Re-thinking the teaching of grammar at various proficiency levels
Patricia Byrd
| Grammar FROM context:
Re-thinking the teaching of grammar at various proficiency levels Patricia Byrd |
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Current Problems With Systems for Organizing Grammar in the ESL/EFL Curriculum Around the world, EFL and ESL students
and teachers are being frustrated because of the continued use of an approach
to the integration of grammar into programs, classes, and materials that
has failed us badly. This traditional approach divides up grammar in an
system that ignores the nature of English and of authentic communication
using English.
Easy Grammar vs. Hard Grammar: Inconsistent Decisions Such systems for dividing the grammar among proficiency levels have often been based on ideas about the easiness or difficulty of certain structures for learners. The lack of consistency in the decisions that have been made using these standards suggests that the "ease" and "difficulty" cannot be defined with certainty. Indeed, some lack of clarity about the differences between "easy/hard to learn" and "easy/hard to teach" have added to problems with such systems (see www.gsu.edu/~eslhpb/grammar/difmatrx.htm for a discussion of an ease/difficulty matrix). Crandall (1985) discusses another mistaken notion about grammatical difficulty in the commonly held idea that passive is an "advanced" form that must wait until quite late in an ESL curriculum; she found that students even at the very earliest stages of elementary school learn such phrases as "4 is divided by 2." That is, whatever is going on with passive voice, children who are learning ESL to participate in U.S. elementary education cannot wait around to learn the passive voice when they are at a "more advanced level." Top A common complaint voiced by teachers working in traditional systems such as that illustrated in Table 1 is "I can’t cover all the material. If I don’t, the students won’t have another chance. But my students just can’t learn all of this material in one term!" A peculiarity of the traditional design is its assumption that students can "put off" elements of grammar for later in their lives—notice how the curriculum in Table 1 delays the use of noun phrases and articles for Level 2 and demands mastery (or 75% mastery) at that Level. The frustration of teachers with such a plan is only natural—such a division is both inauthentic (students can’t wait until Level 2 to start encounters with noun phrases since any authentic English will have articles and noun phrases) and unrealistic (few students will "master" noun phrases in a single term of study). Very often, teachers find that they need to teach grammar that is supposed to be delayed to a higher level; they also find that students do not yet have "mastery" of grammar that they were supposed to have learned at a lower proficiency level. As we know from second language acquisition research (for example, Ellis, 1994, especially chapter 9), students cannot be expected to learn everything correctly through just one presentation during just one academic term; most learners need repeated "spiraling" of a topic and of various aspects of a topic. While most of teachers realize the importance of such patterned repetition for ESL/EFL students, spiraling of grammar cannot easily be achieved if the curriculum does not allow for it.
Around the ESL/EFL world, we hear calls for the use of "authentic" tasks, materials, and activities in our programs and courses. While the term has many different interpretations, its wide appeal seems to be based on the recognition by teachers that students can learn to pass courses based on made-up English without learning to communicate in English outside of the classroom. At the same time, the use of authentic materials is a substantial challenge for most curricula and for many teachers because authentic materials often include vocabulary and grammar that are supposed to be "too difficult" for students "at this level." To select and use authentic materials, we have to break with long held beliefs about language proficiency, about language proficiency levels, and about the nature of English itself.
Divide-up-the-grammar approaches to
curriculum and materials design misconceive the nature of language in
two ways: First, these schemes build on de-contexualized abstractions
about language. They assume that all features of English are used in the
same ways in all settings. We know both from research and from personal
experience of using English that this is not accurate: An informal chat
with a friend about where to go to dinner will use different grammar and
vocabulary from a research report on the nutritional value of fast food.
Consider the grammar that we can see in the two small samples of English in Sample 1 and Sample 2. These are both authentic writing that was published in the U.S. and intended for general rather than specialist readers. They are used here to show the grammar of "real" written English as it is written by writers who are not thinking about teaching ESL/EFL but about communicating content to readers. Top Top Comparing the Two Samples Sample 1 was written for an adult audience with advanced literacy skills. Sample 2 was written for young readers with less advanced literacy skills. While both of these narratives "tell a story," neither is written simply to tell the story; both are given to illustrate a principle. These two samples of narrative, each intended for quite different audiences at different "proficiency levels," have much in common grammatically: (1) past tense verbs, (2) chronological organization often signaled by time adverbials, (3) proper nouns, and (4) use of 3rd person personal pronouns (to refer to the people named with the proper nouns). Here is the challenge of such an analysis:
These two samples use the same basic grammatical structures, yet they
were written for very different audiences and seem to represent different
levels of reading proficiency. If they are grammatically alike, then what
makes for the differences? Certainly the difference is not in the length
of the samples--both are in the 150-word range. Schema theory might help
explain the difference for many readers--some familiarity with the Spanish
exploration of the new world will help to understand the first sample;
some familiarity with the history of science/biology will help with the
second. Those differences in content are valuable in making proficiency
level decisions because prior knowledge can make a reading passage more
accessible for learners while current interest in a topic can lead to
the motivation that carries learners along even when a passage is difficult
for them.
