Учебное пособие: Консультации по английской грамматике В помощь учителю иностранного языка

As men And women, wind And weather.

The Preposition stands before

A Noun, as In or Through a door.

The Interjection shows surprise,

As Oh! How Pretty! Ah! How Wise!

The whole are called nine parts of speech

Which reading, writing, speaking teach.

Nine parts of speech are mentioned in the poem against thirteen indicated in the chart. Among notional parts of speech numerals are not mentioned in the poem since they may be regarded in the group of adjectives due to the similarities of their characteristics and are often treated as such. Particles are easily comparable with adverbs, the same refers to modal words; words of affirmation and negation can with a certain degree of proximity be considered to be referring to the group of interjections. So, nine parts of speech is good enough for teaching purposes.

A chart like the one presented above would orientate the learners about the section of grammar they are in every time a grammar point is being taught facilitating them to overlook the complete picture of grammar.

The information about parts of speech may be helpful in teaching how to use an English-English, English-Russian, Russian-English dictionaries. It is taken for granted that students should make use of dictionaries and do make use of them successfully. That is why very little attention is given by EFL teachers to teaching the procedure of rinding a word in a dictionary. It is worthwhile remembering that the dictionary does not only name the word but also bears the information about what part of speech it is and, depending on it, some more data about the word in question.

Here is one other poem, this time about a dictionary.

Dictionary

William Jay Smith

A Dictionary's where you can look things up

To see if they're really there:

To see if what you breathe is Air,

If what you sit on is a Chair,

If what you comb is curly Hair,

If what you drink from is a Cup.

A Dictionary's where you can look things up

To see if they're really there.

Let us try to see how much information the verb "to explain" as a dictionary entry contains (the information comes from the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English by A.S.Hornby).

explain vtl VP6A, 9, 8, 10, 14

2 VP6A, 15B

The symbols are deciphered in the dictionary as follows:

VP6A S + vt n/pr A dictionary tries to ~ the meanings of words.

VP8 S + vt inter.pr/adv + to-infinitive

He ~ed what to do.

VP9 Subject + vt that clause

He ~ed that he .had been delayed by the weather.

VP10 Subject + vt dependent clause/question