Category: Topics

Pondering Grammar with Students and Scott Thornbury
– Ann Loseva

As I was preparing to write this post I did more “research” than I ever have done. I was looking for lines that I could read and nod in agreement, as well as lines that would make me stop right there and reconsider something. The reason for this acute need for digging in the topic is obvious – I don’t know how to manage grammar in my classes, either in those with a pre-set syllabus to follow or with an emergent one, which describes the majority of classes I give at the moment. The latter being my own voluntary choice, I struggle to make it work. It teaches me lessons I wouldn’t have a chance to learn otherwise, so I strongly recommend taking up the challenge.

I’d like to warn the reader that no well-tried grammar activities or successful methods to teach grammar will be shared in the text below, as much as I would love to see myself doing it. I’ve been buying grammar books for many years, every time sure this one will shed light, these exercises will be exciting, this approach will fit the logics of my class. At the moment, after almost nine years of teaching, I still don’t have my favourite grammar activity that works with all groups of students, and I’m beginning to think it’s hardly possible to have it.

I wanted to write this post in order to make an attempt at figuring out my confusion about teaching grammar. In doing that, I’d like to offer three lines of perspectives on grammar in English teaching and learning: one I gathered from my students, another one coming from myself, and finally, some ideas I’ve picked up from Scott Thornbury’s writing. It’s interesting to see how these will correlate, if at all.

 

Students on grammar

Grammar is a big word and every new student I get to teach, no matter what their level is, knows the big Grammar word. Interestingly, around a half of these students might not know the longer word – Vocabulary. The Grammar word is forever imprinted, and so are the fears, expectations and preconceived beliefs of its unquestionable superior status.

Students know something about grammar and that’s what I’ve heard them say:

“Don’t worry, my groupmates want more grammar exercises because that’s what they got used to at school, that’s what they know about English.”

“I can’t make myself do any page in this grammar book. I am prejudiced against it.” (A teacher’s side note – as, in fact, against any other type of course book.)

“I like learning about Passive Voice in the process, when I have the need to use it in my sentence and you tell me about it.”

“Let’s revise tenses next time.”

I’m equally puzzled with both kinds of reactions, whether my learners express a wish to do more grammar explicitly or to avoid exercises at all, because looking at a page filled up with gaps to complete makes them sick and remember wasted time of school English. At this point I start wondering just how much their expressed wishes correspond to their needs and abilities that I, as a teacher, should be addressing in the first place. Shouldn’t I know better and stand on the firm ground? As I’m moving on from term to term I’m examining attitudes of students, which are changing as generations of learners change. Attitudes of teachers I know remain the same. Isn’t this stability something I should learn from them?

 

My recent discoveries

Two months ago I started learning Japanese. It’s especially interesting to look at this experience now as it seems to be the first language I’m learning with sharp awareness of how and why I’m doing it and what the more effective ways to do it could be. There is no coursebook or grammar guide on my desk. It may seem sort of shocking for a teacher, but I’ve decided to try a different approach for now. I’m getting chunks and sentences which are quite beyond my level and then work by myself on figuring them out. From translation I get understanding, then notice patterns. I get them wrong, ask questions, get my answers, and then start all over again. These tiny pieces of Japanese grammar make their first, shy and teasing, appearance and then vanish. I need to point this out – they most often vanish. I can safely say that I only remember now how to say “This/that is …”, “Is this/that …?” or form an of-phrase. I’ve found myself in a new place where I’m learning how language works from chains of discoveries. I’m learning very slowly and with an outstanding irregularity and to this moment have made two major observations from this process:

• These linguistic discoveries need to go through cycles of repetition, to be re-discovered many times before I might hope for them to sink in.
• The more I learn, the more confirmed I become in that we desperately need vocabulary if we want to actually produce sentences. It’s the first thing to escape memory, too.

