Descriptive & Prescriptive Grammar

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TSL 3083 Teaching Grammar in Primary School

Descriptive grammar


Descriptive grammar refers to the structure of a language as it is actually used by speakers and writers of the native speaker.
 Descriptive grammars describe how people use spoken and written language and the knowledge that they use to decide whether something is grammatically correct.
 Specialists in descriptive grammar (linguists) study the rules or patterns that underlie our use of words, phrases, clauses, and sentences. Descriptive grammar
STRENGTHS

• Helps learners to improve their pronunciation and they start to sound like a native speaker.
• When the learners talk with a native speaker, they will not get confused because of the difference in the usage of the language.

WEAKNESSESS

• Descriptive grammar does not deal with what is good or bad language use; forms and structures that might not be used by speakers of Standard
English would be regarded as valid and included.

Descriptive grammar
WEAKNESSESS

• It is difficult for teachers to decide which dialect, which usage of a language to teach. Even if the teacher choose the most used dialect of the target language, pupils will have difficulty in communicating with a native speaker from a different part of the country.

Prescriptive grammar


Prescriptive grammar is a set of rules and examples dealing with the syntax and word structures of a language, usually intended as an aid to the learning of that language.
 It refers to the structure of a language as certain people think it should be used.
 It prescribe the rules of a language.
 Prescriptive grammarians, such as most editors and teachers, layout rules about what they believe to be the “correct” or
“incorrect” use of language.

Prescriptive grammar
Rules provide a standard form of a language that is accepted by most speakers of that language. A set of standard rules is necessary for students learning
English as a second language. Social reasons

Why?

• Prescriptive rules allows a speaker to be understood by the greatest possible number of individuals. • This important for a language such as German, which has dialects so different from one another that their speakers cannot always understand each other.

• Guidelines for learning language, English.

• The existence of prescriptive rules allows a speaker of a nonstandard dialect to learn the rules of the standard dialect and employ them in appropriate social circumstances.

Prescriptive grammar
STRENGTHS

WEAKNESSESS

Teaching prescriptive grammar is more helpful for both non-native teachers and learners. It has certain rules of language which reduces confusion and ambiguity among students.

If the prescriptive grammar is taught, learners will be confused when they talk with a native speaker. They will realize that natives do not use the rules in the grammar books.

Prescriptive grammar helps to draw a language system in their mind, this certainly makes learning the language easier for them.

Learner will get bored of learning grammar rules all the time, because prescriptive grammar mostly deals with rules. Prescriptive grammar teaching creates better writers.