Stephen van Vlack
Sookmyung Women`s University
Graduate School of TESOL
Approaches to Teaching Grammar
Spring 2006
Week 6 - Answers
Thornbury (1999) Chapter 4 - How to teach grammar from examples. pp. 49-68.
1. What do you think might be the strengths and weaknesses of translation as a form of grammar practice?
We all know that translation is a very popular type of practice form particularly for grammar practice in the Korean classroom. Teachers like to use this because it is quick and easy. Within a very short period of time the teachers can find out exactly what students understand. It is also relatively easy to assess, at least on a basic level. Those are the strengths of translation when we think about it as used in congruence with a traditional grammar approach. There are, however, a lot of weaknesses involved with using translation as a form of grammar practice, particularly when it is used too traditionally. The biggest weakness with translation form TL ro L1 is that it has the students concentrate more on the L1 (Korean) forms than actually on the TL (English) ones. Students look at the English and simply decipher it trying to put into the best Korean they can. It is, therefore, more a test of their Korean prowess with grammar than actually an indicator of their English prowess. No focus is necessarily placed on how the meaning was achieved in the English form. Following this line of thought, we must concede that translation especially from the English into Korean is a fairly vacuous type of activity.
We have already talked about the fact that it really does not take a lot of grammar to actually be able to understand or process the target language. A lot of language processing occurs simply at the lexical level. Therefore, when the students are translating from English into Korean they really don't have to pay a lot of attention to the English grammar much at all. Translating from Korean to English, however, is a whole different enterprise. Here the students need to concentrate a lot on English grammar to get the translation right and that's a good thing. It is, however, not all good. If students are translating texts from Korean the texts are going to be embedded within a Korean cultural context and Korean situations. It could be very hard for the students to translate these into English and even if they can, they are not going to be exposed to necessary background knowledge which will help her/him in the long run acquire the language more completely and more smoothly. They might end up learning more about Korean, at least from the aspect of content, than actually about English. If they are translating at the sentence level devoid of context then there is no way of knowing what the best English translation of the Korean sentence should be.
Also, translation is a rather boring type of activity. Simply put, it is not very exciting, even if the text is an interesting one for the students..Why are we doing this? It is difficult and mechanical and if there is no surrounding context created from the language above the sentence level then it's quite useless.
2. What does the teacher need to do to make the inductive approach work well?
In order to make the inductive approach work well teachers need to be very conscious of the types of tasks, the types of functions present and supporting grammar forms that the students are supposed to be doing. Teachers cannot just simply have fun in the classroom and justify the fun by saying that they are using an inductive approach. The teacher needs to plan in advance what the goals of the practice could possibly be bearing in mind that not all students will be doing exactly the same thing, or derive the same thing from the same piece of practice. There has to be a plan. There has to be an idea which underlies all the things that teachers do in the classroom. Based on this idea, it is actually sometimes harder to follow an inductive approach as opposed to the deductive approach, simply because teachers do not have as much power to determine the outcome of what happens in the classroom. Many teachers, therefore, don't like this because they need to make contingency plans based on their own knowledge and experience of the particular class they are dealing with as well as teaching/classroom situations in general. If the teacher has little experience doing this type of thing it can be a painful experience they might not want to repeat again too soon.
The type of practice that the teacher takes is also extremely important. The teacher has to make sure that the practice actually fits what their goals are for the teaching grammar so that when the students are actually exposed to the rule (pattern) or specific attention is drawn to a rule (pattern) in a situation the students are not actually surprised by what they find. The key to all this is planning.
Before doing anything in the classroom the teacher needs to have a clear idea what the goals and expectations of the activity/exercise/task are. This must be done with the full understanding that different students will perform differently on the same activity/exercise/task provided it is more open-end and it must be understood that language is by its very nature open-ended. There is always another option. Maybe the best and simplest way of dealing with this is by thinking about functions first and grammar second. A specific macro function, like narrating, will generally call for certain grammatical forms like past tense verbs, but not all students will use all these unmarked forms the same way. That is one of the beauties of the inductive approach. If planned well it allows the students to complete the task at their own level. In this view we need to plan our classes inn accordance with the entire course curriculum to make sure the students are getting enough practice in different areas. This includes, by the way, vocabulary.
