Welcome to my party!...Or is grammar teaching necessary?

To answer those who argue that grammar teaching is necessary, I would like you to engage in a thought experiment.

Imagine that I am having a party. There is music, snacks, drinks and many guests. All of the guests are my friends. I am delighted when you arrive.

"Hi! I'm so happy you could make it! Here, have a drink! Let me take you around and introduce you to some of my friends.

"This is Bob. He is a marine animal trainer. He's American and trained the dolphins in the Guangzhou Zoo.

"Here is Richard. He's a lawyer and the vice-president of the Guangzhou Law Association. He was one of my students.

"And this is Rauol. He is the manager of the golf course, he's from Holland.

"This is Helen. She's the Southern China manager for Cambridge University Press. She is from Hubei.

"Here is Zhou Jing. She is the general manager of Microsoft Technology Center in Guangzhou. She was one of my students and improved her English very quickly so she could attend a big Microsoft meeting in Seattle.

All of these are real people I know as friends and/or students.

OK, now a question. Who is Bob?

Maybe you don't remember.

I agree that a brief introduction to a grammar form, just like a brief introduction to someone at a party, is not going to hurt unless you mix up all the people you met. But I don't think it really does much to help you really know the grammar or be able to use the grammar.

You don't really know Bob. You don't know that the secret of his job is "hunger". You don't know he is from California. You don't know that he also worked in Taiwan and in Japan. You don't know that when he was in Japan he studied the ancient Japanese martial art of sword fighting and passed several tests to achieve mastery. You don't know that he lives with his lovely Chinese girlfriend who is also an animal trainer.

What if I didn't introduce you to Bob? What if you lived with Bob? What if you observed him while he worked? What if you went out to dinner with him and his girlfriend? What if you joined him as he practiced his sword technique with his Japanese tutor? Without any introductions, you would know Bob very well.

Sure, introduce me to your friends. It's not going to kill me. (Unless one of them is a killer.) But to know them I don't really need to have an introduction. I need to spend time with them, even live with them, to know them.

How students learn for tests

When our students take the big exams are the only questions they get right the ones the teacher "taught" them? I don't think so. I would like to know how effective is teacher "teaching" as compared to indirect learning.

I think they are answering some questions on the test correctly for items that they were not "taught". If so, then how did they learn them? I believe Comprehensible Input is playing a bigger role than we realize.

Krashen tells the story of how his French teacher wanted to only speak French to them and was explaining a grammar point, in French. Finally frustrated, she told them in English. However, her effort to explain it in French, all that French speaking to explain something, actually constituted Comprehensible Input for the students and helped their French.

Every time the teacher talks to the students in the L2 is Comprehensible Input. Teachers are naturals for adjusting their English speaking so students can understand them.

So between the teacher's speaking and the student's own study they are getting a lot of CI.

Perhaps the student is reading a business text and it is talking about international finance and the teacher wants the student to learn some language about stocks, bonds, interest rates, prime lending rate, etc. Perhaps the student has some degree of success in learning some of those terms but there are many things in the text that the student was not studying but was learning such as "carry on" when it says "banks cannot carry on making risky loans" or something like that.

Reverse engineering vocabulary learning

We hear a lot of advice about how to teach vocabulary, how to bring the mass of vocabulary to the student so the student has the right word when she needs it. But instead of looking at it from the mass to the useful word, let us look at it from the useful word to the mass. In other words, how did that student actually acquire that word?...a sort of lexical forensics, if you will.

I have been pondering the CET4 English test used in China. This is the most important English test in China and it's hard for Chinese to claim they know any useful amount of English if they haven't passed this test. (Following this test is the CET6 and CET8). I'm looking at an official sample test right now and have chosen a question at random to study. This is one line in a long paragraph and we know it's talking about home care for someone who is ill. This is a cloze test question and it goes like this:

The responsible one in the home ___ on with the rest of the care during the _interval_ between the nurse's visits.

