Resource centre Theory and issues Grammar teaching
Grammar Teaching: Implicit or Explicit?
Larry Lynch adds his views to the debate about implicit versus explicit grammar teaching, and argues that the chosen approach should depend on the teaching and learning conditions of an individual class.
Based on my 15 years of EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teaching experience, the statement "grammar teaching should be implicit, not explicit" could be argued both for and against. Whether to teach grammar as an extracted focus of ELT (English Language Teaching) or more passively as an inductive, integral topic has been the theme of countless debates on the part of institutions, professors, grammarians and language researchers for decades. Grammar is the branch of linguistics dealing with the form and structure of words or morphology, and their interrelation in sentences, called syntax. The study of grammar reveals how language works, an important aspect in both English acquisition and learning.
In the early 20th century grammarians like the German-American anthropologist Franz Boas and the Danish linguist Otto Jespersen began to describe languages and Boas' work formed the basis of various types of American descriptive grammar study. Jespersen's work was the fore-runner of such current approaches to linguistic theory such as Noam Chomsky's Transformational Generative Grammar.
Chomsky, who studied structural linguistics, sought to analyze the syntax of English in a structural grammar. This led him to view grammar as a theory of language structure rather than a description of actual sentences. His idea of grammar is that it is a device for producing the structure, not of a particular language, but of the ability to produce and understand sentences in any and all languages. Since grammar is the means by which we can understand how a language "works", a definitive study of language grammar is essential to language study.
Strictly explicit grammar study however, and even grammar-focused lessons are often not communicatively based. They can therefore be boring, cumbersome and difficult for students to assimilate. The strict teaching of grammar / structure, except with students of the Logical - Mathematical or Verbal - Linguistic multiple intelligences, can be frustrating and highly ineffective.
Grammar teaching should be implicit
Friday, April 10, 2009
Discourse Analysis for Language Teachers
Discourse Analysis for Language Teachers
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What Is Discourse Analysis?
Discourse analysis is the examination of language use by members of a speech community. It involves looking at both language form and language function and includes the study of both spoken interaction and written texts. It identifies linguistic features that characterize different genres as well as social and cultural factors that aid in our interpretation and understanding of different texts and types of talk. A discourse analysis of written texts might include a study of topic development and cohesion across the sentences, while an analysis of spoken language might focus on these aspects plus turn-taking practices, opening and closing sequences of social encounters, or narrative structure.
The study of discourse has developed in a variety of disciplines-sociolinguistics, anthropology, sociology, and social psychology. Thus discourse analysis takes different theoretical perspectives and analytic approaches: speech act theory, interactional sociolinguistics, ethnography of communication, pragmatics, conversation analysis, and variation analysis (Schiffrin, 1994). Although each approach emphasizes different aspects of language use, they all view language as social interaction.
This digest focuses on the application of discourse analysis to second language teaching and learning. It provides examples of how teachers can improve their teaching practices by investigating actual language use both in and out of the classroom, and how students can learn language through exposure to different types of discourse. Detailed introductions to discourse analysis, with special attention to the needs and experiences of language teachers, can be found in Celce-Murcia and Olshtain (2000), Hatch (1992), McCarthy (1992), McCarthy and Carter (1994), and Riggenbach (1999).
Discourse Analysis and Second Language Teaching
Even with the most communicative approaches, the second language classroom is limited in its ability to develop learners' communicative competence in the target language. This is due to the restricted number of contact hours with the language; minimal opportunities for interacting with native speakers; and limited exposure to the variety of functions, genres, speech events, and discourse types that occur outside the classroom. Given the limited time available for students to practice the target language, teachers should maximize opportunities for student participation. Classroom research is one way for teachers to monitor both the quantity and quality of students' output. By following a four-part process of Record-View-Transcribe-Analyze, second language teachers can use discourse analytic techniques to investigate the interaction patterns in their classrooms and to see how these patterns promote or hinder opportunities for learners to practice the target language. This process allows language teachers to study their own teaching behavior—specifically, the frequency, distribution, and types of questions they use and their effect on students' responses.
Step One: Videotape a complete lesson. Be sure to capture all of your questions and the students' responses. (Opportunities to speak the target language are often created by teachers' questions.)
Step Two: Watch the videotape. As you watch it, think about the types of questions you asked. Look for recurring patterns in your questioning style and the impact it has on the students' responses.
Step Three: Transcribe the lesson. A transcript will make it easier to identify the types of questions in the data and to focus on specific questions and student responses.
Step Four: Analyze the videotape and transcript. Why did you ask each question? What type of question was it—open (e.g., "What points do you think the author was making in the chapter you read yesterday?") or closed (e.g., "Did you like the chapter?")? Was the question effective in terms of your goals for teaching and learning? What effect did your questions have on the students' opportunities to practice the target language? How did the students respond to different types of questions? Were you satisfied with their responses? Which questions elicited the most discussion from the students? Did the students ask any questions? Focusing on actual classroom interaction, teachers can investigate how one aspect of their teaching style affects students' opportunities for speaking the target language. They can then make changes that will allow students more practice with a wider variety of discourse types.
