The trend in EFL teaching is to not teach grammar to students overtly. Instead, teachers just present students with a correct model of language and the students are supposed to naturally learn these rules themselves.
I’m all for this. I believe the principle is a sound one and it will be a big improvement over the old grammar-translation model.
But I think many schools in Taiwan are going about this the wrong way.
Here’s the problem: The theory behind not teaching grammar rules to students is that they will naturally learn the rules themselves the way children learn their first language. But this requires a lot of “correct input” and is talking about children.
Cram schools in Taiwan are generally 2 days a week, up to 2 hours each class. That’s 4 hours of seat time, but in between that there is a constant Chinese environment. EFL programs in the US may be once a week or fewer hours, but students there will have much more input outside of class.
Additionally, many of these students don’t start classes until they are over 10 years old. Their minds are already programmed for Chinese and their learning process is very different than kindergarten and younger aged children.
This doesn’t mean that a natural approach can’t work, but that you are certainly not in an ideal situation for it. I believe there is a need to use some overt grammar teaching, particularly when students are older and when they have less contact with native input.
[quote=“puiwaihin”]The trend in EFL teaching is to not teach grammar to students overtly. Instead, teachers just present students with a correct model of language and the students are supposed to naturally learn these rules themselves.
I’m all for this. I believe the principle is a sound one and it will be a big improvement over the old grammar-translation model.[/quote]
I Agree with this principle as well. My school has operated on this principle since the beginning. A lot of parents don’t accept this way and are very disappointed when their children haven’t mastered certain grammar concepts after a certain period of time, say three months. This is frustrating for teachers. I believe that this method is workable, but it takes convincing the parents. The process is a bit slower than the grammar-translation method but I feel in the end that the result is better. With parents pressuring for better grammar understanding even at the early stages, I’ve found myself with no easy answer: only that it takes time. Correct examples and comprehensible input don’t do much for parents who are convinced that a sound understanding of grammar rules is the basis for competence in the language being studied.
It’s frustrating but I am convinced that in the long run, it is a good way to learn a language. Getting the parents on board isn’t the only problem I’ve faced. The staff also has a hard time getting the point across. Parents constantly want to know why their kids can’t explain certain concepts and I feel they’re missing the point badly. Better for them if they go to other schools that emphasize exactly what they’re looking for. The parents of the children at our school are told what to expect. But they often don’t really get it. I guess the biggest problem is getting parents to get it.
To teach vocab, you have a discussion in and around the topic area that uses it. To teach a language function (e.g. ‘shopping at the supermarket’), you run a roleplay that applies it to a simulated real-world situation. To teach a grammar point, you play a repetitive game that drills it into a student’s frontal lobe. No need ever to ‘explain’ the language to students. I know 15 different ways the ‘ba’ construction is used in Chinese - every Chinese teacher I’ve ever had has tried to ‘teach’ it to me - but can actually use about two confidently. Language and smoking have a lot in common: i.e. both are habitual.
I only think that is half of the whole picture. I think language learning is more about procedural memory than declarative, but I believe there is still a large declarative area. Tell a person all you want about riding a bike and it will avail them very little- only practice means anything. Language learning benefits much from memorization than something like riding a bike, but still you need practice in the same way you do with bike riding.
And then there’s the issue of different learning styles. Perhaps those same teachers explained it to another student and they “got it”, and other people went through a dozen teachers who gave them drills but never figured out how it is used as you did.
I’m good at applying a rule I’m given. I still need to practice it, and sometimes I need examples to clarify things for myself, but when my Chinese teacher explained that there is a “disposal” function inherent in the ba construction it crystalized things for me.
Why deny students the use of the deductive side of their reasoning? Give them role plays, games with drills, language in context. But a simple diagram and an explanation may very well do the trick for others.
I teach grammar. It’s useful, especially in a foreign language class. If you are not teaching it, you are doing your students a disservice IMO. It should be part of any balanced approach to teaching. It helps clarify things and improve usage.
One word: TPRS. It works. (NOT TPR, that is something different.) Google it.
No grammar is taught overtly. The focus is on comprehensible input and teaching narrow and deep (less material, more repetition).
I gave the same grammar test at the end of a year that the other teacher did. My kids outscored hers on grammar. These were teenagers, not children, BTW. My kids could not answer questions like “What is the pluperfect of Verb X?” but they could pick the right word to fill into a sentence (where the choices might be different conjugations of a verb, different prepositions, etc. etc.). Usually the reason they gave is, “It just feels right.”
