What is Syntax?
Syntax refers to the systematic way that words combine to form phrases, clauses, and sentences. It includes the way phrases, clauses, and sentences are combined to form more complex sentences (Curzan & Adams, 2012) Syntax describes the way verbs are conjugated to indicate person, number, tense, aspect (perfect or progressive), voice, and mood (Curzan & Adams, 2012).
At the word level, syntax indicates a grammatical category (i.e., part of speech) of a word and its position in a phrase or a sentence. The parts of speech are classes of words that behave similarly in the grammar of a language (i.e., in their morphological and syntactic criteria) (Curzan & Adams, 2012). These parts of speech fall into two categories; open-class lexical categories, which readily accept new words (i.e., nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs), and close-class lexical categories, which tend not to admit new words (e.g., prepositions, conjunctions, pronouns, determiners, and auxiliary verbs) (Curzan & Adams, 2012).
At the phrase, clause, and sentence level, syntax indicates the linking of constituents (i.e., words that work together) into progressively bigger parts until sentences are created (i.e., words-phrases-clauses-sentences) (Curzan & Adams, 2012). In the English language, there are five types of phrases: noun, verb, adjective, adverb, and prepositional. Every clause is composed of a noun phrase that functions as the subject and a verb phrase that functions as predicate (Curzan & Adams, 2012). Sentences are then created from at least one clause. It can be dependent (can't stand on its own) or independent (can stand on its own) (Curzan & Adams, 2012).
Note: The order of words in a sentence determines the sentence's meaning and the functions of different words. For example, the sentence,"The man chased the dog," is different in meaning and function than another sentence, "The dog chased the man."
At the word level, syntax indicates a grammatical category (i.e., part of speech) of a word and its position in a phrase or a sentence. The parts of speech are classes of words that behave similarly in the grammar of a language (i.e., in their morphological and syntactic criteria) (Curzan & Adams, 2012). These parts of speech fall into two categories; open-class lexical categories, which readily accept new words (i.e., nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs), and close-class lexical categories, which tend not to admit new words (e.g., prepositions, conjunctions, pronouns, determiners, and auxiliary verbs) (Curzan & Adams, 2012).
At the phrase, clause, and sentence level, syntax indicates the linking of constituents (i.e., words that work together) into progressively bigger parts until sentences are created (i.e., words-phrases-clauses-sentences) (Curzan & Adams, 2012). In the English language, there are five types of phrases: noun, verb, adjective, adverb, and prepositional. Every clause is composed of a noun phrase that functions as the subject and a verb phrase that functions as predicate (Curzan & Adams, 2012). Sentences are then created from at least one clause. It can be dependent (can't stand on its own) or independent (can stand on its own) (Curzan & Adams, 2012).
Note: The order of words in a sentence determines the sentence's meaning and the functions of different words. For example, the sentence,"The man chased the dog," is different in meaning and function than another sentence, "The dog chased the man."
Why is Syntax Important to Understand?
Syntactic knowledge plays a critical role in ELLs comprehension and ability to effectively communicate. A student's ability to decipher the dense material in a textbook into constituent parts enables them to analyze and comprehend simpler segments of information, rather than trying to interpret the complex sentences as a whole. This type of analysis also promotes vocabulary development. Additionally, syntax is important in a student's ability to communicate. A student's whose written and oral communications do not follow English syntactic rules may be more difficult to understand.
Challenges for ELLs
The challenges posed by English syntax, vary greatly among ELLs speaking different native languages. While most languages have similar types of sentences as English (e.g., statement, interrogative), the rules governing the sentence structures in the student's native language may be different from those in English (Hong Xu, 2010). For example, the subject-verb-object sentence pattern does not exist in Arabic, which has a verb-subject-object sentence pattern (Hong Xu, 2010). Additionally, syntax defines the different parts of speech and separates the words of a language into these groups. Each part of speech has various rules that govern when they should and should not be used. English, for example, makes use of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and other word types, while other languages may not have a separate class for adjectives (e.g., Thai doesn't distinguish between adjectives and adverbs) or makes use of classes not found in English (Hong Xu, 2010). At the sentence level, the concept of compound and complex sentences may mean different things to ELLs speaking different native languages. For example, in Korean there are compound sentences, but they are not expressed in the same way as English compound sentences (e.g., they may lack a conjunction) (Hong Xu, 2010).