Teachers can also use this process of Record-View-Transcribe-Analyze to study communication patterns in different classroom activities, such as student-to-student interactions during a paired role-play task and during a small-group cooperative learning activity. Communicative activities are expected to promote interaction and to provide opportunities for students to engage in talk. Teachers are likely to discover that students produce different speech patterns in response to different tasks. For example, a map activity is likely to elicit a series of questions and answers among participants, whereas a picture narration task requires a monologue developed around a narrative format. Given that teachers use communicative tasks to evaluate learners' proficiency, a better understanding of the influence of specific activities on learner discourse will likely lead teachers to use a greater variety of tasks in order to gain a more comprehensive picture of students' abilities. By recording, transcribing, and analyzing students' discourse, teachers can gain insight into the effect of specific tasks on students' language production and, over time, on their language development.
A discourse analysis of classroom interactions can also shed light on cross-cultural linguistic patterns that may be leading to communication difficulties. For example, some speakers may engage in overlap, speaking while someone else is taking a turn-at-talk. For some linguistic groups, this discourse behavior can be interpreted as a signal of engagement and involvement; however, other speakers may view it as an interruption and imposition on their speaking rights. Teachers can use the Record-View-Transcribe-Analyze technique to study cross-cultural interactions in their classrooms, helping students identify different communication strategies and their potential for miscommunication.
Although some variables of language learning are beyond the control of second language teachers, discourse analysis can be a useful analytic tool for making informed changes in instructional practices. Mainstream teachers, especially those with second language learners, can also use this technique to study classroom interactions in order to focus on the learning opportunities available to students with limited English proficiency. In fact, discourse analysis can be an integral part of a program of professional development for all teachers that includes classroom-based research, with the overall aim of improving teaching (Johnson, 1995).
Discourse Analysis and Second Language Learning
Language learners face the monumental task of acquiring not only new vocabulary, syntactic patterns, and phonology, but also discourse competence, sociolinguistic competence, strategic competence, and interactional competence. They need opportunities to investigate the systematicity of language at all linguistic levels, especially at the highest level (Riggenbach, 1999; Young and He, 1998). Without knowledge of and experience with the discourse and sociocultural patterns of the target language, second language learners are likely to rely on the strategies and expectations acquired as part of their first language development, which may be inappropriate for the second language setting and may lead to communication difficulties and misunderstandings.
One problem for second language learners is limited experience with a variety of interactive practices in the target language. Therefore, one of the goals of second language teaching is to expose learners to different discourse patterns in different texts and interactions. One way that teachers can include the study of discourse in the second language classroom is to allow the students themselves to study language, that is, to make them discourse analysts (see Celce-Murcia & Olshtain, 2000; McCarthy & Carter, 1994; Riggenbach, 1999). By exploring natural language use in authentic environments, learners gain a greater appreciation and understanding of the discourse patterns associated with a given genre or speech event as well as the sociolinguistic factors that contribute to linguistic variation across settings and contexts. For example, students can study speech acts in a service encounter, turn-taking patterns in a conversation between friends, opening and closings of answering machine messages, or other aspects of speech events. Riggenbach (1999) suggests a wide variety of activities that can easily be adapted to suit a range of second language learning contexts.
One discourse feature that is easy to study is listener response behavior, also known as backchannels. Backchannels are the brief verbal responses that a listener uses while another individual is talking, such as mm-hmm, ok, yeah, and oh wow. Listener response can also be non-verbal, for instance head nods. Research has identified variation among languages in the use of backchannels, which makes it an interesting feature to study. Variation has been found not only in the frequency of backchannels, but also in the type of backchannels, their placement in the ongoing talk, and their interpretation by the participants (Clancy, Thompson, Suzuki, & Tao, 1996). Students can participate in the Record-View-Transcribe-Analyze technique to study the linguistic form and function of backchannels in conversation.
Step One: Ask to video- or audiotape a pair of native speakers engaging in conversation, perhaps over coffee or lunch.
Step Two: Play the tape for students. Have them identify patterns in the recorded linguistic behavior. In this case, pay attention to the backchanneling behavior of the participants. Is the same backchannel token used repeatedly, or is there variation?
Step Three: Transcribe the conversation so that students can count the number and types of backchannel tokens and examine their placement within the discourse.
Step 4: Have students analyze specific discourse features individually, in pairs or in small groups. These are some questions to consider: How often do the participants use a backchannel token? How does backchanneling contribute to the participants' understanding of and involvement in the conversation? How can differences in backchannel frequency be explained? How does backchanneling work in the students' native language?
Students can collect and analyze data themselves. Once collected, this set of authentic language data can be repeatedly examined for other conversational features, then later compared to discourse features found in other speech events. This discourse approach to language learning removes language from the confines of textbooks and makes it tangible, so that students can explore language as interaction rather than as grammatical units. Teachers can also use these activities to raise students' awareness of language variation, dialect differences, and cultural diversity.
Conclusion
In sum, teachers can use discourse analysis not only as a research method for investigating their own teaching practices but also as a tool for studying interactions among language learners. Learners can benefit from using discourse analysis to explore what language is and how it is used to achieve communicative goals in different contexts. Thus discourse analysis can help to create a second language learning environment that more accurately reflects how language is used and encourages learners toward their goal of proficiency in another language.
