teaching useful structures
the teacher of grammar is an enormous field to cover. Consequently , we have split it into two, beginning here with the teaching of structures. A structure is a pattern of words which make a meaningful utterance. The aim of teaching structure is to get students to internalize dozens of useful phrases, but with a sensitivity to the generative power of each one. The meaning is changed by a process of substitution, but the basic shape of the phrase remains the same
The teaching of structures is probably the main aim of the textbook you are using, since most school textbook were written in days when structures were the basic of the syllabus .Structures are seen as the building blocks of language , hence their name. Dialogues especially, are often little more than a string of useful structures . Until comparatively recently, textbook structures were chosen largely on the criterion of simplicity was judged partly by length of utterance and partly by traditional grammatical progressions. The accompanying approved method stressed learning the structures by heart, with little attention to the communicative value of the utterances Teachers who use these textbook often retain the mechanical method of teaching those structures, and so we still hear unlikely exchange of the following sort.