Morphosyntax in English: Structures and Communicative Competence

Posted on Jan 17, 2025 in Other civil servant exams

Essential Morphosyntactic Elements in English: Elementary Communicative Structures

This essay aims to study the concept of morphosyntax. In order to do so, I will first develop the essential elements of morphosyntax. Second, I will focus on the elementary communicative structures. The third part of the essay will study the progressive use of grammar categories to improve oral and written communicative competence. In this way, I will emphasize how to teach grammar. In the last part, a section is dedicated to explaining how to teach grammar through information and communication technologies and the resources I can use in the classroom to give an updated approach to teaching grammar. Finally, I will compile the main conclusions and the bibliography used to develop this topic.

As far as foreign language learning is concerned, the legal framework is the Organic Law 2/2006 of Education, 3rd May, modified by the Organic Law for the Improvement in Educational Quality, 8/2013, 9th December. One of the most relevant aspects of the Organic Law for the Improvement in Educational Quality is related to the Order ECD/65/2015, 21st of January, which establishes the relation among the key competences, contents, and evaluation criteria in Primary Education. On the other hand, the Royal Decree 126/2014, 28th of February, establishes the Minimum Teaching Requirement for Primary Education, and it states in article 7 “to acquire basic communicative competence, in at least, one foreign language to enable expression and comprehension of simple messages and survive in everyday situations”. In addition, the Order EDU/519/2014, 17th of June, modified by the Order EDU 278/2016, 8th of April, which establishes the minimum contents for Primary Education in the Autonomous Community of Castilla y Leon.

Bearing in mind all these legal references, I will start mentioning the essential morphosyntactic elements in English.

1. Essential Morphosyntactic Elements in English

1.1. Morphemes

Morphemes are the smallest grammatical units. There are free morphemes, which can occur on their own as separate words, for example, boy, and bound morphemes, which cannot occur on their own. The morphological process refers to the way words are formed.

  • Prefixation is when an affix is placed before the base of the word, like in unhappy.
  • Suffixation is an affix placed after the base of the word, as in happiness.
  • Conversion is when a word changes its class without changing its form. For example, book as a noun or to book as a verb.
  • Compounding occurs when two base forms are added together, like in blackboard.
  • Reduplication is a type of compound in which both elements are the same, for example, goody-goody.
  • Clipping is an informal shortening of a word, as in ad for advertisement.
  • Blending is when two words merge into each other, like in brunch, that comes from breakfast and lunch.
  • Acronyms are words formed from the initial letters of the words that make up a name, for example, USA for the United States of America.

1.2. Words

A word is a minimal free form. Words have traditionally been grouped into two separate classes. These are usually referred to as lexical words, which are nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. On the other hand, grammatical words are prepositions, pronouns, determiners, and conjunctions.

  • Nouns: Their meaning and use are decided by determiners. They act as the head of the noun phrase and change form to express singular or plural or the genitive case. Nouns can be classified into:
    • Proper, like London
    • Common, as table
    • Countable, such as pencil
    • Non-countable, like butter
    • Variable, as in boys
    • Non-variable, for example, sheep
  • Adjectives are words that specify the attributes of nouns. They are gradable because they can be modified by adverbs like very nice. They occur in the comparative, nicer, and superlative form, nicest.
  • Verbs are words that denote a process or state of being. They are categorized into two groups:
    • Lexical, which is the main verb in a verb phrase, and they can be regular or irregular. They are capable of contrasts of tense, aspect, person, and number.
    • Auxiliary, which are restricted verbs in form and distribution.
  • Adverbs modify a verb by giving information about the time, place, or manner in which an action takes place. There are several types:
    • Time and place adverbs, for example, here or tomorrow.
    • Degree adverbs like very or quite.
    • Sentence adverbs such as maybe or perhaps.
  • Determiners serve to specify the number and definiteness of nouns.
    • Indefinite articles are a or an.
    • Possessives could be my or your.
    • Demonstratives like this or that.
    • Quantifiers, for example, some or many.
    • The definite article is the.
  • Pronouns can be used to substitute a single noun. They can be:
    • Personal, like me
    • Possessive, as mine
    • Reflexive, myself
    • Demonstrative, this or that
    • Interrogative, why or which
    • Relative, who or whose
    • Indefinite, like somebody
  • Prepositions are words that relate two parts of a sentence to each other. They can be of time like after or since, place such as in, on, or at, logic, for example, because or in spite of.
  • Conjunctions refer to a word whose main function is to connect words or other constructions. There are some types:
    • Coordination like and, or, but.
    • Subordination, for example, if or when.
    • Conjuncts such as so and however.