Download a PDF of this digest.Adobe PDF icon
What Is Discourse Analysis?
Discourse analysis is the examination of language use by members of a speech community. It involves looking at both language form and language function and includes the study of both spoken interaction and written texts. It identifies linguistic features that characterize different genres as well as social and cultural factors that aid in our interpretation and understanding of different texts and types of talk. A discourse analysis of written texts might include a study of topic development and cohesion across the sentences, while an analysis of spoken language might focus on these aspects plus turn-taking practices, opening and closing sequences of social encounters, or narrative structure.
The study of discourse has developed in a variety of disciplines-sociolinguistics, anthropology, sociology, and social psychology. Thus discourse analysis takes different theoretical perspectives and analytic approaches: speech act theory, interactional sociolinguistics, ethnography of communication, pragmatics, conversation analysis, and variation analysis (Schiffrin, 1994). Although each approach emphasizes different aspects of language use, they all view language as social interaction.
This digest focuses on the application of discourse analysis to second language teaching and learning. It provides examples of how teachers can improve their teaching practices by investigating actual language use both in and out of the classroom, and how students can learn language through exposure to different types of discourse. Detailed introductions to discourse analysis, with special attention to the needs and experiences of language teachers, can be found in Celce-Murcia and Olshtain (2000), Hatch (1992), McCarthy (1992), McCarthy and Carter (1994), and Riggenbach (1999).
Discourse Analysis and Second Language Teaching
Even with the most communicative approaches, the second language classroom is limited in its ability to develop learners' communicative competence in the target language. This is due to the restricted number of contact hours with the language; minimal opportunities for interacting with native speakers; and limited exposure to the variety of functions, genres, speech events, and discourse types that occur outside the classroom. Given the limited time available for students to practice the target language, teachers should maximize opportunities for student participation. Classroom research is one way for teachers to monitor both the quantity and quality of students' output. By following a four-part process of Record-View-Transcribe-Analyze, second language teachers can use discourse analytic techniques to investigate the interaction patterns in their classrooms and to see how these patterns promote or hinder opportunities for learners to practice the target language. This process allows language teachers to study their own teaching behavior—specifically, the frequency, distribution, and types of questions they use and their effect on students' responses.
Step One: Videotape a complete lesson. Be sure to capture all of your questions and the students' responses. (Opportunities to speak the target language are often created by teachers' questions.)
Step Two: Watch the videotape. As you watch it, think about the types of questions you asked. Look for recurring patterns in your questioning style and the impact it has on the students' responses.
Step Three: Transcribe the lesson. A transcript will make it easier to identify the types of questions in the data and to focus on specific questions and student responses.
Step Four: Analyze the videotape and transcript. Why did you ask each question? What type of question was it—open (e.g., "What points do you think the author was making in the chapter you read yesterday?") or closed (e.g., "Did you like the chapter?")? Was the question effective in terms of your goals for teaching and learning? What effect did your questions have on the students' opportunities to practice the target language? How did the students respond to different types of questions? Were you satisfied with their responses? Which questions elicited the most discussion from the students? Did the students ask any questions? Focusing on actual classroom interaction, teachers can investigate how one aspect of their teaching style affects students' opportunities for speaking the target language. They can then make changes that will allow students more practice with a wider variety of discourse types.
Teachers can also use this process of Record-View-Transcribe-Analyze to study communication patterns in different classroom activities, such as student-to-student interactions during a paired role-play task and during a small-group cooperative learning activity. Communicative activities are expected to promote interaction and to provide opportunities for students to engage in talk. Teachers are likely to discover that students produce different speech patterns in response to different tasks. For example, a map activity is likely to elicit a series of questions and answers among participants, whereas a picture narration task requires a monologue developed around a narrative format. Given that teachers use communicative tasks to evaluate learners' proficiency, a better understanding of the influence of specific activities on learner discourse will likely lead teachers to use a greater variety of tasks in order to gain a more comprehensive picture of students' abilities. By recording, transcribing, and analyzing students' discourse, teachers can gain insight into the effect of specific tasks on students' language production and, over time, on their language development.
A discourse analysis of classroom interactions can also shed light on cross-cultural linguistic patterns that may be leading to communication difficulties. For example, some speakers may engage in overlap, speaking while someone else is taking a turn-at-talk. For some linguistic groups, this discourse behavior can be interpreted as a signal of engagement and involvement; however, other speakers may view it as an interruption and imposition on their speaking rights. Teachers can use the Record-View-Transcribe-Analyze technique to study cross-cultural interactions in their classrooms, helping students identify different communication strategies and their potential for miscommunication.
Although some variables of language learning are beyond the control of second language teachers, discourse analysis can be a useful analytic tool for making informed changes in instructional practices. Mainstream teachers, especially those with second language learners, can also use this technique to study classroom interactions in order to focus on the learning opportunities available to students with limited English proficiency. In fact, discourse analysis can be an integral part of a program of professional development for all teachers that includes classroom-based research, with the overall aim of improving teaching (Johnson, 1995).
