My Current Position on Teaching Grammar in EFL Classes

After my studies this semester, I have gradually formed my basic opinion of gram-

mar teaching. Special-designed techniques are necessary for grammar teaching, because

of the features of grammar teaching. Grammar is different from other aspects of English

teaching, such as vocabulary, and phonetic teaching, which all ask for few study skills.

Grammar as a part of language plays an important role in cognitive processes. Grammar

is not an independent area, but it is the foundation of successful study of reading, listen-

ing, speaking, and writing of a language. My current position of teaching grammar will

be discussed in following paragraphs. Three grammar pedagogies which I found to be

most useful will be elaborated.

Grammar is an abstract concept for language learners who begin learning English.

For students without any experience of learning a foreign language, grammar is a mys-

tery, even though they speak their native language with proper grammar. Actually, it is

universal grammar, an innate principle, which works on our first language learning. Be-

cause of this feature of grammar of foreign languages, teachers should teach grammar di-

rectly, which is different from first language acquisition.

However, foreign language grammar teaching should not only focus on explicit but

also implicit instruction. From my point of view, it can be either explicit instruction with

implicit feedback, or implicit instruction with explicit feedback. Here I found that textual

enhancement to be an effective technique for input-based grammar teaching. Textual en-

hancement highlights salience of grammar features input, because it is either visual or

phonological modification of input (Nassaji & Fotos, 2011). Positive enhancement is

used most frequently to teach grammar rules. However, as some studies have shown, neg-

ative enhancement is also necessary for language teaching. One of these studies is

White’s (1991) investigation of French children learning English, in which he found that

“negative evidence did indeed promote the learning of adverb placement” (Gass, 2013, p.

361). Gass (2013) also holds that “positive evidence can reveal to leaners the presence of

information in the L2 that is different from their NL, but that negative evidence is neces-

sary to show that is not possible in the L2 when it is possible in the NL” (Gass, 2013, p.

362). One of the most common examples of negative enhancement is corrective feed-

back. However, “corrective feedback was important in the learning, but that it had little

effect on a learner’s ability to generalize this information to new items” (Gass, 2013,

p.363).

We should use both enhancement when we teach grammar rules. In the first activity

I designed, input flood was used to introduce target grammar implicitly, and then textual

enhancement was used to highlight the target grammar eternally. In follow-up activities,

corrective feedback was given to students according to their performance in the practice.

The reason for such design is that I want students to notice the grammar feature internally

by themselves first, and then to give them the external input enhancement.

Language, as a communication tool, is used to express “particular meanings accord-

ing to the requirements of the context” (Nassaji & Fotos, 2011, p. 50). Halliday (1978)

claimed that “grammar is regarded as a regarded as a complex process of making context-

based choices, not only of syntax or vocabulary, but also considering social and psycho-

logical factors determined by the grammatical links between discourse and meaning”

(Nassaji & Fotos, 2011, p.50). Now I believe that English teaching should be discourse-

based, so is English grammar teaching. For most foreign language learners, their goal is

to communicate, so the emphasis of grammar teaching should be focused on communica-

tive use of grammar (Nassaji & Fotos, 2011, p.51). Even for learners who study a foreign

language only for curriculum design purposes, it is still of no harm to them to learn gram-

mar from authentic input in a discourse level.

Corpora are increasingly used in language teaching. “It provides an approach to lan-

guage teaching that is supported by what has been termed data-driven learning (DDL)….

DDL provides opportunities for discovery learning since L2 learners are able to induc-

tively generate grammar rules by considering the great number of examples supplied by a

corpus search using concordancing software” (Nassaji & Fotos, 2011, p.54). I believe

corpora are useful for students’ self-study as well as teachers’ instructional activities.

Teachers can develop their own syllabi with assistance of corpora. Corpora can be

used as a tool to help teachers decide to focus on which grammar features according to

concordance of each grammar feature. From student feedback and reactions to certain

grammar points, of which teachers can decide to input more information by searching

phrases containing those grammar features in corpora. For example, students may find

the indirect objects to be difficult to master, because not all indirect objects of verbs can

be used in both after-verb structure and after-prep form (Yule, 1998, p.189). I designed

such an activity in Activity II of using CORPUS OF CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN

ENGLISH to assist students’ grammar learning. Therefore, it is easy to understand that

for students’ self-study, a corpus is also a convenient tool. In a corpus, students can find

sufficient and correct use of the lexical items they want to look for. Compared with using

dictionary, information from corpus is abundant. Another advantage of using corpus is to

help learners realize the different speech in different contexts, although this type of

awareness is only a byproduct.

It is clear that input-based grammar teaching is not sufficient for successful language

learning, so output-based grammar teaching should be utilized to improve accuracy of

students’ use of target form. “Input alone is not sufficient for acquisition, because when

one hears language, one can often interpret the meaning without the use of syntax…. out-

put has generally been seen, not as a way of creating knowledge, but as a way of practic-

ing already existing knowledge” (Gass, 2013, p. 356). Structured grammar-focused tasks,

which have “target grammar point presented implicitly or explicitly as the task content”,

are a good choice of output-based option of grammar teaching.

