Infinitives

What Is an Infinitive?

An infinitive is a word that look like a verb but doesn't act like a verb.
They are actually made up of two words: to + a verb. These two words act together as nouns, adjectives, or adverbs.
(Words that are made of verbs but don't act like verbs are called verbals. There are two other types of verbals: gerunds and participles.)
Examples:
I love to swim. The person to call is Jeff.I can't wait to see!

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Where's the To?

Sometimes, finding infinitives can be tricky because the word to is omitted. That's not very nice is it?
This usually happens when it follows certain verbs like feel, hear, help, let, make, see, and watch.
Here are some examples of infinitives that are missing the word to.
I'll underline the special verbs so that you can see where they are.
They watched the ship sail. I heard the doorbell ring. When Margo slammed the door, she made the painting fall. 

 more discussions and exercises at www.english-grammar-revolution.com

 

Participles & Participial Phrases

Participles & Participial Phrases

Participles are words that look like verbs and act like adjectives.
You could say that they have identity issues.
Words that are made of verbs but don't act like verbs are called verbals. There are two other kinds of verbals: gerunds and infinitives.


A participle is a verbal that is used as an adjective and most often ends in -ing or -ed. The term verbal indicates that a participle, like the other two kinds of verbals, is based on a verb and therefore expresses action or a state of being. However, since they function as adjectives, participles modify nouns or pronouns. There are two types of participles: present participles and past participles. Present participles end in -ing. Past participles end in -ed, -en, -d, -t, or -n, as in the words asked, eaten, saved, dealt, and seen.

• The crying baby had a wet diaper.
• Shaken, he walked away from the wrecked car.
• The burning log fell off the fire.
• Smiling, she hugged the panting dog.

A participial phrase is a group of words consisting of a participle and the modifier(s) and/or (pro)noun(s) or noun phrase(s) that function as the direct object(s), indirect object(s), or complement(s) of the action or state expressed in the participle, such as:

Removing his coat, Jack rushed to the river.

 

more discussions and exercises at  www.owl.english.purdue.edu

Gerunds

Gerunds (-ing)

When a verb ends in -ing, it may be a gerund or a present participle. It is important to understand that they are not the same.
When we use a verb in -ing form more like a noun, it is usually a gerund:

• Fishing is fun.

When we use a verb in -ing form more like a verb or an adjective, it is usually a present participle:

• Anthony is fishing.
• I have a boring teacher.

 Gerunds are sometimes called "verbal nouns".
 more discussions and exercises at www.grammar-quizzes.com

Literary Theory and Teaching English

This examines the historical relationships between literary theory, literature curriculum, and classroom practice. Clearly, theory has played a role in the development of our thinking about curriculum and teaching. At the same time theories have come into prominence in certain periods as part of or a response to particular historical moments and movements. The contexts listed continue...

Current Approaches and Practices 

Cultural Studies 

Integrates a variety of approaches with an emphasis on addressing social inequality. Origins in British social theory (Birmingham School), European socialism (Frankfurt School), American popular culture, and multicultural, postcolonial, and feminist movements. continue... 

Deconstruction

Derrida, the founder of deconstruction, challenges universal ideals, metaphysical certainties, or claims to unchanging truths about the human condition. "Truths" when examined closely, when "deconstructed," turn out to be fictions created by language and particular systems of meaning situated in time and place.continue ...

New Historicism

New Historicism incorporates the insights from multicultural studies, gender studies, political criticism, media studies, popular culture, cultural studies, etc. as it looks literature of the past. New Historicists distrust expressions like "in the eyes of the later middle ages" and tend to see historical periods not as consistent or coherent, but as made up of different social groups in contest with one another. Literature should not be thought of as transcending the time continue ...

Post-marxism

Breaking with certain more rigid marxist ideas such as the necessary determination of a social system by its economic structure, the inevitability of revolution, or the justice of a one-party state, many postmarxist scholars continue to draw insight and inspiration from socialist continue...

Postmodernism

Postmodernism foregrounds the concept of difference, the jarring, collage-like existence of contemporary life The world is seen as a cartoonesque Disneyland, an unremitting play of striking cultural difference, the overflow of an uneven and diverse globalism where African slum dwellers watch the Cosby show, continue ...

Poststructuralism

Consciousness resides in language and is socially made, not uniquely individual or divinely given. English courses can address the discourses from which identity (subjectivity, subject positions) arise. No escape from the "stereotype" only richer and richer explorations of roles and possibilities. Poststructuralism can take different forms, such as postmodernism, deconstruction, post-marxism. 

Read more about these theories of teaching literature at the the Western michigan website or at  teachingliterature.org.