Do you think the language acquisition is more effective than grammar for adults learning ESL? Why?
Your any comments & feedback will be highly appreciated.
Language Acquisition for Adults Learning
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Language Acquisition for Adults Learning
Last edited by ellen523 on Sat May 31, 2003 5:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Re: Language Acquisition for Adults Learning
Hmmm not sure which kinds of activities you are comparing for "effective" language acquisition. However, having taught adults ESL for over thirty years, in my opinion, the best approach is an eclectic one that takes into consideration the type of adult learner (educational background, reason for studying, etc.) and uses a combination of everything.ellen523 wrote:Do you think the language acquisition is more effective than grammer for adults learning ESL? Why?
Your any comments & feedback will be highly appreciated.
When grammar/translation was overturned by the audio-lingual approach eons ago, sometimes teachers didn't understand that things still needed to be written for those who are more visual learners. When communicative competence became the buzz word, a lot of teachers dropped teaching grammar entirely, forgetting that adults like to have a structure to hang things on. It was interesting to see the textbooks that came out later, including both "communicative competence" and grammar.
From what I've seen, the bottom line is a well-prepared, well-educated, interesting, enthusiastic teacher will get his/her students to learn using whatever methods he/she chooses.
Just my two cents
In what way, or to what extent does LANGUAGE ACQUISITION exclude GRAMMAR? I think that grammar always is part and parcel of acquiring any language.
The question we are perhaps faced with is this: Can we teach a second language to adults without teaching grammar?
There should be a clear and resounding No!
It is like saying I want to buy that cow but without bones, please! Buy a live animal without its bones - and you have to slaughter it first!
I think the so-called "communicative approach" has laid waste to flowering landscapes of foreign language training! Nowadays, you are faced with a stony Chinese Great Wall if you tell your Chinese students that they must improve their grasp of SVA, tenses, prepositions, numbers etc. Anyone willing to open their eyes and ears can find out for themselves that the study of English in East Asian countries has gone astray, with generations of English learners merely acquiring an English vocabulary without understanding the instructions of use. Most cannot understand standard English. At the same time, they complain about the tedious and boring rote-learning, which is inevitable if they want to enlarge their vocabulary!
But my rant may be digressing... I think there is NO generalisable rule as we must assess
- the student's first language and its potential influence on English and
the acquisition of English; for instance Europeans are used to reading
and analysing. They remember a word best if they have written it
some time before. Roman letters serve as phonetic props. In their
case, grammar is felt to be an evil, but a necessary evil that goes well
with their own tradition in learning languages (even perfecting their
first tongue).
East Asians on the other hand have an age-old habit of memorising,
without thinking about the subtler aspects of the words they are
studying. To give them a really competent grasp of English, you have
to give them a solid grounding at an early age, say preschool, so that
they acquire the necessary sense of discrimination and the curiosity
to study words in their variant forms!
- the age of the learner is of paramount importance! The older students
are, the more their learning habits have been set. To graft European
analytical skills onto a mind that has essentially been trained to use
its memory only often is a hopeless attempt! To give you an example:
CHinese adults that want to study English for the first time in their
life often are unable to distinguish between "loss" (n.) and 'lose'
(v.). Furthermore, they won't catch on to the terminology in use -n
verb, noun because these categories are wholly new to them as they
do not need to study CHinese by looking at words through a gramma-
tical magnifying glass. Most Chinese verbs essentially have the same
semantic contents as nouns, and they do not differ in form from each
other at all.
Learning a language is more than just acquiring words. It also is acquiring a way of seeing the world, a mode of thinking and expressing oneself. Thus a L2 speaker must be trained from an early age on to see the world through the eyes of the L1 speaker. Seeing things through the eyes of the L2 speaker necessarily contorts their views!
The question we are perhaps faced with is this: Can we teach a second language to adults without teaching grammar?
There should be a clear and resounding No!
It is like saying I want to buy that cow but without bones, please! Buy a live animal without its bones - and you have to slaughter it first!
I think the so-called "communicative approach" has laid waste to flowering landscapes of foreign language training! Nowadays, you are faced with a stony Chinese Great Wall if you tell your Chinese students that they must improve their grasp of SVA, tenses, prepositions, numbers etc. Anyone willing to open their eyes and ears can find out for themselves that the study of English in East Asian countries has gone astray, with generations of English learners merely acquiring an English vocabulary without understanding the instructions of use. Most cannot understand standard English. At the same time, they complain about the tedious and boring rote-learning, which is inevitable if they want to enlarge their vocabulary!
