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[dduck]

[Capergirl]

@dduck...Whatever office you are applying for, you have my vote!

[leeroy]

For what it's worth...

�The rules we can learn and carry around in our heads� are not those that are the earliest acquired, nor are they those that are important for communication. Rather, they are the simple rules, rules that are easiest to describe and remember.� (Krashen, 1987)

Quite.

Simplification of grammatical terms to the level of the students has been the key for me - I have rarely had classes where the terminology at the level Bertrand has been using it has been viable.

"We use the present continuous for now and the present simple for always" may seem like a complete travesty to the accomplished linguist - it is, after all, what a fresh CELTA graduate might say. But it's what a class of pre-intermediate students want to hear.

I think Diane Larsen-Freeman quoted research a little while ago stating that "students with grammatical instruction within a communicative environment increased their communicative competence more than those in the same environment but with no grammatical instruction" - or words to that effect. The question isn't "should we or shouldn't we", it's how. I avoid whenever possible using grammatical meta-language, and my lesson focus is very rarely grammatical.

Should teachers know their grammar? Definately, but to the level stated (for example) in the last page? Not for 99% of classes worldwide.

All in my humble opinion of course, and it is late.

I'm tired, apologies for grammatical misconsitensies and speling erors.

Leeroy

(References)

Krashen, 1987, Principles and Pracice in Second Language Acquisition, Alemany pr

[richard ame]

Hi China girl
Nice to see Penny got a mention she has being held up to be a teaching guru here for quite some time I don't see her some how spouting the virtues of grammar teaching above all else as a certain Bert would have us believe . BTW Linda what happened to that little rant you had at our Bert looks like it got the elbow , pity I thought it was a nice piece is Dave getting even handed or heavyhanded with his deletions ?

[some waygug-in]

Bertrand, you are obviously well-studied and well-read. I'm sure your discourse will be most helpful to me as an ESL teacher. Why just this afternoon I was discussing the subtle differences between "morphology" and "phonetics" with my classes of pre-adolesants. They were indubitably enthrawled and couldn't wait for next week's lecture on "phonetic grammar" .

Yes, I have a one week TESOL course, but also 3 years of teaching experience. I wouldn't dream of pretending to be an "expert" in the field of English grammar, but I do know enough to recognize BS when I see it (or in this case, read it) You certainly seem to want to impress everyone here. Perhaps this is to make up for some of your own personal insecurities?

cheers

[cheryl]

Just a little note about this thread....

NOTE to everyone: I agree with a lot of the ideas and/or theories Bertrand brought up. I hope that most of you who don't have a degrees in Applied Linguistics or haven't taken a Grammatical Theory course won't dismiss everything that he brought up simply due to his "pompus" way of putting forth these ideas.

[cheryl]

Sorry, forgot to add this thought:

I think that explicit grammar instruction is important in classes where a language is taught as a foreign language but not as important in second language situations. I'm purely pulling this from personal experience.

While I was in Brasil, i was able to learn Portuguese simply by being immersed in the language with no formal language instruction. I didn't feel the need to understand even the more elementary structures of the language i.e congugations. On the other hand while i was learning Spanish here in Canada in univerisity, i found myself wanting and needing to be explicitly taught grammar in order for me to feel as though i was learning something. I don't know whether my proficiency in Spanish was aided by explicit grammar teaching or not. All i know is that it made me feel as though i was learning "better" and "faster" which ultimately made me feel more confident with speaking and making oral mistakes.

Cheryl

[chinagirl]

Cheryl,

I agree with you that we have a varied perspective when we look at grammar instruction from the point of an ESL or EFL teacher. Since I am primarily working in the US with students who are immersed in English all day long, my point of view is different from a teacher abroad that is prepping students for the TOEFL for only a few hours a week.

I've been really happy to read all of these different points of view, and of the tolerance that has been expressed in most of this thread. I also have some background in linguistics and agree that it is useful. Thanks for those who have been politely encouraging our senior linguist to simplify his jargon.

This forum has a lot of potential, let's all work to make it a professional environment.

[Hap Thorton]

Bertrand is really smart! Wow!

[MindTraveller]

Extending the grammar teaching topic a little bit further - I have an adult Korean friend here in Canada who still thinks learning a language is memorizing grammar and vocabulary.

