CAELA Brief -Teaching Grammar

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Teaching Grammar to Adult English Language Learners:Focus on Form Amber Gallup Rodríguez, Center or Applied Linguistics

April 2009Brief

Center or Applied Linguistics

4646 40th Street NW

Washington, DC 20016-1859

Background on Adult Learners Adult education programs serve both native English speak-ers and learners whose rst, or native, language is not Eng-lish. Native English speakers attend adult basic education(ABE) classes to learn basic skills needed to improve theirliteracy levels and adult secondary education (ASE) classesto earn high school equivalency certicates. Both ABE andASE instruction help learners achieve other goals relatedto job, amily, and urther education. English languagelearners attend English as a second language (ESL), ABE, orworkorce preparation classes to improve their oral and lit-eracy skills in English and to achieve goals similar to thoseo native English speakers.

Audience for This Brief This brie is written or teachers, program administrators,education researchers, and policy makers to provide inor-mation on evidence-based strategies or teaching grammarto adult English language learners through ocus on orm.

www.cal.org/caelanetwork

Introduction

Many adult English language learners place a high value onlearning grammar (Ikpia, 2003). Perceiving a link betweengrammatical accuracy and eective communication, theyassociate excellent grammar with opportunities or employ-ment and promotion, the attainment o educational goals, andsocial acceptance by native speakers. Refecting the disagree-ment that was once common in the second language acquisi-tion research, teachers o adult English language learners varyin their views on how, to what extent, and even whether toteach grammar. Indeed, in popular communicative and task-based approaches to teaching, the second language is viewedprimarily as “a tool or communicating rather than as anobject to be analyzed” (Ellis, 2008, p. 1). Nonetheless, mostresearch now supports some attention to grammar within ameaningul, interactive instructional context.

This brie begins with a brie history o grammar instructionin the United States, including the shit rom explicit to implicitapproaches. It then describes the contemporary approach,called focus on form, and explores the reasons and research-based evidence or drawing learners’ attention to languagestructure while they remain ocused primarily on meaning.Next, it oers examples o instructional activities that can help

raise learners’ awareness o grammar. It concludes with sugges-tions about areas or uture research within the ocus-on-ormmovement.

The Evolution of Grammar Instruction

The debate over the place o grammar in instruction has playeda dominant role in the history o language teaching. For mucho the previous century, the debate revolved around the ques-

tion o whether grammar instruction helped learners gain

prociency in a second language. The many answers to thisquestion could be placed along a continuum with extremes aeither end (Gascoigne, 2002). At one end are highly explicitapproaches to grammar teaching, and at the other end lieimplicit approaches that eschew mention o orm.

Hinkel (2002) provides a concise history o grammar instruction in language teaching, which is summarized here. The listo historical approaches to grammar instruction is long, thoughcertain approaches are noted or their infuence. One o theearliest o these, the grammar translation approach, was characterized by rote memorization o rules and an absence o genuinecommunicative activities. Around the turn o the 20th centurylinguists’ structural descriptions o world languages, combinedwith behaviorist psychology, gave rise to the direct method

Proponents o this method believed that students should learna second language in the same way that they learned their rstgrammar was acquired through oral practice, drills, and repetition, not through memorization and written manipulation oexplicit rules. Nevertheless, language learning was still orderedaround structural principles. Audiolingualism was anotherstructural method that shared this implicit orientation towardgrammar. By the 1960s, cognitive approaches to instruction hadgained popularity. Inspired by Chomsky’s theory o universal grammar and the resulting emphasis on syntax, cognitiveapproaches represented a shit back to more explicit grammarinstruction. However, the pendulum swung again toward theimplicit in the 1970s with the advent o humanistic approachesparticularly communicative language teaching. These approache

emphasized meaningul interaction and authenticity in learning activities and held that communication should be the goao instruction. Grammar was not explicitly taught; proponentsinstead believed that accuracy would be acquired naturally overtime. (See Gascoigne, 2002, or a ull discussion o the explicit/implicit grammar debate.)

