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Even second language teachers
concede that punctuation is not as uniform and prescriptive as was once assumed and that
teaching this subskill can fall into a mechanical, monotonous abyss. If we encourage our
students to explore a diversity of written and entertainment media, they can learn to
discover and appreciate permissible variations and violations of punctuation beyond the
"prescriptive" dictates of usage that they were formerly taught. Various novel
and thought-provoking assignments can be introduced which require the learner to interact
with authentic English, such as collecting data samples from magazines, listening to the
news to compare reported and direct speech, and administering a punctuation
"test" to peers and other teachers. The benefits of this discovery approach to
teaching punctuation will increase students' motivation, arouse and sustain their
interest, and foster independence-all significant pedagogical considerations in language
learning.
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...Ther is so great diversite In English, and
in wryting of oure tonge, So prey I god that non myswrite thee.
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Glossing the glossary pages of magazines
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During the initial phase of data collection, the
teacher may wish to focus on one form of punctuation such as the apostrophe. (See Footnote 1 ) The students can then be
asked to scrutinize advertisements in English magazines to find occurrences of the
apostrophe, which can prove to be an amusing assignment outside the confines of the
classroom. A viable area to examine would be possessive forms which fulfill two
functions-as a possessive determiner before a noun phrase (referred to as possessive
adjectives in traditional grammars) or as a replacement for a noun phrase inflected for
possession. This inductive exercise is simplified by virtue of data being readily
available. There is a relatively controlled number of student responses, and learners'
findings generate animated group discussion. After evaluating the occurrences of the
apostrophe, the teacher can illustrate the different functions of the possessive to
reinforce patterns of usage:
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| Poss. Determiner: |
This is Sheila's book. |
| Poss. Pronoun: |
This book is Sheila's. |
Expanding the setting-beyond the typical apostrophe
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In the second stage, students can be asked to
scrutinize advertisements that are marked by more than one "sign" to insure they
collect a variety of data. For example, students can look for other symbols that perform
the same function as the apostrophe, e.g., Macy*s or Steve s Ice Cream (see G. Little
1993:354).
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Analysis . At this stage, students
are asked to examine their collections in order to develop a set of generalizations which
could describe the appearance of punctuation marks, in this case the apostrophe. Students
will discover that their generalizations sometimes conform to patterns prescribed in
handbooks or reference guides, and sometimes they do not, as in this Dannon yogurt
magazine ad: "New Dannon Sprinkl'Ins Crazy Crunch is Creating Quite a Stir." It
is advisable for the EFL teacher to restrict the students' discovery method of collecting
data by providing a specific category of magazines. Students can be led to discover
"nonstandard" examples of punctuation in group work. Learners can draw on
concrete, contextualized examples which vividly illustrate the functional usage of
apostrophes and also realize that such nonstandard styles are not stigmatized.
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At this stage, the teacher may wish to provide
exercises to accommodate learners who prefer a deductive learning style. For example, the
teacher can focus on the written forms of the possessive. In addition to both the
determiner and pronominal possessive forms, there are two other major ways of signaling
possession in English. The first is in writing, by inflecting regular singular nouns and
irregular plural nouns not ending in "-s" with 's:
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or by adding an apostrophe after the
"s" ending of regular plural nouns.
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Further, it can be demonstrated that the
apostrophe suffixed to regular plural nouns that end in "s" does not alter the
pronunciation, but the 's suffixed to singular nouns and irregular plurals is
realized in speech as /-s/ when occurring after voiceless consonants, -/z/ when following
voiced consonants and vowels and /?z/ after sibilants (/s/, /z/, /s/, /z/, /c/ and /j/).
For example:
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Another way of signaling possession is by using
the possessive "of" form where the possessor and possessed object are inverted
if one compares this order with the inflected 's form:
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the man's name-the name of the man.
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It is important to alert learners to the fact
that possessive 's and "of" forms are not always interchangeable. At this point,
the teacher may need to distinguish the 's form with [+human] head nouns and the
"of" form with [+nonhuman] head nouns since many grammar texts instruct the
learner to distinguish these forms:
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Janet's husband (human head noun) and
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The end of the road (nonhuman), but:
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The alligator's tail is thrashing.
