This is a somewhat belated reaction to Catherine Walter's article which appeared in the Learning English section of Guardian last
autumn. Click here to read it.
Dr Catherine Walter’s article Time to
stop avoiding grammar rules defends explicit
grammar teaching in EFL. Proudly subtitled The evidence is now in: the
explicit teaching of grammar rules leads to better learning, the article
makes numerous references to a "wide range of studies" that have
shown evidence of effectiveness of explicit grammar teaching.
Although no sources are cited, the
forthright and cogent tone of the article written by the co-author of How
English Works, The Good Grammar Book and Oxford English Grammar
Course (all with Michael Swan) would win over any ELT practitioner. As one would expect, to make her argument
more convincing, Dr Walter talks with mild disdain about other
approaches that have de-emphasised explicit grammar instruction and proposed
instead:
One such approach which has dealt a heavy
blow to the dominance of a traditional grammar syllabus is the Lexical Approach
proposed in the 1990s and based on teaching chunks of language. Without beating
around the bush, Dr Walter claims it is WRONG because there are hundreds of
thousands of chunks the learner has to commit to memory. She states "With
much less time and effort, learners can acquire grammar" (acquire grammar or
learn a few declarative rules?) "for putting together comprehensible
phrases and sentences".
Does the author imply that, unlike
grammar rules, chunks do not have generative value? Surely, chunks can be
equally generative. Imagine, your student learns
which is a semi-fixed expression which
allows variability and helps learners produce similar requests in other
situations:
Learning chunks actually facilitates the
teaching of grammar and serves as a basis for mastery of the grammar system. Furthermore,
grammar is best learnt when students have memorised a chunk which can then be
used as a template for creating novel utterances. Let's consider, for example:
Imagine how many "rules" a learner needs to remember here: no will after if, 3rd person doesn't and not don't… If they memorise it as a chunk, they can go on to produce:
Both Ellises subscribe to this view of grammar acquisition. Rod Ellis (Second language acquisition researcher) says that it is worth focusing on
formulaic chunks initially before the teaching of rule-based grammar while Nick
Ellis (cognitive linguist), coming from the emergentist perspective, maintains that by memorising and
later analysing chunks learners bootstrap their way to grammar.
Native
speakers do not realise how much they rely on stock phrases such as If I
were you…, When it comes to… There's been a lot of opposition to…
when communicating. By some estimates, between 50% and 80% of native speaker
English – depending on the genre - consists of prefabricated routines and
memorised chunks.
A number of studies have shown that
learners across all levels use far fewer chunks than native speakers relying on
word-by-word sentence building. The ability to produce appropriate multi-word
phrases often lags behind even when students have mastered the third
conditional. If anything, we should be advocating more – not less- chunk
learning.
In the
final paragraph of the article after elevating the role of grammar rules, Dr
Walter, as if to pre-empt the imminent backlash by those on the anti-grammar
side of the argument, acknowledges that teaching vocabulary is more important
than grammar and there is room for both: a grammar syllabus and word lists…
There
you have it: twenty or so years of psycholinguistics,SLA
research, cognitive linguistics and corpus linguistics are thrown out of the
window, and grammar and vocabulary are decoupled yet again. Ironically, those
teachers whose teaching is no longer dictated by the outdated and largely
discredited slot-and-filler model of language learning probably shrugged off the
article. But those who have never let go of the hold that pedagogic grammar has
on their teaching will now be vindicated and continue - with renewed vigour -
battering their students with grammar exercises.
References
Ellis,
N. (1996). Sequencing inSLA : Phonological
memory, chunking, and points of order. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 18(1),
91-126. Available
at: www-personal.umich.edu/~ncellis/NickEllis/Publications_files/Ellis1996Chunking.pdf
Ellis,
R. (2005). Principles of instructed language learning. Asian EFL Journal,
vol. 7. Available
at: www.asian-efl-journal.com/September_2005_EBook_editions.pdf
Walter, C. (2012, September 18). Time to stop avoiding grammar. The Guardian Weekly. Available at: http://gu.com/p/3aa24
autumn. Click here to read it.
 |
| Language or maths? Spaarnestad Photo via Nationaal Archief |
Dr Catherine Walter’s article Time to
stop avoiding grammar rules defends explicit
grammar teaching in EFL. Proudly subtitled The evidence is now in: the
explicit teaching of grammar rules leads to better learning, the article
makes numerous references to a "wide range of studies" that have
shown evidence of effectiveness of explicit grammar teaching.
