3 answers from our tutors
Best answer
The first step is to get the full grasp of what language syntax is and what it is not. Very few students I've taught could distinguish the difference between syntax, semantics, lexicon, morphology or even phonetics. It was all "grammar" to them. The key and the first task of the teacher then is to help students sort through and disentangle those concepts. One cannot start teaching verb tenses, modal auxiliary and other syntactic concepts when the student does not understand what tense, auxiliary verbs etc are in the first place. There is no one to one relationship between syntax and semantics. For example, in English we can refer to future situations in a number of ways, but there is no dedicated future verb tense in the language. There's no "future tense", simple or continuous or perfect or whatever.
It's important to remember that everyone learns differently so we should employ a variety of teaching strategies and adapt to the needs and preferences of our students. Effective strategies to teach syntax and lexical - clear explanations of the concepts, visual aids, examples, interactive activities. Syntax is about the rules that govern the structure of words, phrases and sentences and their correct order to form meaningful expressions. Lexical analysis focuses on keywords, identifiers or punctuation marks.
- JennyCertified ESL Teacher who helps her student in Conversational English.
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Other student questions
- How can we run a successful business English meeting with our foreign clients?
What strategies can we implement to ensure our Business English meetings with foreign clients are engaging and effective?
- Can you share your experience how you teach students conditionals?
What kind of method do you use to explain clearly each conditional for students? Do you provide some examples from real life and how you do it? Thank you!
Best answer
The first thing to do when teaching conditionals would be to explain what conditionals are, then provide them with examples, then play a game where they need to identify the conditional, and finally have them create their own to see if they understood it
- Could you explain me, please, when I need to use 0,1,2,3 and mixed conditionals? Thank you!
Can you provide examples?
Best answer
Mixed conditional combined second and third conditionals to talk about the past situations has a present consequence or a present situations that is a result of a past action Structure: If + past perfect + would +verb If I had studied medicine, I would be a doctor now.
