free morphemes, which occur on their own as separate words as
history, garden, and bound morphemes, which do not occur on their own as prefixes
and suffixes.

 Free morphemes can be divided into lexical morphemes, which are words that carry
the content of the message (such as nouns: car) and functional morphemes, which are
mainly functional words (such as conjunctions (and), prepositions (but) or articles (a)).

 Bound morphemes can be divided into inflectional morphemes, which indicate


aspects of the grammatical function of a word, such as: gender (masculine, feminine),
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voice (active, passive), tense (present, past, future), number (singular, plural, dual) or
person (first, second, third) and Derivational morphemes, which are used to make new
words.

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There are different morphological processes to form new words. Affixation is the most
common process. It can occur through:
 Prefixation: affix placed before the base of the word. Ex: prehistory.
 Suffixation: affix placed after the base of the word. Ex: historian.
 Infixation: Combination of prefixation and suffixation. Ex: un-friend-ly
 Conversion: a word changes its class without changing its form. Ex: name (n), to
name (vb).
 Compounding: two or more lexemes combine into a single new word. These words
may be written as one word or as two words joined with a hyphen. Ex: sunflower,
mother-in-law, post office. Reduplication is a type of compounding in which both
elements are the same or similar: bye-bye.
 Clippings: a word is shortened without changing its meaning. Ex: laboratory – lab,
mathematics – math.
 Blending: parts of two or more words combine to create a new word which meaning
is a combination of the meanings of the original words. Ex: breakfast + lunch →
brunch, Spanish + English → Spanglish
 Abbreviation a word or phrase is shortened. Ex: Dr. – doctor, Jr. – Junior. Initialism is a
type of abbreviation formed by the initial letters of a word or phrase, as USA. If the
new word is pronounced as one and not as letters, it is called acronym: PIN (Personal
Identification Number)

1.2. Words
Words are units of expression which native speakers easily recognize in both the spoken and
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written language, words are characterized by standing at their own and they are units with
internal cohesion. There are different word classes that are important in the acquisition of a
language, because they help us to construct sentences.

 Nouns: David Crystal (1987) defines a noun as a word whose job is naming or
labelling. Nouns can classified into:
- Proper nouns: names of people or places, with capital letter at the beginning.
Ex.: Manchester or Julia.
- Common nouns can be:
 Countable nouns (individual nouns that can be counted, ex: pencil) and
non-countable nouns (indefinable mass, ex: water).
 Variable nouns (singular and plural form, ex: pencils) or non-variable
nouns (no mark of plurality, ex: fish).
 Concrete nouns (refer to things that you can see, feel o measure, ex:
pencil) or abstract nouns (refer to thing that you can’t observe or
measure, ex: danger).

 Adjectives: words that describe nouns. We can find: attributive adjectives (comes
before that noun, ex: he is a nice boy) or predicative adjectives (go after the verb, ex:
the boy is nice). Besides, adjectives are gradable; they can be modified by adverbs.
(“The boxes are really heavy”) and they occur in the comparative and superlative
form. Ex: more dangerous than/ the most dangerous, smaller than/ the smallest.

 Verbs: denote a process or state of being. They are categorized in two main groups:
- Main verbs: which have tense, aspect, person and number. They can be
classified by the formation of the past tense in:
Regular (3rd person s, -ing, -ed) or irregular (derived from Anglo-Saxon
and have different endings in the past simple and past participle). Ex.:
looked and ate. The most irregular verb in English is the verb “to be” with
eight different forms.
- Auxiliary verbs: restricted both in form and distribution. They are always used
with lexical verbs. Ex.: may or might: May I go to the toilet, please?

 Adverbs: modifies a verb, adjective or another adverb by giving information about time
(tomorrow), place (here) or manner (adding the suffix –ly to adjectives: suddenly) in
which an action or process takes place. There are also adverbs relate to Degree: very,
quite and Doubt: perhaps.

Once we have given the open classes, lets get into the closed ones:

 Determiners: serve to specify the number and to define nouns. Some of the most
important type of pronouns are:
- Definite/ indefinite articles: the, a/an.
- Possessives: my, your.
- Demonstratives: this, that.
- Quantifiers: many, much.
- Indefinite: some.
- Numbers: one, hundred.

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 Pronouns: substitute nouns. Some of the most important type of pronouns are:
- Personal: I, you, he, she.
- Possessive: mine, yours.
- Reflexive: yourself, myself, themselves.
- Demonstrative: these, this.
- Interrogative: what, how.
- Relative: who, where.
- Indefinite: somebody.

 Prepositions (links): relate two parts of a sentence joining them together. The
relationships can be of:
- Time: after, before, since.
- Place: in, on, at.
- Logic: because.