(a) works (b) carries (c) looks (d) depends

The answer is "carries".

Now the question is, how did the student come to choose that word? What was the learning process that enabled that student to correctly choose that word over the others? Were those words in a vocabulary lesson? Were those words on the student's vocabulary list of words to memorize? How did our student acquire those words to be able to answer the question correctly? How did the student know she cannot say "...WORKS on with..." That sounds almost possible. How exactly did the student know it is impossible? What lesson was given to the student on this?

If we take a look at the correct word we can see in the American Heritage Dictionary there are many definitions or usages for the word "carry" plus six phrasal verbs with multiple uses as well, these being:

carry-45
carry off-2
carry out-3
carry over-7
carry a (or the) torch-1
carry the ball-1
carry the day-1

And...

carry on-4
To conduct; maintain: carry on a thriving business.
To engage in: carry on a love affair.
To continue without halting; persevere: carry on in the face of disaster. To behave in an excited, improper, or silly manner.


This makes a total of 64. Certainly, our student did not need to know every usage of "carry" to be able to choose it as the correct answer. But the student had to learn many of them. And how did she learn them, did the teacher teach them to the student?

My suspicion is that our student has not had English lessons in the multiple uses of the word "carry" that enabled her to answer correctly. Perhaps the student never had any lesson on the word "carry". I believe that once an elementary vocabulary has been reached, the vast bulk of learning takes place indirectly through vast amounts of input as suggested by Krashen in his theory of "Comprehensible Input".

Still more on error correction

On the TESL-L mailing list, a teacher asked the question below about error correction. As it seems to be something we're interested in, I'm including my reply. - dk


"I,m an English teacher in China. I'm teaching 2 classes with 56 students each. When I teach writing, I'll use differnt methods to encourage my students to write about their own ideas. To my joy, they like writing very much though it is hard work. However, I find it very difficult for me to correct their errors. I know fluency is more important, but it dosn't mean we can ignore accuracy. Error correcting will take lots of time and energy, and the students don't want to see their composition after I correect errors. Is there anybody who can help me use a kind of more efficient method?"


This is a common problem faced by many writing teachers. We could say it is even a trap because teachers feel obligated to this idea of correcting everything.

TRUSCOTT & ERROR CORRECTION

John Truscott famously or infamously, depending on what side of the debate you are standing on, has brought up research[1] indicating that grammar correction doesn't really help students at all. So, generally speaking, all time spent at correcting is time wasted.

Truscott is in the same vein of English learning as Krashen. Indeed, Krashen has referred to Truscott's research[2]. In this direction of English learning it is understood that students learn from indirect ways of teaching, things like Extensive Reading, that the students will absorb the language through massive exposure to it at a difficulty level of i+1.

After studying Truscott's paper, and even organizing a virtual seminar for him on the TEFL-China list[3] where we interviewed him for a week, I began to pay closer attention to how my students responded to corrections.

Personally, from observing my students carefully, I've seen that my students do respond to some corrections.

But to be effective in this area, we have to understand some things first.

UNDERSTANDING CORRECTION

Our students cannot have a lesson, or even a correction, and simply "know" it. They only begin to know it. All learning in an area as complex as language takes a lot of time and repetition.

Choose your targets. Don't try to correct everything. Correct what you think will be easiest for them to learn, that they are ready to learn. Remember, it is more like teaching a baby how to walk than teaching the fine points of running to an Olympic athlete. Teach only what can be learned or you are wasting your time and frustrating your student.

When you read over the papers, understand that this is the whole class speaking to you. Through their errors they are telling you what they need to be taught. In this way you can respond and give your class exactly what they need.

Group the corrections. Choose the Top 5 errors the students were making in their papers and show them how to do it correctly. Of course, some students may have not made those errors on the paper they submitted to you. But if they didn't make this error this time they may make it next time so teach it to all of them. Even if they know, more or less, how not to make that error, such instruction will strengthen their understanding. As mentioned before, students begin to know something and slowly understand it better and better.