There are two types of structured grammar-focused tasks, namely, implicit gram-

mar-focused tasks and explicit grammar-focused tasks. Both types of tasks are considered

consciousness-raising, and “provide opportunities for meaning-focused language use dur-

ing activities that promote awareness of problematic grammatical structures” (Nassaji &

Fotos, 2011. P. 93).

For the implicit grammar-focused tasks, learners have to understand the structure be-

fore they finish the tasks. However, target grammar rule is not mentioned. I think it en-

courages students to discover the rule by themselves in communication with partners. Ex-

plicit grammar-focused tasks are focused on form “since the task content is the grammar

structure itself” (Nassaji & Fotos, 2011, p. 94). It is often applied in an information-gap

task, where learners are required to notice and compare information given by each group

members. I think this task causes them to develop awareness of certain grammatical fea-

tures, which potentially develops their degree of cognitive understanding. The forms of

explicit tasks are flexible. They can be either deductive or inductive. As R. Ellis (1993)

noted that in deductive tasks, learners are given a rule so that they can apply it to given

data; while in inductive tasks, learner are asked to discover the rule form the given data

(Nassaji & Fotos, 2011). Both of them are communicative. Such output-based tasks are

beneficial for improving accuracy.

I designed the third activity as an application of implicit grammar-focused task to

students from beginning through intermediate level. It is adapted from one of Karen Rus-

sikoff and Lilin Fucaloro’s (2013) activity. Actually my third activity can be used both as

input-based and output-based instruction for teaching prepositions, but I would like to

demonstrate how to use it as a practice activity of practicing prepositions. Students

would be asked to use cards or blocks of different prepositions to build the phrases while

they listen to teacher’s announcement.

Here I designed some activities which incorporated some grammatical points in the

following activity part of this project. I designed these activities supposing they are in an

EFL class in China. The textbook I chose is Book B of Grade 7, published by Peoples’

Education Press, China, which is used in the second semester of junior middle school.

Activity I: Textual Enhancement

Target language: English

Grammar focus: present progressive tense

Grade and proficiency level: beginning through intermediate level, students in the first year of junior middle school.

Instructional goal of activity: this activity is designed as an adaption of Activity 3a in Unit 5. I readjust it into an implicit instruction activity. Students’ awareness of present progressive tense is supposed to be improved.

Materials needed: Book B of Grade 7, handout edited version of Activity 3a (showed in Step 2).

Equipment needed: classroom.

Time required: 10 minutes for introduction; 10 minutes for implementation.

Implementation:

In-class activities:

1st Step: introduction (10 minutes)

Teacher introduces present progressive tense with input flood. Students are taught to read the sentences in Grammar Focus (Nunan, & Liu, 2005, p. 26) by the teacher.

Teacher teach students the meaning of each sentence in L1. Students are not taught structure in this step.

2nd Step: Student implementation (10 minutes)

Students are asked to read the edited version of exercise 3a (handouts).

The edited text is showed below (Nunan, & Liu, 2005, p. 29):

Dear Linda,

Thanks for your letter and the photos. Here are some of my photos. In the first photo, I’m playing basketball at school. In the second photo, I’m swimming at the pool. In the next photo, you can see my family at home. We’re eating dinner. In the last photo, I’m with my sister Gina. She’s doing homework—I’m watching TV.

Mike

Students are asked to translate the paragraph according to what they were taught.

(Students are supposed to notice that the target structure is present progressive

tense).

(Note: It is only part of the class, so I didn’t add any follow-up activity and class

summary.)

Activity II: Teaching with Corpora

Target language: English

Grade and proficiency level: beginning through intermediate level

Grammar focus: verb types and indirect objects

Instructional goal of activity: this activity serves as an instruction of culture background which can be put in the culture class, which can improve students’ interest of learning English. Students are taught to use a general criteria to decide which type of verbs it is, so as to choose the correct forms of indirect objects.

Materials needed: lists of verbs.

Equipment needed: computer room.

Time required: 10 minutes for leading in and introduction; 30 minutes for implementa-tion, and 5 minutes for class summary.

Implementation:

Preparation before class: students are given a list of verbs with which they would use in the corpus. (This list includes following verbs: A. tell, give, show, bring, teach, ask, get, promise, offer; B. Suggest, explain, donate, distribute, report, announce.)

In-class activities:

1st Step: Leading in (15 minutes)

Teacher introduces types of verbs and the criteria of deciding verb types according to Summary Box 7.3 in Yule (1998).

T: There is a general rule of verifying which type of verb it is according to its ori-gin and pronunciation. Verbs that are originated from Old English are first or only syllable stressed. After-verb and after-prep position of indirect object can be used with this kind of verb. Another type of verb are originated from Latin, which are stressed in second syllable (two or more syllables). Indirect objects of Latin-origi-nated verbs can only be put in after-prep position.

The teacher introduces the online corpus— CORPUS OF CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN ENGLISH (http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/), which they will use this class. As showed in the first picture below.

T: Today, we will learn how to use an online corpus to study different types of verbs. I want you to use this tool after class as assistance for your vocabulary learning.