Rather than starting our grammar design
with a list of grammatical structures, we need, when possible, to begin
with an analysis of the uses to which our students will put their English--the
communicative purposes for their study of ESL/EFL (Byrd & Reid, 1998;
Carson, Chase, Gibson, & Hargrove, 1992; Long and Crookes, 1992).
Knowledge about their real world communication tasks gives us access to
realistic, authentic samples of the language used in such tasks. This
combination of task-based and genre-based curriculum design has been used
extensively in Australia (Hyon, 1996) and is gaining popularity in the
U.S., especially in ESL programs that have clearly defined purposes such
as English-for-academic purposes or English for business communication.
Once we are clear about the purposes of our students, we can turn to the
growing literature on discourse/text/genre analysis to seek more information
about the language that our students need to learn to use effectively
(for example, Bardovi-Harlig, 1996; Meyer, 1996).
However, many students are taking English courses for less-than-clear reasons--because of requirements in their academic programs, because their friends are taking it, because their parents think it a good idea, because it might help get a better job, and other vague if worthy purposes. For these students, teachers must make "educated guesses" based on our experiences of the ultimate uses to which other similar students have put their English. In addition, we now have research that reveals the grammar system that lies behind genres and tasks. The analyses of written and spoken English provided by Biber (1988), Grabe (1987), and other of their colleagues (Biber, Conrad, and Reppen, 1994, and Conrad 1996a & 1996b) show the systematic intertwining of sets of grammar structures in various settings. Biber (1988) gives a detailed explanation of the research methodology and of his results; Conrad (1996b) provides an accessible explanation of the multidimensional system. The fundamental value of this system
for ESL/EFL teachers, curriculum designers, and materials writers is that
it gives us a map to use in making decisions about what grammar to teach
and in what combinations. If we know the ultimate purposes of our students,
we can select texts and tasks based on those purposes--and can present
the grammar in a rational, coherent pattern that is not limited to its
use just in a particular type of communication. If we and our students
are unclear about their ultimate purposes, then we can be sure that they
have experience with an appropriate range of English communication and
linguistic patterns as background to future uses that we cannot now anticipate.
The first two of Biber's dimensions are especially powerful tools for the analysis of language-in-use and for moving toward a more authentic, realistic, and practical system for organizing the grammar in ESL/EFL curricula or materials. Dimension one involves the contrast between conversational communication (called "involved" by Biber) and more technical, academic communication (called "informational" by Biber). The second dimension illustrates the importance of past time narrative and the contrast between the language of past time narration and other communication in English. A combination of these two dimensions provides a picture of eight different ways in which grammar is clustered for particular types of communication. For example, informational narratives are often found in academic writing about history (as in Sample 1). Another example combines some of the features of conversation with informational writing--as when a textbook writer structures explanations in a series of questions and answers, uses contractions, and addresses the reader as you. Another important observation in the work by Biber, Grabe, and Conrad is the use of modal auxiliaries and conditional sentences (with if-clauses) in writing that is trying to be "persuasive." For ESL/EFL teachers, this stands our traditional approach on its head--or at least turns our heads in a better direction. Rather than teaching students about conditional sentences as if the main issue involves getting the right verb tenses in the right clauses, we need to teach students that they are trying to build combinations that will convince a reader of the truth of their argument. The persuasive purpose comes first--then getting the tenses right is part of the larger obligation of the writer to take meaning and audience into consideration. The same re-focusing is true for uses of modal auxiliary verbs to persuade a reader that the writer is being reasonable and judicious. For example, rather than the bald generalization Eating hamburgers and french fries for lunch everyday causes high blood pressure and obesity.A more acceptable generalization might possibly be Eating hamburgers and french fries for lunch everyday could cause high blood pressure and obesity.Top While a complete program would need
to consider all the dimensions proposed by Biber (and his colleagues in
publications such as Conrad, 1996a and 1996b), we can begin our re-thinking
of the curriculum by focusing on the grammatical characteristics that
underlie English communication. Three Principles to Guide Re-Design of the Grammar Curriculum Much research and analysis remains
to be done. We need to know details about the nature of authentic materials
and activities that are appropriate for learners at different stages of
language acquisition. We need to know more about the details of the "grammar
clusters"--those grammatical structures that generally occur together
in a particular type of communication. For example, narratives often cluster
together (1) past tense verbs, (2) proper nouns, (3) first and third person
pronouns, and (4) adverbs of time and place. 1. In authentic communication,
the structures of English cluster together in predictable patterns.