 

Insights from Scott Thornbury

In chapter 19 ”Do rules help you learn a language?” of his Big Questions in ELT a lot of what is said resonates with how I feel in my contradictions. One of the life examples that Scott makes is constantly present in my teaching. Many learners spend years of studying English going through Present Simple and Present Continuous again and again, from year to year. As university students join my class, they keep making fun of this fact, get sarcastic… and yet many appear to have a “conspicuous lack of success” with these basic forms. What nature do the reasons for that have? I heard some teachers say such learners are “grammatically challenged”, or plain slow. I ignore such voices and keep searching for the real reasons behind the problems.

One of the questions at the end of chapter 19 is this: Are rules that learners have worked out themselves better than rules that they have been given and why?

This makes me turn to Japanese again. I’ve mentioned that I’ve been trying to deduce some patterns in this language. It’s not easy, actually quite painful, and not at all memorable as in rules afterwards. I wonder how quick at grasping these same patterns I’d be if I had them handed over to me, like we as teachers so often do in our own classrooms. I’m left with an uneasy doubt that it makes no big difference in terms of future language use. I can just say that working out a rule by yourself looks more engaging and fun, if you aim for that.

Here are some more of my many puzzles and subsequent struggles within the topic, which some of you could probably connect with:

1) Grammar continuum in a coursebook-less class. I’m learning to organize what we’re learning at every lesson into a kind of a developing syllabus. Grammar is one of the bothersome stumbling blocks.

2) The discrepancy between lexis I teach and forms I want to put this lexis in. I’m questioning dividing grammar and vocabulary instruction as I see it done in my context. While I have to teach within these rules, filling this gap without damaging the general flow is my ongoing mission. I see teaching grammar as coming from emergent needs and so I face difficulties in keeping up with the syllabus.

3) The Careless Teacher puzzle. How sloppy will you allow a student’s speech to be, both in written and spoken production? I fear that I’ve recently been forming for myself a distinction between little grammar and serious grammar. I’ve already tried to give it a thought in my post here. My main point of concern is how my lax approach impacts students and their decisions to choose this or that form, to remember or forget a rule.

Having said all this, I’m no less confused and probably have confused you a bit, too. I’m thinking of this former student of mine. His/her eagerness to communicate a message in English no matter what is impressive, even though grammar is inaccurate. This attitude can be seen as a good sign. However, I wish I could say that this apparent lack of norms in his/her short sentences doesn’t impede the message he/she wants to get across…but it often does. And this is how I keep pondering grammar.

 

Links

These are just three of several inspiring posts I’ve marked as favourites while sifting through blogs looking for something that spoke along with my tune.

http://authenticteaching.wordpress.com/2013/03/31/today-we-did-the-2nd-conditional-pff/

http://authenticteaching.wordpress.com/2013/05/12/what-i-dont-do-part-1-of-1/

http://scottthornbury.wordpress.com/2012/04/15/g-is-for-grammar-syllabus/

 

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You’re teaching EAP? Forget most of what you know about grammar (kind of!) 
  – Adam Simpson

The name Daniel Horowitz may not be that familiar to you, nor to many in the world of English language teaching. Nevertheless, this man’s writings in the 1980s have had as profound an effect on my teaching as any other individual. Part of the reason he is not well known is that he was sadly taken from us before his time, but also because he was not frightened of rattling the establishment and speaking out against what he knew to be wrong, or at very least ineffective in language teaching. I consider myself fortunate, therefore, to find myself in a working environment where his ideas have come to life.

As the title of this post suggests, Horowitz had certain ideas on what constituted ‘academic English’ and indeed what that meant in terms of grammatical focus. My aim today is to show you how logical and practicable Horowitz’s suggestions are, and yet how they probably aren’t being implemented in a lot of supposedly EAP courses. I feel that it is pertinent at this point to look at the main functional categories that Horowitz suggested comprise academic discourse, and the specific functional objectives that each and every EAP course therefore should aim to teach. If you teach EAP, look at the program you’re involved with and ask questions if you don’t see these things being covered.