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Here, the teacher needs to understand the
linguistic rules, particularly that the head noun is syntactically and semantically the
most important noun in a phrase, clause, or construction that has two or more nouns. (See Footnote 2 ) According to a study by
Khampang (see Footnote 3 ) to test
native English speakers' preferences for the possessive 's versus the "of"
forms, subjects reported a preference for the former when the head noun was animate and
even with inanimate head nouns when the noun was perceived as performing some action,
e.g., The train's arrival was delayed , as opposed to The arrival of the train
was delayed . (See Footnote 4 )
For more advanced students, the teacher can illustrate a few less common applications of
the 's possessive:
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| Double Poss.: |
Hank's brother' s car |
| Special NP: |
The game's history |
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London's water supply |
| Natural Phenomenon |
The sun's rotation. |
Conversely, the "of" form is preferred generally with lifeless things as in He
stood at the foot of the bed as compared to He stood at the bed's foot. *But,
Khampang (1973) notes the "of" form is preferred with [+human] head nouns when
the modifier noun is lengthy: He's the son of the well-known politician versus He's
the well-known politician's son or with long, double possessives which, when
shortened, normally take 's : What can I do for the husband of Mrs. Smith's
niece? Likewise, if the medium requires a formal register of English, the
"of" form may be preferred (the sonnets of Shakespeare), whereas 's may
signal informality (Shakespeare's sonnets). It is incumbent on the EFL teacher to be aware
of these linguistic applications concerning levels of formality in English and
corresponding punctuation, as it has been found that the learner's ability to distinguish
such variation is not so clear-cut and often accounts for errors.
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Other reasons that account for interference may
be the student's native language or the frequency of certain inflectional morphemes. For
instance, the 's form occurs relatively infrequently in English compared to other
inflectional morphemes such as the plural, past tense, and progressive. According to
Larsen-Freeman (1976) and Dulay and Burt (1974), when a morpheme is of low frequency in
the learner's input, it is acquired later than the more frequently occurring morphemes.
Regardless of the source of difficulty, ESL learners' ubiquitous possessive usage errors
frequently produce these two patterns that exemplify over generalization of the
"of" form: *The car of my friend is new ; and oversimplification, i.e.,
omitting the 's altogether, thereby signaling possession by juxtaposition of two
NP's: *My friend car is new.
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If possible, the teacher should either elicit
further examples from the students or provide more elaborate contexts for the above
analyses.
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One final note concerns the functional analysis
of the above forms. It is important to illustrate how form and meaning (the grammatical
and semantic levels of language) do not always exhibit a one-to-one correspondence. For
instance, possessives can express meanings other than the traditional notion of possession
(i.e., belonging to) such as:
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| Description: |
A debtor's prison - a |
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prison for debtors |
| Amount/quantity: |
Three dollars' worth of gas |
| Relationship/association: |
John's roommate or |
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NY's skyscrapers |
| Part/whole: |
My brother's hand |
| Origin/agent: |
Shakespeare's comedies |
It may also be important to address "noun adjuncts" which consist of two nouns
juxtaposed to create a noun compound. The noun in an attributive position may function
like an adjective: jewelry store, table leg or kitchen chair. (See Footnote
5 ) Since the focus is on punctuation, the latter
examples with the "of" usage may serve as a point of contrast with the 's
possessive forms. The above exercises illustrate how other linguistic aspects of English
can be integrated into the punctuation lesson grammar, semantics, pronunciation, and
morphology (e.g., the morphophonemic alternations of 's in "Mac's" (/s/),
"Sam's" (/z/) and "Grace's" (/?z/).
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Reported vs. direct speech
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In an exercise contrasting reported and direct
speech, the video medium can be exploited to integrate the basic skills along with the
punctuation subskill. For example, my upper intermediate or advanced students viewed a
lengthy news clip from the CNN Headline News on the O. J. Simpson murder case which
they had been following. It is suggested that the clip be at least two minutes in duration
to provide sufficient, substantive information to facilitate comprehension. The teacher
may want to distribute an "advance organizer" to prime the students on the main
theme of the clip.
