This is a hybrid course that includes “live” synchronous class meetings one night a week during scheduled class time using the Big Blue Button web conferencing system. Students are required to log in and attend the synchronous meetings. Students will need access to a computer or tablet with reliable high-speed internet connection, along with a webcam, microphone and either speakers or headphones.

The remaining credit hours for the course will be fulfilled through online assignments completed in myCMU. Students must participate in the live meetings and online assignments to be successful in this course. Students will access Big Blue Button meetings by clicking “Online Meetings” located on the left side menu of this course in myCMU. To participate in the meeting click on the appropriate weeks link during the scheduled time and day of the course. Recorded sessions can also be accessed here.

Morenberg, Max. Doing Grammar. Fifth Edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. ISBN-13: 9780199947331

This course will introduce students to the basics of English grammar. Students will learn how to identify parts of speech, analyze sentences, and recognize the conventions of Standard American English. This course will prepare students for upper-level coursework in teaching language arts, assessing language development, and linguistic study.

Upon successful completion of the course, each participant should be able to:

• Identify parts of speech
• Parse grammatical slots and their hierarchy of constituents, including heads and attributes
• Describe the status of verb phrases in terms of tense, modality, and aspect
• Employ tree diagrams to parse simple, compound, and complex sentences
• Rearrange statements into yes/no questions, wh-questions, and negative statements
• Understand the structure/effect of active and passive sentences
• Analyze/construct relative clauses and relative clauses that have been reduced to phrases
• Analyze/construct noun clauses, gerunds, and infinitives
• Add nonrestrictive modifiers, absolute phrases, and adverb clauses to sentences