How do you focus on form?

[Heath]

Take Present Perfect Continuous (aka. Present Perfect Passive) for example. Example sentences include, "He's been swimming in that dirty swamp water again" and "I've been washing his clothes all morning."

You're a teacher, and you're introducing this, and it's the first time most of your students have had their attention explicitly focused on this pattern.

Meaning and phonology done already, how do you focus the students' on form? Here are some options. Which of these do you prefer, or do you prefer another approach?


(1)
He has been swimming in that dirty swamp water again.
sub + have/has + been + V-ing

(2)
He has been swimming in that dirty swamp water again.
sub + perfect infinitive of 'be' + present participle

(3)
He has been swimming in that dirty swamp water again.
he/she/it + has + been + V-ing
I/you/they + have + been + V-ing

(4)
He has been swimming in that dirty swamp water again.
She has been eating cake.
I have been painting the house.
They have been playing in the attic.

(5)
He
She.......has.........................swim
It........................................eat
I.......................... been.......paint......-ing
You........have......................play
They


And how is your approach affected by:
* educational philosophy
* SLA research
* linguistic theory

[fluffyhamster]

Not sure about that 'aka Present Perfect Passive'.* Or about that 'perfect infinitive of BE' ('been' is the past participle of BE). But as for the five ways of presenting the structure, 1 and 3 (and indeed 5 too) are both/all quite similar, 2 is perhaps unnecessary terminology, 4 isn't really saying anything, whilst 5 has some obvious advantages (and seemed favoured in at least 'audiolingual' approaches - drill substitution tables etc). So I guess I'd go for 1, 3 or 5 in order of most concise to most...involved? "Explicit"? Useful?(!).

More interesting however IMHO is what is to be found in our teacher's kitbag beyond these few examples and quasi-formalisms (which I am not sure were or are very revealing in themselves); that is, what is the wider context, teacher's general favoured pedagogy etc. For example, many teachers like to contrast Present Perfect Progressive with (implicitly, previously taught and somewhat mastered) Present Perfect, and I myself recall using a few contrasts along the lines of 'Have you (ever) been drunk (before)?' and 'Have you been drinking?!', or 'You look like you've seen a ghost!' and */??'You look like you've been seeing a ghost!' (implying, that perhaps certain aspects of meaning have to be learnt lexically, on an item-by-item basis; and furthermore, that perhaps we shouldn't be constrasting forms so much as just presenting students with the exemplar(s)/exponent(s) they need for expressing function A, with any contrast with exponent/function B maybe needing to be only implicit, an unavoidable artefact of being contained within the same potentially quite long course of study, with "conflicting" items separated by an intervening span of whatever length of more or less unrelated material. Ultimately, we have to just tell students and/or decide for them that e.g. 'Have you been waiting long?' or 'I hope you haven't been waiting (for too) long' is "more natural and frequent" than 'Have you waited long?' or 'I hope you haven't waited (for too) long', assuming of course that this sort of phrase strikes any one particular coursebook writer or teacher let alone group of students as of potential value).

*Examples like 'I've been washing his clothes all morning' are simply Present [tense] Perfect (and/plus/combined with) Progressive [aspect] (and if we want to be absolutely clear, in the Active [voice]); that is, they just involve the addition of Progressive aspect to 'Present Perfect' construction-wise.

[Heath]

Oops... progressive - that was just a slip ('passive' didn't even cross my conscious mind, so I don't know why my hands were typing that!)

As for the perfect infinitive, I had never heard anything like it until I worked with a French teacher of English, so I'm only 90% sure that it was used to describe 'have/has + pp' (perhaps French has a specific verb form reflecting both components and he was drawing on terms for that?) either way, I thought the term was unnecessarily complex.

Regarding everything else you suggest, I agree entirely. The only reason I'm narrowing it down to form/structure explicitly is because the teacher training course I work gets teachers using #1... and the teachers find it extremely difficult because not one of the grammar reference books that we recommend (Eastwood, Leech, Parrott, Swan, and a couple of others) uses that method. All the grammar books and pretty much every course book I've checked with use #5.

So I'm just wondering if anyone does find method 1 useful (and if not, is there any particular reason why).

[fluffyhamster]

Disregarding the 'perfect infinitive', and the exact format of formal presentation in grammar books, I find it worrying if trainee English teachers (yours, or in general) are struggling with any of the terms or "various methods"/layouts you've presented here, Heath - I mean, bog-standard plain vanilla 'Subject' shouldn't be too difficult for most people to grasp and appreciate (even if there might be more linguisticy quibblers who like to nibble and gnaw away at that concept at a deeper/"notional" level e.g. in relation to passives).