Although no sources are cited, the
forthright and cogent tone of the article written by the co-author of How
English Works, The Good Grammar Book and Oxford English Grammar
Course (all with Michael Swan) would win over any ELT practitioner. As one would expect, to make her argument
more convincing, Dr Walter talks with mild disdain about other
approaches that have de-emphasised explicit grammar instruction and proposed
instead:
"to expose learners to
language that is just a bit more advanced than what they currently
produce"(Krashen's comprehensible input hypothesis / the Natural approach);
"to wait until a
communicative situation demands a certain structure before introducing it" (Task-Based Learning with reactive focus on
form)
"to let the grammar
emerge naturally from the lived context of the classroom" (Dogme).
One such approach which has dealt a heavy
blow to the dominance of a traditional grammar syllabus is the Lexical Approach
proposed in the 1990s and based on teaching chunks of language. Without beating
around the bush, Dr Walter claims it is WRONG because there are hundreds of
thousands of chunks the learner has to commit to memory. She states "With
much less time and effort, learners can acquire grammar" (acquire grammar or
learn a few declarative rules?) "for putting together comprehensible
phrases and sentences".
Does the author imply that, unlike
grammar rules, chunks do not have generative value? Surely, chunks can be
equally generative. Imagine, your student learns
Could you pass me the salt, please?
which is a semi-fixed expression which
allows variability and helps learners produce similar requests in other
situations:
Could you pass me the water, please?
Could you pass me the ketchup, please?
Could you pass me the menu, please?
Could you pass me my phone, please?
Learning chunks actually facilitates the
teaching of grammar and serves as a basis for mastery of the grammar system. Furthermore,
grammar is best learnt when students have memorised a chunk which can then be
used as a template for creating novel utterances. Let's consider, for example:
If it doesn't work out, you can always fire me.
Imagine how many "rules" a learner needs to remember here: no will after if, 3rd person doesn't and not don't… If they memorise it as a chunk, they can go on to produce:
If it doesn’t work out you can always move.
If it doesn't work out you can always go back to working part-time.
If it doesn’t happen…
If it doesn't get better…
Both Ellises subscribe to this view of grammar acquisition. Rod Ellis (Second language acquisition researcher) says that it is worth focusing on
formulaic chunks initially before the teaching of rule-based grammar while Nick
Ellis (cognitive linguist), coming from the emergentist perspective, maintains that by memorising and
later analysing chunks learners bootstrap their way to grammar.
Native
speakers do not realise how much they rely on stock phrases such as If I
were you…, When it comes to… There's been a lot of opposition to…
when communicating. By some estimates, between 50% and 80% of native speaker
English – depending on the genre - consists of prefabricated routines and
memorised chunks.
A number of studies have shown that
learners across all levels use far fewer chunks than native speakers relying on
word-by-word sentence building. The ability to produce appropriate multi-word
phrases often lags behind even when students have mastered the third
conditional. If anything, we should be advocating more – not less- chunk
learning.
In the
final paragraph of the article after elevating the role of grammar rules, Dr
Walter, as if to pre-empt the imminent backlash by those on the anti-grammar
side of the argument, acknowledges that teaching vocabulary is more important
than grammar and there is room for both: a grammar syllabus and word lists…
There
you have it: twenty or so years of psycholinguistics,
research, cognitive linguistics and corpus linguistics are thrown out of the
window, and grammar and vocabulary are decoupled yet again. Ironically, those
teachers whose teaching is no longer dictated by the outdated and largely
discredited slot-and-filler model of language learning probably shrugged off the
article. But those who have never let go of the hold that pedagogic grammar has
on their teaching will now be vindicated and continue - with renewed vigour -
battering their students with grammar exercises.
References
Ellis,
N. (1996). Sequencing in
memory, chunking, and points of order. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 18(1),
91-126. Available
at: www-personal.umich.edu/~ncellis/NickEllis/Publications_files/Ellis1996Chunking.pdf
Ellis,
R. (2005). Principles of instructed language learning. Asian EFL Journal,
vol. 7. Available
at: www.asian-efl-journal.com/September_2005_EBook_editions.pdf
Walter, C. (2012, September 18). Time to stop avoiding grammar. The Guardian Weekly. Available at: http://gu.com/p/3aa24
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