|
Resource for English Teachers and Testers
Personal Information
I am a native English speaker, hold a
B.A. in Philosophy (University of Cape Town), a B.A. Honours in
French (University of South Africa), an M.A. in English (University
of Potchefstroom), a Ph.D. in English language and linguistics
(University of Cape Town), and a postgraduate teacher's diploma
(University of South Africa). I have published articles on language,
education, and literature, and presented conference papers in
South Africa and internationally.
________________________
On this website, there are links to my articles,
conference papers, and doctoral thesis.
These writings cover a variety of topics on education, applied
linguistics, literature and psychology. All the material follows
the spelling conventions of British English, and the format follows
the conventions of the journals in which they were published.
Grammargraphs
I need to explain the thinking behind the name of
my website. Language teachers often distinguish in a language
between 1. the grammar, or structure, and 2. the lexicon (word
meaning).
Grammargraph derives from two Greek words: gramma,
"the recording of ideas in written form", and graphein,
the "format of writing" - how the writing appears on
the page. In articles, theses and dissertations, the format, the
layout, the graphein of the words and graphics plays an
important part.
Grammar in Grammargraph has a more comprehensive
meaning than structure. Grammar embraces - as it does in the Greek
meaning of gramma - both structure and meaning. In modern
linguistics, we distinguish between grammatical
meaning" (meaning at the sentence level and below the sentence level) and
"discourse meaning" (meaning beyond the sentence level).
Sentence structure and sentence meaning belong to
grammar, while the function of sentences in discourse belongs
to the language use.
In a good piece of discourse, language does not
lag behind or run ahead of what we intend to say. Language lags
behind when we cannot find the accurate or appropriate words to
express our intentions. Language runs ahead when the fascination
with the medium clouds the message. Good writers avoid or correct
these problems.
Looking forward to working with you.
Raphael Gamaroff
|