There are also big rewards in terms of writing and reading, not to mention oral fluency.
Now, of course if you are locked into a school structure that emphasizes testing and standardized tests (esp. those written by governments who have poor English!), it will be difficult to implement TPRS effectively. You can’t do it by half measures, you have to leap in to have it work. It’s scary. But it’s worth it. I’ve taught and been taught using just about every other teaching method there is, from grammar-translation right on up to principled eclecticism, and I would never teach or be taught by any other method.
I googled it way back when Ironlady first mentioned it to me some year or so ago. To be honest I forget a lot of the details of what I read but what I know for sure is that my teaching style has certainly changed since then. Comprehensible input. Narrow and deep. Lots of (I would add rhythmical) repetition. These are phrases to live or at least teach by. Puiwaihin mentioned that grammar instruction was probably neccessary because most students don’t get enough comprehensible input in their day to day lives. He teaches a captive audience so I suppose he has to live with that fact. I don’t. I teach adults and I ask them straight out if they want to learn or not. If they do I tell them that the most important thing is that they create a listening environment for themselves. They can do this in lots of ways. By taping our classes, by listening to Grammar Chants, Lets Talk in English, Studio Classroom, DVD. Heck, Green Eggs and Ham is a great CD. If they can get the lyrics with music they like that is great too. I think they should have a lot of lattitude as far as choosing materials is concerned but if they won’t at least try for an hour a day or so I likely won’t teach them long. Especially if they won’t listen to the tape we make together which, ideally, contains material related to THEIR interests.
These days in class I find myself looking for actual things to “do” that give me a chance to get them up and around responding to requests and I think this is really effective for teaching all kinds of things from command form to prepostions to question forms. “Where is the remote?” “Under the table” “No?” “Damn I am always losing that thing” “Does Fred have it?” Creating listening tapes and little videos are good for this too simply because there are so many things to be decided and acted upon. Of course none of this leaves much room for grammar study and I can’t say I feel that constitutes any real loss especially if I am talking to people who don’t know even basic grammar terminology in English. If I talk about grammar now it is usually in Chinese, or with Fox or Puiwaihin, of course!
TPRS is an extension of TPR. It’s nothing new nor particularily revolutionary. It involves ensuring comprehensive input and allowing appropriately for a silent period. If you are not at that stage in your English teaching God help you. I’ve been using it all my teaching life before they had a name for it. I still teach grammar though.
There’s nothing new under the sun but there’s a lot that’s been forgotten, a lot that has been reconsidered, and a lot that has been improved upon. God help any language teacher who isn’t willing to question what he does.
[quote]There’s nothing new under the sun but there’s a lot that’s been forgotten, a lot that has been reconsidered, and a lot that has been improved upon. God help any language teacher who isn’t willing to question what he does.
[/quote]
Hey, if you can get students to immerse themselves in the language you can definitely cut back on the repetition exercises and devote a lot less time to overt grammar instruction.
That sure helps as well. Unfortunately, my kids tend not to know what their own interests are. They like listening to pop music, playing video games and basketball, and not failing tests. 90% of their life revolves around school since they spend 90% of their productive hours in school or doing school work.
Students with deeper and broader interests are much easier to teach. If you have the latitude to introduce things to them which might interest them, that’s a great way to help make your teaching more relevant to students. Unfortunately, for the moment, I don’t have that option.
I guess it depends on what you mean by “grammar study”. If you mean spending an hour diagramming sentences and preaching grammar rules like they’re the ten commandments, then I’ll agree that it’s no real loss.
For me, teaching grammar rules is a process of explaining and practicing so that students can internalize (acquire) them. You do talk about the grammar, but then you show the grammar, and then the students do the grammar (by using it).
Again, I don’t think this should take up the majority of class time, but I believe there is a place and even a need for it-- especially when students are on a limited budget of time.
[quote]My kids could not answer questions like “What is the pluperfect of Verb X?” but they could pick the right word to fill into a sentence (where the choices might be different conjugations of a verb, different prepositions, etc. etc.). Usually the reason they gave is, “It just feels right.”