But my rant may be digressing... I think there is NO generalisable rule as we must assess
- the student's first language and its potential influence on English and
the acquisition of English; for instance Europeans are used to reading
and analysing. They remember a word best if they have written it
some time before. Roman letters serve as phonetic props. In their
case, grammar is felt to be an evil, but a necessary evil that goes well
with their own tradition in learning languages (even perfecting their
first tongue).
East Asians on the other hand have an age-old habit of memorising,
without thinking about the subtler aspects of the words they are
studying. To give them a really competent grasp of English, you have
to give them a solid grounding at an early age, say preschool, so that
they acquire the necessary sense of discrimination and the curiosity
to study words in their variant forms!
- the age of the learner is of paramount importance! The older students
are, the more their learning habits have been set. To graft European
analytical skills onto a mind that has essentially been trained to use
its memory only often is a hopeless attempt! To give you an example:
CHinese adults that want to study English for the first time in their
life often are unable to distinguish between "loss" (n.) and 'lose'
(v.). Furthermore, they won't catch on to the terminology in use -n
verb, noun because these categories are wholly new to them as they
do not need to study CHinese by looking at words through a gramma-
tical magnifying glass. Most Chinese verbs essentially have the same
semantic contents as nouns, and they do not differ in form from each
other at all.
Learning a language is more than just acquiring words. It also is acquiring a way of seeing the world, a mode of thinking and expressing oneself. Thus a L2 speaker must be trained from an early age on to see the world through the eyes of the L1 speaker. Seeing things through the eyes of the L2 speaker necessarily contorts their views!
I have doubts about centring textbooks and teaching around grammar points. Regardless of how communicative or functional activities are, it seems to treat English as a giant jigsaw puzzle that students can not only put together again but can use to create new aesthetically pleasing pictures, if only they can memorise the pieces.
However, 'acquiring' language (and I'm assuming you mean in the sense that we acquire our first langage without explicit grammar/function teaching) is just as problematic. Can adults still 'acquire' language? Most research suggests they can't. Even assuming they theoretically can, there is still the practical difficulty that most learners, ESL or EFL don't operate in the environment in which we acquire or first language. How many adult learners have a large community of native speakers who will consciously 'grade' language for them, overlook their mistakes or repeat flawed pronunciation and grammar correctly, chat to them, voluntarily label the world and answer our questions patiently, and act as models for the language all day, seven days a week?
When my students complain about slowly they learn, I ask them to consider how long it took them to acquire and master their native language: generally fifteen years of daily, all-day practice.
However, 'acquiring' language (and I'm assuming you mean in the sense that we acquire our first langage without explicit grammar/function teaching) is just as problematic. Can adults still 'acquire' language? Most research suggests they can't. Even assuming they theoretically can, there is still the practical difficulty that most learners, ESL or EFL don't operate in the environment in which we acquire or first language. How many adult learners have a large community of native speakers who will consciously 'grade' language for them, overlook their mistakes or repeat flawed pronunciation and grammar correctly, chat to them, voluntarily label the world and answer our questions patiently, and act as models for the language all day, seven days a week?
When my students complain about slowly they learn, I ask them to consider how long it took them to acquire and master their native language: generally fifteen years of daily, all-day practice.
That analogy of the jigsaw puzzle was a nice picture! The only point I find to be a stumbling-block is your mentioning memorisation. You do not need to memorise and remember how the pieces fit together. Your imagination can do that - visualising missing bits.
And that holds true in language production too. Speaking any meaningful sentence cannot happen if the speaker has to recall from his or her memory the missing bits.
I have just read an introduction to Krashen's acquisition versus learning theory. On the surface, this is a brilliant differentiation although a very obvious one. He also makes a valuable distinction between 'conscious speaking' and 'not conscious speaking'. That too is not very new although it seldom is discussed in TEFL/TESL circles. However, to say we can all acquire a l 2 (as Krashen seems to imply) without the study of its formal component parts is oversimplifying the problems involved. Krashen postulates that students will "learn what they like to learn", and grammar is not normally what they want to study.
He seems to overlook the fact that a child's acquiring his or her L 1 is a largely coercive feat. Children are born speechless, and it is their mothers that force them to adopt their mother's first language.
Over time, their consciousness forms as they learn to separate the I from the We, the You and even the He from the She. This is the stage when they develop concepts, and these concepts are then turned into language. Thus, they are not merely acquiring their L 1, they are also FORMING THEIR FIRST CONCEPTS AND THEIR CONSCIOUSNESS. They have at age 4 a somewhat complete grounding of their L 1, and they can increase their linguistic competence on their own by asking relevant questions ("how do you call that..."). The more often they make the same utterances, the more they are speaking them unconsciously.
