Teaching the Language System

Part 1

Main issues in FL grammar teaching

1. Whether to teach it at all

2. Whether to do so “directly” or “indirectly”

Issue 1: pro

• Krashen’s Hypotheses (the Monitor Model)

• -> Natural Approach, Procedural Syllabus, Content-based Learning, Immersion, etc.

• learners are exposed to communication or take part in problem-solving tasks or learning of other school subject-matter in the foreign language, and language system knowledge is learned as a by-product

Issue 1: con

• a native-speakerist/BANA-oriented view

• learning and acquisition processes nowadays seen as alternative “pathways”

• Krashen’s ideas best seen as drawing attention to the role of acquisition as a complement to learning, rather a replacement for it

Issue 2

• “direct” vs. “indirect” teaching of language system knowledge (“grammar”)

• a “par excellence” example of the former: PPP (Presentation, Practice, Production)

PPPStage Purpose Example

Presentation Introduction (learning about)

1) Set of instructions for making paper aeroplane 2) Establishment of rules for, e.g., imperative, etc

Practice Guided use (learning how to)

Guided → freer pattern practice, etc., re using imperative in instructions

Production Freer use (learning by doing)

Students devise own instructions for making, e.g., a paper boat or flower

PPP - some benefits

• relatively well-defined overall procedure• not dissimilar to basic paradigm of teaching in

other subject areas• high face-validity (looks like what language

learning should be about)• many learners all over world have learned

successfully using it• supported by some findings of SLA research

(e.g., Wong-Fillmore in O’Neill)

PPP - some drawbacks

• uninvolving, potentially monotonous• usually just PP• learners may well have learned despite rather

than because of it• no guarantee that forms focussed on in

earlier stages will be used in later ones• conflicts with some findings of SLA research

(see, e.g., Skehan in Willis & Willis)

Focus on form vs. Focus on formS

• Focus on formS (direct): “discrete-point grammar teaching, or what I call focus on forms, where classes spend most of their time working on isolated linguistic structures in a sequence predetermined externally by a syllabus designer or textbook writer” (Long, 1997)

• E.g., GT, A-L, TPR, PPP, etc.

Focus on form vs. Focus on formS

• Focus on form (indirect): “during an otherwise meaning-focused lesson… learners' attention is briefly shifted to linguistic code features, in context, when students experience problems as they work on communicative tasks, i.e., in a sequence determined by their own internal syllabuses, current processing capacity, and learnability constraints” (Long, 1997)

• E.g., TBLT, etc.

Recommended reading

Seminar

• Watch the lvideo of the lesson and make notes of the main stages. Then try to answer the following questions:

– Was the lesson mainly an “FoF” or “FoFS” one? – What did you like/dislike about the way language

system knowledge was taught?– What would you have done differently?