There are also big rewards in terms of writing and reading, not to mention oral fluency.[/quote]
It just feels right. And everything else feels wrong. That’s what I want. It’s weird that some parents want kids to be able to explain why something is and seem less concerned about whether or not the kids can do it. As long as they know the rules, everything else is okay. It doesn’t matter that they have to think about a particular rule before answering simple questions.
A lot of this has to do with testing methods. Those won’t change so the demand for grammatical explanations will continue.
[quote=“ironlady”]One word: TPRS. It works. (NOT TPR, that is something different.) Google it.
No grammar is taught overtly.[/quote]It is now, but using grammar “pop-ups” rather than big chunks of grammar teaching. A grammar pop-up consists of a very brief explanation or elicitation of the meaning of a particular grammatical feature. As you know, it’s within a meaningful, comprehensible and interesting context. Blaine Ray and the other TPRSers have been using these pop-ups for a while and it has become an important part of the method.
[quote=“Fox”]TPRS is an extension of TPR. It’s nothing new nor particularily revolutionary. It involves ensuring comprehensive input and allowing appropriately for a silent period.[/quote]I think perhaps that the TPRS you know about is from a few years ago. There have been quite a few additions and adjustments to the method in the last few years. TPRS as it is now is really quite different from TPR. Even gesturing is optional. The main focus is on the personalized mini-situations and the circling – the cycles of questions to ensure enough comprehensible, interesting repetitions of the structures (and structures are now the main focus rather than vocabulary although of course the vocabulary is acquired as well).
An initial period of TPR is suggested for some ages/situations but this is optional. I don’t think the Fluency Fast classes offered in the States have much if any TPR.
[quote]God help any language teacher who isn’t willing to question what he does.
[/quote]
While I think that is a fair statement, I don’t think it’s a good idea to change your style too radically too often. Unless you are a novice teacher then I’d advise you to try whatever works and identify which methods best suit your style. The truth is there are good, average and poor teachers. Most of us aspire to be good, but personality is the X factor in teaching. Some people’s personalities limit their application in the classroom; however, they are still in the classroom. That means it’s best to find the approach best suited to your style.
I think the more conventional style of teaching the stricter grammar-translation or simple audio-lingual approaches which are popular here in Taiwan are popular because of the perception (rightly/wrongly) that they are better suited to teaching large classes of students and better for assessment purposes AND are easier for most teachers to get a grip on. This third factor I believe is actually the biggest contributor.
Teaching English seems to be made up of any number of fads and different approaches. When people adopt these they often lose site of other aspects of their teaching. For example, in Taiwan over the years there has been a big change toward improving kids listening, and speaking skills. Whilst I’m an advocate of this, I don’t believe it ought to be advocated at the expense of reading and writing. However, I think this has been largely the case. This is a pity, because for most Taiwanese English usage is going to be primarily reading and writing; the two skills they need the most have been neglected. I put this down to fad teaching. I think that much of that has resulted from the predominant influence of ESL teaching on EFL. ESL places a strong emphasis on developing listening and speaking for obvious reasons, and these influences have had a big effect on how EFL materials have been designed and more so on how teacher-training courses have been developed.
I think TPRS is a form of fad teaching. There is nothing wrong with the basics of the approach, however, I don’t believe in advocating approaches that are exclusive of other methods and ideas. For example, teaching grammar overtly is some how an anathema to effective English teaching. As Fred would say in another of our forums that’s the kind of concept that’s best shoveled.
I have a very long-term approach to teaching. It is something born of having taught for a very long time and having seen generations of kids go through my hands. I’m still learning about teaching, but I’ve learned an awful lot about it in the mean time. One thing that I would advocate to all teachers is stick with approaches that seem to be getting results for you. For example, it might just so happen that you are an excellent teacher of grammar. You could be the best in the business. You might never know because teaching is essentially an experience which occurs in the vacumm of your classroom. Be open to ideas and other approaches but don’t throw out the proverbial baby with the bathwater.
[quote]Fox wrote:
TPRS is an extension of TPR. It’s nothing new nor particularily revolutionary. It involves ensuring comprehensive input and allowing appropriately for a silent period.