 Conjunctions (links): main function is to connect words or other constructions (linking


words).
- Coordination: links units of equal status (and, or, but).
- Subordination: links two units in which one is dependent on the other (if, when).
- Conjuncts: they introduce circumstantial information (however).

Once I have analysed the words, I would like to consider the sentences….

1.3. Phrase and Sentences

Due to time restrictions, we are going to solely mentions how phrase are conformed by a
nucleus which makes the phrase has its classification: noun, adjective, adverb,
prepositional.

In relation to, a sentence is the highest grammatical unit made up of a group of words which
starts with a capital letter and ends with a full stop (.), question mark (?) or exclamation mark
(!). A sentence implies a predicate and a subject. Sentences have a concrete structure
that includes one or more independent or related clauses. Moreover, they are made up of the
following elements
 Subject: It encodes the main participant in the situation presented by the clause.
 Verb: It is the action or state of the clause. It can be transitive (requires an object),
intransitive (does not require an object) or copular (refers back to the subject).
 Objects: They reflect participants other than the subject. They can be direct or
indirect.
 Complements: They add information about the subject or the complement.
 Adverbials: They are optional elements which express omissible circumstances.

They are 5 types of clauses structure:


 S + V I am sleeping.
 S + V + O/ S + V + O + O Ex: He stole the car/ He stole the car to my father.
 S + V + O + C Ex: He stole the car to my father yesterday

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We can classify sentences by structure they can be: minor sentence (incomplete, ex: Go!)
and mayor sentences (have subject -predicate complete). Mayor sentences are divided into:

 Simple sentences: One independent clause “I like cookies”


 Compound sentences: Two or more independent clauses. “I love cooking and I love
eating cookies”.
 Complex sentence: One independent clause and one or more dependent clauses “I
love cookies because they are amazing”.
 Complex-compound: Two or more independent clauses and one or more dependent
clauses. “I love cookies because they are amazing and I love eating cookies because
they are delicious”.

We can also classify sentences by purpose:

 Declarative: Used to make a simple statement “I love biscuits”. “The lock is broken”.
 Interrogative: Used to ask a question “Do you love biscuits?”
 Exclamatory: Used for emphasis and emotion “I need biscuits for the recipe!”
 Imperative: Use for commands “Bring me some biscuits, please”.
 Conditional: Used to express what one would do if a condition were met. “If I had a
bakery, I would eat a lot of biscuits”.
 Subjunctive: Used to express wishes, suggestions.

2. ELEMENTARY COMMUNICATIVE STRUCTURES

Now that we have studied the essential morphosyntactic elements, let me explain the elementary communicative
structures in which these elements are used but first getting into their aspects (formal, semantic and pragmatic) and
then explicating their contextual use.

2.1. Aspects of structures: formal, semantic and pragmatic

 Formal classification of sentences is based on grammar rules. It may be divided into four syntactic types:

 Declaratives: the subject is present and generally precedes the verb


 Interrogatives: yes/no or wh interrogatives
 Imperatives: no overt grammatical subject and verb is base form.
 Exclamatives: initial phrase with what or how.

 Semantic classification of sentences is associated with the discourse function at the most general level. There
are four general semantic types:
 Statements are used to convey information.
 Questions are used to seek information on a specific point.
 Commands are used to instruct somebody to do something.
 Exclamations are used to express being impressed by something.
 Pragmatic classification of sentences studies how speakers communicate more than that which is explicitly
stated in the sentence (the ability to understand another speaker´s intended meaning is called pragmatic
competence).

2.2. Elementary structures for socialization, managing


information and expressing attitudes.

These structures are needed for social relations, to give and receive information and to expressed emotional and
intellectual attitudes. Let’s get into some practical examples.

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ELEMENTARY STRUCTURES FOR SOCIALIZATION

Starting with markers of social relations, they are used to understand and control interactions in social relations.
They can be:

 Greetings: on arrival (hello), leave-taking (bye), introductions (how do you do?), seasonal greetings (Happy
Easter).
 Address forms: formal (Miss., Mr.), informal (Paul!), familiar (mate).
 Politeness conventions: politeness formulas (please), request (would you please…?)

ELEMENTARY STRUCTURES FOR MANAGING INFORMATION

Moving into the expression of information, we use it to give someone information we think they do not know. They
can be classified into:

 Asking and answering (What´s your name? My name is Paul).


 Identifying (Is that your pen?).
 Reporting (I have a blue pen).
 Correcting (No, it is not my pen).

ELEMENTARY STRUCTURES FOR EXPRESSING ATTITUDES

Finally, the expression of attitudes, they are used to convey emotional attitudes and feelings towards the person or
the subject they are talking about.

 Expressing agreement and disagreement (I agree).


 Expressing modality: obligation, necessity, ability and permission (Can I…, you must…,)
 Expressing desires, intentions and preferences (I wish you a happy new year).
 Expressing likes and dislikes (I like).
 Expressing apologies (I´m sorry).
 Expressing feelings (I love you).