DIY RESEARCH

Do your own research. If you want to see how responsive the students are to correction, after you have taught them the 5 main errors and how to avoid them, ask the students to return their papers to you and ask them to rewrite the assignment. Collect those papers and check them. You'll find that most of them will not repeat those errors, that they have learned from the correction. About two weeks or a month later, ask them to write the very same assignment yet again. You will find that a lot of the students will not make the same errors although many may have forgotten your correction lesson and are slipping again.

HASTE MAKES WASTE

Beware of the hurried writer. This guy really wastes so much teacher time. He's the guy who forgot the homework and before the homework is to be handed in just dashes off a quick paper. He makes a lot of mistakes that, if he took his time, he would not have made. He knows they are errors but they were errors made in haste. But he doesn't mind and he wants his paper to be corrected. The problem is, it takes your precious time to read his paper and deal with these errors. I refuse to check any papers unless the student has made it as perfect as he possibly can. Only then can I really help a student with what he doesn't know. Check the paper for really basic errors, simple words misspelled, obvious grammar mistakes. If you find such things, hand the paper back to the student and tell him to correct it himself until he thinks it is perfect. If you find someone hastily finishing a writing assignment make sure you don't accept it. If he doesn't have time to try to write it well, you don't have time to try to correct it.


[1] http://frenchgateway.coh.arizona.edu/F05/FREN579/truscott_grammar_writing.pdf
Also, see his webpage at his university:
http://www.hss.nthu.edu.tw/~fl/faculty/eng/John.html
Here you'll find the grammar paper plus lots of other aspects of his research into correction.

[2] http://sdkrashen.com/pipermail/krashen_sdkrashen.com/2005-April/000102.html
http://www.sdkrashen.com/articles/why_support/all.html
http://www.sdkrashen.com/articles/eta_paper/all.html

[3] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/teflchina
This is a group of about 900 English teachers in China or involved with teaching Chinese students. If you are a teacher in China you certainly would benefit from joining this list.

Making podcasts for low level English students

Here are a few ideas for making podcasts for your students:

1. Make recordings of your experiences like the time you met someone famous or thought you were going to die in an accident. Don't be boring but be simple.

2. Interview friends and other teachers. Don't rely on the friends to be simple enough or talk slowly enough. If the friend is using some language that you feel is too advanced for your students then jump in and ask your friend to define it or define it or restate it yourself.

3. Take your students on a tour to a favorite local haunt. There is a shopping mall here that is immensely popular with all students in this area. Record a tour of the location that they could listen to and use to follow your footsteps. Describe what you see, tell some funny stories and go in to the shop and talk to some clerks about their products. I did this with my notebook computer in my bag running Audacity with a microphone clipped on my shirt. Many mobile phones have recording functions on them. You can include some insights into some of the businesses or some of the fashions even if you have to look them up on the Internet. Check this out.

4. Make your case for your method. Students always want to know what is the best/fastest/easiest way to learn English. Explain how you are teaching your students. Some of our teaching methods are counter intuitive. I think Grammar-Translation makes a lot of sense but is not as good as Communicative Approach. If our teaching method is not always easily accepted by students you should take every opportunity to "sell" your teaching methods over and over.

5. Don't just make a recording on any subject but try to steer it in a way to augment units you are teaching in one of your courses. This way you can further the unit, even if you have to 'assign' the listening item, or you can use it as a collection of materials students can listen to on a voluntary basis. For example, if you have a unit discussing Human Resources you can interview a friend about their experience in hiring or with working with colleagues.

6. Record your lessons. This is normally quite boring but it can be very effective if you just extract some of the jewels, ancedotes you tell your students, special tips on learning English, fun facts, a story about your travels, etc.

I am also trying some projects along this line and am starting to post them at GCAST.

