Rod Ellis is currently
a professor at the Institute of English Language Teaching and Learning,
University of Auckland, New Zealand. He is also the director of the Institute.
Previously, he taught at Temple University in Japan and Philadelphia.
He has also worked in Spain, England and Zambia. He has written several
books about second language acquisition and has also published a number
of ESL and EFL textbooks that are used widely throughout the world, including
the Impact series.
How can
we teach grammar in ways that enable learners to learn grammar? This has
been one of the key questions that researchers have grappled with over
the last thirty or so years.
This question
arose as a result of research that showed that language learners have
their own built-in 'syllabus' which governs both when they learn particular
grammatical features and also how they learn them. The research demonstrated
what many teachers have long known - namely, that students often don't
learn the grammar they are taught. It indicates why this is so; learners
only internalize those grammar features that they are ready to learn and
they learn each feature very gradually, passing through a series of transitional
stages.
There are
perhaps two ways in which teachers can try to address this problem. The
first is to make sure that the teaching syllabus matches the learner's
own syllabus. That is, teachers need to teach specific grammatical features
when they know that the learners are ready to learn them. The difficulty
with this solution is that it is not easy to find out if learners are
at a stage of development that will enable them to learn a particular
structure. This calls for quite sophisticated diagnosis. Another difficulty
is that we still do not have anything like a complete picture of what
the learner's syllabus looks like. In short, this solution is probably
not very practical.
The second
solution is to circumvent the problem. We can do this if we direct the
teaching of grammar at explicit knowledge rather than implicit
knowledge. Explicit knowledge is knowledge about grammar -
understanding the rules. Implicit knowledge is knowledge of grammar
- knowing the rules in an intuitive way that enables them to be accessed
quickly and easily for purposes of communication. It is this kind of knowledge
that underlies the learner's built-in syllabus and which is acquired gradually.
We can avoid the difficulties of trying to match the teaching syllabus
to the learner's syllabus if we make explicit rather than implicit knowledge
the target of instruction.
Of course,
such a solution only makes sense if it can be shown that learning explicit
knowledge is useful. Current theories of second language learning suggest
that explicit knowledge is important in a number of respects. First, it
helps learners to be more grammatically accurate by monitoring
what they say or write - they can 'edit' out some of the errors they make
because they have not yet acquired the necessary implicit knowledge. Second,
explicit knowledge can help learners to acquire implicit knowledge. If
learners understand how a grammatical feature works they will be more
likely to notice it when they are listening or reading. Current theories
claim that noticing is essential for the development of implicit
knowledge.
How, then,
should we teach explicit knowledge of grammar? The traditional way is
through direct instruction - the teacher tells the learners what the rules
are. An alternative way is to use a grammar-discovery approach. This involves
providing learners with data (in the form of a listening or reading text)
to illustrate a particular grammatical feature and getting them to analyze
it so as to arrive at an understanding of how the feature works. In effect,
this requires learners to become active-thinkers in order to discover
for themselves how the grammar of the language they are studying works.
The grammar-discovery
approach has a number of advantages. It is likely to be more motivating
than the direct approach - in general, learners find it more interesting
to discover something for themselves than to be told it. It turns grammar
into a 'content' that the learners can communicate about. In other words,
learners can use the target language as the medium for discovering grammar.
In this way, a grammar discovery task doubles up as a communicative task.
After all, learners can just as well talk about grammar as the countless
other things language teachers get them to discuss. Perhaps the biggest
advantage, however, is that grammar-discovery tasks help learners to develop
the analytical skills they need to dissect language for themselves. In
this way, they can continue to discover how the grammar of the language
works on their own when they are outside the classroom. The grammar-discovery
approach helps to foster the curiosity and the analytical skills needed
to work on language autonomously - one of the hallmarks of successful
language learners.
Together
with Steven Gaies, I have recently put together some materials designed
to teach grammar through awareness-raising (see Ellis and Gaies 1998).
Each unit is based on a grammatical problem that we know learners of English
as a second language commonly experience (e.g. the use of the present
progressive tense with stative verbs as in * I am weighing 60 kilos).
The learners begin by listening to a text that contains examples of correct
usage. They first process this for meaning. Then they listen again, this
time focussing their attention on the target grammatical feature (i.e.
they are helped to notice it). Next, they use the data to try to arrive
at an explicit understanding of the rule (e.g. the kinds of verbs that
are not used in the present progressive tense). This provides a basis
for an error-identification task, where they can check if they have understood
the rule clearly. Finally, there is an opportunity for the learners to
try to use the correct grammatical structure in their own sentences.
These materials
incorporate a number of novel features. First, they aim to teach grammar
through input-processing by helping learners to attend to particular grammatical
features; they train the skills of noticing. This contrasts with
traditional approaches which aim to teach grammar through production practice
of one kind or another. Second, the materials make use of oral texts on
the grounds that learners need training in being able to notice grammatical
features when they are listening. This is very difficult for learners,
particularly if the features are redundant (i.e. are not essential for
understanding the meaning). Third, the materials employ a grammar-discovery
approach. Learners are shown how to analyze the data in order to arrive
at an understanding of how a grammatical feature works. Fourthly, the
materials provide practise in monitoring - the learners are asked
to use their explicit knowledge to identify and correct errors of the
kind that they typically make.
Grammar teaching
has undergone a lot of rethinking in recent years. There are some theorists,
such as Stephen Krashen, who believe that it should be abandoned, or at
least relegated to a very minor role in a language programme. There are
other theorists, such as myself, who recognize the problems inherent in
the teaching of grammar, but who believe that ways round them can be found.
Irrespective, of these differences of opinion, many teachers will continue
to feel the need to teach grammar. Perhaps, what is important, is that
they do so with an understanding of the difficulties involved in learning
grammar and experiment with possible solutions. Teaching grammar through
awareness-raising is one possible solution.
Ellis, R. and
Gaies, S. 1998. Impact Grammar. Hong Kong: Longman.
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