Abstract
Abstract There is a growing consensus that language learning is facilitated by an awareness of language structure. A vital component of this structure is the relationships between meaning and grammatical encoding. The ability of the teacher to help learners discover these relationships is, however, dependent on a number of factors. One is the availability of descriptions which are both descriptively adequate and easily understandable to teachers and learners. In the area of Tense‐Aspect‐Modality (TAM) such a description has, in the author's view, been lacking. One difficulty has been overcoming the opaqueness of the metalanguage. Another that of clearly distinguishing between key notions such as ‘tense’ and ‘aspect’. This paper discusses a visual representation of the English TAM (verb) system which helps overcome both of these difficulties through the use of ‘icons’. It is based on the author's previous research into TAM in English and Modern Greek (Svalberg, 1991). The paper endeavours to show how learners can be made aware of the very abstract meanings involved through the use of ‘icons’ which obviate the need for grammar terminology. Grammar is presented as meaningful and a number of grammar rules can be taught as ‘visual rules’.
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