Advantages And Disadvantages Of Generative Grammar

Transformational Generative Grammar, Functional Grammar, and Pragmatics etc. has left the language teachers bewildered with their jargon and hypotheses. Hence in this existing context, a grammar teacher remains in a state of confusion to decide whether he should follow the old prescriptive approach or the descriptive approach of the Structural Linguists; whether he should aim at the achievement of grammatical competence or communicative competence of the learners; whether he should concentrate on the parts of sentences by parsing them or on the utterances of the speakers; whether a teacher should concentrate in his pedagogy on the teaching of rules or the correct use of language. This paper briefly examines some of the cardinal problems or challenges that teachers of English grammar generally wrestle with while teaching English as a foreign language.

Key Words: Structuralism, Transformational Generative Grammar, Functional Grammar,

According to Professor Sinclair, “It is now generally accepted that it is extremely difficult to invent examples which sound realistic, and which have all the features of natural examples. I am convinced that it is essential for a learner of English to learn from actual examples, examples that can be trusted because they have been used in real communication (Sinclair1990:vii). Professor Sinclair regards “Train stopped” and “Frey agreed” as genuine examples than “Bird sing” as “real examples have a communicative value that the invented one lacks” (Sinclair1990: xi). In addition to the above mentioned problems, the issue of making the teaching of English grammar meaningful and relevant to the needs of the learners by contextualizing it using examples derived from the socio-cultural situations of the learners poses another serious