1.3. Sentences

Sentences are units that are grammatically complete and semantically independent. They are made up of elements such as the subject, verb, object, and complements. The clause structure can be intransitive, for example, the film started, transitive like he played basketball, intensive as I am Spanish, complex-transitive, for example, I found the exam easy. There are also different types of sentences: declarative, interrogative, imperative, and subjunctive.

2. Elementary Communicative Structures

2.1. Form and Function

Form refers to the grammatical structure, like simple, present, or continuous, and function is the meaning and use of structures. The teacher will have to make decisions about what structure or form to teach and what use, the function, to give the structure.

2.2. Communicative Language

Teaching places emphasis on the use of language rather than on form. Mainly communicative structures are the social conventions: greeting people, introducing oneself, asking about somebody, giving and thanking, apologizing; getting the listener to do something with commands or polite requests; giving and receiving information such as the identity, age, jobs, color, or possession; expressing opinions and preferences with likes and dislikes; and finally, routines.

3. Using Grammar to Improve Communicative Competence

The main objective is learning to use the language. When teaching grammar, the following procedure is suggested:

  1. Select the grammatical structure to teach and what use, the function, the structure is to be put to.
  2. It is important to present the new language in a context that is familiar to the learner.
  3. Visual support is also very important to help convey meaning. Nowadays, the use of new technologies facilitates the acquisition of grammar structures as they offer a great amount of different activities, and they are utterly motivating for the students.
  4. It is essential to teach the spoken form and introduce the written form only when the students can pronounce it well.
  5. Plan activities to practice the language with controlled activities and then get the students to do activities to use the language more freely with communicative activities.

This procedure can be divided into three main stages: presentation, practice, and production.

3.1. Presentation Stage

Students are introduced to the form, meaning, and use of a new language item using a taped dialogue, visuals, realia materials, or miming the situation.

3.2. Practice

Once the students understand a new grammatical structure, they need to practice it to absorb the structure and learn it correctly. The activities at this stage are controlled by the teacher.

To provide the students with oral practice, the teacher can suggest activities like guessing games, competitions, and interaction activities such as guided dialogues or questionnaires. While the activities to practice the written skill are parallel writing, dictations, consolidating grammar with gap-filling, multiple-choice, word order, and discovery grammar activities.

3.3. Free Production

Students must be encouraged to use language freely, without teacher control. During this stage, pupils develop confidence and fluency. There are a great amount of oral communicative activities, for example, information-gap activities, communicative games, role-play, following instructions, describing personal experience, problem-solving activities, discussions, or reaching a consensus. As to the written communicative activities, they can be writing instructions, short messages, letters, and diaries, writing questionnaires, cooperative writing like in a story, communicative games, for example, the hangman, describing pictures, and project works.

3.4. Teacher’s Attitude Towards Errors

The teacher’s attitude towards errors is of crucial importance for the learner. Errors must not be regarded as signs of failure but as evidence that the student is working his way towards correct rules. Corrections must be done positively and with encouragement. The teacher should first explain the error and then devise a series of oral and written activities to practice the problematic linguistic forms.

4. Conclusion

I would like to say that there is no doubt that the knowledge of grammatical structures is essential to master a language. A learner cannot use words unless he/she knows how and when to use them. Learning a language requires the knowledge of both the form and functions of that language. Contemporary methodology encourages us to teach grammatical structures for real communicative purposes. This can be done by maintaining a balance between activities that focus on accuracy with practice activities and those that concentrate on fluency with communicative activities.

The bibliography used to develop this unit includes:

  • COUNCIL OF EUROPE. (2003). Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.
  • EMMER, E.T. & GERWELS, M.C. (2002). Cooperative Learning in elementary classrooms: Teaching practices and lesson characteristics. The Elementary School Journal.
  • GARDNER, H. (2001): Reformulated Intelligence. Multiple Intelligences in XXI Century. Buenos Aires: Paidós.
  • HARMER, J. The Practice of English Language Teaching. London: Longman, 2008 (4th ed.)
  • NUNAN, D. (2010): Language Teaching Methodology. University Press.

Referring the webpages: