My First Grammar Class in the Fourth Semester!

Etika Suzerein
16320009 (Dk)

On my second meeting of Advanced English Grammar class in the fourth semester, all participants including my lecturer, my classmates, and I were discussing a chapter about “Coordination and more”. Coordination is two or more elements of equal status are joined to make a larger unit. The words used to make this joining are called coordinators. Actually, this chapter had been discussed in my third semester yet I did not really understand because it was explained on my friends’ presentation and not monitored by my lecturer. It seemed I had some questions but I could not even ask some. So I felt a little bit anxious yet curious to face this chapter. For this occasion, we only attempted to reach the first three sub topics to be discussed.

Firstly, coordination is a non-headed construction. It is what makes coordination different from noun phrase, verb phrase or prepositional phrase which has a head. I eventually made my own example, “Reading novels, watching romantic movies, and listening to the western music are her hobbies”. For sure, “and” is a coordinator which connects the three coordinates with the equal status such as reading novels, watching movies, and also listening to the music. Other coordinators commonly used are or, nor, for, but, yet, and so.

Secondly, it is the distinctive syntactic properties of coordination. What I could get is, that the coordinate structures should belong to the same function is more important than the category. For example given in Rodney’s book, I’ll be back next week or at the end of the month. In this sentence we found next week and at the end of the month function as the adjunct of time.

Thirdly, it is the order of coordinates. Coordinates can be changed without perceptible effect on the acceptability or interpretation of the coordination. It is called symmetric and the contrast with asymmetric coordination.

Given these materials, I could understand more about coordination not only as the common I have already known. However, I hope the atmosphere in the class could be more relax and flexible so all participant especially the students will not get afraid or feel ashamed to be involved in the discussion.

On my second meeting of Advanced English Grammar class in the fourth semester, all participants including my lecturer, my classmates, and I were discussing a chapter about “Coordination and more”. Coordination is two or more elements of equal status are joined to make a larger unit. The words used to make this joining are called coordinators. Actually, this chapter had been discussed in my third semester yet I did not really understand because it was explained on my friends’ presentation and not monitored by my lecturer. It seemed I had some questions but I could not even ask some. So I felt a little bit anxious yet curious to face this chapter. For this occasion, we only attempted to reach the first three sub topics to be discussed.

Firstly, coordination is a non-headed construction. It is what makes coordination different from noun phrase, verb phrase or prepositional phrase which has a head. I eventually made my own example, “Reading novels, watching romantic movies, and listening to the western music are her hobbies”. For sure, “and” is a coordinator which connects the three coordinates with the equal status such as reading novels, watching movies, and also listening to the music. Other coordinators commonly used are or, nor, for, but, yet, and so.

Secondly, it is the distinctive syntactic properties of coordination. What I could get is, that the coordinate structures should belong to the same function is more important than the category. For example given in Rodney’s book, I’ll be back next week or at the end of the month. In this sentence we found next week and at the end of the month function as the adjunct of time.

Thirdly, it is the order of coordinates. Coordinates can be changed without perceptible effect on the acceptability or interpretation of the coordination. It is called symmetric and the contrast with asymmetric coordination.

Given these materials, I could understand more about coordination not only as the common I have already known. However, I hope the atmosphere in the class could be more relax and flexible so all participant especially the students will not get afraid or feel ashamed to be involved in the discussion.