Discourse Analysis and Second Language Learning
Language learners face the monumental task of acquiring not only new vocabulary, syntactic patterns, and phonology, but also discourse competence, sociolinguistic competence, strategic competence, and interactional competence. They need opportunities to investigate the systematicity of language at all linguistic levels, especially at the highest level (Riggenbach, 1999; Young and He, 1998). Without knowledge of and experience with the discourse and sociocultural patterns of the target language, second language learners are likely to rely on the strategies and expectations acquired as part of their first language development, which may be inappropriate for the second language setting and may lead to communication difficulties and misunderstandings.
One problem for second language learners is limited experience with a variety of interactive practices in the target language. Therefore, one of the goals of second language teaching is to expose learners to different discourse patterns in different texts and interactions. One way that teachers can include the study of discourse in the second language classroom is to allow the students themselves to study language, that is, to make them discourse analysts (see Celce-Murcia & Olshtain, 2000; McCarthy & Carter, 1994; Riggenbach, 1999). By exploring natural language use in authentic environments, learners gain a greater appreciation and understanding of the discourse patterns associated with a given genre or speech event as well as the sociolinguistic factors that contribute to linguistic variation across settings and contexts. For example, students can study speech acts in a service encounter, turn-taking patterns in a conversation between friends, opening and closings of answering machine messages, or other aspects of speech events. Riggenbach (1999) suggests a wide variety of activities that can easily be adapted to suit a range of second language learning contexts.
One discourse feature that is easy to study is listener response behavior, also known as backchannels. Backchannels are the brief verbal responses that a listener uses while another individual is talking, such as mm-hmm, ok, yeah, and oh wow. Listener response can also be non-verbal, for instance head nods. Research has identified variation among languages in the use of backchannels, which makes it an interesting feature to study. Variation has been found not only in the frequency of backchannels, but also in the type of backchannels, their placement in the ongoing talk, and their interpretation by the participants (Clancy, Thompson, Suzuki, & Tao, 1996). Students can participate in the Record-View-Transcribe-Analyze technique to study the linguistic form and function of backchannels in conversation.
Step One: Ask to video- or audiotape a pair of native speakers engaging in conversation, perhaps over coffee or lunch.
Step Two: Play the tape for students. Have them identify patterns in the recorded linguistic behavior. In this case, pay attention to the backchanneling behavior of the participants. Is the same backchannel token used repeatedly, or is there variation?
Step Three: Transcribe the conversation so that students can count the number and types of backchannel tokens and examine their placement within the discourse.
Step 4: Have students analyze specific discourse features individually, in pairs or in small groups. These are some questions to consider: How often do the participants use a backchannel token? How does backchanneling contribute to the participants' understanding of and involvement in the conversation? How can differences in backchannel frequency be explained? How does backchanneling work in the students' native language?
Students can collect and analyze data themselves. Once collected, this set of authentic language data can be repeatedly examined for other conversational features, then later compared to discourse features found in other speech events. This discourse approach to language learning removes language from the confines of textbooks and makes it tangible, so that students can explore language as interaction rather than as grammatical units. Teachers can also use these activities to raise students' awareness of language variation, dialect differences, and cultural diversity.
Conclusion
In sum, teachers can use discourse analysis not only as a research method for investigating their own teaching practices but also as a tool for studying interactions among language learners. Learners can benefit from using discourse analysis to explore what language is and how it is used to achieve communicative goals in different contexts. Thus discourse analysis can help to create a second language learning environment that more accurately reflects how language is used and encourages learners toward their goal of proficiency in another language.
Effects of Task Repetition on the Fluency, Complexity and Accuracy of Iranian EFL Learners’ Oral Discourse
Bio Data:
Parviz Birjandi is a full professor holding an M.A in applied linguistics from the Colorado State University and a Ph.D in English education; minor: Research methods and statistics from the University of Colorado. He is currently the Dean of the College of Foreign Languages and Persian Literature in the Islamic Azad University, Science and Research Branch. He has published 15 articles in the area of TEFL and he is the author of English textbooks for high school and pre-university levels, used nation wide, 5 university textbooks and 4 practice textbooks.
Saeideh Ahangari is a Ph.D. candidate of TEFL at the Islamic Azad University/Science and Research Branch. She has an M.A in Teaching English from the University of Tabriz. She has recently completed her Ph.D studies in the Islamic Azad University/Science and Research Branch. She is a lecturer at the Islamic Azad University/Tabriz Branch and currently she is the Head of the English Department in that university. She has published and presented papers in international conferences and journals.
Abstract
A more recent trend within communicative approaches has been to consider how attention can be profitably channeled through the instructional choices that are made (Schmidt, 1999). The assumption is that learners have available limited attentional capacities, that the different components of language production and comprehension compete for such limited capacities. “The more that a learner tries to hold in his or her head at a given moment, the harder the learning is and the more likely there will be a cognitive overload” (Oxford, 2006, p. 51).
A number of proposals have been made as to how some attention may be focused on form. It can be done through task design (Fotos & Ellis, 1991), pre-task and post-task activities( Doughty, 1991), conciousness-raising activities( Willis, 1996). In this research we approach the issue of attention from a different but related perspective. Our study focused on the ability learners have to utilize their L2 knowledge in production. We investigated if there is an evidence of target like production when the need to focus on meaning has been minimized through task repetition, thereby freeing learners to attend to form, not from input, but from their own internal system.
