Breaking a sentence up into different parts-verb,noun etc

Forums: English, Esl, Grammar, Efl
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I've started teaching a student who needs to pass his pilots licence and he wants to see a structure to be able to understand the meaning of the exam questions and although I've broken simple sentences up into the relevant parts I'm dealing with much longer complicated sentences e.g. A message concerning an aircraft being threatened by grave and imminent danger,requiring immediate assistance is called 'distress message'
Here there are various verbs and I can no longer say subject-verb-object-place-time etc
Can you help me to label this sentence correctly?
I've been teaching English for years but rarely concentrate on the parts of the sentence.

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@alisonjane,

I suggest you google "Aviation English" for some procedural hints. For example
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHUwac3Ekf4

Note that standard English grammar (nouns, verbs etc) is probably too general to be useful in specific varieties of English like "pilot speak". The concept of "grammar" has moved on from the early days of analogy to Latin. Halliday, for example, stressed contextual features as being possibly more important than sentence structure in his study of "discourse analysis".

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@alisonjane,

Ali forgive me but which sentence

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@alisonjane,

Quote:

I've started teaching a student who needs to pass his pilots licence

I suspect that this is a non-native English speaker who is trying to get their commercial pilot's license. The language of air traffic controllers and pilots is English.

You're not helping this person, nor are you helping this person's future passengers. Pilots have to become much more than proficient in reading to pass an exam. They have to become fluent in listening and speaking English in order to land their plane and its passengers with all the pieces in the same order that they were when they left the ground.

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@fresco,

fresco wrote:

Halliday, for example, stressed contextual features as being possibly more important than sentence structure in his study of "discourse analysis".

Rolls eyes.

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@contrex,

Got an eye problem ?

This is supposed to be a "forum of experts" so those with knowledge of linguistics should comment on assumptions behind questions. I did so as a footnote following a link to some practical advice.

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Can't anyone just give me a simple answer?
We're not questioning passenger safety here.If he has to pass a multiple choice reading test as part of the licence then that's what he has to do!!!! My question was about the sentence not his ability to speak English well or not.

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@alisonjane,

I too, have been teaching English [ESL/EFL] for years, Jane, but I can't for the life of me fathom how labeling the words with their respective parts of speech tags would help anyone pass an English test.

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@alisonjane,

Suggest you maintain a link to Essentials Of English
or google the topic so as to have a quick online reference source.

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@alisonjane,

The link above refers to oral exchanges. I would have thought that a written test is of limited use.

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@alisonjane,

Quote:

Can't anyone just give me a simple answer?

An answer to what? Waiting for the question.

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I neve break up sentences . . . i have too much trouble putting them together in the first place.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

I neve break up sentences . . . i have too much trouble putting them together in the first place.

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@JTT,

JTT wrote:

I too, have been teaching English [ESL/EFL] for years, Jane, but I can't for the life of me fathom how labeling the words with their respective parts of speech tags would help anyone pass an English test.

True, except wasting time and energy. Razz

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Breaking a sentence up into different parts-verb,noun etc

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