A short course in language analysis

This short course is intended for anyone who speaks English and now wants to teach it.

If English is your first language, and especially if you were educated in Britain, you may know what's right and what's wrong but may not be able to put your finger on why because you have never been taught the structure of English explicitly.

Alternatively, you may have acquired English to a high level as a second (or third etc.) language but without being able to state the rules of grammar in English or describe it well for your students.

If either alternative describes you, this course is for you.

finding your way in the language jungle

This page describes the structure of this short course and contains an index of everything that's in it. It also has a suggested route through the materials, slowly building on what you learn as we go along.

This is quite a traditional approach to the analysis of English. This form has been selected because it is familiar to learners and teachers and is the basis on which many syllabuses and course materials are constructed. There is no assertion here that it is either the best or the only way to approach the analysis of English.
Understanding this nuts-and-bolts approach to the language will form the basis for an understanding of more sophisticated and interesting approaches should you wish to investigate further.
Advice concerning where to go next comes at the end.

What do we need to analyse?

Traditionally, language can be imagined in six areas, like this:

analysis overview

This course is divided in the same way. You can access it at any point but if language analysis is quite new to you, the best approach is to take each area in turn.
Here's the index. Click where you want to go.

Phonemes	What is a phoneme?	Phrases, clauses and verbs	Phrase structure
	Consonants		Clause structure
	Vowels	Sentences	Types of sentences
Morphemes	What is a morpheme?		Conjunction
	Word formation	Discourse	Cohesion
Words	What is word class?		Theme and rheme
	Meaning	Take all the tests again to check and revise.
	Relationships	Where next?

These topics are also accessible from the links on the left and in the footer of all pages.

Sometimes, there are links in the sections of this course to guides in the rest of the site. All these links will open in new tabs so simply shut them to return to the course.

At the end of each guide, you will see this:

Learn more about:

Links here will take you to guides on this site which have a lot more detail. These guides are usually in the in-service training section of the site and will open in a new tab so you do not lose contact with the course.
Simply close the page when you are done.