I tried the other day to convince her that fluency occurs from USING THE LANGUAGE in the four skill areas rather than STUDYING about them.

This constant struggle with students who have been brought up in a 'memorize educational environment' is discouraging. Teaching the idea of reading for pleasure, or even writing for pleasure, is foreign to many people who have come from a 'memorize educational system'. (The USA was also in that category years ago.)

I kept telling my Korean friend that she can learn reading comprehension by reading things she enjoyed. That it was a SKILL, not something to be memorized. Thus it didn't matter exactly what she read, but that she LIKED what she read and was thus encouraged to read more. I told her it's like walking. It doesn't matter what street (content) you walk on, but the fact that you walk (skill).

From my experience, students feel TOO comfortable learning grammar. They have control over that. It can be memorized.

Learning French, I had to overcome my language anxiety - that I didn't know what was going on or being said in class. I was tense in class, tense outside of class. I was angry and felt stupid. But I couldn't learn until I overcame it - accepted the anxiety and tried to minimize it so I could concentrate more on the French spoken in the classroom. That, for me, was an important part of the learning acquisition process.

From my experience, too many of my students do not want to experience that process, so they hunger for grammar rules and vocabulary to memorize.

My conclusion in teaching English is to teach students: Use English, don't just study it.

[Roger]

Personal memories play a vital role in making up one's mind on such issues. If you have learnt a second tongue at primary school, you know advantages and pitfalls of teaching methods better than a monolingual with a TEFL cert.
This may be at the root of this discussion. My suspicion is that monolingual teachers tend to belittle the importance of grammar. I note that most Aussie teacherws I see in China have very good communication skills in a second tongue; most Americans and Britons don't. Guess who thinks of grammar as superfluous most often?

Yes, of course, grammar is a somewhat academic subject. That's why it has to be taught at an appropriate level, say, when the learner has achieved a certain fluency and proficiency. Of course, you can't teach grammar rules to preschoolers; you can teach them to use appropriate syntactic forms and tenses as well as SVA and other basic elements of any language through immersion.
But when kids start reading books on their own, they need to understand how to differentiate between nouns and verbs that are orthographically identical; examples: "I go home" versus "have a go at something";
"the bear is brown" versus "I can't bear it any more".

The monolingual will probably try to steer his learners towards translating these sentences (the words 'bear' as a noun versus as a verb!). Do you think translation works well this way? I feel that translations are the step we must teach our learners to AVOID. The purpose of teaching a second tongue is to empower the learner to understand a target language on its own terms. This means the learner has to learn to conceptualise the world anew in a different and distinct way, independent of his first language!

That's what I learnt at school studying other languages anyway. Translations did take place, but very soon, at secondary school we felt it was too cumbersome and time-consuming, not to mention misleading. You can't translate humour very well from one tongue into another without changing the makeup of the sentences.

Second language acquisition is a race against time. The learner has a head start in his first language. In one week; he can potentially use his first tongue for 168 hours (highly exaggerated); his second tongue is encased in that textbook of his and a notebook that he opens upon being ordered by his teacher. At most, his mind will be exposed to it for ten hours, not all of which he spends with his attention totally focussed on the target.
It goes without saying that grammar helps rationalise the workings of the target language - in the cases of languages that rely on grammar for accuracy, and that means all Indo-European languages (and many others, but not Chinese, for instance).

[Sherri]

I admit it. I am American and monolingual. This is despite studying French, German and Russian in high school and university and later as an adult, Japanese. I really can't claim to be bilingual.

To say the following about monolingual EFL teachers:

"the bear is brown" versus "I can't bear it any more".
The monolingual will probably try to steer his learners towards translating these sentences (the words 'bear' as a noun versus as a verb!).

...is not fair. It might be fair to say this about an untrained EFL teacher, but what does being monolingual have to do with it? Just being able to speak a second language does not make that person a better language teacher in itself. Studying a second language can give a teacher insight into what it is like to learn another language but that is not enough to make that person an EFL teacher! Knowing how to integrate grammar into a lesson in a meaningful way takes a great deal of knowledge about how people learn languages (not just yourself--Everyone has a different learning style), training and practice.

