In this example, the participle is covered which modifies the noun bridge.
c. The spaghetti, tasting good to everyone, was a popular choice.
In this example, the participle is tasting. The complement is good. Tasting modifies the noun spaghetti.
4. The Use of Grammar in Teaching and Learnig
Penny Ur has given her opinion that there is no doubt that knowledge implicit or explicit of grammatical rules is essential for the mastery of a language.
One cannot use words unless he knows how they should be put together.
27
When teachers teach type of structures, they are getting their students to learn quite a large number of defferent, though related, bits of knowladge and
skills how to recognize the example of the structure when spoken, how to identify its written form, how to understand its meaning in context, and produce
meaningful sentences using it. All the defferentiations may be presented in the form of a table made by Penny Ur:
Table 2.1 Aspect of TeachingLearning of Structures
27
Penny Ur, Grammar Practice Activities, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988 p. 4
Language Skills
Form Meaning
Listening
Speaking Perception and recognition of
the spoken form of the structure
Production of well-formed examples in speech
Comprehension of what the spoken structure means in context
Use of the structure to convey meanings in speech
Some teachers, and the course book they use, have tendency to concentrate on some of these and neglect other: they may spend a lot of time on getting the
forms right and neglect to give practice in using the structure to comvey meanings or they may focus on written exercises and fail to cover the oral aspects
satisfactorily. It is important to keep a balance, taking into account, of course, the needs of the particular class being taught.
In the organization of grammar teaching, there is a generalization about the best way to teach grammar. It is what kinds of teaching procedures should be
used, and in what order will have to take into account both the wide range of knowledge and skills that need to be taught and the variety of different kinds of
structures subsumed under the heading of grammar. The organization of usage suggested here to represent is only a general framework into which a very wide
variety of the teaching techniques will fit. As Penny Ur wrote in her book, she suggests four stages: presentation, isolation and explanatory, practices, and text.
28
Since the development of Communicative Language Teaching CLT in the mid
– 1970, grammar teaching has tened to be associated with a more or less discredited approach to second language teaching often labeled the structural
approach, in which syllables consisted of a progression of doscreted grammatic item to be mastered one after another and methodology consisted largely of the
presentation of rules and example sentences followed by extensive drilling of the
28
Penny, op. Cit., p.7
Reading
Writing Perception and recognition of
the written form
Production of well-formed examples in writing
Comprehension of what the written structure means in context
Use of the structure to convey meanings in writing
grammatical patterns. Such an approach did not, it has been argued, enable learners to use the language to communicate appropriately in real contexts.
29
Without grammar, learners can communicate effectively only a limited number of situations. So, many linguistis and researchers have given support to
grammar instruction in ESL and EFL language teaching and learning; grammar is viewed as one of component of communicative competence. Grammar is used to
interpret and convey literal meaning of utterances. So it keeps an important role in English communication.
C. Gerund
1. The defination of Gerund
The gerund is identical in form to the present participle ending in -ing and can behave as a verb within a clause so that it may be modified by an adverb or
have an object, but the clause as a whole sometimes consisting of only one word, the gerund itself acts as a noun within the larger sentence. For example:
Eating this cake is easy.
In Eating this cake is easy, eating this cake, although traditionally known as a phrase, is referred to as a non-finite clause in modern linguistics. Eating is
the verb in the clause, while this cake is the object of the verb. Eating this cake acts as a noun phrase within the sentence as a whole, though; the subject of
the sentence is the non-finite clause, specifically eating. Definition above can be concluded that gerund is the
– ing form of verb, used as a noun, so it can function as subject of a sentence, as object of preposition, and
as the complement of a sentence.
29
Graham Lock, Functional Englis Grammar, Australia: Cambridge University Press, 1997 p.265