Contemporary research on the merits o the implicit andexplicit approaches described above has led to the consensusthat an exclusive emphasis on either extreme impedes adultlearners’ acquisition o English. While the inadequacies o atraditional ocus on language structure alone are well docu-mented (Green & Hecht, 1992; Long, 1991; Winitz, 1996)the drawbacks o a strictly communicative approach have alsobeen noted (Norris & Ortega, 2000; Scott, 1990; Skehan, 1996)Indeed, experienced language teachers have long recognizedthe benets o the judicious use o error correction, repeti-tion, and even drills in the classroom (Poole, 2005b). Gass andSelinker (2008), drawing on a large body o research, assertedthat complex orms cannot be acquired by processing meaningul input alone. Ellis (1996) suggested that advanced speakingand writing prociency, necessary or achievement o studentsacademic and vocational goals, may require explicit ormocused instruction. Moreover, studies on the practices and



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attitudes o teachers (Borg & Burns, 2008; Farrell & Lim, 2005)and students (Ikpia, 2003; Manley & Calk, 1997; Paraskevas,1993) suggest that both groups are avorably disposed to someelement o explicit grammar instruction in the classroom.These ndings and others set the stage or the current ocus-on-orm movement.

Focus on Form in Instruction

Ellis (2001) denes ocus on orm as “any planned or inci-dental instructional activity that is intended to induce lan-guage learners to pay attention to linguistic orm” (pp. 1-2).This attention to orm should take place within a meaningul,communicative context, making it an extension o communi-cative language teaching, not a departure rom it.

Instructors encourage learners to ocus on orm in severalways. Focus on orm may be planned and ocused on pre-selected structures, or it may be incidental, arising spontane-ously at any point in a communicative activity. Teachers mightdesign a task to encourage learners to notice orms in the input(e.g., prepositions o location such as in, on, under ), or theymight explicitly teach these orms and provide opportunitiesor meaningul practice. Focus on orm may be reactive, includ-ing explicit corrections to student language; recasts (sayingwhat students have said, but dierently); clarication requests;and other types o eedback. Focus on orm is most requentlyteacher-initiated, but it is also initiated by learners throughquestions and requests or explanation (Poole, 2005b).

Although second language acquisition research has notdenitively answered many important questions regardingorm-ocused instruction, studies have provided promisingevidence that ocus on orm is correlated with more acquisi-tion o new grammar and vocabulary than non-orm-ocusedapproaches. Ellis, Basturkmen, and Loewen (2001) ound thatlearners who engaged in communicative, ocus-on-orm activi-ties improved their grammatical accuracy and their use o neworms. Loewen (2002) ound that short episodes o correctiveeedback correlated with higher rates o correctness on subse-quent tests. Some empirical studies have ound that various

ocus-on-orm techniques (discussed below) have led to moreaccurate use o target structures (Camhi & Ebsworth, 2008;Doughty & Verela, 1998; Jourdenais, Ota, Stauer, Boyson,& Doughty, 1995; Loewen, 2005; Williams & Evans, 1998). Asynthesis o the ndings rom a large review o research on theneeds o English language learners suggested that they learnbest with instruction that combines interactive approacheswith explicit instruction (Goldenberg, 2008).

Instructors should consider learners’ developmental readi-ness when deciding whether a ocus-on-orm approach isappropriate in a given context. Since learners with low literacyoten struggle to comprehend orm in their rst language, it isnot advisable to teach them grammar in the second languageuntil they have advanced into higher stages o literacy. It has

also been suggested that ocus on orm should not be initi-ated with beginning learners (Ellis, 2006; Spada & Lightbown,1999). Instead, learners should be encouraged to attend to ormonly ater they have acquired basic structures and vocabularyand have developed a basic ability to communicate. Yet, Spadaand Lightbown ound that even in cases where learners are notdevelopmentally ready to learn a orm, intensive ocus-on-orminstruction can help them learn other structures that are associ-

ated with the target orm. For example, learners who may notbe ready to ully acquire the comparative structures in English(e.g., That cat is smaller than this cat; That book is more interesting than this book) could still begin to use and pronouncethe comparative sux –er and the comparative word more pluadjective. Conversely, advanced learners with academic goalmay benet rom a more explicit approach, especially whenlearning complex structures and concepts (Andrews, 2007).

