I teach the grammar, but they don’t learn it!

Grammar - The G word. Once taught only by unimaginative fascists, but now
possibly coming back into vogue.
(from Simon Barne’s deliciously irreverent TEFLese glossary)

Cinderella

Grammar may have been out of fashion for some time in many parts of the world, but
in Greece this has never been the case. Few English teachers in this country would
even consider the notion of grammarless language teaching and, although grammar
has not always been taught in the most pedagogically sound ways, it has at least never
been abandoned. And while recent research (Norris and Ortega 2000, R. Ellis 2002,
N. Ellis 2002) suggests that explicit grammar instruction is, indeed, beneficial, certain
aspects of this research focusing on what kinds of explicit instruction are most
relevant to the task of learning a foreign language are often overlooked.

Grammar has always been one of the most important components of the curriculum of
Greek foreign language centres, most of which devote at least a third of their course
time to the explicit teaching of grammatical rules. In commercially unmistakable
recognition of this fact, publishers keep churning out grammar books for all levels,
including junior, while teachers keep reading out the rules and examples, occasionally
throwing in a bit of a lecture on the finer points not comprehensively covered by the
books in question, to classes of terminally bored students, who are then required to do
countless form manipulation exercises.

And yet...

Nevertheless, on the rare occasions when these same students attempt to communicate
in English, what most teachers (and examination boards!) would call basic errors
invariably raise their ugly heads: My sister go to primary school. I am playing
basketball twice the week. I had gone to the cinema last week. This may have been
one of the reasons why the explicit teaching of grammar fell out of favour with many
misguidedly communicative teachers a few years ago, but in Greece it has produced
the opposite result: more grammar instruction was felt to be necessary.

This must be the Greek approach to education par excellence: the emphasis on
quantity rather than quality. If students don’t pass CPE, it is because they haven’t had
enough practice, so let’s do more practice papers with them. If they can’t produce
grammatical sentences, it’s because they haven’t studied enough grammar, so let’s
give them more hours of grammar instruction. If they don’t display enough
vocabulary knowledge in their compositions, let’s give them more and lengthier lists
of words to learn by heart. The preoccupation with quantity is rarely questioned – on
the contrary, it has become commonplace, and publishers have of course realised and
capitalised on it; hence the plethora of supplementary books for every level: speaking
books for elementary classes, readers for juniors, composition books for pre-juniors;
the more books you use, the more certain you can be that you have covered
everything!
And yet... A typical private language centre English course at elementary level
comprises 90 or more hours of instruction. At intermediate and advanced levels the
number of hours could rise to 180. Greek First Certificate students have usually had
more than 850 hours of instruction over eight years, at least a third of which is
grammar instruction. By the time they take the exam they’ve done the present perfect
five times, and each time they’ve done dozens of exercises on it. And yet, the pass
rate is the lowest in the world! What gives?

Less is more

I would argue that what Greek students need is less grammar, better taught. It isn’t
necessary, for example, that students should know all of the grammatical terminology
that describes the phenomena they are studying, nor is it necessary that they do
countless gap-fill or multiple choice exercises on each grammatical item they focus
on. But it is essential that they are exposed to new language items in a realistic
context, that they become aware of how the target language differs from their own
production, and that they are fully cognizant of their own deficiencies in using the
language grammatically. What this clearly presupposes is that the grammar lesson
contains some receptive skills work (: reading and/or listening) that involves realistic
instances of language use, as well as a lot of productive skills work (: speaking and/or
writing), which will give them the chance to see for themselves what gaps there are in
their performance.

Optical illusion

We don’t necessarily notice everything that we see or hear. A learner might have
heard and read and understood sentences using the present simple third person
singular a number of times, and yet they may not have noticed that the form of the
verb is different. If they fail to notice the difference, they will fail to reproduce it. This
is why teachers explicitly focus on grammar, so that learners can actually notice
language forms. The problem is that if this focus on grammar consists entirely in the
recitation of rules and formulae, it soon becomes so boring that learners switch off.
They may simply be on automatic pilot when they repeat forms after the teacher, fill
in gaps accurately and make the right choices in exercises – and, in spite of the
impression given that they have mastered the forms, they may in fact not have
consciously noticed or internalised them. Which is one of the reasons why they will
get it wrong when they next attempt to produce language freely.

