Stephen van Vlack

Sookmyung Women`s University

Graduate School of TESOL

Approaches to Teaching Grammar

Fall 2006

Week 5 - Answers

Thornbury (1999) Chapter 3 - How to teach grammar from rules. pp. 29-48.

1. What are the two main approaches in teaching grammar from rules and how do they differ, how are they similar?

The main approaches are:

a. Rule-driven learning = deductive

b. Discovery learning = inductive

These two approaches differ in the ordering of the elements. In a. the rules are given fist and overtly and then exercise and examples are given to tie the rules to actual language and hopefully to reinforce them. In b. examples and practice is given first followed by the rules, which will hopefully better explain the examples more clearly for the students.

The two approaches are similar in that they both represent overt attempts at teaching grammar

The advantages of rule-driven approaches are that the students know from the beginning what is going on and adults like that. Adult students generally do not like to guess or feel that they are swimming in shark infested water. Giving them the rules first makes them feel safe and comfortable. At the same time, however, it makes them lazy and over reliant on rules which are not always true. We have said in this class that language is something which is hard to break down into rules which just float in some cognitive void. An over reliance on rules and the ensuing disappointment when the rules are not always right can be very demotivating.

The advantages of discovery learning approaches are that the students get to figure out what is going o by themselves based on real language data, assuming that the teacher is suing authentic input. This is closer to L1 acquisition and is, therefore, seen as being more natural. Just remember, there is still a point where the class discusses and the teacher explains the rule, but based on the input and the practice. The problem with this is that it takes more time for the student to figure things out and some people don`t like that little child lost feeling.

In reality, these two approaches can be very similar or very different. It depends on how the teacher works in the classroom.

2. What are the components of a good grammar rule?

Thornbury lists six components of good grammar rules.

Truth

This means that the rule has to be as true as you can make it, which is a bit of a catch 22, because truth is relative. It also related to the component below because no rule we give can ever be completely true.

Limitation

Most language rules are much too complex to ever be able to give to our students in one fell swoop. For this reason, we need to try to impose some limitation on our description. Go for the core of the rule in the initial stages of introduction and then, over time, look for the oddities and exceptions that are bound to be there. Teachers often think they need to do everything. Remember, you are only a small cog in a very large wheel. Others have come before you and explained and other will come after you to explain and hope fully not the mess you created by trying to explain too much.

Clarity

Obvious!! Make sure that your explanations are clear. Organize them well and include good examples at the right time.

Simplicity

This is related to clarity. What is simple is generally more clear and is easier to understand. Thinking about the simplicity of your explanation will also ensure that your explanation is limited and easier to understand, and hopefully not boring.

Familiarity

OK, this is a basic concept in learning theory. Use familiar images to explain something and people will understand it well. Find things that your students like and know well and integrate them into your explanations.

Relevance

Make sure your explanations are useful; that they are centered around the goals of your class or the particular lesson, or string of lessons. The reason for the explanation must be clear. Never explain for explanation`s sake.

3. What are the two necessary parts of a good grammar explanation?

Thornbury lists the two parts in the following order. This is interesting in light of the fact that Thornbury has said that meaning is more important than grammar and again shows that often people give lip service to certain ideas but then go back and do something different and often more traditional. We could also interpret this as indicating that we need first to draw the student`s attention to the form(s) before we go and explain its(their) use. This might make sense, but first we need to decide if we want to teach the grammar point overtly or covertly, bearing in mind that overt teaching is done to save time and labor, but is not necessarily clearer or more complete than covert handling of the matter.

Rule of form

This part of the explanation obviously revolves around trying the explain how the grammatical form is realized. It involves introducing the shape of the forms and any kinds of changes or irregularities we might find in the shape of the forms.

Rule of use

This part of the explanation deals with the questions of when, why, and possibly how a particular form is used. This is the link of structure to meaning, which is good, but as it is formed here it is a bit of an oversimplification.

The consideration of rule of use, as it is given in Thornbury, seems to imply that particular structures have meaning in and of themselves. This is a rather old-fashioned but hard to kill idea about grammar. It is not the grid that has the meaning. It is what is in the slots created by the grid, that has and creates the meaning; the vocabulary items. What is more interesting and true is that the vocabulary items themselves create the grid. Rules of use, then, cannot be seen as a simple correlation between structure and meaning, but rather is a correlation between lexis and meaning.

