References: Anthology Chapters 13, 14, 15
The focus of these three chapters of Anthology is the effects and alternatives to grammar teaching methods in the L2 classroom. Grammar is a tricky subject in a second language; more than likely, the grammar of English is going to be quite different from that of the L1 and thus harder to fully acquire. I know that when learning Spanish, I had to become accustomed to the setup of sentences; while it was not vastly different than English, it still required my full attention while doing practice sentences and eventually became like second nature, but the point of these chapters is summed up in these two questions from Chapter 15: "Should we teach grammar at all?" and "If we should teach grammar, how should we teach it?" (pg. 167)
In Chapter 13, Swan discusses reasons for teaching grammar; 7 he considers 'bad', and 2 he considers 'good'. Something that stuck out to me was the idea that grammar is testable. "Tests show (or appear to show) whether students are learning and whether teachers are teaching properly" (pg. 149). Like we talked about on Thursday, unfortunately schools are dependent on these standardized tests and classroom exams as a measurement of student progress; they want results and they want them fast. Grammar is definitely one of those concepts that is easily adapted to a test. When learning past tense for example, all the student needs to do on a test is do fill-in-the-blank exercises or verb charts to show that they know it. It is also easy to make a test for this; I know because I have helped my University High School cooperating teacher grade tests and she showed me how she set up her tests. Also when I worked on their homework to test their knowledge on subjunctive tense in Spanish, I found it difficult to use anything but verb charts and fill-in-the-blank. I felt terrible for doing it, and I knew it was repetitive, but I reverted back to how I learned and I am still working really hard to break myself out of that mode. Another bad reason that Swan states is that of the results of teaching grammar: "Students do not learn English...they know the main rules, can pass tests, and may have the illusion that they know the language well" (pg. 151). Powerful statement. From personal experience, communicative competence in a second language is nowhere near easy; when I went to Spain, I honestly felt like I talked like a child in Spanish. I knew I could make a little bit more than just declarative statements, but I did not know how to carry on a conversation. Yes, our methods may be a bit dated for teaching grammar and we should find something new and more engaging, but consciousness-raising methods have a long way to go in development (discussed in the last section).
In Chapter 14, Richards discusses the filling of the gap between current language teaching methods and those of the past. He suggests a transition from grammar-focused to task-focused instruction, meaning students are involved in "comprehending, manipulating, producing or interacting in the target language while their attention is principally focused on meaning rather than form" (pg. 154). This follows along the methods of communicative language teaching, and suggests a move from a focus on form to focus on meaning as we have talked about earlier. Honestly, focus on form is not without its merit; I think that is difficult to find the one method that works for every student. I think that eclecticism fits in this area as well. There should be some focus on form in learning grammar while combining it with a focus on meaning. Verb conjugation charts are merely focus on form and nothing else. They do not put them into context at all, and therefore should be done away with as homework. It is alright to do them in class while you have their attention, but to harp on them as most teachers do is ridiculous. I had a Spanish teacher in high school who made us do verb charts EVERY DAY. It was stifling. The only good experience I remember from that class was that we had to assume different responsibilities at a wedding and do an extended role-play. This suggests what really works and is memorable for students.
As I stated, grammar has been the bane of any language teachers' existence, so to speak. It is difficult to make it interesting or engaging for students, and some will get so frustrated with how monotonous it is that they will shut down. I had many friends in high school who quit taking Spanish primarily because they hated how much grammar and verb conjugations they had to do in class. They said they never did any hands-on or kinetic types of activities or even a simple game to get them up and moving. They felt like it was all just busy work to fill time, and it was all repeated exposure. As Ellis states in this chapter, practice aims "to transfer what they know from short-term to long-term memory" (pg. 168). Ellis basically debunks the theory of teaching grammar as 'practice' versus his ideal method of 'consciousness-raising' grammar work and that the main purpose of this method is to "develop explicit knowledge of grammar" (pg. 169) and that grammar is understood through "every day" classroom language (pg. 169). This method does not include this method of repetition and drilling that we generally tend to associate with learning grammar. While this does sound more ideal than our previous methods, it is not much different than the original method of 'practice' that we have been given. It does not take into account that some students may learn better through repetition; some Chinese students, for example, are used to drills and grammar exercises and would therefore be more accustomed to using this method than this implicitness that Ellis is proposing. We are socialized in the classroom that the teacher is the source of knowledge, and I know when I was first learning Spanish in junior high, we did workbook exercises until we were blue in the face to learn grammar structures, and when I learned it in high school, we did the same thing. To go from explicit teaching to merely noticing and more CLT methods would be very confusing and disorienting for students who are used to a different way of learning. Some students would not adapt easily to it. I know that I would feel a bit lost if someone was not telling me that I needed to learn this structure and how to set it up. I prefer much more visuals and practice writing sentences to see the structure in real time than just listening for it. Ellis says, "Consciousness-raising, then, is unlikely to result in immediate acquisition. More likely, it will have a delayed effect" (pg. 172). Unfortunately, administrators and parents do not want to hear that. We have to face the reality as teachers that schools and administrators and parents want immediate results; they want to see that the students are learning something, and the most common method is through written assessment. If the students are not learning it right away, the teacher will have nothing to show for it and the administration will feel frustrated. I suppose that if the teacher wanted to use this method, they would need to clear it with the school and tell them the results and research that they have seen and how they can implement it in the classroom. They will also need to explain that results will not be quick in this sort of measure, and the school would have to approve that. Researchers are not always realistic and again it shows how out of touch they are with the school system and what is plausible.
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