I've recently retired from teaching ESL to adult students here in San Diego County, Leon. I'm currently focusing on a project to add a room to my house. Still like to keep my toes in the water, though. I guess once teaching gets into your blood, it's hard to get it out. I always loved teaching. My times with students have been some of the best times of my life, rewarding in spite of some of the frustrations involved--mostly from my own failings. But I believe I was always becoming a better teacher, which is not to say I was necessarily a good teacher. It was a wonderful challenge to me to constantly improve what I did with my students, though. They were my ever present inspiration to keep learning. I've only been retired about three months, but I miss them quite a lot already. I still read quite a bit in the field, and, as you can see, still like to shoot my mouth in this forum.
Best to you in your new capacity.
Larry Latham
LEXICAL APPROACH R.I.P.
Moderators: Dimitris, maneki neko2, Lorikeet, Enrico Palazzo, superpeach, cecil2, Mr. Kalgukshi2
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LarryLatham
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- Location: Aguanga, California (near San Diego)
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Norm Ryder
- Posts: 118
- Joined: Wed Jan 29, 2003 9:10 pm
- Location: Canberra, Australia
grammar!
Hi, Benade
Like Larry, I'm almost at the end of my teaching career, but still do some part-time teaching of adults, especially of older migrants who didn't have much opportunity of learning English when they first arrived in Oz.
Anyway, last year I took over a new class, and we started by talking a lot about their past. That led into using models of the simple past, then the continuous past, and they had plenty of practice at using the same few structures, and building vocabulary around that. Then a couple of them said that they planned to travel at the end of the year, so we spent some months on using the basic structures for discussing the future.
Looking back I began to think it had been excessively grammar based; but when I asked them to comment on the term's work some of them said: "It was OK, but we didn't do any grammar"
It turned out, of course, that they were the Europeans who had been brought up on explicit rules. I don't think many of my Asian students have had anything like that kind of schooling, and all they are looking for are the basic patterns; but these, as people have already commented, they tend to over-generalise. We can only hope that the younger ones recognise that there are many elements of their "inter-language" that are simply makeshift until they are ready to absorb some more subtle detail.
So, Benade, I join my wishes with Larry's. Enjoy your teaching, your people - and your learning
Norm
Like Larry, I'm almost at the end of my teaching career, but still do some part-time teaching of adults, especially of older migrants who didn't have much opportunity of learning English when they first arrived in Oz.
Anyway, last year I took over a new class, and we started by talking a lot about their past. That led into using models of the simple past, then the continuous past, and they had plenty of practice at using the same few structures, and building vocabulary around that. Then a couple of them said that they planned to travel at the end of the year, so we spent some months on using the basic structures for discussing the future.
Looking back I began to think it had been excessively grammar based; but when I asked them to comment on the term's work some of them said: "It was OK, but we didn't do any grammar"
It turned out, of course, that they were the Europeans who had been brought up on explicit rules. I don't think many of my Asian students have had anything like that kind of schooling, and all they are looking for are the basic patterns; but these, as people have already commented, they tend to over-generalise. We can only hope that the younger ones recognise that there are many elements of their "inter-language" that are simply makeshift until they are ready to absorb some more subtle detail.So, Benade, I join my wishes with Larry's. Enjoy your teaching, your people - and your learning
Norm
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kiwiboy_nz_99
- Posts: 8
- Joined: Tue Aug 19, 2003 7:14 am
- Location: Seoul
I'll make a very tentative comment as I'm junior to you all in experience. I'm currently pre-reading for an MA TESOL,( yes, I purchased the books ahead of time and start in Feb ) and the texts are fascinating. Anyway, it's seems that grammar is comming back to the forefront, albeit in a new incarnation. And this jibes well with me. We make thousands of totally unique statements every day. To me favouring grammar over LA is like the advantage of gearing. You don't have to push as hard and you get more power. I'm interested in grammar consciousness raising activities, that lead to the learner being able to produce unique utterances that are correct. The important thing is that the grammar is eventually aquired. I disagree though with Krashen, I do think that something that is initially learned can become aquired. I think it takes plenty of the right kinds of exersizes, refered to often as "grammatisation" work.
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LarryLatham
- Posts: 1195
- Joined: Thu Jan 16, 2003 6:33 pm
- Location: Aguanga, California (near San Diego)
Tentative or not, your comments are certainly welcome.