L2 learners still have their L 1 in their minds when they "acquire" their L 2. The L 1 interferes with the L 2. Grammar and syntax of their L 1 are on the surface of their minds, while their consciousness is trying to superpose L 2 vocables. Their consciousness is being fed new words, but their L1 grammar is resisting to fade from their consciousness - typically in China, people speak Chinese using English words, in other words, the speak Chinglish.
I think the biggest flaw in Krashen's theory is that he fails to differentiate between adults and younger learners, and between the consciousness of an adult person and a preschooler. Clearly, the preschooler with his underdeveloped language and conceptual thinking can better acquire any L 2 because he can develop his consciousness in the L2.
Once it is developed, he can understand the study of grammar in the same degree any native speaker can understand the study of his L 1's grammar: it helps understand the mechanism at work in the language. The study of grammar is not the study of rules. It is the study of segments larger than individual words working together.
We can say that you can communicate in any given language without the study of grammar, but you can significantly improve your comprehension and communication skills by studying grammar. To communicate with an absent but sophisticated opposite number you need to express yourself adequately and accurately - as in writing.
Writing has this beneficent effect that it helps the unconscious acquirer to stabilise and consolidate his or her command of the language. It helps much more than the mere oral production and reproduction does. Oral production should be done when the student has achieved the level where he or she can use the target language unconsciously.
This is, in my opinion, forgotten most of the time in TEFL/TESL classroom settings!
And that holds true in language production too. Speaking any meaningful sentence cannot happen if the speaker has to recall from his or her memory the missing bits.
I have just read an introduction to Krashen's acquisition versus learning theory. On the surface, this is a brilliant differentiation although a very obvious one. He also makes a valuable distinction between 'conscious speaking' and 'not conscious speaking'. That too is not very new although it seldom is discussed in TEFL/TESL circles. However, to say we can all acquire a l 2 (as Krashen seems to imply) without the study of its formal component parts is oversimplifying the problems involved. Krashen postulates that students will "learn what they like to learn", and grammar is not normally what they want to study.
He seems to overlook the fact that a child's acquiring his or her L 1 is a largely coercive feat. Children are born speechless, and it is their mothers that force them to adopt their mother's first language.
Over time, their consciousness forms as they learn to separate the I from the We, the You and even the He from the She. This is the stage when they develop concepts, and these concepts are then turned into language. Thus, they are not merely acquiring their L 1, they are also FORMING THEIR FIRST CONCEPTS AND THEIR CONSCIOUSNESS. They have at age 4 a somewhat complete grounding of their L 1, and they can increase their linguistic competence on their own by asking relevant questions ("how do you call that..."). The more often they make the same utterances, the more they are speaking them unconsciously.
L2 learners still have their L 1 in their minds when they "acquire" their L 2. The L 1 interferes with the L 2. Grammar and syntax of their L 1 are on the surface of their minds, while their consciousness is trying to superpose L 2 vocables. Their consciousness is being fed new words, but their L1 grammar is resisting to fade from their consciousness - typically in China, people speak Chinese using English words, in other words, the speak Chinglish.
I think the biggest flaw in Krashen's theory is that he fails to differentiate between adults and younger learners, and between the consciousness of an adult person and a preschooler. Clearly, the preschooler with his underdeveloped language and conceptual thinking can better acquire any L 2 because he can develop his consciousness in the L2.
Once it is developed, he can understand the study of grammar in the same degree any native speaker can understand the study of his L 1's grammar: it helps understand the mechanism at work in the language. The study of grammar is not the study of rules. It is the study of segments larger than individual words working together.
We can say that you can communicate in any given language without the study of grammar, but you can significantly improve your comprehension and communication skills by studying grammar. To communicate with an absent but sophisticated opposite number you need to express yourself adequately and accurately - as in writing.
Writing has this beneficent effect that it helps the unconscious acquirer to stabilise and consolidate his or her command of the language. It helps much more than the mere oral production and reproduction does. Oral production should be done when the student has achieved the level where he or she can use the target language unconsciously.
This is, in my opinion, forgotten most of the time in TEFL/TESL classroom settings!
Fluency in ESL
First of all, many thanks for sharing your views on this topic.
There is no doubt that the grammar is essential for learing ESL. I totally agree to this point. Especially for beginners or in writing, it's necessary.
But, what if we'd like to be fluent in ESL? Could it be possible that we are able to be fluent in ESL just from studying/learning grammar? According to Krashen's Acquisition-Learning Hypothesis, "fluency in second language performance is due to what we have acquired, not what we have learned. " I think "acquired" & "learned" is different issue in gainning the second language.
In my opinion, grammar is just a tool to help people realize what's going on with ESL better. At times, we might learn some slang. How could we learn the slang from grammar?