To examine the effects of task repetition and task type on fluency, accuracy, and Complexity, the researcher assigned 120 students to 6 groups; the narrative task performers, personal task performers and decision-making task performers in the male and female groups. Data was collected using a 2x2x3 factorial design. The first production of the subjects was measured for fluency, accuracy, and complexity. Then after a week all the subjects did the same task again, and their second production was also measured for fluency, accuracy, and complexity. The t-test results and the analysis of variance indicated that task repetition, and task type, as well as the interaction between these variables resulted in significant differences in subjects’ oral discourse in terms of fluency, accuracy, and complexity.
Key Words: task, repetition, fluency, accuracy, complexity, oral discourse
Introduction
In recent years a number of researchers, syllabus designers and educational innovators have called for a move in language teaching toward task-based approaches to instruction. (Prabhu,1987; Nunan,1989; Long & Crooks,1991; Ellis, 2003).
Since the advent of communicative language teaching and the belief that language is best learned when it is being used to communicative messages, the communicative task has ascended to a position of prominence as a unit of organization in syllabus design. Nunn (2006), for example proposes a task-based unitary framework because it “leads to student-led holistic outcomes in the form of written reports, spoken presentations and substantial small-group conversations that lead to decision-making outcomes” (p.70). This interest in the task has been motivated to a considerable extent by the fact that ‘task’ is seen as a construct of equal importance to second language acquisition (SLA) researchers and to language teachers (Pica,1997).
The rise of task-based language teaching has led to a variety of different interpretations of what exactly constitutes a task. Central to the notion of a communicative task is the exchange of meanings. Willis (1996) defines task as an activity where the target language is used by the learner for a communicative purpose (goal) in order to achieve an outcome. Here the notion of meaning is subsumed in ‘outcome’. Likewise for Nunan (2006) tasks have a non-linguistic outcome. He defines task as:
A piece of classroom work that involves learners in comprehending, producing or interacting in the target language while their attention is focused on mobilizing their grammatical knowledge in order to express meaning, and in which the intention is to convey meaning rather than to manipulate form. The task should also have a sense of completeness, being able to stand alone as a communicative act in its own right with a beginning, middle and an end(p.17).
Parviz Birjandi is a full professor holding an M.A in applied linguistics from the Colorado State University and a Ph.D in English education; minor: Research methods and statistics from the University of Colorado. He is currently the Dean of the College of Foreign Languages and Persian Literature in the Islamic Azad University, Science and Research Branch. He has published 15 articles in the area of TEFL and he is the author of English textbooks for high school and pre-university levels, used nation wide, 5 university textbooks and 4 practice textbooks.
Saeideh Ahangari is a Ph.D. candidate of TEFL at the Islamic Azad University/Science and Research Branch. She has an M.A in Teaching English from the University of Tabriz. She has recently completed her Ph.D studies in the Islamic Azad University/Science and Research Branch. She is a lecturer at the Islamic Azad University/Tabriz Branch and currently she is the Head of the English Department in that university. She has published and presented papers in international conferences and journals.
Abstract
A more recent trend within communicative approaches has been to consider how attention can be profitably channeled through the instructional choices that are made (Schmidt, 1999). The assumption is that learners have available limited attentional capacities, that the different components of language production and comprehension compete for such limited capacities. “The more that a learner tries to hold in his or her head at a given moment, the harder the learning is and the more likely there will be a cognitive overload” (Oxford, 2006, p. 51).
A number of proposals have been made as to how some attention may be focused on form. It can be done through task design (Fotos & Ellis, 1991), pre-task and post-task activities( Doughty, 1991), conciousness-raising activities( Willis, 1996). In this research we approach the issue of attention from a different but related perspective. Our study focused on the ability learners have to utilize their L2 knowledge in production. We investigated if there is an evidence of target like production when the need to focus on meaning has been minimized through task repetition, thereby freeing learners to attend to form, not from input, but from their own internal system.
To examine the effects of task repetition and task type on fluency, accuracy, and Complexity, the researcher assigned 120 students to 6 groups; the narrative task performers, personal task performers and decision-making task performers in the male and female groups. Data was collected using a 2x2x3 factorial design. The first production of the subjects was measured for fluency, accuracy, and complexity. Then after a week all the subjects did the same task again, and their second production was also measured for fluency, accuracy, and complexity. The t-test results and the analysis of variance indicated that task repetition, and task type, as well as the interaction between these variables resulted in significant differences in subjects’ oral discourse in terms of fluency, accuracy, and complexity.
Key Words: task, repetition, fluency, accuracy, complexity, oral discourse
Introduction
In recent years a number of researchers, syllabus designers and educational innovators have called for a move in language teaching toward task-based approaches to instruction. (Prabhu,1987; Nunan,1989; Long & Crooks,1991; Ellis, 2003).
Since the advent of communicative language teaching and the belief that language is best learned when it is being used to communicative messages, the communicative task has ascended to a position of prominence as a unit of organization in syllabus design. Nunn (2006), for example proposes a task-based unitary framework because it “leads to student-led holistic outcomes in the form of written reports, spoken presentations and substantial small-group conversations that lead to decision-making outcomes” (p.70). This interest in the task has been motivated to a considerable extent by the fact that ‘task’ is seen as a construct of equal importance to second language acquisition (SLA) researchers and to language teachers (Pica,1997).
