Analyzing simple past tense through a functional and a formal perspective

Abstract

This paper is aimed at comparing and presenting two grammar books about simple past tense teaching. One of them is Susan Kesner Bland Intermediate Grammar: From Form to Meaning and Use. And John e Alison Kooistra the power drill, reproducible 70 lessons. In order to do so, we trace the question “what’s the difference between teaching simple past tense in two different approaches?” We intend to bring up the functional and formal approach. Therefore, we inspire this work based on qualitative research in a descriptive method. For achieving our thesis, we cut out simple past tense throughout this paper. Hence, we intend to spot this work based on it. Thus, we concluded that, two grammar books that spread two different approaches: functional and formal. In deep, we found that the formal one is bound to rules, while the functional one is related to contextualized situations. Furthermore, the functional one is adjusted to contemporaneity in the classroom context. While the formal approach overview only on a universal grammar. Formal linguistics is embodied most notably by the work of Noam Chomsky and the paradigm of Generative Grammar. Afterward, we intend to reflect which approach should be better for a classroom and student’s learning.