Syntax

These approaches to syntax appear to have an influence on applied-linguistics research activities. Comsky's earlier approaches to syntax are still proving influential in that many introductions to syntax courses in applied-linguistics programs are modification on both past and current Comskean linguistics.

The descriptive syntax texts have been used for grammar courses and for resource references in language policy and planning- particularly in the development of language standards in schools, in second-language acquisition, in discourse analysis, in computational stylistics, and in lexicography.

The third major syntactic approach having a strong iinfluence on applied linguistics is the functional-systemic approach of Halliday. Many applied linguists have received their basic syntactic training in this approach on to their students.

In Australia, Canada, Great Britain, New Zealand, and the United States, the movement to have schoolchildren write from the earliest grades, commonly referred to as the whole language approach, has drawn support for its ideas at least in part from the work of Halliday.

Halliday has argued that children learn language when its use has a meaningful purpose for them.  

language approaches