Once treated elementary communicative structures, let us move to progressive use of grammar categories to
improve the student´s communicative competence.

3. PROGRESSIVE USE OF THE GRAMMATICAL CATEGORIES IN ORAL


AND WRITTEN PRODUCTIONS TO IMPROVE COMMUNICATIVE
COMPETENCE

The formal teaching of grammar is not an objective per se in Primary Education. According to the LOMLOE (2020),
the main objective is learning to use the language, to develop the Communicative Competence of our students in
both oral and written language, plus to foster the plurilingual competence to help our students to acquire the
basic knowledges¸ plurilingualism, communication and interculturality. Thus, teaching grammar is MEDIUM to
achieve these aims.

Along this section we will explain what the Communicative competence is and the differences between oral and
written language considering its pedagogical views of English acquisition. Then, we will focus on the procedures for
teaching and learning grammar and how errors should be treated.

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3.1. Communicative Competence
During the 1970’s there was a widespread reaction against methods that stressed the teaching of grammatical
forms and paid no attention to the way language is used in everyday situations. Pragmatic discipline studies the
factors that control our choice of language (selection of grammatical structures, vocabulary...) in social interaction.
Instead, communication theories study language as a dynamic, social, and interactive phenomenon occurring
between participants in oral or written language. The meaning is transmitted by complex exchanges, where
participants play a crucial role.

In this sense, the Communicative Competence (Hymes, 1979) explains that communicative and cultural dimensions
should be incorporated. The learner should know how to use language in a community considering its features:
systematic potential (native speakers are capable of creating infinite messages), appropriateness (adequate
messages to situations), occurrence (frequency of language elements and react accordingly) and feasibility (native
people automatically know if something is correct or not).

Canale and Swain (1980s) expanded the Communicative Competence establishing four dimensions: grammatical
competence (correct use of the linguistic code), discursive competence (relationship and combination of words and
structures), sociolinguistic competence (production and understanding of messages adapted to social context) and
strategic competence (effective communication through verbal and non-verbal strategies). These dimensions are
complemented by the socio-cultural competence (understanding of messages considering cultural factors).

Considering these details, learning to communicate in English should be developed through communicative activities
that focus more on the message rather than on linguistic structures. Littlewood (1981) created a classification for
these activities: functional communication activities (to seek information or solve problems) and social interaction
activities (development of the students’ interactive abilities).These activities should be developed, according to
Harmer (1983), within a context and in a relaxed atmosphere, and should be interactive, unpredictable and
authentic.

According to these specifications, we can distinguish between oral activities (role play, problem solving, following
instructions or communicative games) and written activities (penfriend letters, projects works, filling gaps).

It is also important to bear in mind that teaching and learning English must depend on the context and the needs of
the learner. One key factor for effective learning is internal –from each one- and external –provoked by teachers,
materials, etc. - motivation. The more varied the materials we use, the more complete the process will be (ULD). In
general terms, we must consider communication as the final objective and design our activities and learning
situations in order to obtain that goal.

LOMLOE emphasizes that methodology will be based on the Universal Learning Design (ULD) principles. ULD is a
teaching-learning approach learner-centredness that gives all students equal opportunities to succeed and to
achieve those specific competences. A good way to merge ULD and Communicative Approach in the English
classroom is through learning situations. A learning situation helps to create meaningful contexts and help our
students to acquire the basic knowledges ; communication, interculturality and plurilingusm.

It integrates all the skills, helping students to appreciate the value of language. Moreover, it motivates learners
providing a purpose for learning and communicating. Learning situations must prepare pupils to the XXI century
challenges promoting aspects such as public interest, sustainability or democracy. (CO

Some examples of Learning situations would be; Making a short documentary , Escape rooms…

3.2 Differences between oral and written language

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The most obvious difference between these systems of communication is the physical form. While speech uses
airwaves, written language uses graphs. In general, speech is immediate, dynamic and interactive, while writing is
static and permanent.

The main characteristics of oral language are:


 It has expressive possibilities through contextual support: facial expressions, intonation and other
extralinguistic features which enhance understanding.
 The spontaneity of oral language means that errors will be considers as normal.
 Use of repetitions, pauses and rephrasing due to the spontaneity of oral language.
 Simple grammatical constructions are used because of the immediacy of oral language.
 It is transitory, which makes the listener pay special attention to the understanding of the message

In contrast, written language is characterized by:


 It is permanent and static.
 It has unique graphic features: punctuation, spelling, space organization, capitalization and calligraphy,
which make it more difficult to learn.
 Precision as the writer has more time for preparing a careful organization of the text and for using more
structured expressions (complete sentences, internal cohesion).
 Clarity, due to the lack of direct interaction between the participants, avoids repetitions and paraphrasing.
 It tends to be more formal.

