I deleted some messages on this topic without reading them, so forgive
me if this is repetitive.
Seems you have gotten some research sources on this -- great! I have
worked with particular genres in both ESL and native-speaker classes:
-recipes (imperatives, of course)
-restaurant menus (lots of participial modifiers --sauteed, roasted, etc.
-instruction manuals for assembling or operating furniture, electronics
(phones, VCRs), etc. -- interesting ways of phrasing commands
-information about health insurance policies or procedures for dealing
with bureaucracies (have a lot of 'will' sentences--"The applicant will
need to provide a form of ID" ... ). Notice this isn't really a future
statement, but the 'will' of the if/then conditional. The 'if' clause is
an unstated assumption.
-greeting cards (a variety of genres within this category)
-field guide entries (e.g. birdwatching books) (lots of bare predicates
w/o subject noun phrases)
My students have done nice creative work with the last one--esp. with
writing their own field guide entries for people: toddlers, couch
potatoes, good teachers, surfers, etc. I had beginning ESL students
write a recipe for a favorite dish and then cook it for the class and
give the recipes to their classmates.
In general, it's fun to have students collect 'realia' -- actual printed
documents that serve real-world purposes--and use them for class
analysis and generation of their own documents. This is one area where
you can just try to pay attention to the stuff you see in everyday life
to find treasures for class.
A fun activity (yes, I use it as an adjective) just for language
awareness in general is to observe things like bumper stickers and
clever business names. These, esp. the business names, show how creative
ordinary people can be (although I guess a lot of business names come
from PR firms). Some of my favorites are an exterminator called "The Bug
Stops Here" and a hair salon called "Curl up and Dye". Hair salons are
especially wonderful. There was one in a beach town where I lived once
that was called Coast Barbery. This isn't grammar per se, but it's fun!
I'd like to start a serious collection of clever business names.
***************************************************
Johanna Rubba, Associate Professor, Linguistics
English Department, Cal Poly State University
San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
Tel. 805-756-2184 ~ Dept. phone 805-756-2596
Dept. fax: 805-756-6374 ~ E-mail: [log in to unmask]
URL: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
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