Now, let’s look at each of these functional categories and think about what they mean in terms of grammar. Please bear in mind that this is just a brief overview:

 

Displaying familiarity with a concept

So, what do you need to do to ‘display familiarity’ with something? This might mean defining, exemplifying or giving a physical description. At lower levels, this might mean using the simple present tense and focusing on the use of articles. As learners progress, they might be exposed to defining and non-defining relative clauses.

 

Expressing similarities and differences

This is as simple as the title suggests: to do this you need to be describe and account for differences, or compare and classify concepts. At lower levels, this might mean using comparative and superlative adjectives, or comparison of nouns (more, less, fewer). As learners progress, they might be required to use adverbials of concession (although, despite (the fact that), in spite of (the fact that), nevertheless), for instance.

 

Expressing cause and effect relationships

So, how might we express cause and effect relationships? This might mean having to identify historical causes and contributory factors, or indicate goals and express results.  At lower levels, this might mean using specific verbs (is caused by, result from, contribute to). As learners progress, they might start to learn other expressions (as a result of, because of, as, since, because, due to therefore, thus, so, as a consequence of, for this reason, the more … the more, owing to) and noun complement clauses with ‘the fact + that-clause’ (e.g. ‘The fact that Prozac is so powerful undermines the power of psychotherapy’).

 

Displaying familiarity with a process

So, what do you need to do to ‘display familiarity’ with a process? This requires the learner to be able to describe a scientific process, or narrate a historical process. At lower levels, learners might encounter the passive voice (made (of), given, taken, used (for), known (as), defined (as), related (to), associated (with), composed (of), linked (to/with), based (on)) and sequencing meta-discourse (first (of all), next, finally, at the same time, the first/next/final step/stage, after/before that). As learners progress, they might be exposed to other structures such as ‘Having’ + participle (-ed) phrase + clause (e.g. Having completed the research, we can now determine…).

 

Displaying familiarity with argumentation

So, how do we ‘display familiarity’ with argumentation? This might mean emphasizing a point, evaluating ideas, or paraphrasing and summarizing an argument. At lower levels, this can involve using expressing obligation with modal verbs (present and future: have to, don’t have to, must, should, allowed to, need to). At higher levels learners might be exposed to structures such as noun complement clauses (N + that-clause + evaluation) with head nouns (idea, assumption, assertion, realization, discovery, proposition, recognition, evidence, proof, sign, indication, (e.g. the assumption that the population was evenly distributed is not a good one here)).

 

Using an academic style

What does it mean to use an academic style? This might require being concise, precise and objective. At lower levels, this might mean avoiding repetition through the use of synonyms, pronouns (personal, possessive and reflexive). As learners move on in their studies, they might be exposed to participle clauses including reduced relative clauses, for instance.

 

Is it really so different?

Hopefully, none of the examples I’ve given will appear to be dramatically different from what you might traditionally consider to be ‘grammar’. Therein lies the problem with academic grammar: it is both very similar to what we might teach in a general English course and yet with sometimes drastic differences in emphasis.

 

If you’re familiar with the progression we see in many course books, you might have noticed that I didn’t mention the present continuous or the present perfect in my examples. That’s because they are noticeably less important to the academic world than they are in everyday life. I mention these as they are particular stalwarts of many a grammar syllabus, and exactly the kind of things that Horowitz would have told you to downplay in your teaching (and which consequently made his suggestions seem so difficult to accept).

Your biggest challenge, and one I hope you’ll take up if you teach EAP, is to think about what your learners really need and don’t be afraid to focus more on things such as the passive voice and simple tenses and less on the present continuous or the present perfect. While this is merely a brief introduction to academic grammar, I’d be happy to discuss this in more detail with anyone interested.

 

Suggested reading

The Contribution of Daniel Horowitz by Ann M. Johns – JALT Publications (available by clicking here jalt-publications.org/files/pdf-article/jj-12.1-art2.pdf)

 

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