The purpose of this study is to take a theoretical approach to the necessity of develop the course of the spoken English grammar at the college level and its contents. The current goals of English education in high schools in Korea put more emphasis o ...
The purpose of this study is to take a theoretical approach to the necessity of develop the course of the spoken English grammar at the college level and its contents. The current goals of English education in high schools in Korea put more emphasis on listening and speaking skills. In spite of this, many English grammar textbooks of colleges or universities have introduced rules or usage using written English in examples, without considering context in them. This eventually led students to the language institutes, in which they took courses such as 'English Conversation' and 'TOEIC Listening' to acquire relaxed pronunciation skills including liason, reduction related to oral or spoken English. This means that they are made to have double pain by learning grammar, on the one hand, and pronunciation, on the other. That is why the author is interested in constructing spoken English grammar at the Korean college level.
After using many English grammar textbooks at the major and liberal arts courses, I found that fifteen textbooks, including Communicative Grammar Practice written by Jones(1992), were rated as good responses from students as well as instructors in several respects. These respects I took as principles of organizing contents of spoken English grammar, as shown in: (1) more emphasis on spoken than written English, (2) the use of genuine examples for liveliness and being on-spot, (3) consideration of context, thereby forming discourse in which related examples are included, (4) consideration of communicative or discoursal functions from the perspective of the users, (5) the teaching of English grammar in an inductive way rather than in a deductive way, and (6) the including of socio-cultural aspects in the textbooks.
According to the organizational principles, our intended textbook should include as generics of spoken English grammar: (1) general distinctions between spoken and written Language, (2) lexical and grammatical differences between spoken and written English, (3) interactive and interpersonal communication and spoken language, (4) spoken language and discourse(-based) grammar, (5) connection between grammar and vocabulary, which is provided by the recognition and use of lexical phrases, frames and patterns, (6) a corpus-based grammar and genre-based grammar in relation to speaking (and writing). Our intended textbooks should include as specifics of spoken English grammar: (1) phonetic-phonological features of spoken grammar(SG), such as conversational/prosodic features, etc.; (2) SG's lexical features, such as interactive words, polywords, light verb constructions, etc.; (3) SG's semantic features, such as intonational meaning; (4) SG's lexico-grammatical features, such as the frequent use of tag-questions, Fronting constructions, demonstrative wh-clefts, etc.; (5) SG's discourse features, such as conversational structures, internal schematic structures, the concept of genre introduced in teaching of spoken language, etc.; (6) SG's socio-relational features, such as degree of formality, social distance, face-saving and politeness strategies, cooperative principles, etc.; (7) drills and technologies for using spoken English, including developing spoken English grammar textbooks, how to teach spoken and spoken English grammar, tasks or activities for teaching spoken grammar to Intermediate and advanced learners, and techniques improving English for classroom lectures, etc.