I believe you may be right that grammar may be coming back into favor in ESL teaching. But I also want to point out that anybody who has read Michael Lewis's, The Lexical Approach with care will understand that he does not disparage the teaching of grammar. What he did say was he thought the teaching of grammar ought to be somewhat de-emphasized to make time for increasing the emphasis on learning lexical items, especially phrases, fixed expressions, sentence heads, and particular types of words (such as sentence adverbs). What he wants us to do is help students commit more English to memory so that they may use the lookup function of their brains for faster access to accurate chunks of English.
Now, that being said, there is some more recent work being done about the use of underlying grammar to master language. (I've been reading Steven Pinker, in particular.) Most of this work relates to the acquisition of (a first) language in children, but it does get me to thinking about whether we in ESL have perhaps been neglecting grammar too much. To be sure, nobody should lament the passing of prescriptive rules and rigid stances about what is "correct" or not. (Actually, I'm afraid it's not completely dead, sadly.
) But maybe we ought to take another look at how we can expose or introduce our students to grammatical principles in English that might help them "get it" more quickly and easily.
Is that what you're talking about?
Larry Latham
I believe you may be right that grammar may be coming back into favor in ESL teaching. But I also want to point out that anybody who has read Michael Lewis's, The Lexical Approach with care will understand that he does not disparage the teaching of grammar. What he did say was he thought the teaching of grammar ought to be somewhat de-emphasized to make time for increasing the emphasis on learning lexical items, especially phrases, fixed expressions, sentence heads, and particular types of words (such as sentence adverbs). What he wants us to do is help students commit more English to memory so that they may use the lookup function of their brains for faster access to accurate chunks of English.
Now, that being said, there is some more recent work being done about the use of underlying grammar to master language. (I've been reading Steven Pinker, in particular.) Most of this work relates to the acquisition of (a first) language in children, but it does get me to thinking about whether we in ESL have perhaps been neglecting grammar too much. To be sure, nobody should lament the passing of prescriptive rules and rigid stances about what is "correct" or not. (Actually, I'm afraid it's not completely dead, sadly.
) But maybe we ought to take another look at how we can expose or introduce our students to grammatical principles in English that might help them "get it" more quickly and easily.Is that what you're talking about?
Larry Latham
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kiwiboy_nz_99
- Posts: 8
- Joined: Tue Aug 19, 2003 7:14 am
- Location: Seoul
That is very much what I'm talking about Larry, but I should read Micheal Lewis before I comment further. I just can't help thinking that of all the thousands of words in the language, and all the ways we put them together, collocations and the like couldn't really account for enough to make that the only approach. But, as I said, I should read first.
Andy
Andy
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LarryLatham
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- Location: Aguanga, California (near San Diego)
lexical approach
Can someone enlighten me ...? what is the difference between collocations and lexical words??? Are collocations lexical words that don't come "naturally" i.e. more complex combinations?....
Thanks
Ignorant me....
Thanks
Ignorant me....
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LarryLatham
- Posts: 1195
- Joined: Thu Jan 16, 2003 6:33 pm
- Location: Aguanga, California (near San Diego)
Collocations, etc.
Hi Michelle,
I may be able to help a bit with some ideas about collocations, but I must confess I don't exactly know what "lexical words" are. Perhaps they are distinguished in some way from "non-lexical words", but maybe someone else can help both of us there. My first inclination, though, is that the appellation is intended to suggest lexical items that are single words as opposed to other kinds of lexical items, such as collocations, or institutionalized combinations, or sentence heads, and like groupings. I, myself, just call them "words." We'll see what other people say here.
Collocations are word partnerships. You know how some words just seem to 'naturally' go together? For example, if I say, "Blond...", most native speakers would know that the next word (single words being seldom used in communications, with the exception that they may be appropriate in certain dialogs between people who know each other well) will most likely be "...hair." Of course, it is not inevitable, since I can certainly talk about "a dumb blond", or ask a buddy to tell his "blond joke." But the bond that exists between "blond" and "hair" is undeniable. In fact, the color blond hardly applies to anything other than hair. Some bonds (some collocations) are stronger than others. For example, "fast car" is an acceptable partnership, but there are many other words that can be easily and naturally combined with both "fast" and "car."
This is by no means an exhaustive treatment of "collocations", but you'll get the idea, at least.
Hopefully it'll help some. The idea in ESL teaching, of course, is to get students to learn these combinations of words (collocations) as well as merely learning long lists of single words.