[some waygug-in]

A monolingual will probably try to steer his learners towards translating these sentences (the words 'bear' as a noun versus as a verb!). Do you think translation works well this way? I feel that translations are the step we must teach our learners to AVOID. The purpose of teaching a second tongue is to empower the learner to understand a target language on its own terms. (Quote)



That depends upon the relationship between the target language and the native language, the level of the student, the age of the student and more importantly, how proficient the teacher is in the student's language. If you are going to use translation, you have to be absolutely certain that what you are teaching is accurate.

For example: it is a lot easier using translation for native Spanish speakers who are learning English, than it is for Koreans learning English.

It's not that translation should be avoided at all costs, but more when and where is translation appropriate, and how should it be used? When we are first learning a new language as adults, how else are we to learn new vocabulary but through a bilingual dictionary? In other words, translation.
When I studied French in university, our texts always provided translations for beginning levels. Higher levels always had key words translated. The same when I studied Spanish. The same with every other university level language text I've ever seen. The adult learner (at beginning level) needs something to "grab onto" A totally monolingual approach with such a student will leave him/her feeling totally frustrated and confused. The problem comes from "over reliance" on translation. A good teacher should know that they should be gradully reducing the use of translation and thus increasing the student's ability with the target language. This is a long process. It can take years, as in my case with studying Korean. After 2 years of studying Korean I am just now getting to the point where I would feel comfortable in a monolingual language class.



Since children are far more adept at picking up foreign languages, a monolingual approach is better, but then again it depends on the age of the student, their level and the context of the teaching situation.


I'm sure to recieve lots of flak for this, but hey, you only live once.
Cheers

[Roger]

No, you get no flak for your reply.
I have too little experience in teaching ADULT BEGINNERS a second tongue. My students have been introduced to English by local teachers, except for the preschoolers whom I teach from scratch, and I do this without, or virtually without, recourse to their mother tongue.
Let's confine this debate to teaching EFL learners of young ages, that are not necessarily beginners! In other words, let's cut out adults that have no skills whatsoever in the target language. YOu will, I hope, agree that such adults present us with special challenges that no TEFL training prepares you for. I would like to stick to teaching English to students that have had a formal instruction in English by a local teacher. Most of us based in China teach at public schools (usually so-called 'oral English'), or we teach at private institutes where someone pays tuition for upgrading their own English proficiency. It does not matter whether tuition is being paid by the students themselves or by their employer (here in China, very often a company foots the bill!).

If you think that 'oral English' is fundamental to their English proficiency and fluency, you will probably agree that they must be past the level where translation is necessary!
For a foreign student of English to be able to identify native English he or she has to be able to distinguish good English from substandard English.
He or she can't decide whether an informal phrase is an idiom or faulty English unless you have had some immersion in the language without using your first tongue.
Why else should they have exposure to NETs?

[some waygug-in]

I agree with you that once students reach a basic conversational level that translations should not be used.
Except for instances where all else fails: When pictures, gestures, drawings and explainations fail to make the meaning clear and we have exausted all other options, then there is no harm in refering to a bilingual dictionary. Isn't it better that they get some explanation rather than have them leave still not understanding?

For example: While teaching in Mexico, I was trying to teach the students
the difference between "I want..." and "I would like..."

They kept asking me, "what means would?" After countless attempts at trying to explain the meaning of would using English, I could see that they still weren't getting it.

By simply showing them I want = yo deseo
I would like = yo quisiera

They instantly understood.


I know this is rather simplistic.

Your comment about adult beginners is interesting. Well here in Korea there are many adults that claim to have studied English for years, yet they can't put together a single sentence. They can give one word answers and usually respond to basic questions, but really, for all intents and purposes, they are still beginners.

With such students I've found it helpful to have some key vocabulary translated. (only words that may be new and difficult)
Usually because these same students are ashamed that they don't understand, and they won't ask. Furthermore, they won't bring a dictionary to class, they just pretend to understand and then usually get lost and can't follow anything.

Usually what happens is that these students are placed in classes with more advanced students, and those students tend to dominate the class, leaving the lower level students grasping for straws, confused, frustrated and too shy to ask. They will ultimately drop out, claiming that English is too difficult and or that the teacher is bad.

Anyway, I'm sure you will disagree. But you are no doubt, a much better teacher than I.
Cheers