Grammar in Foreign Language Learning

March 5th 2015 Workshop

Ernesto Macaro and Matt Connor

outline

• What is grammar and what are our expectations?

• What does the research evidence suggest?

• Link to ways of teaching writing

• Discussion and sharing of ideas

What is….

•Grammar?

Defining Grammar

• Grammar as a way of describing and categorising language – grammar books written by experts

• Grammar as a set of rules that a learner can try to explain to you – back of exercise book

• Grammar as terminology – metalanguage

• Grammar as a series of patterns in the learner’s head – evidence of change in their productions

How do we expose learners to patterns in language (implicit learning)?

• Through pattern-focused teacher talk and corrective feedback

• Through transferring phrases to different situations• Through high exposure/interaction of verb-rich talk• Through opportunities to engage in open-ended

activities - choice of language• Through pattern-focused listening• Through reading with a pattern focus • Through extensive reading

How do we teach patterns explicitly?

• Practice a pattern communicatively then give some support via explicit teaching (+ exercises)

• Provide lots of grammar-based exercises after exposure to aural and written text (in which those patterns are prevalent)

• Teach explicitly only when they demonstrate consistent errors

• Start lesson with and explanation of the grammar rule, then give exercises

Defining error

• Slips

• Mistakes

• Errors

Interlanguage

The theory of interlanguage goes something like this:

learners who make mistakes when speaking or writing do not do so (necessarily) because they are lazy, inattentive, careless or have a low aptitude for the language.

Their “interlanguage”, their current competence in the language, is quite systematic. Mistakes are the result of systematic hypothesising about the L2. These hypotheses may be influenced by transfer from their L1 or by over-generalising from what they already know (or have noticed) about the L2.

L1 L2Mary

Example of interlanguage

• *j’ai jouer au cricket

• Where did this mistake come from?

Example of interlanguage

• *j’ai jouer au cricket

• a student justified by explaining that, as the phrase preceded ‘au cricket’, a ‘vowel clash’ should be avoided

Cheval/chevaux Cheval & chevaux

chevals

Est-ce qu’il y a un camping près d’ici?(formulaic)

Est-ce qu’ils sont des toilettes près d’ici?(beginning to unpack)

Est-ce qu’il y a des toilettes près d’ici(generated)

What does the research say about teaching grammar explicitly

1. Depends on the nature of the rule/pattern: complex rules not easily learnt through explicit teaching

2. There are ‘orders of learning’ rules/patterns: difficult to learn them in the wrong order. Coursebooks random.

3. Try the inductive/implicit method first

4. Always ask “at what cost?”

Writing

• OFSTED inspection evidence suggests that pupils make rapid progress with language learning in the first half of Year 7 but that progress slows considerably from then on and particularly during Years 8 and 9

• “in writing pupils move too slowly from the copying of words or phrases to independent writing” (Ofsted)

Controversial Statement

• Our obsession with written accuracy is stopping the learners from developing the rules and patterns of the foreign language

Study of year 7/8 writing

(June Year 7)

• Could write about anything they wanted

• Topic chosen: personal information (except for one student who wrote about the sport she did. )

• Sample produced on average 5.7 words (range: 0 to 10 words)

Experience of writing in French• “we do exercises, but if um, I need to revise for a test like,

I’ll put it on a bit of paper or something”

• “(we)just copy things and do exercises out of….from books…”

• “she just told us to write them down like “ à la campagne”, in the countryside and like right by the side of it in the English so we can just remember them or if we forget we just look back in the book……”

• “we have ones where you have to make it up like our bedrooms, stuff like that, or we might have to copy out of our book to see how we do it”

difficulties with formulation process“I was thinking about some work we did about after

school and stuff and I remembered it and then um, *je mangeay a snack* just came into my mind. Thinking about it I just wrote it”

“I remember back to when we did it…it’s on my graffiti wall …(meaning a visual image he has?)”

• “I keep thinking what I could put but I don’t know how to say these things. That’s my problem”

strategies used

• most popular strategy was to try to recall a set phrase which roughly matched the idea that came into their heads

• if the set phrase strategy failed, the only other available strategy was to avoid saying the idea altogether

March of Year 8

• students produced an average of 17.3 words, (range: 3 words to 38 words)

a wider range of topics:

• personal information;

• hobbies/sport; the home;

• likes and dislikes.

Summary of research in L2 writing (all contexts; all levels)

• Vocabulary knowledge important in any type of writing task

• Narrative tasks tend to be most challenging (require most knowledge of grammar)

• Providing ‘models’ results in most accurate writing

• Not providing models results in most interesting writing

Summary of research

• Planning in L1 results in best content but most inaccuracies

• Very unlikely that we can stop students from thinking in L1 when they are writing (but there are some things we can do to help)

• Successful writers use a combination of “formulation” strategies and evaluate these for the likelihood of their effectiveness.

• students (beginners & lower intermediate) who check as they write more likely to employ a range of strategies rather than only one or two

Summary of research

• Dictionaries: only small % of words looked up result in correct use.

• Important to a) use good dictionary b) use example sentences (dictionary training).

• Students can be trained to improve their writing by using different strategies.

Suggested Writing Approaches

• Let’s get away from copying• Let the students write more of what they want to

write rather than what they know or have access to.

• Sometimes do a writing task at the beginning of a topic rather than at the end.

• encourage them to make mistakes• But offer them a series of strategies to minimise

the mistakes• Feedback on their strategy use more than on

their achievement

Spidergrams

Topic or topics

words

phrases

Phrases

phrases

phrases words

Quickly try to remember phrases on the topic: Les Vacances

5 simple sentences in English

1.__________________________

2.__________________________

3.__________________________

4.__________________________

5. __________________________

First draft of a story “mes vacances, l’année dernière

______________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________

1(spidergram)

Formulation strategies

Recombining(set phrases)

Restructuring(unpicking set phrases)

Generating viaTranslation(word for word)

Avoiding(content)

Evaluatingdecisions taken

Recombining set phrases

Il y a toujours On trouve souvent

quelqu’un qui peut t’aiderun ami qui veut écouter tes problèmes

Restructuring set phrases

Elle trouve souventIl n’y a pas toujours*il n’y ont pas toujours**il n’y est pas toujours*

quelqu’un qui peut les aiderune amie qui veut te raconter ses problèmes*quelqu’uns qui peuvent le aider*

Generating sentences via translation

She can arrive at 5 o’clock

My parents give me £10 per week

Elle peut arriver à cinq heures*Elle boîte arriver à cinq heures*

*Mes parents donnent moi dix livres par semaine*

Strategies in the monitoring process

• Auditory monitoring (does it sound right?)• Visual monitoring (does it look right?)• Back-translating (usually shows up extra or missing words)• Common sense monitoring (does it make sense?)• Content monitoring (have I put in the right information?)• Coherence monitoring (do the sentences follow each other)• Conventions monitoring (is this right for a business letter?)• Prompting a specific monitor (what are usual problems with

this? E.g. present, future, conditional tenses = 1 verb)• Personalised monitoring (watch out for my usual mistakes)

• Evaluating monitoring process