A Syntactic Approach to Teaching English as a Second Language at the Undergraduate Level

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The aim of this paper is to present a model of teaching English as a second language (L2) at the undergraduate level based on some theoretical insights of generative syntax. Broadly, it is an attempt to reconcile some insights about language expounded in generative syntactic theories overtime with second language teaching, hence, at the application level. These two disciplines, i.e., generative syntax and language teaching have developed as two distinctive domains at both theoretical and empirical levels, and hardly any organized attempt has been made to see the pedagogical advantages that the latter can derive from the former. The different language teaching methodologies and approaches from Grammar Translation to Audio Lingual method, Audio Visual method, Communicative Approach, and to more recent ones have been attempted at both Sri Lankan schools and the universities. Nevertheless, it can be seen that the L2 teachers are practicing more of an eclectic method in the L2 classroom in both places. In terms of syllabus, mode of presentation, and assessment forms, a discrete point pedagogical organization of language items can be seen. In contrast, when language teachers are shown the nature of native speaker competence as reflected in his/her performance, i.e., his/her utterances, in a rather modular architecture of grammar, better results can be expected from both the language teacher and the learner. Hence, this paper examines teaching of lexical categories, verb complementation, and tense and aspect in terms of distributional criteria, argument structure, thematic roles, and tense as a linguistic representation of time.