Teaching, learning and "concept pods"

One friend told me that, as a child, he mistook the line from the old Christmas song which goes, "While shepherds WATCHED THEIR FLOCKS by night..." and always ang "While shepherds WASHED THEIR SOCKS by night..."

But I think that we can say that incidental learning actually produces massive results. A tremendous amount of learning is taking place without it being taught, not only new language patterns but reinforcement and greater development of language already acquired. And I think we can say that nearly all of this learning is accurate.

This is where Mert Bland's Concept Pod Theory comes in. It starts as a nucleus of one single idea of a word. Over a period of time more and more understanding and definition and application for the word is added through a vast number of contacts and encounters with the word and experiences attached to the word. It's something like a snowball effect as more and more ideas get stuck on the word and our understanding of the word grows.

Christine Tierney is right. Some of it needs to be corrected if it is mistaken when acquired. Thus, direct teaching has a role to play in correcting bits and pieces of this massive amount of material we have not learned correctly.

Now Christine Tierney's students' word, "firstable", was a concept nonetheless. They had a clear idea of what they were trying to express with that word and the concept was valid. Thus, I think according to Mert's idea of a Concept Pod, the Concept Pod for that word was begun. They had ideas of how to use this word and how not to use it. It's complex growth had begun. However, a bit of correction was needed to the Concept Pod to realize that actually the correct thing to say is "first of all", not "firstable". On the other hand, perhaps we are watching the birth of a new word in the English language.[1]

Here in China, almost all students have trouble with the word "colleague". They want to say "col-lea-gue" as opposed to "col-league".

As Krashen says, "The study of grammar has value, however: Even those who are well-read may have small gaps in their writing competence, and conscious knowledge of some grammar rules can be helpful in filling some of these gaps (e.g. the it’s/its distinction)."

Proponents of the value of indirect learning (Comprehensible Input, Extensive Reading, what I call "Extensive Contact", etc) are not saying that all direct teaching should stop and all learning should be done indirectly. It's just that we realize the massive amount of language our students learn without it being directly taught and also realize the difficulty students have to learn even simple language rules that are directly taught, so we raise the question if "direct instruction" should support efforts towards "indirect learning" and not the other way around.

[1] http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/read/WORDS/2000-03/0952827010

Students learn "untaught" language

Students do learn and fluently use language that is "untaught" to them. They do this through Comprehensible Input. Although Jack Richards does provide models of "yeah" in his dialogs he doesn't "teach" students to use it.

I don't think that we can attribute the widespread use of "yeah" to Jack Richards, Interchange books or any other practice of direct teaching. It is an "untaught" language feature.

Another example is what Jack Richards[1], in discussing the nature of conversation, calls conversational routines. Examples Richards gives are:

This one's on me.
I don't believe a word of it.
I don't get the point.
You look great today.
What will you have to drink?
Nearly time. Got everything?
Check please!
After you.
Guess I'll be making a move.
I see what you mean.
Let me think about it.
Just looking, thanks.
I'll be with you in a minute.
It doesn't matter.
No harm done.

How do students learn these things? They are examples of untaught learning. These sorts of examples clearly show how effective Comprehensible Input can be.

[1] Jack Richards, The Language Teaching Matrix, Conversationally speaking, p.75, Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Is English learning golf?

At teacher compared learning various sports to practicing and drilling in English learning when he said, "This is like saying that the only way for a goalie to get better at soccer is by playing soccer games. Golf players should never go to driving ranges, because they can't get a sense of the lie of the land there. Tennis players should never practice against a wall because the wall won't spin the ball the way another player will. Baseball players should spurn hitting practice because it lacks the context of the position of the players."

No, I don't think it's the same. Can we really compare becoming proficient in English to becoming proficient in sports? Wouldn't we say that English communication is infinitly more complex than sports?

Take golf, for example, the number of variations for a putt are highly limited compared to the number of variations in expressing something in English. In fact, many skills in sports are dependant on the player being able to replicate the motions the same way every time.