But playing along with your #1 for a little bit more, (your) teachers do need to get used to something like that, if only because it's similar to the grammar codes and word-order breakdowns given in learner dictionaries (though plain N would be used rather than S(ub(j)), for both S and O - seems learners beyond beginner level can work out what the functions are for forms, on the basis of perceived regularities in English word order, if not being familiar with the actual words used in whatever sentence). And personally (like I suggested before), I doubt that any of this would (i.e. I hope that it wouldn't!) be too much of a stretch for any prospective language teacher!

[Heath]

Man I'm terrible at communicating through written form only...

Sorry, what I meant was that if, for example, a trainee teacher (usually no experience and no qualifications) has a lesson on Present Perfect Continuous, as part of the training we require that they produce a lesson plan with a clear analysis of meaning, use, form and phonology.

Typically, that means they pick up a grammar book, and when it comes to form all they get is a bunch of boxes.

They understand noun, adj, verb, etc, and roughly get subject and object (although things like the passive voice you mention, plus complements, adverbials, etc can throw them off). But, when they need to be analysing the form as, "sub + have/has + been + V-ing" and the grammar books just don't have that kind of break down, well then we end up with odd things like:
* sub + aux + aux + V-ing
* sub + present simple + past participle + V-ing
etc...

So, do teachers need to know the exact way to break something down terminologically in order to benefit the students, or because 'a teacher should know his stuff'?



(nb. We only do those short 4 week 'initial' courses. Not that much we can cram in, and eventually they're going to have to get grad/post-grad ELT/TESOL qualifications).[/i]

[Heath]

By the way, differences like the suggestion that noun could replace subject are exactly the kind of differences I'm wondering about. I much prefer using noun in regular analysis (and reserving sub for clarifying issues if an L1 word order is confusing things - but I've never come across that personally).

[fluffyhamster]

Well, if you really want people to be able to proceed relatively smoothly and consistently from basic concepts like 'noun' and 'verb' up through e.g. sorting out what's what in verb phrases, then I think you're going to have to bite the bullet and look at stuff like Leech at least (English Grammar for Today and An A-Z of English Grammar), who's quite good on verby stuff breakdowns and (in the former book) the essentials of parsing from word to unit etc, if not something like Huddleston & Pullum's A Student's Introduction to English Grammar. I'd also recommend looking at and considering more 'linear' grammars (which would help counterbalance the apparent top-down, "language as somehow suddenly fully-grown dead thing/product to be dissected" mode of analysis rather than a potential "as living thing to be built up incrementally via a process") as championed by David Brazil in his A Grammar of Speech (which is mentioned in one or more of the links or sublinks below also). If you don't get somewhat "ambitious" like this then I don't really see how you'll be able to avoid the students confusing you or you them, by talking at cross-purposes and seemingly divided by "unshared" metalanguage(s)!

Anyway, here's some stuff that might be of interest:
http://forums.eslcafe.com/job/viewtopic ... 938#759938 (NPs)
http://forums.eslcafe.com/teacher/viewt ... 0930#40930 (Clauses)
http://forums.eslcafe.com/teacher/viewt ... 7308#37308 (VPs. Is Leech heading, with his caution concerning the word 'tense', towards the Lewis-championed concept of "remoteness"?! )

http://forums.eslcafe.com/teacher/viewtopic.php?t=2771
http://forums.eslcafe.com/teacher/viewtopic.php?t=8693
(misc. etc)

[Heath]

Ah, yes, I just picked up Huddleston & Pullum the other day. Nice book.

[fluffyhamster]

By the way, differences like the suggestion that noun could replace subject are exactly the kind of differences I'm wondering about. I much prefer using noun in regular analysis (and reserving sub for clarifying issues if an L1 word order is confusing things - but I've never come across that personally).

Again, take a looksy at Brazil's A Grammar of Speech, particularly the 'A linear analysis' bit on page 215~ (previewable on Google Book Search as I'm writing this) - I mean, any grammar book that not only replaces S with N but has a variant on the 'Hairy-handed old lady' urban legend as its model text is a MUST READ!
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ADDF ... q=&f=false
http://www.snopes.com/horrors/madmen/madmen.asp
> http://www.snopes.com/horrors/madmen/hairyarm.asp

Then, there's Richard Hudson's form of analysis (which if you ignore the dependency-relation arrows on top and just look at the linear letter codes below the words, has at least a superficial similarity to Brazil's):
http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/*beep*/enc ... sh-grammar
> http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/*beep*/enc/pinker.htm (a clearer version can be found in one of the appendices of his English Grammar (Routledge), which obviously also contains some detailed explanatory build-up to get the reader to that endpoint!).

[woodcutter]

Do you mind telling us what course you are taking Heath (sorry if you already did)?

To mind my people ask these kind of questions as a starting gun for the student to show off and tell what they know about a lot of different things. It isn't the kind of question that works as a real discussion because it depends upon a number of assumptions best discussed in isolation.

[Heath]

Hi Woodcutter,

Sorry, I'm not taking a course. I'm a teacher trainer conducting a course.