(http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/)

T: Now look at the webpage, do you find a bar where you can input a word? (Teachers

show how to do it on the teacher’s computer, and let the students watch the process.) In-

put a word, and you will get the frequency and concordance of the word. Remember to

choose the KWIC setting in Display.

Teacher gives the example of “tell”, and search it in the corpus.

(http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/)

T: Now, please search those verbs in the list given to you, and write down rules of collo-

cation of them. And then try to decide which type of verb they are according to the crite-

ria instructed at the beginning of this class.

2nd Step: Students implementation (30 minutes)

Student use given corpus to search each verb.

Students list their list of verbs in two groups: verbs originated from old English,

and verbs originated from Latin.

(Teacher should go around the room during this process, so that he or she can

solve students’ problems personally, without disturbing other students.)

3rd Step: Check students’ works, and summarize the class. (5 minutes)

Let students share their working results in the class

Then let them hand in their works.

Teachers will assess students’ works by how many the words they choose, and

their participation in the class.

Follow-up activities:

Homework:

Students are asked to use this tool after class. Let them list five more verbs of each type,

which they find in their extracurricular reading, for example, in newspaper, magazines,

and so on.

Activity III: Output-based implicit grammar-focused activity

Target language: English

Grade and proficiency level: beginning through intermediate level, students in the first year of junior middle school.

Grammar focus: prepositions

Instructional goal of activity: to teach students how to use prepositions to describe posi-tions. The purpose of this activity is to help students remember and use proper preposi-tions in different situations. (This activity will be applied followed by Activity 4 in Unit 2 of this book.) To motivate students to use prepositions.

Materials needed: Book B of Grade 7, cards or toy blocks.

Equipment needed: classroom.

Time required: 15 minutes for leading in and review of the phrases taught in last period; 20 minutes for implementation of this activity, and 10 minutes for follow-up activity.

Implementation:

Preparation before class:

Teacher writes the preposition parts (each phrase is divided into words) on cards or toy blocks. E.g. in, front, of; next, to; between; behind; across, from; on. (These phrases had been practiced in a listening practice in the textbook in last class pe-riod.)

Divide the class in to several groups with 4 in each.

Hand out the preposition cards or blocks to each group.

In-class activities:

1st Step: Leading in (15 minutes)

T: Today we are going to have practices on prepositions we learned last time.

(Review those phrases one by one with attention to meaning of each phrase.)

…

T: Now we are going to do an interesting activity called Preposition Blocks. You are asked to order the blocks according to my announcements.

2nd Step: student implementation (20 minutes)

Teacher gives an example first before the activity is began (Russikoff and Fucaloro, 2013, p. 119- 120):

• Assembles a large pile of building blocks, 6-12

• Then builds a pyramid of blocks.

• As the teacher builds the blocks, s/he announces “in front of”, “next to”, “across from”, etc.

Class:

• Works in small groups to demonstrate the same types of actions, but adds to them as they go through lists of English prepositions.

• Then teachers would read the sentences in activity in 2b. The teacher al-ready have the answer, and students have already done this practice in last period of class. So this step serves as an answer to this practice (Nunan, & Liu, 2005, p. 8).

•

• Then students are asked to listen to these sentences again and order these blocks according to what they heard.

• For example, when the teacher reads “the library is between the restaurant and the supermarket”, students are supposed to put the block of “between” on the desk.

3rd Step: follow-up activities (10 minutes)

Students are asked to play the game with the target structure learned in this unit (Nunan, & Liu, 2005, p. 9).

Reference

Gass, S. m., Behney, J., & Plonsky, L. (2013). Input, interaction, and output. Second lan-guage. Second language acquisition: an introductory course (4th ed.) (pp. 339-397). New York, NY: Routledge.

Nassaji, H., & Fotos, S. (2011). Focus on grammar through textual enhancement. Teach-ing grammar in second language classrooms: integrating form-focused instruc-tion in communicative context (pp. 36-48). New York, NY: Routledge.

Nassaji, H., & Fotos, S. (2011). Focus on grammar through discourse. Teaching gram-mar in second language classrooms: integrating form-focused instruction in com-municative context (pp. 49-67). New York, NY: Routledge.

Nassaji, H., & Fotos, S. (2011). Focus on grammar through structured grammar-focused tasks. Teaching grammar in second language classrooms: integrating form-fo-cused instruction in communicative context (pp. 88-102). New York, NY: Rout-ledge.

Nunan, D., & Liu, D. (2005). I’m watching TV. Go for it: students book (pp.25-30). Bei-jing, BJ: People’s Education and Thomson Learning (a division of Thomson Asia Pte Ltd).

English and Foreign Language Department of California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. (2013). Teaching English in Asia: Frequency asked questions, answers & more. California, CA: Russikoff, K., & Fucaloro, L.

Yule, G. (1998). Indirect objects. Explaining English grammar (pp. 187-210). Oxford, OX: Oxford University Press.

NOTE: I collaborated with Cheryl Meehan for my final projects. She gave me valuable suggestions and feedback on my draft. She reviewed my position paper, and corrected grammatical mistakes and errors in my paper. She also influenced me on my activity de-sign from our discussion.