These extension activities help you to become more aware of issues that affect grammatical choices, more aware of difficulties your own learners have with grammar, and more constructively critical of how grammar is treated in published materials.

These activities extend the content of any of the chapters. Each time you use one of them, you need to decide which grammatical feature you wish to research/explore.

More detailed extension exercises/research activities for each of the chapters in this book can be found on the Cambridge University Press Website: http://www.cambridge.org/elt/gelt/extension/.

Exploring variation from text to text

Obtain two or more short texts from different sources. These can be written (e.g. a letter from a friend; a serious newspaper article; a recipe) or transcribed spoken English (e.g. a magazine interview or your own transcription of a recording of friends talking or of an unscripted radio discussion).

You can:

• • count the number of times your chosen grammar feature occurs, and for each text work out a ratio between this and some related feature (for example, you might compare the frequency of a and the or of two tenses).

• • explain why this feature is used each time it occurs.

• • sub-classify the feature (for example, you might divide adverbs into adverbs of frequency, attitude markers, etc.).

• • look at how the speaker’s/writer’s tone or message would be affected if other choices had been made.

• • identify and account for any non-standard features (e.g. conditionals: If I’d have has; past tense forms: didn’t used to; relative pronouns: The girl what I saw).

• • compare the occurrence of this grammar feature between the two texts, and account for any differences (e.g. some features are assumed to occur more frequently in written text than in spoken, or in formal contexts than informal). This activity enables you to begin testing this out.

Exploring variation from person to person

Choose a grammar feature where use varies from person to person, e.g. comparatives, prepositions, modal verbs or singular/plural agreement.