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During the pre-listening phase, students
brainstorm in groups about various aspects of the O. J. Simpson case to generate a list of
background information which the teacher can write on the board. This list will
accommodate both auditory and visual learners. During the initial listening phase, the
teacher plays the clip for global listening. The teacher then instructs the students to
listen to the videotape again and to take notes only on the main ideas. For example, in
this particular clip of November 21, 1994, the major headline concerned whether Judge
Lance Ito's wife, a Los Angeles police captain, should testify in the case since this
situation could prove prejudicial. The defense attorney, the judge, Judge Ito's wife, and
a university law professor were interviewed. This not only exposes students to varieties
(dialects) of American English but provides a fruitful vehicle for applying techniques to
compare direct and reported speech. The teacher plays the tape at least two more times for
students to fill in details. At this stage, the teacher may ask different student groups
to focus only on the substance of one of the four interviews. Student groups can then
collaborate to refine their notes and fill in any gaps. If necessary, the tape can then be
played again.
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The post-listening phase then entails recapping
the news clip. The substance of the conversations can be written on the board to
facilitate the less proficient students, and also to confirm information extracted by the
more proficient ones. Some students may wish to view the video again. This, the teacher
should do since we are teaching, not testing, comprehension. The next step of the exercise
then capitalizes on punctuation in direct versus reported speech. The teacher may approach
this stage inductively by asking students to transform the blackboard examples into direct
speech, e.g.:
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Reported speech: "Judge Ito
indicated that another judge could preside during the questioning of his wife to avoid
prejudice."
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Direct: Judge Ito said, "I
think another judge could preside during the questioning of my wife to avoid
prejudice." (See Footnote 6
)
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Subsequent to the punctuation exercise, a
follow-up communicative activity to focus on speaking and listening skills involves a role
play. The examples of direct speech provide the substance of dialogues in an interview
format at this stage. Students become sensitized to register, vocabulary usage, prosodic
features, and the guidance that punctuation in their written scripts provides for
expressing these nuances in oral expression (e.g., ellipsis indicates a pause or
hesitation, or affectively, an exclamation point may signal surprise, vociferous
objection, or some other emotion).
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Style sheets: Student-generated rules of usage
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The teacher can guide more advanced students in
groups to generate rules or "style sheets" (Little 1993) for punctuation in
specific contexts such as reported speech or direct speech. Advertisements are
representative of a genre that is characterized by unconnected prose and requires
idiosyncratic rules that depart significantly from prescribed norms. Student groups can
compare their style sheets to determine which functions are performed by the apostrophe in
different contexts and develop a taxonomy for their usage. (See Footnote
7 ) Pedagogical considerations include the teacher's
selection of materials appropriate to the learners' proficiency level, age, educational
background, learning objectives and most importantly, cross-cultural awareness.
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Unpunctuated text exercise-testing others
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This last assignment is particularly provocative
and reinforcing, especially if the teacher is a participant. Each student is provided with
at least three copies of one unpunctuated text to administer to peers and other EFL
teachers. The teacher selects a text that is brief, contains standard English, is
level-appropriate and contains a topic familiar to the students. After the
"tests" have been administered, students divide into groups in class to compare
their findings, which invariably results in animated discussion about sentence boundaries
and areas of variation. When students recognize that careless errors are committed by
novices (peers) and veterans (teachers) alike, they recognize that no one is an infallible
prescriptivist-an effective way of lowering the affective filter! Furthermore, students'
confidence is increased as they learn that there is considerable variation and creativity
in styles of punctuation.
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The seemingly monotonous, mechanical task of
learning punctuation can be integrated in the communicative EFL classroom. Students will
realize that language is flexible and creative, even in the realm of punctuation. The
selection of punctuation is neither an arbitrary nor purely mechanical choice but rather,
part of language that conforms to some established pattern or criteria. Students can
accept the notion that punctuation can and does violate prescriptive notions, depending on
such factors as the medium, the intended message, and the audience. Finally, the types of
activities that can be exploited to teach punctuation creatively and to maximize
opportunities that foster communicative competence are only limited by the teacher's
imagination!
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Judith
E. Moy has taught ESL at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Va. and
Indiana University of PA. She was an EFL teacher trainer at Guangzhou Foreign Languages
University in Guangzhou, People's Republic of China. |
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Return
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- Celce-Murcia, M. and D. Larsen-Freeman. 1983. The grammar book: An ESL/ EFL teacher's
course. Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle Publishers.
- Dulay, H. and M. Burt. 1974. Natural sequences in child second language acquisition. In
Language Learning, 24, 1, pp. 37-54.