These grammatical clusters do not change at different "proficiency levels."
2. These grammar clusters involve combinations of structures that have often been taught separately: in authentic use, verbs combine with nouns and other structures to make up the grammar package used for a particular type of communication. Therefore, rather than thinking about the grammar curriculum in terms of separate features separately taught, we have to learn to think about features in combination with each other. For example, in the past we thought about the verbs as a separate system and organized presentation of verbs without thinking much about how verbs connect with nouns or other grammatical features. 3. All students at all proficiency levels need to work with the range of grammar clusters that lie behind English genres. All students need work with authentic oral communication with its use of informal vocabulary, fragments, you/I, questions, and turn-taking about everyday topics. All students need work with the features of past time narrative and its use in a wide variety of settings (not just literature but business case studies, newspaper reports, research reports, and other uses of "stories" to explain and support generalizations). All students at all proficiency levels need to learn to communication about general topics--theories, ideas, data, and so forth--using the grammatical features that cluster together for such communication (complex noun phrases, passive voice, technical or specialized vocabulary, and so forth). All students at all levels need to learn about ways to be persuasive and convincing for different audiences. Additionally, students need to learn to see how these subcategories interact with each other--the use of conversational grammar in written settings (when writers use contractions, ask questions, refer to the reader as "you," and other conversational strategies). Problems with a "Grammar Strand" Approach The traditional grammar curriculum
has a verb strand, a noun strand, a preposition strand, an adverb strand,
and so on. For example, we thought about how present tense contrasts with
past tense, but we didn't think about how past tense tends to be used
with the grammatical structures such as those that we found together in
the narrative samples given earlier in this discussion in samples 1 and
2. Tentative Redesign Suggestions Table 2 and
Table 3 are incomplete and tentative but are provided
as examples of the way that I've been thinking about grammar in the ESL/EFL
curriculum as a result of my study research of discourse analysis and
my observation of the problems that students and teachers are having with
the current approach to grammar. In this curricular model, rather than
planning a verb strand or noun strand, strands are based on the communication
that students really need to learn to handle and on the grammar that underlies
those communicative needs. Content is based on the students' needs and
interests. Genre types (letters, reports, newspapers, textbooks, quiz
and test questions and answers, conversations with friends, oral reports
in the business setting, and so forth) are selected from those that the
students will be required to understand and produce. The grammar items
are selected and organized based on the work by Biber and other discourse
analysts (for example, Bardovi-Harlig, 1996; MacDonald, 1992; Pica, 1987)
that shows how different grammar items cluster together in the selected
genres and how different grammatical structures are used for different
discourse purposes. Overcoming the Obstacles to Needed Change
Clearly, the implementation process for such a major change in ESL/EFL
curricular design will be difficult. We face at least two significant
problems. First, the research on grammar, discourse, genres and tasks,
while substantial and mature, is far from complete. Application of the
research into the grammatical structures that characterize particular
written genres has been limited, but the potential of the work is undoubtedly
beginning to have a considerable impact on the teaching of ESL/EFL.
A common complaint voiced by teachers working in traditional systems such as that illustrated in Table 1 is "I can’t cover all the material. If I don’t, the students won’t have another chance. But my students just can’t learn all of this material in one term!" A peculiarity of the traditional design is its assumption that students can "put off" elements of grammar for later in their lives—notice how the curriculum in Table 1 delays the use of noun phrases and articles for Level 2 and demands mastery (or 75% mastery) at that Level. The frustration of teachers with such a plan is only natural—such a division is both inauthentic (students can’t wait until Level 2 to start encounters with noun phrases since any authentic English will have articles and noun phrases) and unrealistic (few students will "master" noun phrases in a single term of study). Very often, teachers find that they need to teach grammar that is supposed to be delayed to a higher level; they also find that students do not yet have "mastery" of grammar that they were supposed to have learned at a lower proficiency level. As we know from second language acquisition research (for example, Ellis, 1994, especially chapter 9), students cannot be expected to learn everything correctly through just one presentation during just one academic term; most learners need repeated "spiraling" of a topic and of various aspects of a topic. While most of teachers realize the importance of such patterned repetition for ESL/EFL students, spiraling of grammar cannot easily be achieved if the curriculum does not allow for it.
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