Conflicting Grammatical Terms and Sentence Patterns in The Teaching of English

摘要

Grammar plays an important role in the teaching of English. However, some grammatical terms are used differently. This condition leads to confusion among th students and teachers. In a sentence analysis, for example, a grammarian prefers to use the term subject for a sentence element whereas other grammarians tend to use the term noun phrase for the same thing. Surprisingly, the term noun phrase can be used to represent a single word. To most grammarians a phrase is always a group of words.udA similar situation exists in the use of the term sentence pattern. Many grammarians use that term while certain grammarians use clause pattern for the same condition. Every grammarian has certain reasons to support his terms. This paper tries to discuss the use of different grammatical terms. Standard terms are encouraged that they prevent from confusion among users.ud