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Syntax: Why Do You Need to Know About It?
Teachers of ELLs need to remember that the English that students first produce will be fairly basic. I know that was the case for me when I moved to Germany and was immersed in a new language. I began with simple phrases (Coffee with cream – Kaffee mit Sahne . . . NOT Zähne . . . which would be translated as coffee with teeth – a case in point about the importance of pronunciation). Once ELLs gain some confidence with the language, they will produce longer phrases and they will also be confronted with academic texts that include more than simple sentences. This is why an understanding of syntax is useful. The key is being able to explain that “words cannot appear in just any order to form a grammatical sentence” (Curzan & Adams, 2012, p. 129).
Teachers of ELLs need to remember that the English that students first produce will be fairly basic. I know that was the case for me when I moved to Germany and was immersed in a new language. I began with simple phrases (Coffee with cream – Kaffee mit Sahne . . . NOT Zähne . . . which would be translated as coffee with teeth – a case in point about the importance of pronunciation). Once ELLs gain some confidence with the language, they will produce longer phrases and they will also be confronted with academic texts that include more than simple sentences. This is why an understanding of syntax is useful. The key is being able to explain that “words cannot appear in just any order to form a grammatical sentence” (Curzan & Adams, 2012, p. 129).