DILEMMATIC GRAMMAR OF ENGLISH Project Summary by Leslie Simonfalvi INTERNATIONAL TEACHER TRAINING & DEVELOPMENT COLLEGE

DILEMMATIC GRAMMAR - Project Summary 1 Trainers, teachers, trainees and students of the INTERNATIONAL TEACHER TRAINING & DEVELOPMENT COLLEGE Budapest - Hungary have long felt the need to create, use and transmit a different approach to English Grammar with MEANING as its starting point. Since this kind of pedagogical - communicative grammars are relatively difficult to find on the market, our only choice is to produce a tailor-made grammar for this purpose.

DILEMMATIC GRAMMAR – Project Summary 2 The goals of this project are firstly theoretical, but mostly methodological and practical. Analyses and evaluations have proceeded in three mutually dependent and overlapping phases: the theoretical phase, the methodological phase, and the practical phase.

DILEMMATIC GRAMMAR – Project Summary 3 The theoretical phase began in 1999 with a re-examination of the English tense system and especially the time- concept that is attached to it when we teach the language, and / or coming out of it in the students’ understanding.

DILEMMATIC GRAMMAR – Project Summary 4 This analysis proceeded by a series of four dilemmas of FORM and MEANING, namely the time – tense dilemma, the perfect form – ‘perfect meaning’ dilemma, the continuous form – ‘continuous meaning’ dilemma, and the passive form – ‘passive meaning’ dilemma.

DILEMMATIC GRAMMAR – Project Summary 5 A new paradigm, i. e. a new set of concepts related to the four dilemmas has been developed and the principles underlying their diverse contributions to meaning have been analysed. The time-concepts of different cultures have been studied by employing the best of the phenomenological – existential, and at times the positivist philosophies, as well as different theories from Gestalt Psychology.

DILEMMATIC GRAMMAR – Project Summary 6 In the methodological phase more than 10,000 sentences have been examined in situations through six cumulative series of Y / N questions related to the four dilemmas and other aspects of grammar and use, e. g. modality, conditionals, copulas, clauses and subordination, etc., through a novel system of time-lines and time-sets, through horizontal extensions, through the synthesis and reconstruction of sentences from horizontal extensions, through the identification of characteristic markers in the sentences and in the horizontal extensions that would help us better create a mental picture related to the real meaning, through identifying the figure – ground relationships in the pictures we have created, through computer animations, and through tests.

DILEMMATIC GRAMMAR – Project Summary 7 The methodological project phase has identified the essentials of those methodological procedures which are adequate to the theoretical concepts and principles, as well as a set of workable and theoretically grounded methodological rules and procedures leading to successful practice.

DILEMMATIC GRAMMAR – Project Summary 8 The ultimate aim of the methodological phase is to help teachers create a learning environment in which students are able to move away from conditions that are characteristic to the EFL [English as a Foreign Language] classroom, towards conditions that prevail in ESL [English as a Second Language] settings where really effective and more person-centered exercises, e. g. gist listening, gist reading, ChatterBoxing, HotSpot Reading, JigSawing, LipWriting, SlipWriting, and the rest, are more readily and more naturally applicable. These conditions and this kind of circumstances would be the answer to many learning disabled, and / or psychologically – socially handicapped students.

DILEMMATIC GRAMMAR – Project Summary 9 Finally, in the practical phase some 300 teachers as well as their students have used both the paper - handout version and some two dozen computerized generations of the Project, both in tailor-made workshops and in the teachers’ own classes. The successive computerized generations have resulted from the extensive feedback from all participants.

DILEMMATIC GRAMMAR – Project Summary 10 It can be said from the outset that the principal common approach of all the three phases has been their emphasis on language-in-context as a unit of study, on their attention to meaning in concrete – discrete situations, and, in the methodological and practical phases, on reaching comprehension as a developmental manifestation of the fulfilment of a basic educational need in studying a language.

DILEMMATIC GRAMMAR – Project Summary 11 One of the key features of the Project is seen as its linking theory and practice, and it is expected to bring a certain change to both by introducing into theory concepts and principles that have been proved by practice, as well as by introducing into practice methods that have been proved by theory.

DILEMMATIC GRAMMAR – Project Summary 12 The Project may be described as an essential attempt at remedying the lack of understanding when learning the language, remedying a high number of cases of misunderstanding and / or misinterpretation when teaching the language, remedying many teachers’ lack of emphathy re what is difficult and what is ‘easy’ for learners of English, remedying making a great deal of otherwise avoidable mistakes when using the language, and remedying not using a high number of grammatical exponents we have already ‘learned’, almost all resulting from neglecting the four basic dilemmas of modern English Grammar.