4. Using considerations based on E-factors and A-factors, which of the four sample lessons given in the book do you think is the most effective?

I like sample lesson 1 the best basically because it moves in a series of small but progressive stages which become more and more personally meaningful for the students.

5. Using considerations based on E-factors and A-factors, which of the four sample lessons given in the book do you think is the least effective?

I like sample lesson 2 the least. I just don`t like translation approaches, especially not from the TL into the L1.

6. Is there anything in any of the sample lessons that you would like to change or add?

Probably yes, but it is hard to decide on this unless one sees the teachers in action with the students. One thing we need to be very critical of are ready made activities. Even though they look great on paper you can never tell how they will work in the classroom until you try them.

Lewis (1997) Chapter 3 - Lexis in the classroom. pp. 44-59

7. Lewis claims that while languages can be learned they can`t be taught. Do you agree or disagree?

I absolutely agree with the truth and he sentiments of Lewis`s statement. In particular it is foreign language teachers which need to take a lesson from this statement. It is definitely true that YOU cannot teach your students English. The more you believe you can and the more you try to do so the more limited the outcomes in the long term. The only thing that can teach language is language. This is particularly important in foreign language environments where for many students the only language they are getting is the language you are giving them. Teachers need top grasp this harsh reality. The more you are talking the less your students are learning. Yet there is a time and a place for explanation and presentation and much of what we will be doing in this course is getting you to the point where you can make decisions as to when and where those appropriate situations are.

8. What are some of the ways we can go about expanding our students` lexicons?

Expanding the students lexicon of paramount importance. We need to think about the lexicon as a self organized system within memory. As with all self organized systems, the more information the system has to work with the better it is going to work. Therefore the first and most important step for us as language teachers is to increase our students lexicon. It is also important to remember that this is not restricted to simple single word entries. One of the best ways of expanding the lexicon is to draw attention to more and different types of multiword units.

The key to expanding the students` lexicons is in exposure and the development of awareness in his exposure. Thus it is better to expose students to more language and possibly language that is not so finely tuned although the form of the language the students are to be exposed to does play a role. Students are to be encouraged to deal with a text written or spoken in a more holistic manner. What this means is that rather than practicing what I call `search and destroy reading or listening` where the students listen or read (process) each word individually and have troubles when they fail to process one word. Many of your students will NOT develop strategies on their own and like in the old apprentice learning system it seems clear that strategies for learning vocabulary are best learned in the context of actual language. But short simplified texts do not provide any opportunity for the students to actually use strategies or at least strategies that work well.

Two additional tricks in trying to get students to increase their store lexical items is to use both monolingual dictionaries and a lexis notebook. The beauty of a dictionary is that it actually tries to mimic what lexicographers actually believe is the structure of the lexicon. Therefore it will include different types of meaning and other interesting usage patterns which students were learners should actually try to get into their mental lexicon. As should be clear by now knowledge of lexis goes way beyond knowing a particular dictionary like definition of a word. Using a good monolingual dictionary will help raise awareness of some of the complexity of lexis and individual lexical items and chunks. The beauty of having a lexis notebook is that it allows students to revisit over and over again the interesting lexical items, and remember this includes multiword units, which they have encountered in their textual explorations. We know that repetition is extremely important in learning and particularly in the learning of lexis. It should be clear that lexical knowledge is not something which happens into stepwise fashion. Students will know different aspects of lexical item at any given time, but will probably never ever have the entire picture. Knowledge is always incomplete and in learners is even less complete. A lexical notebook allows them to add more information to what they are really have and organize and revisit the information that they have encountered and noticed.

9. What are some of the basic methods of practicing the lexical approach in the classroom?

Learner participation

The value of repetition

Noticing

Consciousness raising

Negative evidence

10. What are some of the ways we can get our students to chunk lexically?

The basic idea here is that we need to start with........awareness. Students need to be made aware of the inherent chunkiness of language. Interestingly this same idea is continued in the generative idea of structural dependency and because of this we can encourage students to focus on lexical development by doing simple chunk analysis in the for of identification of phrases. Thus traditional grammar already has a bit of a handle on this. The same can be said for pronunciation. How a sequence of words is actually pronounced guides us to the chunks inherent in the language. By having students identify things like thought groupings which reflect not only phonological structure but syntactic (and even CHUNKS) e are drawing their attention to the ever-present chunks of language. It is actually pretty simple.