The rise of task-based language teaching has led to a variety of different interpretations of what exactly constitutes a task. Central to the notion of a communicative task is the exchange of meanings. Willis (1996) defines task as an activity where the target language is used by the learner for a communicative purpose (goal) in order to achieve an outcome. Here the notion of meaning is subsumed in ‘outcome’. Likewise for Nunan (2006) tasks have a non-linguistic outcome. He defines task as:
A piece of classroom work that involves learners in comprehending, producing or interacting in the target language while their attention is focused on mobilizing their grammatical knowledge in order to express meaning, and in which the intention is to convey meaning rather than to manipulate form. The task should also have a sense of completeness, being able to stand alone as a communicative act in its own right with a beginning, middle and an end(p.17).
Introduction: "Good Grammar"
Introduction: "Good Grammar"
Few Americans escape school without some understanding of grammar. For most, this understanding amounts to a murky sense of something called "good grammar" and a nagging fear that they don't have it. In other words, they have a sense of "prescriptive grammar," a set of "rules" governing the choice of who and whom, the use of ain't, and other such matters. Promoted by Jonathan Swift and other literary figures of the 18th century, this approach to language prescribes the "correct" way to use language.
Many English speakers haunted by prescriptive grammar might be surprised and a little relieved to learn that most scholars who study language today are more interested in what they call "descriptive grammar." Instead of establishing and enforcing lists of rules about language, these scholars try to describe the system by which humans communicate. Indeed, they know from their study of English and other languages that language continually changes and that today's serious writers regularly make what Swift and others would have labeled mistakes in the 1700s.
These modern scholars are known as linguists, people who study language, and they are interested in much more than grammar. Among other areas within the field of linguistics are phonology, the study of sounds used in languages; semantics, the study of meaning; psycholinguistics, the study of the way the brain processes language; and sociolinguistics, the study of language in society, particularly subjects such as dialect, euphemism, and slang. Linguists study language in the same way biologists study plant or animal life. A serious biologist does not say that mammals are not supposed to fly and chastise all the world's bats for breaking the rules; rather, they study an organism's actions and try to understand why it acts as it does. Likewise, linguists try to understand how and why humans communicate through language.
Which is right, prescriptive or descriptive grammar? A better question might be "What can we learn from each?" For example, while today's linguists are careful not to say a word or sentence is "correct" or "incorrect," virtually all professional Americans--including teachers, journalists, doctors, lawyers, politicians, scientists, and business executives--realize that some forms of English are appropriate for business letters, reports, job interviews, resumes, books, and magazines, while others are not. They know to say,"She has never done it" instead "She ain't never done it" when talking to a prospective employer or writing a report. In other words, in their professional dealings, they try to communicate in Standard English--a dialect of English that obeys the "rules" set down by prescriptive grammarians--not because this English is inherently better than other dialects, but because it is widely accepted as the language of professional Americans. Prescriptive grammar, then, can help us master Standard English so that we can communicate effectively when we speak or write to other professionals.
Descriptive grammar, on the other hand, can help us to understand the way humans communicate, even the way we think. By studying the way humans speak, linguists such as Noam Chomsky have reached some interesting and valuable conclusions about subjects such as language acquisition--the process by which babies learn their language. Furthermore, studying the number of ways English speakers package information in words, phrases, and clauses can help students improve their own speaking and writing, making their communication clearer and more engaging. On a broader level, linguistics gives us insights into many other fields. The more we know about dialect, slang, language acquisition, and other linguistic phenomena, the more we know about politics, identity, education, and a hundred other fields. Language plays a role in virtually every human endeavor; we would do well to understand it.
Definitions
* descriptive grammar: the study of the ways human use systems--particularly syntax and morphology--to communicate through language; descriptive grammarians describe and analyze what speakers of a language say. Example: A descriptive grammarian might note that native English speakers say, "She doesn't like apple pie," not "Pie apple she like doesn't."
* prescriptive grammar: a set of "rules" governing the use of a language; prescriptive grammarians tell speakers what they should say. Example: A descriptive grammarian might warn English speakers not to say, "She don't like apple pie" because, according to the rules of Standard English, a singular subject, "She," takes a singular verb, "doesn't."
* Standard English: the form of English taught in schools and used widely by professional Americans, including politicians, journalists, and lawyers. Example: Magazines such as Newsweek and television news programs generally use Standard English.
* linguistics: the study of human language, including subjects such as phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, lexicon, sociolinguistics, and psycholinguistics
* phonology: the study of speech sounds. Example: Phonologists know that some sounds disappear or change because of the ways speakers use them. "I am going to stay" becomes "I'm gonna stay."
* morphology: the study of words, particularly of the inflections that indicate differences in tense, number, case, and other matters. Example: In English, adding the inflection "-ed" to a verb indicates past tense: "walked."
* syntax: word order. Example: In English, we create some questions by changing the syntax. "He is here" becomes "Is he here?"