As my experience and qualifications are in TESOL specifically, not in AL, I joined this forum because I can learn more about the AL side of things here. When it comes to teaching methodology, education, classroom management, teaching techniques and procedures, SLA research, etc, I'm okay (you know, but still learning). Less so when it comes to the more 'languagey' side of things (ie. not completely ignorant, of course, but I've grown overly reliant on coursebook grammar, I think).

That's why I'm on the forum. The reason for this specific topic, is because in intensive TESOL courses (ie. the 4 week ones), we ask teachers, when clarifying a structure, to break down the form in a very specific way (the first approach in my initial post). Before I get to that, though, a bit of background info:

The courses are 4-week, intensive courses, covering a wide variety of aspects of TESOL and teachers are required to learn specific procedures and techniques, how to develop skills as well as how to focus on language, etc. When 'clarifying language' they are encouraged to put the emphasis on meaning/use first, to deal with stress, intonation, etc, and the main focus is on communicative practice in believable contexts. The course as a whole is holistic and about as comprehensive as a 4-week course can get (obviously 4-weeks is limited no matter how the time is used).

So, back to the 'form'. The thing is, I've worked with a number of teacher trainers and other kinds of teacher supervisors, and that first approach seems to be the one that everyone uses (when it comes to clarifying the form for a class of students who are potentially focusing on that structure for the first time). We ask the teachers to prepare their lessons by themselves, and to refer to grammar reference books to help them work out how to analyse the form. But grammar reference books break down the form in a different way.

So I'm just wondering which approach(es) other teachers use, and whether there is any SLA or AL justification for one approach or another.

I personally think I might change the course so that the teachers make more use of either the fifth approach, or at least to the N instead of S variant of the first approach.

[fluffyhamster]

Probably the best thing to do would be to bite the bullet (if you haven't already done so) and select "the ONE" (Morpheus speaking to Neo LOL) set grammar reference text, and then strongly recommend (i.e. almost insist) that any prospective student get it and only it before any if not all other books because 'its terminology and methods of presentation - for example, the breakdown of the sentences on page 120 - is what the tutors on this course use and in turn suggest that trainees also use'.

Now that might demand quite a high level of familiarity with all the various grammar reference books out there, and appear to be ignoring debate on 'the necessity for relatively fancy terminology at all', but it would at least ensure that the trainees knew where to look when (and this will - unfortunately, or fortunately, in the greater linguistic scheme of things? - be inevitable at some point) they start being asked (by future "keen" students) if not asking themselves what the functions and thus functional labels should be for forms (i.e. I am just cautioning against leaving things at the 'Buy what you like, and worry about simple "surface" form-only' approach you might now be going for - I mean, to really appreciate even the likes of Brazil's analysis, one does ultimately have to read the whole book for all the thinking that produces that final analysis; same thing really with whatever reference you care to name and draw upon at all).

But I'm sort of repeating myself here (and what's more appear to have taken Woody's turn! ).

[woodcutter]

You can write a lengthy essay, of course, but I suspect in the end theory/research will usually tell you that students respond to natural language and grammatical shorthand is beyond many people.

So 4 is best and 2 is worst, but you see researchers almost never focus on time constraints.

[fluffyhamster]

It's tempting to agree with you Woody that we shouldn't be superimposing too much potentially needless technical verbiage (certainly when/once actually ourselves teaching, especially if the school/boss is against it too), but the fact is that some students respond well to and therefore request metalanguage, and teachers do need to know it (and shuttle back and forth to themslves at least between form and function labels and understandings), and should therefore grapple with it a bit in training (though I am not sure cert level would be quite the place for e.g. formal parsing - ah how things have become dumbed down! Previous generations used to learn such stuff in school, but that was apparently along with lashings of pretty prescriptivist stuff it must be said, so perhaps a "grammar-free" childhood education and leaving it to us as TEFL-oriented adults to more or less educate ourselves about such matters has been no bad thing).

[Heath]

Amazing how the simplest solution is often staring you right in the face. Fluffy, I think your suggestion is exactly the solution I was looking for, and one that I should've thought of straight away. I am absolutely going to try that out on the next course (we have 2 reference books that use the same approach, so we can tell them it's gotta be one of those 2). Perfect, thanks.

And I know I'm skirting the real issues here. It's a current necessity only (and my focus is purely on what's most beneficial for the trainee teachers, which, as terrible as it sounds, in some ways means I need to disregard what's most beneficial for the learners).

Regarding those issues, being a mildly stubborn supporter of a Lexical Approach (it does seem to be the most intuitive and it incorporates pretty much everything we've learned about language teaching from the past till now), when it really does come to the learners, I believe Woody's "4 is better than 2" is right - with or without the time contraints. Research tends to argue from two different angles - people learn best naturally and without technical jargon; but they learn best with a focus on form. The thing is, the 'focus on form' research doesn't really say is what a focus on form is, exactly. Number 4 (perhaps with different coloured underlines) seems to hit both, a naturalistic focus on form...