- Harris, M. 1994. Reference guide to grammar and usage. 2nd edition. Englewood Cliffs,
N.J.: Prentice Hall.
- Larsen-Freeman, D. 1976. An explanation for the morpheme acquisition order of second
language learners. In Language Learning, 26, 1, pp. 125-134.
- Little, G. D. 1993. Variation in written English: Punctuation. In Language variation in
North American English research and teaching. eds. G. R. Wayne and D. M. Lance. New York:
The Modern Language Association of America.
- Quirk, R. and S. Greenbaum. 1973. A concise grammar of contemporary English. New York:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
- Sedley, D. 1990. Anatomy of English: An introduction to the structure of standard
American English. New York: St. Martin's Press. N.Y.
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ALICE FOUND A BOOK WHICH SEEMED TO BE IN A
PECULIAR LANGUAGE BUT WHEN SHE HELD IT TO THE LOOKING GLASS SHE FOUND THAT SHE COULD READ
THIS POEM IT SEEMS VERY PRETTY SHE SAID WHEN SHE HAD FINISHED IT BUT ITS RATHER HARD TO
UNDERSTAND SOMEHOW IT SEEMS TO FILL MY HEAD WITH IDEAS ONLY I DON'T KNOW EXACTLY WHAT THEY
ARE HOWEVER SOMEBODY KILLED SOMETHING THAT'S CLEAR AT ANY RATE
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Jabberwockyby Lewis Carroll
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Some punctuation phenomena in
written English
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A. In the following
exercises, ambiguity in meaning can be prevented by the useof commas. Can youdistinguish
the meanings of the sentence pairs? (Taken from Sedley, 1990.)
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1. The Greeks, who were philosophers, loved
to talk a lot.
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2. The Greeks who were philosophers loved to
talk a lot.
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B. In these sentences, the
writer's intention can be distinguished withpunctuation. Compare the sentencetypes.
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3. The children are going to bed at eight
o'clock.
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4. The children are going to bed at eight
o'clock!
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5. The children are going to bed at eight
o'clock?
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6. The children are going to bed at EIGHT
o'clock?!
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C. Compare the referents,
"he" in this pair of sentences.
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8. John said, "He's going."
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D. Consider how syntactic
information is conveyed in this pair.
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E. Writing may reflect spoken
languages in an imperfect way.
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11. John whispered the message to Bill and then
he whispered it to Mary.
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F. Consider in speaking, one
can emphasize one word with contrastive stresswhich might be indicated inwriting by visual
devices (e.g., bold face type, italics, capitalization,underscoring). Compare the
emphasisin this group of sentences:
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12. John kissed Bill's wife.
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13. John kissed Bills' wife.
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14. John kissed Bill's wife.
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15. John kissed Bill's wife .
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Footnote 1
| 1. For examples of the comma which can create
ambiguity, see Appendix "B" |
Footnote 2
2. One can consider count nouns or pronouns in
determiner form as "nouns" while other nouns may be "modifier nouns"
(Celce-Murcia and Larsen-Freeman 1983:125).
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Footnote 3
| 3. The reader may refer to P. Khampang, "A study
of the 's genitive and the of-genitive in English." Unpublished English 215 paper at
UCLA, Fall 1973. (cited in Celce-Murcia and Larsen-Freeman 1983). |
Footnote 4
| 4. It would also be interesting to elicit advanced
non-native English learners' responses to form preference. |
Footnote 5
5. Andersen (1979) points out that the Spanish
construction (also Italian) for the English 's and noun adjunct is the same:
Possessive: Mario's garden el jardin de Mario
Noun adjunct: a baseball player un jugador de beisbol
The reader may also refer to Andersen, R. 1979. The relationship
between first language transfer and second language over generalization: Data from the
English of Spanish Speakers. In The Acquisition and use of Spanish and English as first
and second languages. ed. R. Andersen. Washington, DC.: TESOL. |
Footnote 6
| 6. It is also important for the teacher to advise
students that reported speech is not always necessarily transliterated into direct speech,
especially since the interviewees may differ with respect to status (attorney, policeman,
university professor) and may adopt different levels of formality during the interview. |
Footnote 7
| 7. For example, Little (1993:355) noted that her
students discovered three different ways of indicating the end of a declarative sentence:
the expected period, bubble, or nothing; or exclamation points, dashes, or ellipses. |
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