Larry Latham
I may be able to help a bit with some ideas about collocations, but I must confess I don't exactly know what "lexical words" are. Perhaps they are distinguished in some way from "non-lexical words", but maybe someone else can help both of us there. My first inclination, though, is that the appellation is intended to suggest lexical items that are single words as opposed to other kinds of lexical items, such as collocations, or institutionalized combinations, or sentence heads, and like groupings. I, myself, just call them "words." We'll see what other people say here.
Collocations are word partnerships. You know how some words just seem to 'naturally' go together? For example, if I say, "Blond...", most native speakers would know that the next word (single words being seldom used in communications, with the exception that they may be appropriate in certain dialogs between people who know each other well) will most likely be "...hair." Of course, it is not inevitable, since I can certainly talk about "a dumb blond", or ask a buddy to tell his "blond joke." But the bond that exists between "blond" and "hair" is undeniable. In fact, the color blond hardly applies to anything other than hair. Some bonds (some collocations) are stronger than others. For example, "fast car" is an acceptable partnership, but there are many other words that can be easily and naturally combined with both "fast" and "car."
This is by no means an exhaustive treatment of "collocations", but you'll get the idea, at least.
Hopefully it'll help some. The idea in ESL teaching, of course, is to get students to learn these combinations of words (collocations) as well as merely learning long lists of single words.Larry Latham
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LarryLatham
- Posts: 1195
- Joined: Thu Jan 16, 2003 6:33 pm
- Location: Aguanga, California (near San Diego)
Collocation
Ah, forgive me for leaving a confusing impression, Michelle.
If you mean that every word can be 'combined' with other words, then that is true, but as you suspect, not very useful. It isn't quite what is usually meant by collocation. The term refers more to the actual bond, and its relative strength, that ties two or more words together, rather than the mere fact that they may appear together. It could maybe be thought of as a kind of measure of the likelihood that certain given words will occur in the same phrase, or clause, or sentence in a way that conveys a single understandable and perhaps even common idea.
There are evidently several overlapping definitions of collocation to be found. I like what Michael Lewis has put forward in his book Teaching Collocation (p. 29), because he has prepared his explaination so as to be most useful for teachers rather than for academics. Here's what he suggests:
"[It is probably not necessary to] draw attention to the combinations heavy furniture/loads [presumably because students will have no difficulty making those connections], whereas I do for combinations...which I think my students will not expect...such as heavy seas/smoker. [Or maybe heavy meals.] I reserve the term collocation, then, for those co-occurances of words which I think my students will not expect to find together [but which will seem perfectly natural to native speakers]. These are also the combinations that I would not expect my students to produce in their free production of language."
I have taken liberties in rearranging some of the wording in Lewis' quote here, but I think I've retained the spirit of his meaning. Hopefully, this will help to clear some of the 'fog' that exists in this area.
By the way, you certainly are not alone in feeling confusion here. Many of the rest of us do too. Nobody who knows says teaching ESL is easy.
Larry Latham
If you mean that every word can be 'combined' with other words, then that is true, but as you suspect, not very useful. It isn't quite what is usually meant by collocation. The term refers more to the actual bond, and its relative strength, that ties two or more words together, rather than the mere fact that they may appear together. It could maybe be thought of as a kind of measure of the likelihood that certain given words will occur in the same phrase, or clause, or sentence in a way that conveys a single understandable and perhaps even common idea.
There are evidently several overlapping definitions of collocation to be found. I like what Michael Lewis has put forward in his book Teaching Collocation (p. 29), because he has prepared his explaination so as to be most useful for teachers rather than for academics. Here's what he suggests:
"[It is probably not necessary to] draw attention to the combinations heavy furniture/loads [presumably because students will have no difficulty making those connections], whereas I do for combinations...which I think my students will not expect...such as heavy seas/smoker. [Or maybe heavy meals.] I reserve the term collocation, then, for those co-occurances of words which I think my students will not expect to find together [but which will seem perfectly natural to native speakers]. These are also the combinations that I would not expect my students to produce in their free production of language."
I have taken liberties in rearranging some of the wording in Lewis' quote here, but I think I've retained the spirit of his meaning. Hopefully, this will help to clear some of the 'fog' that exists in this area.
By the way, you certainly are not alone in feeling confusion here. Many of the rest of us do too. Nobody who knows says teaching ESL is easy.
Larry Latham