3. How does situation language teaching work?
The idea behind situational language teaching is actually quite simple. What it basically involves is putting the students into a particular situation which will call for them to use language in a particular way. Quite simple. In many ways it is really not that different from what is done today in the communicative approach. In the communicative approach you set the students up to have to use language in a particular communicative situation. The focus is more on functions than on grammar, but there is definitely a connection between the two. The situational approach is very similar except the grammar, a particular form of grammar, or a particular lexical item will fuel the practice and the practice will be built around that particular point rather than the communicative outcome although there may be a certain communicative aspect to this. From the description we get in Thornbury (1999) situational practice can be highly artificial and pretty meaningless, especially when combined with the idea of drilling, but it is not hard to imagine how this lead to the communicative approach. Also, from a cognitive point of view, there is something to be said for trying to form associations between particular grammatical forms and situations, but only really of we are able to do so by building on prototypes. If only language and language use were that easy!!
4. How can corpora linguistics be used in the teaching of grammar?
What corpora linguistics basically is, is a huge databank of authentic language stored in a computer ready for analysis. It is built around certain lexical units for the most part and tries to show how each of these lexical units can be used maximally. This is extremely useful in language teaching basically because it allows the teacher at least to know how the language is actually used. This can then be used by the teacher in deciding to type of practice and type of structures that they want to students to be able to practice. By using corpora linguistics data teachers know that what they're referring to, what they are talking about, is authentic. Corpora linguistics can provide us with the knowledge that we need to be better language teachers. We all know that it's often very hard to know the right answer to questions about usage patterns, even for native speakers. The bottom line is that nobody knows everything about a language, even their own language. And by making hard and fast judgments, very strong judgments, about what she believes is exactly right and what is exactly wrong, a teacher is certainly making a lot of mistakes. Corpora linguistics provides us with a tremendous amount of data which really shows how language is actually used and then we really know what is acceptable and what may not be acceptable. It gives a teacher a better view of linguistic behavior. It can also be used by students as a way of observing language patterns. They may be able to use it to help develop or supplement their lexis notebooks. Teachers can develop activities for students built around corpora data where the students need to observe patterns and make sense of them. If you want to see some free corpus sites go to my website and click `links`. There under the heading of `vocabulary` you will find some corpus sites that are free to use.
5. Which do you think students prefer: the inductive or deductive approach? Why?
It would seem a no-brainer to simply state that the older the student the more they probably appreciate the deductive approach. This is based, to a large extent, on what they have already experienced in the classroom. It is also based on the idea that many students simply like to be given the answers, particularly if they think the question might appear on a test. They want everything in black and white. They want to know what is right and what is wrong. Unfortunately however language does not work this way. Often there is no right or wrong in language. There is simply good, better, best as measured against the context and intended meaning. For these reasons many adult learners really prefer the deductive approach. It makes them feel like they know what's going on in the classroom: that they know what they need to do and that they know how to get there. Meeting students expectations is always something that we should try to do as teachers, but it is not always the most important thing. That is something that should be born in mind when considering the issue of inductive vs. deductive.
6. Of the five sample lessons, which one do you most prefer and why?
Sample lesson three is an example of situational language learning. The students are expected to generate language based on a particular situation. Not bad actually. The teacher also conducts this fairly well, at least in the beginning. The only problem, as I see it, is related to memory. The students are going to have to memorize all the things that Andy should have done in order to generate the sentences that the teacher wants. It might have been better if she had written more things on the board for the students. Sometimes people need to see things in order to be able to do them.
Basically sample lesson 4 is a good practice. In particular, the use of minimal pairs seems to work here very efficiently. The only problem as I see it is the overt lack of context and this is something which is often apparent when minimal pairs are used. Task designers think that the pairs or groups in scales are powerful enough to show the difference. Unfortunately, they are not. Often minimal pair practice is vacuous simply because the meaning difference between the two pairs is not clear. I would like to see a little more context provided here.
7. Of the five sample lesson plans which one do you least prefer and why?
One of the major problems of sample lesson 1, the sample lesson which deals with TPR, is the fact that it doesn't keep all the students busy all the time. TPR is basically designed to be used with younger learners. We know that it is imperative, and often quite difficult, to keep these younger learners engaged in what is going on in the classroom. For some strange reason, in this lesson the teacher demonstrates the meaning of the target language individually. That is, she does this dealing with one student at a time. The big question here is, what are the other students getting as the one student is demonstrating the language? I highly doubt that they are going to sit there very quietly and patiently and wait for their turn. Chaos! So, that's a problem. It might be better to have the students work in pairs trying to show each other the language that they had talked about rather than have them work individually with the teacher.
