Teaching Grammar Usage to ESL Students: A Practical Application of the Invariant Meanings of *TO* and *ING*

While students often confuse the usage of infinitives with gerunds or participles, most grammar tests for foreign students do not contrast these forms to any great extent but rather treat these forms separately. This thesis proposes a new approach to teaching these forms based on rules which contrast the invariant meanings of to and -ing (derived from Roman Jakobson’s invariant meaning theory). A field experiment was conducted in which the experimental students used materials based on the contrastive invariant meanings of to and -ing and the control students used traditional materials. Both groups were given a pre- and post-test. The results of the experiment showed that the experimental students raised their mean score from 69.0 to 88.3 while the control students raised their mean score from 72.6 to 79.9.

Thesis Author: Smith, Peggy Hall

Year Completed: 1978

Thesis Chair: Rey Baird