* semantics: the study of meaning in language. Example: Linguists interested in semantics know that human language can be very imprecise. The word "love" means different things to different people. Moreover, some sentences are ambiguous--that is, they have more than one meaning--because of their syntax: "The chicken is ready to eat."
* lexicon: the stock of words in a language; people who compile lists of these words and their meanings in dictionaries are called "lexicographers." Example: English has an enormous lexicon, but a single speaker uses only a portion of it.
* sociolinguistics: the study of language in social contexts. Example: Sociolinguists study phenomena such as dialect, slang, and register.
* dialect: a form of a particular language. Usually, people who speak different dialects of the same language can understand each other, but they use some different words, pronounce words differently, perhaps even use different inflections or syntax. Example: I grew up in Indiana, where we say things like "Maybe you could turn it on by pushing the button." In North Carolina, however, I hear sentences like "You might could cut it on by mashing the button."
* register: the level of formality used in communication. Example: Most people use a casual register when speaking to friends; they might say, "Me and John are gonna hang out here." When speaking to a teacher or employer, however, people generally speak on a more formal register, saying, for example: "John and I will stay here."
Tip
A mastery of Standard English can help you make a positive impression on teachers, prospective employers, and co-workers. Think of your speech in the same way you think of your behavior and dress. For example, there's nothing inherently wrong about chewing gum, looking out a window, or wearing jeans and a T-shirt, but most people know not to do those things in a job interview. Standard English is like a firm handshake, eye contact, a suit and tie, or a skirt and blazer; it shows people that you understand professional conventions.
Few Americans escape school without some understanding of grammar. For most, this understanding amounts to a murky sense of something called "good grammar" and a nagging fear that they don't have it. In other words, they have a sense of "prescriptive grammar," a set of "rules" governing the choice of who and whom, the use of ain't, and other such matters. Promoted by Jonathan Swift and other literary figures of the 18th century, this approach to language prescribes the "correct" way to use language.
Many English speakers haunted by prescriptive grammar might be surprised and a little relieved to learn that most scholars who study language today are more interested in what they call "descriptive grammar." Instead of establishing and enforcing lists of rules about language, these scholars try to describe the system by which humans communicate. Indeed, they know from their study of English and other languages that language continually changes and that today's serious writers regularly make what Swift and others would have labeled mistakes in the 1700s.
These modern scholars are known as linguists, people who study language, and they are interested in much more than grammar. Among other areas within the field of linguistics are phonology, the study of sounds used in languages; semantics, the study of meaning; psycholinguistics, the study of the way the brain processes language; and sociolinguistics, the study of language in society, particularly subjects such as dialect, euphemism, and slang. Linguists study language in the same way biologists study plant or animal life. A serious biologist does not say that mammals are not supposed to fly and chastise all the world's bats for breaking the rules; rather, they study an organism's actions and try to understand why it acts as it does. Likewise, linguists try to understand how and why humans communicate through language.
Which is right, prescriptive or descriptive grammar? A better question might be "What can we learn from each?" For example, while today's linguists are careful not to say a word or sentence is "correct" or "incorrect," virtually all professional Americans--including teachers, journalists, doctors, lawyers, politicians, scientists, and business executives--realize that some forms of English are appropriate for business letters, reports, job interviews, resumes, books, and magazines, while others are not. They know to say,"She has never done it" instead "She ain't never done it" when talking to a prospective employer or writing a report. In other words, in their professional dealings, they try to communicate in Standard English--a dialect of English that obeys the "rules" set down by prescriptive grammarians--not because this English is inherently better than other dialects, but because it is widely accepted as the language of professional Americans. Prescriptive grammar, then, can help us master Standard English so that we can communicate effectively when we speak or write to other professionals.
Descriptive grammar, on the other hand, can help us to understand the way humans communicate, even the way we think. By studying the way humans speak, linguists such as Noam Chomsky have reached some interesting and valuable conclusions about subjects such as language acquisition--the process by which babies learn their language. Furthermore, studying the number of ways English speakers package information in words, phrases, and clauses can help students improve their own speaking and writing, making their communication clearer and more engaging. On a broader level, linguistics gives us insights into many other fields. The more we know about dialect, slang, language acquisition, and other linguistic phenomena, the more we know about politics, identity, education, and a hundred other fields. Language plays a role in virtually every human endeavor; we would do well to understand it.
Definitions
* descriptive grammar: the study of the ways human use systems--particularly syntax and morphology--to communicate through language; descriptive grammarians describe and analyze what speakers of a language say. Example: A descriptive grammarian might note that native English speakers say, "She doesn't like apple pie," not "Pie apple she like doesn't."
* prescriptive grammar: a set of "rules" governing the use of a language; prescriptive grammarians tell speakers what they should say. Example: A descriptive grammarian might warn English speakers not to say, "She don't like apple pie" because, according to the rules of Standard English, a singular subject, "She," takes a singular verb, "doesn't."
* Standard English: the form of English taught in schools and used widely by professional Americans, including politicians, journalists, and lawyers. Example: Magazines such as Newsweek and television news programs generally use Standard English.