The biggest problem in simple lesson two would be the tremendous jump from step three to step four. If the students` level is so low that they really don't know about the morpheme -s as a marker of agreement in the present tense than they probably really won't know how to write their own sentences. I think it is asking too much too quickly. They probably won't have enough vocabulary which means the teacher is going to have to run around the room supplying a lot of the vocabulary for the students. Even if the teacher could do this, what's the point? Then the students really won't be creating things by themselves anyway and the whole practice is nullified.
I am not really sure what the teachers goals in sample lesson 5 are. The teacher doesn't really ask for students to do much of anything except look at a whole bunch of data. The data itself is quite good and quite useful, but is not clear what the students are supposed to do with it. Are they simply supposed to determine that there are differences between genitives and infinitives? They are probably already aware of this. So, what's the point? I just don't get it and probably neither do the students.
Lewis (1997) Chapter 4 - The role of the L1 in the lexical approach. pp. 60-66.
8. Why do we need to embrace the idea of translation, according to Lewis?
Firstly, it is inevitable. Second, it is an effective way to get the students to process the input more deeply. This second point seems to run counter to what I mentioned above in relation to translation in question 1, but as we shall soon see, it is possible to have both opinions and be right on both accounts. For Lewis translation means not word for word, point-by-point, translation but rather translation which focuses on chunks and multiword units. This is the key understanding not only how translation might be made effective but also the very underlying power of the lexical approach, particularly for foreign language learners. By having students focus on larger chunks we are forcing them to focus on meaning and not just on the forms. This becomes particularly compelling when we look at what studies have revealed about the mental lexicon as it develops for a the second language. According to Kroll and Tokwicz (2001) word units in the second language are first linked to the closest translation equivalent of the first language. There is no direct connection between the L2 word and the meaning. The L1 form acts as an intermediary between the L2 form and meaning. Overtime, and with use, a triangle forms where there is a connection between the L2 forms and meaning but it is of a different nature then the L1 form and meaning. In the L2, contrary to the L1, associations will be stronger running from the form to the meaning than from the meaning to the form. This means in production there will be limited or slower access directly from the meaning to the L2 form. It is highly probable that the L1 form will still mediate.
In the lexical approach, where focus is drawn not to individual words but to larger chunks there will have to be a stronger connection and more direct connection to the meaning. Because the form of one chunk will not closely match the form of another chunk (except in the most closely related languages) the forms will have to be linked through meaning and not through form. This means that from the very first, by focusing on chunks, learners are forced to think about meaning and also as a result process the new (foreign) language to a much higher degree. They are not simply looking for translation equivalents. They are searching for meaning in chunks. This is a huge, huge, huge difference!!!
The basic idea for Lewis is that second language learners will always make use of resources from their first language (or previously learned languages) in order to deal with the target language. They have to because of our reliance on short-term and working memory systems in producing and comprehending language. There is no option so we might as well find a way of dealing with this more effectively, and that is obviously through the level of meaning and not the level of form. Remember forms are arbitrary. Forms themselves are unimportant. Meaning on the other hand, is universal. It comes in the environment and from the world in which we live/experience life. Link the target language to the universal flow of meaning through chunking and translation and students will learn. That is the plan anyway.
9. How can we make translation work for us in the lexical approach?
As was explained above, it will only work if we translate chunks and not word-by-word. Another important aspect of translation which we didn't mention above is how we want to deal with collocations. They are not fixed in the same way as other chunks and therefore we have to deal with them piece by piece. Lewis suggests that we start with the most basic element, which following his hierarchy of word classes, is nouns. Thus in trying to get students to understand and translate collocations, we need to start with the most basic element, which in noun phrases is nouns and in verb phrases is verbs. From there we then go on to approach the other collocating elements which are usually APs (either adjectives or adverbs). Lewis suggests that because collocations are not only cultural reflections but also reflections of some psychological reality they might actually have some similarities across languages. This can be a facilitating factor in second language acquisition.
10. What are some of the downsides or pitfalls of translation as a way of approaching the teaching of L2 lexis/grammar?
As mentioned above in response to question 1 one of the main problems of translation is that doesn't make a very exciting type of activity in the classroom. As a result it is something that we maybe don't want to make a necessary part of the class. This is particularly true when we understand that translation will occur whether we want it to or not. For this reason maybe we want to deal with translation more naturally as a recurring element in the class rather than focusing lots of artificial attention on translation. The bottom line is translation is boring and difficult. It is not going to be something that the students will want to do very often as a focused activity whether we are focusing on chunks or words. It might be something we want o do sparingly in the classroom.