3.3. Procedures of teaching- learning grammar

In order to incorporate grammatical structures to the communicative competence of our students in a progressive
and successful way, a grammar lesson should follow some stages: imitation, controlled practice and free production.

There are two main approaches to teach grammar:


 A deductive approach: the rule is presented and the language is produced based on the rule. It is time saving
and effective with lover level students.
 An inductive approach: the rule is inferred through some form of guided discovery. It is more beneficial to
students who already have a base in the language.

Besides, the procedure for teaching grammar should be:


 Selecting the grammatical form to teach and its use

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 Presenting the new language in a familiar context.
 Teaching the spoken form 1st and introducing the written form once it is interiorized.
 Planning activities and learning situations to practice and to use the language freely.

Before gettint into the last section of this topics, let me present a few practical ideas for the EFL classroom:

Shottin´Hoops: Go down to the school’s gym, playground or set up a makeshift basketball hoop in the classroom. Break the students into two
groups or have them play individually against the rest of their classmates.

There are two ways to go about playing this one. Before being allowed to take a shot, each student must either:
1. Answer a question with the appropriate featured grammar pattern.
2. Create a basic statement using the featured grammar pattern.
If the student gets their answer or statement wrong or doesn’t phrase it properly, they won’t get to take a shot.
If the student passes this part of the game, they get to take a shot. If they score, they get 2 points. If they don’t score but got the question
right, they get 1 point.

Quiz-Quiz-Trade: This fun a cooperative learning activity. Every student receives a quiz card relating to the grammar (for example about the
past). On one side they have a quiz or some information to create a sentences (example -/he/play football/last week), and on the other one
the answer to provide feedback (He did not play football last week). Students then pair up with a classmate. Using their cards, they quiz each
other. After coaching or praising, they trade cards and set off to quiz a new classmate with their new card.

 Apps-- duolinguo, FluentU, Grammarly Keyboard, Memrise, Mondly, English Grammar Test by SevenLynx
 AI—Chatgpt…

3.4 Teacher’s attitude towards error

The teacher’s attitude to error is of crucial importance for the learner in order to create the most suitable learning
environment and reduce students’ anxiety, as errors are inevitable they must not be regarded as failure but as
positive evidences of the learning process.

The learner constantly attempts to solve problems and produce rules for language production, based on evidence.
Where the evidence is inadequate that may produce incorrect pattern, which are called L1 interference errors. This
stage of the learning process is called interlanguage.

During the initial stages, grammatical, lexical and phonetic mistakes must be corrected systematically. However,
during genuine communicative activities in which fluency is the main objective to be developed, the teacher must
correct the errors after having finished the activity or at the end of the class.
Finally, to correct written errors the teacher can use a code so that students can correct the errors by themselves.
This approach makes them aware of their learning process and they will be acquiring learning strategies (L2L).
Further explanation will be also needed and devising remedial work (transformation activities, gap-filling...).

CONCLUSION + BIBLIOGRAPHY/ WEBGRAPHY

As outlined in this essay, grammar is a key element in the teaching of a foreign language. English grammar presents
some advantages over the learning of other languages given its simplicity in verb tenses, for example. Teachers must
be aware of the way - especially young children - learn grammar. Implicit learning through contextualised and
holistic activities, such as reading alouds and singing is a great way to deliver quality input using Real English. When
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using progressive structures, we must bear in mind that it has to be in contextualised and communicative activities,
such as role-plays or creating content.

Language is a tool employed by human beings to communicate and interact with each other. As a teacher, this goal
should be one of our central concerns, at least for its relation to our daily practice. The process of teaching,
acquiring, and learning a language is only possible if the communicative goals can achieve and develop it.

 Grugeon, E., Hubbard, L., Smith, C., & Dawes, L. (2014). Teaching speaking and
listening in the primary school. David Fulton Publishers.
 Humphries, S. (2020). Please teach me how to teach”: The emotional impact of
educational change. The emotional rollercoaster of language teaching, 150-172.
 Hubbard, P. (2017). Technologies for teaching and learning L2 listening. The
handbook of technology and second language teaching and learning, 93-106.
 Woods, P., Boyle, M., & Hubbard, N. (2020). Multicultural children in the early years:
Creative teaching, meaningful learning. Routledge
 Pastor, C. A. (2019). Diseño Universal para el Aprendizaje: un modelo teórico-
práctico para una educación inclusiva de calidad. Participación educativa.
 Pastor, C. A. (2022). Entender la educación inclusiva con el DUA. In Enseñar pensado en
todos los estudiantes: el modelo de diseño universal para el aprendizaje (DUA) (pp. 17-
45). SM

Some of the websites are:

 www.enchartedleading.com  www.primaryenglishteaching.com
 www.tolearnenglish.com  http://www.educasites.net

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