I think perhaps that the TPRS you know about is from a few years ago. There have been quite a few additions and adjustments to the method in the last few years. TPRS as it is now is really quite different from TPR. Even gesturing is optional. The main focus is on the personalized mini-situations and the circling – the cycles of questions to ensure enough comprehensible, interesting repetitions of the structures (and structures are now the main focus rather than vocabulary although of course the vocabulary is acquired as well). [/quote]
Thanks Joesax,
But as you describe it is how I understood it to be. I was aware of the grammar teaching being an aspect of TPRS as well. It is an approach I actually use a lot of, but like I said in my previous post…
In addition to the grammar pop-ups, Blaine Ray et al. recommend the use of some more traditional grammar learning from the third year onward.
Like you, I’m wary of fads. I have been cautious about TPRS because, as you say, it can seem a bit exclusive. I think that it is not as exclusive as it once may have been, though. The “green book” mentions some other methods that work well, for example. I get the feeling that Blaine Ray and the other main developers of TPRS are open to anything that can be shown to work consistently in the long term.
Whether once practices the method “from the book” or just reads about it, TPRS sets useful goals in terms of student comprehension, interesting, memorable material and sufficient repetitions of linguistic structures so that they are actually acquired.
Something that few people have mentioned in this thread so far is research. There is a growing body of research on second language teaching methods. Quite a bit of this is on explicit grammar teaching. As I wrote in another thread:
Caves has a number of useful books that summarise current research and theory. One of these is “How Languages Are Learned” (Lightbown & Spada 1993)
( amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de … 194370003/ )
Page One has some good books on this too. I spent a couple of hours in there the other day reading one about explicit grammar teaching (not sure whether this is a boast or a confession!) but I don’t remember the title.
I agree with everything Fox has said. I’ve always been wary of any approach that demand you use their way to the exclusion of everything else.
You do need to have some sort of starting point. From there you can assess what your approach does well and what it does poorly. If it does something poorly you don’t have to change to something entirely new. Just supplement it with something more.
I like the sound of that pop-up method that Joe Sax mentioned. If you can insert brief, concise grammatical explanations into an ongoing conversation without interupting too much the rhythm of the thing then your students grammatical understanding and accuracy “can” be improved quite effectively. This is what I try to do actually but I find that I am constantly being stymied by the fact that a lot of people really don’t know much about grammar. They don’t know, for example, that the reason it’s important to know what part(s) of speech a word is is because that information tells you a lot about how that word behaves, ie, where it will likely to be placed in a sentence, whether or not there are comparative and superlative forms, whether or not it has a plural form etc. Saying that a word is an “action verb” packs an amazing amount of info into a couple of words but only if the student already has some idea of what that information is. Since they frequently don’t I “used to” try and get them to focus on the parts of speech, the five basic sentence structures, five or six verb tenses, question forms etc. for a few classes at least. It’s like a big picture grammar course I suppose. Recently though I’ve not found the patience or the determination or focus it takes to do this and I think that is because motivation seems to be such a key factor in that a dry, analytical approach often just kills the rhythm of the relationship. Quite a few other students however made the comment that after studying with me they finally undertsood what grammar “is”. That was a while ago though like I said. These days I haven’t used this approach much and the only frustration that stems from this is that I don’t think they are getting the most from the pop-up grammar thing that I do. If people like Fox and Puiwaihin who really like teaching grammar and are good at it can send people out into the world equipped at least to make optimal use of a dictionary and to recogognize simple grammatical distinctions as exist between statements and questions, between statements and commands, perhaps even between the active and passive then I’d say they have really accomplished something worthwhile. A lot of the people I meet spent years in school doing God knows what and don’t seem to have any grasp of the basics at all. They don’t understand anything else about the learning process either such as that enourmous amounts of comprehensible input is absolutely essential to building any sort of automaticity with the language. I guess my focus these days has simply shifted to correcting this second deficiency. I have utmost respect for anyone who tries to correct the first one but the longer I teach the less ambition I have for that aspect of the process. It may simply be because personalized communicative activities, music, movies, stories are a lot more fun and the older I get the more fun I need to keep going…
I guess it depends what kind of students you are addressing Bob.
When I teach adults, I rarely if ever teach grammar except to explain structures that the students might be confused about or if I’m in a writing class and it is helpful for their expression. However, if I’m teaching kids after about six months I introduce them to the basics of grammar. Identifying nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, sentence structure, contractions etc. These are useful because as they advance I have an armory for teaching them how to manipulate sentences later on. When I take on a class of students I’m looking four years hence. It’s not the kind of thing you can do with adult students partly because it is hard to have a long-term vision for them. That is also partly true of high school kids as well.