* linguistics: the study of human language, including subjects such as phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, lexicon, sociolinguistics, and psycholinguistics
* phonology: the study of speech sounds. Example: Phonologists know that some sounds disappear or change because of the ways speakers use them. "I am going to stay" becomes "I'm gonna stay."
* morphology: the study of words, particularly of the inflections that indicate differences in tense, number, case, and other matters. Example: In English, adding the inflection "-ed" to a verb indicates past tense: "walked."
* syntax: word order. Example: In English, we create some questions by changing the syntax. "He is here" becomes "Is he here?"
* semantics: the study of meaning in language. Example: Linguists interested in semantics know that human language can be very imprecise. The word "love" means different things to different people. Moreover, some sentences are ambiguous--that is, they have more than one meaning--because of their syntax: "The chicken is ready to eat."
* lexicon: the stock of words in a language; people who compile lists of these words and their meanings in dictionaries are called "lexicographers." Example: English has an enormous lexicon, but a single speaker uses only a portion of it.
* sociolinguistics: the study of language in social contexts. Example: Sociolinguists study phenomena such as dialect, slang, and register.
* dialect: a form of a particular language. Usually, people who speak different dialects of the same language can understand each other, but they use some different words, pronounce words differently, perhaps even use different inflections or syntax. Example: I grew up in Indiana, where we say things like "Maybe you could turn it on by pushing the button." In North Carolina, however, I hear sentences like "You might could cut it on by mashing the button."
* register: the level of formality used in communication. Example: Most people use a casual register when speaking to friends; they might say, "Me and John are gonna hang out here." When speaking to a teacher or employer, however, people generally speak on a more formal register, saying, for example: "John and I will stay here."
Tip
A mastery of Standard English can help you make a positive impression on teachers, prospective employers, and co-workers. Think of your speech in the same way you think of your behavior and dress. For example, there's nothing inherently wrong about chewing gum, looking out a window, or wearing jeans and a T-shirt, but most people know not to do those things in a job interview. Standard English is like a firm handshake, eye contact, a suit and tie, or a skirt and blazer; it shows people that you understand professional conventions.
the Communicative Approach
Capes 4 - the Communicative Approach
A : Chomsky and the critique of behaviourism
The methods such as AL, based upon a behaviourist theory of learning, and on Bloomfieldian linguistics, were challenged by the theories of language and language-learning of Noam Chomsky. Chomsky argued that it was impossible for people to acquire a language by simple repetition and reinforcement. Children, he said, do not learn a language this way, for they do not, in fact, repeat what adults say, but produce their own sentences, and create phrases which they have never heard before. They also make systematic errors, and no amount of correct input or of error- correction will stop them from doing so. Children do not so much learn the grammar of a language, as they construct it anew (see Lecture 1 for Licence for a fuller discussion of Chomsky's LAD).
It should be said that even if this was the case for children learning their mother-tongue, we could not simply assume that adults and adolescents learn a FL in the same way. Nevertheless, the idea that over-learning of typical structures would lead to mastery of an FL seemed to be very dubious in the light of Chomsky's critique of Behaviourist approaches to language learning. However, Chomsky himself did not feel that linguistics could do much to help language teachers. Indeed, he wrote that neither linguistics, nor psychology could do or say much to further the cause of classroom learning.
Moreover, Chomsky's own model of language quickly came under fire from people who were at least sympathetic to his attack on behaviourism. This was because Chomsky's model appears to construct an ideal, and unreal, image of the language user. Chomsky, extending Saussure's distinction between 'langue' and 'parole', differentiates between competence and performance. The proper object of study for the linguist, he says, is not language as it is produced in everyday situations - that is performance - but the inner, and ultimately innate knowledge of grammar that everyone has in their minds - that is competence.
A : Chomsky and the critique of behaviourism
The methods such as AL, based upon a behaviourist theory of learning, and on Bloomfieldian linguistics, were challenged by the theories of language and language-learning of Noam Chomsky. Chomsky argued that it was impossible for people to acquire a language by simple repetition and reinforcement. Children, he said, do not learn a language this way, for they do not, in fact, repeat what adults say, but produce their own sentences, and create phrases which they have never heard before. They also make systematic errors, and no amount of correct input or of error- correction will stop them from doing so. Children do not so much learn the grammar of a language, as they construct it anew (see Lecture 1 for Licence for a fuller discussion of Chomsky's LAD).
It should be said that even if this was the case for children learning their mother-tongue, we could not simply assume that adults and adolescents learn a FL in the same way. Nevertheless, the idea that over-learning of typical structures would lead to mastery of an FL seemed to be very dubious in the light of Chomsky's critique of Behaviourist approaches to language learning. However, Chomsky himself did not feel that linguistics could do much to help language teachers. Indeed, he wrote that neither linguistics, nor psychology could do or say much to further the cause of classroom learning.
Moreover, Chomsky's own model of language quickly came under fire from people who were at least sympathetic to his attack on behaviourism. This was because Chomsky's model appears to construct an ideal, and unreal, image of the language user. Chomsky, extending Saussure's distinction between 'langue' and 'parole', differentiates between competence and performance. The proper object of study for the linguist, he says, is not language as it is produced in everyday situations - that is performance - but the inner, and ultimately innate knowledge of grammar that everyone has in their minds - that is competence.
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