Lately I heard a little about Kato Lomb, who has acquired 17 languages, is acquiring Hebrew at age 86. Her conclusions about language acquisition is : comprehensible input is central. She feels grammer plays a peripheral role in language development. Judging from her age & pattern in obtaining second language, is her case just an exception? I'm not sure. At least, someone has managed to be fluent in second laguage by acquiring and not affected by age.
What do you think of fluency in ESL? Looking forward to having your any comments.
There is no doubt that the grammar is essential for learing ESL. I totally agree to this point. Especially for beginners or in writing, it's necessary.
But, what if we'd like to be fluent in ESL? Could it be possible that we are able to be fluent in ESL just from studying/learning grammar? According to Krashen's Acquisition-Learning Hypothesis, "fluency in second language performance is due to what we have acquired, not what we have learned. " I think "acquired" & "learned" is different issue in gainning the second language.
In my opinion, grammar is just a tool to help people realize what's going on with ESL better. At times, we might learn some slang. How could we learn the slang from grammar?
Lately I heard a little about Kato Lomb, who has acquired 17 languages, is acquiring Hebrew at age 86. Her conclusions about language acquisition is : comprehensible input is central. She feels grammer plays a peripheral role in language development. Judging from her age & pattern in obtaining second language, is her case just an exception? I'm not sure. At least, someone has managed to be fluent in second laguage by acquiring and not affected by age.
What do you think of fluency in ESL? Looking forward to having your any comments.
First off, Lorikeet, I'm with you on using a variety of methods. In addition to 'students with a good teacher will learn regardless' I'd add, keen/good students will often learn regardless of the teacher (see Kato Lomb).
Roger, the myriad differences between L1 and L2 (conceptualisation, L1 interference etc.) is my problem with learning through language acquisition, although I don't think children need too much coercion to speak. Normally it's getting them to shut up that's the problem
Ellen, I think there is difference between fluency and accuracy and focusing on accuracy hinders fluency, at least in the short term. In contrast, focusing on fluency hinders accuracy and also raises the problem of fossilation.
It becomes a problem when you have students with different needs and priorities in the same group. Those who are learning largely for oral communication have well-founded objections to studying grammar. Students who need to communicate accurately, especially to use English professionally or academically will make very limited progress without substantial grammar work. Usually, this goes back to Lorikeet's suggestion: give a bit of everything.
On a 'physician heal thyself note' are any of us fluent in a second language? How did you learn? I'm certainly not fluent in Thai, but for what I've learnt, I'd say comprehensible input was a huge factor, and being able to recognise patterns and therefore grammar and word classes in the input was another. I have never studied Thai grammar however, and remember only what I use most often.
Roger, the myriad differences between L1 and L2 (conceptualisation, L1 interference etc.) is my problem with learning through language acquisition, although I don't think children need too much coercion to speak. Normally it's getting them to shut up that's the problem
Ellen, I think there is difference between fluency and accuracy and focusing on accuracy hinders fluency, at least in the short term. In contrast, focusing on fluency hinders accuracy and also raises the problem of fossilation.
It becomes a problem when you have students with different needs and priorities in the same group. Those who are learning largely for oral communication have well-founded objections to studying grammar. Students who need to communicate accurately, especially to use English professionally or academically will make very limited progress without substantial grammar work. Usually, this goes back to Lorikeet's suggestion: give a bit of everything.
On a 'physician heal thyself note' are any of us fluent in a second language? How did you learn? I'm certainly not fluent in Thai, but for what I've learnt, I'd say comprehensible input was a huge factor, and being able to recognise patterns and therefore grammar and word classes in the input was another. I have never studied Thai grammar however, and remember only what I use most often.
It's been interesting to read everyone's responses to this topic. In thinking over my language learning experiences (No real fluency, but passable in some; passing knowledge in others) I had the most success when I had a grammar hook to hang my knowledge on. I am also a visual learner, and it is very difficult for me to "pick up" language just by hearing it. However, I can remember things I have seen. (It was three syllables, started with a p, had an a in the middle......) Like most people, I imagine I try to teach using various techniques that appealed to me as a learner. Of course, I try to use other techniques as well so I can hit the various learning styles of my adult students. I always think it's interesting at the end of the semester when I ask them to fill out an evaluation form. There is always one student who wants more of "x" and another student who wants less. It makes me think my balancing of activities may be successfulJoanne wrote:
On a 'physician heal thyself note' are any of us fluent in a second language? How did you learn? I'm certainly not fluent in Thai, but for what I've learnt, I'd say comprehensible input was a huge factor, and being able to recognise patterns and therefore grammar and word classes in the input was another. I have never studied Thai grammar however, and remember only what I use most often.