An instructor must also consider learners’ needs and inter-

ests in identiying the best way to draw their attention to a ormand practice using it in a meaningul context. For example, inan ESL class or landscaping workers at an intermediate level oprociency, an oral work report given at the end o a shit (e.g.“I mowed the lawn, then I weeded the fower beds”) could beused to ocus students’ attention on the ormation o the pasttense. Finally, a ocus-on-orm approach may be more dicultto use in programs in which teachers are obligated to strictlyollow mandated curricula or in which class sizes are too largeto allow much individual eedback (Poole, 2005a).

Instructional Activities

Several strategies or integrating orm and meaning in instruction have been presented in the literature. In act, the implicitexplicit continuum persists within the body o techniquesused to draw learners’ attention to orm. One o the moreimplicit techniques, the input food, presents students witha text that contains many instances o the target orm, withthe expectation that students will notice it. In the techniqueknown as input enhancement, orms are highlighted with dierent colored inks, bold lettering, underlining, or other cuesintended to raise students’ awareness o a structure. Fotos(2002) describes an implicit structure-based task in which students compared two cities. Pairs o students told each otherabout eatures o amiliar cities and recorded the inormation on task sheets. They were then instructed to write sentences comparing the cities according to the eatures they haddescribed (e.g., “New York is bigger than Washington, DC”)Students were not explicitly taught comparative structures at

any point during the task, but they had to use comparativeorms to complete it. Aterwards, their instructor taught alesson on comparatives, and students rewrote incorrect sentences, did more production exercises, and read stories thatcontained requent instances o the comparative orm.

Explicit techniques include consciousness-raising tasks, duringwhich learners are encouraged to determine grammar rules romevidence presented, and the focused communicative task (Ellis2001, p. 21), which is designed to bring about the productiono a target orm in the context o perorming a communicativetask. The latter task is designed in such a way that the targeteature is essential to the perormance o the task. For example, atask might require one student to give another student detailedinstructions or the creation o an origami bird. The rst student

will likely eel a need to use adverbs such as frst , now, then, andnext to talk the second student through the sequential steps othe task. Error correction strategies are another way to explicitlyocus on orm within a primarily meaning-ocused activity, inthat they help learners notice dierences between their production and the target (Doughty & Williams, 1998). Among thesestrategies, the garden path technique (Tomasello & Herron, 1988p. 244) introduces a grammatical rule and then leads learnersinto situations in which they may overgeneralize, so they can



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consider the correct orm. Nation & Newton (2008, p. 140) givethe ollowing example o a typical garden path technique:

Teacher: Here is a sentence using these words: think and problem. I thought about the problem. Now youmake one using these words: talk and problem.

Learner: We talked about the problem.

Teacher: Good. Argue and result.

Learner: We argued about the result.

Teacher: Good. Discuss and advantages.

Learner: We discussed about the advantages.

Teacher: No. With discuss we do not use about.

In the example above, the student is corrected and therebyis made aware o the exception to the grammatical rule. Celce-Murcia (2007) suggests that, instead o creating grammarcorrection exercises using decontextualized sentences romlearners’ writing, teachers should create short texts that includecommon error types made by students in their writing. Studentscan work together to edit the more authentic texts, which helpsthem learn to correct their own work more successully.

Although much second language acquisition research hascentered on awareness-raising and noticing activities like those

described above, there are ocus-on-orm grammar productionactivities as well. Larsen-Freeman (2003) discusses and givesexamples o the ollowing techniques. Collaborative dialogues (pp. 94-95) are conversations in which students work togetherto discuss and use a new orm, constructing a sentence together.Another technique, prolepsis (pp. 95-96), is an instructionalconversation that takes place between a teacher and a student.The teacher coaches the student through the process o writingor saying something in English, perhaps incorporating the useo a new orm. In the ollowing example o a proleptic conver-sation, a teacher (T) talks with a student (S) at a low intermedi-ate level who is writing a description o an important event inher past.

