The Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar

Introduction to the Grammar Hardware Store

The GHS is a summary of what linguistic, or structural, grammar is all about. If you are a middle school teacher, you might want to teach the basics of grammar in this way.

You’ll find that linguistic grammar describes word classes in a way that is less abstract than the way traditional grammar classifies words. You’ll also find that linguistic grammar talks about form and function, structure and form classes.

Basically, the form of a word is “how it was born”: is it a noun? An adjective? An adverb? The function of a word is what it is being used for in a particular context. When a noun is called into service as another part of speech, such as a verb or an adjective, we call that a functional shift.

I’ve used the GHS with my ninth grade students, and we find it very successful and much fun. I use lots of toys: flashcards, blocks, tiles, even dice marked with grammatical terms. Linguistic grammar is more fun than traditional grammar because it’s more flexible. Where traditional grammar tries to fit words into eight parts of speech, linguistic grammar recognizes eight parts of speech (with refinements) but also recognizes that the parts of speech (called word classifications) are not rigidly set.

Linguistic grammar, and the GHS, recognizes form classes and structure classes. Form class words are nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. These change their form, pitch hit for one another, and move in and out of the language. We welcome new form class words; some go out of style.

Structure class words (prepositions, conjunctions, pronouns) are the grammatical elements that allow form class words to come together in sentences. Oddly enough, we rarely bring new structure class words into the language.

One more thing: You’ll note that the GHS refers to three aisles, but you have only the first aisle on the site. The other two aisles are a bit more complex, so I thought I’d wait for your response before putting those up.

The Quill & Feather is a feature of the Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar dedicated to teachers at the middle school level.