Which SOL Goals May Be Influenced By ELL's Grasp of English Syntax?
Oral Language
SOL Objective 1- The student will demonstrate an understanding of oral language structure.
SOL Objective 6- The student will use semantic clues and syntax to expand vocabulary when reading.
SOL Objective 12- The student will write stories, letters, and simple explanations.
SOL Objective 13- The student will edit writing for correct grammar, capitalization, punctuation, and spelling.
SOL Objective 1- The student will demonstrate an understanding of oral language structure.
- Create oral stories to share with others.
- Create and participate in oral dramatic activities.
- Use increasingly complex sentence structures in oral communication.
- Use oral language for different purposes: to inform, to persuade, to entertain, to clarify, and to respond.
- Share stories or information orally with an audience.
- Participate as a contributor and leader in a group.
- Retell information shared by others.
SOL Objective 6- The student will use semantic clues and syntax to expand vocabulary when reading.
- Use knowledge of sentence structure.
SOL Objective 12- The student will write stories, letters, and simple explanations.
SOL Objective 13- The student will edit writing for correct grammar, capitalization, punctuation, and spelling.
What Difficulties May Teachers Observe?
Students whose native language has a different syntactic system than English may find it difficult to effectively communicate their ideas and knowledge in ways that are understandable to others, and which conform to the grammatical rules of English (SOL Objectives 1, 3, 12, & 13). For example, in their written and oral communications, they may leave out critical pieces of information, such as verb tenses, that are necessary for audience understanding. Additionally, students who have limited knowledge regarding the English syntactic system, or who have native languages that have different syntactic systems than English, may be unaware of English sentence structure and be unable to break down sentences into their constituent parts in order to expand vocabulary knowledge (SOL Objective 6).
Strategies Teachers Can Use to Help Their ELLs in Acquire English Syntactic Rules.
- Anticipate difficult texts. Teachers use what they know about your students and syntax to anticipate which sentences in an assigned text will be difficult for your ELL's. They consider using alternative materials with simpler syntax to get the content to their students.
- Use proper grammar when speaking. Be a good model of proper grammar usage that students can emulate.
- Provide students with time to communicate with one another. Being able to explore and use grammar rules in context allows students to acquire these rules implicitly, as well as provides them to hear good grammar models from their peers.
- Focus on forms. Explicitly teaching of grammar rules and structures may be necessitated by a communicative demand (e.g., students are missing parts of speech). Teachers should be knowledgeable in the morphological descriptions of the parts of speech (e.g., what suffixes they use, such as -s for plural forms of nouns) and how they can be used in a sentence. This powerpoint is a good review of lexical categories: www.ling.ohio-state.edu/~jfon/ling201/syntax.pdf
- Provide students with texts that emulate good English syntax.
Activities That Can Be Used In The Classroom To Promote English Syntactic Knowledge.
- Use Mad Lib type activities (Fill-in-the-blank). Create close passage texts that students choose nouns, verbs, adjectives, prepositions, conjunctions, and adverbs that relates to a particular unit. This activity will help students practice lexical categories.
- Interactive Grammar Notebook (TPT, 2014). This activity provides students with an interactive guide for the different parts of speech.
- Syntax Trees. Use syntax trees to break down sentences into their constituent parts and discuss each parts purpose and meaning.
- Build a Sentence (B, 2012). Tape different words from the different parts of speech onto legos (a different color lego for each part of speech) and have students build grammatically appropriate sentences.
- The Bag Game (Oh, 2014). This activity provides practices for the parts of speech, as well as appropriate sentence structure. Have words from each part of speech in their appropriate bag. Pick from each bag one word and as a class make a big sentence from them. For example, you may choose "house" (noun) and "ran" (verb), and create a sentence that say, "The house ran away."
- Parts of Speech Activities. When necessary, focus on one part of speech to teach at a time. Pinterest offers great activity ideas for teaching the parts of speech. For example: