Grammar Teaching – Practice or Consciousness-Raising?

Two major questions need to be considered with regard to grammar teaching in second
language (L2) pedagogy:

1. Should we teach grammar at all?

2. If we should teach grammar, how should we teach it?
I will then present a number of arguments in support of consciousness-raising and conclude with an
example of a ‘CR-task’.

have the following characteristics:

1. There is some attempt to isolate a specific grammatical feature for focused attention.

2. The learners are required to produce sentences containing the targeted feature.

3. The learners will be provided with opportunities for repetition of the targeted feature.

4. There is an expectancy that the learners will perform the grammatical feature correctly. In general,
therefore, practice activities are ‘success oriented’ (Ur, 1988, p. 13).

5. The learners receive feedback on whether their performance of the grammatical structure is correct
or not. This feedback may be immediate or delayed.

Consciousness-raising, as I use the term, involves an attempt to equip the learner with an
understanding of a specific grammatical feature – to develop declarative rather than procedural
knowledge of it. The main characteristics of consciousness-raising activities are the following:

1. There is an attempt to isolate a specific linguistic feature for focused attention.

2. The learners are provided with data which illustrate the targeted feature and they may also be
supplied with an explicit rule describing or explaining the feature.

3. The learners are expected to utilise intellectual effort to understand the targeted feature.

4. Misunderstanding or incomplete understanding of the grammatical structure by the learners leads to

clarification in the form of further data and description or explanation.

5. Learners may be required (although this is not obligatory) to articulate the rule describing the
grammatical structure.

To sum up, there are strong grounds – empirical and theoretical – which lead us to doubt the efficacy
of practice. ‘Practice’ is essentially a pedagogical construct. It assumes that the acquisition of
grammatical structures involves a gradual automatisation of production, Grammar Teaching – Practice
or Consciousness-Raising? from controlled to automatic, and it ignores the very real constraints that
exist on the ability of the teacher to influence what goes on inside the learner’s head. Practice may
have limited psycholinguistic validity.

The acquisition of implicit knowledge involves three processes:

1. Noticing (the learner becomes conscious of the presence of a linguistic feature in the
input, whereas previously she had ignored it).

2. Comparing (the learner compares the linguistic feature noticed in the input with her
own mental grammar, registering to what extent there is a ‘gap’ between the input and
her grammar).

3. Integrating (the learner integrates a representation of the new linguistic feature into
her mental grammar).
 TEACHING PRONUNCIATION

Before Reading

1. Why do you think it is difficult for adults to acquire a nativelike pronunciation in a second or foreign
language even if other aspects of their speech are nativelike?

2. What do you think is a suitable target in the learning of pronunciation – a nativelike accent or a fluent
but accented style of speaking?

3. What factors do learners need to attend to or become conscious of in learning new sounds or
correcting fossilized pronunciation habits?

4. What is the role of imitation-based activities in teaching pronunciation?

5. Do you think young learners have less difficulty with pronunciation than older learners? If so, why
might this be the case?

6. Have you learned to speak a foreign language? What difficulties did you have with pronunciation?
How did you address these difficulties?

7. Do you think some people have a better “ear” for accents and pronunciation in a new language than
others?

8. Do you think explaining to learners how to produce difficult sounds has a role in the teaching of
pronunciation?

9. Why do you think much pronunciation teaching appears to be ineffective?

10. What personality factors do you think might play a role in learning pronunciation?

11. To what extent do you think intelligibility is a sufficient goal in the learning of pronunciation?

Introduction

After Reading

1. Examine a textbook for teaching pronunciation. What aspects of pronunciation does it teach? What
exercise types does it employ? To what extent do the exercises link pronunciation to communicative
interaction?

2. Jones suggests that older learners “might benefit from a more descriptive or analytic approach” to
the teaching of pronunciation than younger learners. What might the implications of this be for program
design and teaching strategies?

3. Design an activity that teaches pronunciation within a communicative task.

4. Do you agree that teachers and classrooms seem to have very little to do with how well students
pronounce English?
5. What is the role of the teacher in a pronunciation class? What is the role of the learners?

6. What are the arguments for and against the use of pronunciation drills?

7. What is the role of focused listening in the teaching of pronunciation? Give examples of activities of
this kind.

8. What is the role of monitoring in the learning of pronunciation? Suggest activities that can develop
this capacity.

9. How can learners be included “in the decision-making process concerning the areas in which they
would like to improve their speaking,” according to Hebert?

10. Listen to some samples of low-level second language learners speaking, and use the diagnostic
profile proposed by Hebert to identify their pronunciation problems.

11. Choose a topic for a speaking lesson and plan a lesson that builds in a pronunciation focus,
following the approach illustrated by Hebert.
 Beyond ‘Listen and Repeat’: Pronunciation Teaching Materials and Theories of
SecondLanguage Acquisition

PRONUNCIATION TEACHING AND THEORIES CAN PRONUNCIATION BE TAUGHT?

Arguments against the explicit teaching of pronunciation rely on two basic assumptions about the
acquisition of second language phonology: the first, based on the critical period hypothesis, claims that
it is virtually impossible for adults to acquire nativelike pronunciation in a foreign language (for review,
see Burrill, 1985); the second, arising primarily from the work of Krashen (1982), insists that
pronunciation is an acquired skill and that focused instruction is at best useless and at worst
detrimental.

CONCLUSION: PRONUNCIATION TEACHING MATERIALS IN THE FUTURE

Contemporary materials for the teaching of pronunciation, though still retaining many of the
characteristics of traditional audiolingual texts, have begun to incorporate more meaningful and
communicative practice, an increased emphasis on suprasegmentals, and other features such as
consciousness-raising and self-monitoring which reflect current research into the acquisition of second
language phonology. Much, however, remains to be done to bring materials in line with SLA research
findings.

Writers of pronunciation teaching materials in the coming years will likely pay more attention to learners’
sociolinguistic situations and the political implications of attitudes Beyond ‘Listen and Repeat’ toward
nonnative accents. They will also increasingly find ways of dealing with the psychological aspects of
pronunciation training, integrating confidence building and reflective activities into their courses. More
attention will also be given to the order in which phonological principles are presented, with increased
focus on the broader, more communicative aspects of pronunciation such as ‘voice quality’
(Jones&Evans, 1995). Like other aspects of language teaching, pronunciation materials must adapt to
changes within ESL, addressing, for example, the more specialized needs of ESL, and the changing
role of the learners in Self-Access Language Learning (Rogerson-Revell & Miller, 1994). Listening will
continue to play a large part in pronunciation training, with perhaps more authentic listening tasks with
a variety of accents. The explicit teaching of rules will remain, but will be tempered with more and more
opportunities for free practice, and training at the monitor will continue to be emphasised with exercises
in self-assessment. Finally, pronunciation will, whenever possible, be taught in concert with other skills,
not as a separate entity, but as another string in the communicative bow.