(S writes “My baby was angry.”)

T: Oh, she was angry. And then?

S: I pick her up, but she cry.

T: I see. Why don’t you write it down?

S: I can say it, but I don’t write.

T: Just try it. Write what you know.

(S writes “She cry.”)

T: Good. Ok, cry when? Now?

S: No, she cried.

T: Yes. Go ahead and write it. I’ll help.

(S writes “She cryed.”)

T: Right. But remember what happens to the “y”?(S erases “cryed” and writes “cried.”)

T: Right. What happened then?

In the conversation above, both teacher and student areengaged in the story. The teacher directs the student to ocusalso on the ormation o the past tense but does not simply tellher to use the past tense orm o cry, nor does she tell her how

to spell it. In other words, the teacher denes the parameters othe problem or the student but encourages her to come to theanswer on her own.

The language experience approach (Larsen-Freeman, 2003, p96) is a technique in which learners dictate to the instructorin English, something they would like to be able to say. Theinstructor then writes students’ messages in correct, grammatical English and gives them to the students. For examplea student might say or write, “I late the work or the bad tra

c.” The teacher would write the sentence as, “I was late orwork because trac was bad.” With the corrected text in handstudents have the opportunity to compare what they said orwrote with the correct orm o the messages they wished toconvey, ask questions, and learn.

Areas for Further Research

As the ocus-on-orm movement has taken shape, the debateamong instructors and researchers has undergone a unda-mental shit. The question is no longer whether explicit grammar instruction helps learners gain prociency in Englishbut rather how this approach can best be accomplished. Anumber o interesting questions about ocus on orm have yetto be addressed. Some questions have to do with the timing oocus on orm. How should attention to orm and meaningul interaction be ordered in the adult ESL classroom? Whenin the syllabus should it be introduced (Doughty & Williams1998)? Should ocus on orm precede interactive activitiesor vice versa? How do learner characteristics such as educa-tional background, goals, and levels o literacy and oral prociency aect their readiness and ability to attend to orm(Poole, 2005b)? Though these questions continue to point tothe need or urther research, an empirical study by Andrews(2007) suggests that orms to be ocused on do not have to besequenced by complexity in order to be learned, nor do theyhave to match learners’ prociency levels.

Other questions revolve around which orms to ocus on andto what extent. Which orms lend themselves to ocus on ormin instruction, and which do not? A case study in an English as

a oreign language class, conducted by Farrokhi, Ansarin, andMohammadnia (2008), ound that students across prociencylevels tended to ocus more on vocabulary than on other ormand suggested that instructors consider spending more timedirecting student attention to grammar and pronunciationPoole’s (2005b) similar ndings prompted him to suggest thata orm-ocused approach was more useul or vocabulary development than or grammatical development. The question maybe, then, how can teachers encourage students to ocus morerequently on grammatical orm?

What is the optimal balance between ocus on orm andocus on meaning? It is possible that planned rather than reac-tive ocus on orm demonstrates to learners that the instructoris concerned more with orm than with meaning. Ellis (2008)

suggests that intensive, pre-planned ocus on orm can be timeconsuming and result in ocusing on ewer structures, while areactive or incidental ocus allows or the targeting o manydierent linguistic orms as the need arises.

The answers to these questions promise to provide newinstructional direction or teachers on helping adult learnersgive attention to both the meaning and the orms o language



This publication was prepared with unding rom the U.S. Department o Education, Oce o Vocational and Adult Education, under contract No. ED-07-CO-0084. The opinions expressed herein do not necessarily refect the opinions or policies o the U.S. Department o Education. This document is in the public domain and may be reproduced

without permission.

Conclusion

Recent ocus on communicative instruction has at timesresulted in explicit grammar instruction playing a limitedrole in adult education. However, the research on second lan-guage acquisition and ocus on orm in instruction supportsapproaches like those described in this brie. To help learnersimprove their grammatical accuracy, instructors should embedexplicit ocus on orm within the context o meaningul learn-ing activities and tasks that give learners ample opportunities

or practice.

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CAELA Brief -Teaching Grammar