Mind the gap

In fact, learners need to realise not just how the grammar works in the target
language, but also how different the grammar of the target language is from their own
production. In other words, they need to notice the forms (Schmidt 1990, Batstone
1996), notice the gap between their own performance and that of a competent speaker
of the language (Schmidt and Frota 1986), and also, and perhaps most importantly,
notice what forms they lack whenever they need to express their personal meaning in
the foreign language, or, in Swain’s terms, they need to notice the holes in their
knowledge (Swain 1985, 1998).
To do this, learners need to be given the chance to compare their own spoken and
written production with that of a competent speaker (so as to notice the gap) and they
need to be given the chance to express their own meanings in the target language,
using whatever linguistic resources they have at their disposal, thus realising what
linguistic resources are not (yet) at their disposal (so as to notice the hole). Such
procedures should, in my opinion, form the bulk of the grammar lesson. I am not
claiming here that controlled practice of certain forms is irrelevant or useless, but I am
suggesting that it is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for learning to take
place.

Grammarless Grammar Teaching?

This is, unfortunately, very different to most people’s understanding of what grammar
teaching is about. The explanation-example-exercise cycle has become not only the
de facto method of teaching grammar in Greece, but also the de facto expectation of
learners (and their parents)! Greek ELT’s collective experience has sanctioned it and,
of course, publishers have perpetuated it by producing ‘grammar books’ which
merely contain cycle after cycle of explanation, example, exercises. Learners have
come to expect that this is what will happen in the grammar lesson. Any departure
from this model is likely to be considered radical to the extent that it may not even be
recognised as a grammar teaching sequence. I am therefore not suggesting that this
method be wholly abandoned yet, but that it should be toned down and complemented
by procedures that have been found to enhance the grammar learning experience and
improve the learners’ eventual output:
• awareness-raising activities that help the learners actively notice forms and
meanings
• language production (speaking and/or writing) activities followed by explicit
comparison between how the learners expressed meanings and how competent
speakers express meanings
• challenging language production (speaking and/or writing) activities that force
the learners to use as much of the language as they have at their disposal

That so much ‘free’ speaking and writing should form part of a grammar lesson may
look strange at first, but let us bear in mind that it is precisely the exclusion of
speaking and writing from the grammar lesson that has led to the current situation of
learners who have been studying English grammar for years and years and can still
only speak a severely limited, ungrammatical pidgin!

References

Ellis, N. C. 2002a. Frequency effects in language processing. A review with

implications for theories of implicit and explicit language acquisition. Studies in
Second Language Acquisition 24: 143-188

Ellis, R. 2002. Does form-focused instruction affect the acquisition of implicit

knowledge? A review of the research. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 24:
223-236
Norris, J. M. and L. Ortega 2000. Effectiveness of L2 Instruction: a research synthesis
and quantitative meta-analysis. Language Learning 50 (3): 417-528

Schmidt, R. W. 1990. The role of consciousness in second language learning. Applied

Linguistics 11 (2): 129-158

Schmidt, R. W. and S.N. Frota 1986. Developing basic conversation ability in a

second language: A case study of an adult learner of Portuguese. In R. Day (Ed.),
Talking to learn: Conversation in second language acquisition. Rowley, MA:
Newbury House, 237-326

Swain, M. 1985. Communicative competence: some roles of comprehensible input

and comprehensible output in its development. In S. Gass and C. Madden (eds.) Input
in Second Language Acquisition. Rowley, MA.: Newbury House.

Swain, M. 1998. Focus on form through conscious reflection. In Doughty, C. and J.

Williams (eds.) 1998. Focus on Form in Classroom Second Language Acquisition.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 64-81