That is why repetitious practice can help players. They practice their swing over and over and over until they are like a machine. Of course, in the game, the lay of the land may require some judgements in how to hit the ball but those judgments are calculated into the stroke that the player has mechanically practiced.

Perhaps there are only a few ways to sink a putt but there can be a hundred ways to explain you are going to the store to buy some sugar. I'm sure Tiger Woods would disagree but I believe language is more complex than golf and they cannot be learned in the same way.

Drilling and repeating is not effective. Students can learn English by using English following Krashen's theories of Comprehensible Input.

Teacher knows "Father Knows Best"!

I have a sort of Krashenistic view on learning. I like to have tons of material to offer my students and let them select what particular items appeal to them. Although Krashen is focused on reading books, I think in our multimedia world we can extend that to films, TV shows, podcasts, etc. One problem is finding enough material to offer that is i + 1.

Here is a website with some "old time radio" shows. The English is about the same speed as VOA Special English but even slower, clearer and simpler and much more so compared to normal speech or movies. It would be suitable for mid to upper-intermediate students. Not all of the shows are at the same level.

Below is a sample of the dialog from "Father Knows Best" , an old radio show but very popular. Although some proper nouns are unique the rest of the dialog is fairly basic and actually very repetitive, all of which contributes greatly to comprehensibility.

Following the sample is a textual analysis, a frequency list of words used in the sample and the vocabulary levels of the words.

See how accessible this language is. Except for "poultry breeder", "gazette", "mining" and "Harvard", I think intermediate students could understand nearly everything.

Jim: Margaret
Margaret: Yes, Dear?
Jim: What’s this?
Margaret: What’s what, Dear?
Jim: This.
Margaret: Oh, that. That’s a magazine.
Jim: I know it’s a magazine but what are we doing with a copy of the “Poultry Breeder’s Bulletin and Gazette”.
Margaret: Well, we had our choice between that and “Mining Engineers Monthly Manual”.
Jim: So you took the “Poultry Breeder’s Bulletin and Gazette”?
Margaret: Naturally, we wouldn’t have any use for a magazine about mining engineers, would we?
Jim: Margaret.
Margaret: Yes, Dear.
Jim: Have you developed a sudden interest in poultry?
Margaret: No.
Jim: Poultry breeders?
Margaret: Don’t be ridiculous.
Jim: Well, you don’t just go out and buy a thing like this without some reason.
Margaret: I didn’t go out. He brought it here.
Jim: Who did?
Margaret: Well, I don’t know his name but he was a very nice boy and he’s working his way through Harvard...
Jim: You mean...we bought a subscription for this thing?
Margaret: It was only four dollars, Jim. If I knew you were going to make all this fuss...
Jim: I’m not making a fuss. It’s just that I don’t see any reason to throw money away on things we don’t need.
Margaret: People ALWAYS need magazines.
Jim: Alright, but why did you have to choose the “Poultry Breeder’s Bulletin and Gazette”?
Margaret: I told you, Dear. It’s because we couldn’t use “Mining Engineers Monthly Manual”.

Find more Father Knows Best at RADIO LOVERS.

==========================

Here are the vocabulary level statistics, the percentage of words in each level. For contrast I included vocabulary levels for NY Times and Voice of America Special English. (These levels could vary as the samplings I used were not very large):

K1 Words - the list of the 1000 most common words:
84.07% (NYT 71.95, VOASE 77.02)

K2 Words - the list of the 1001-2000 most common words:
2.65% (NYT 3.96, VOASE 5.18)

AWL Words - the Academic Word List:
0.88% (NYT 8.52, VOASE 4.76)

Off-List Words:
12.39% (NYT 15.56, 11.94)

==========================

Family Word List
family_[number of tokens]

K1 Words:
about_[1] all_[1] always_[1] and_[6] any_[2] away_[1] be_[13] because_[1] between_[1] boy_[1] bring_[1] but_[3] buy_[2] choose_[2] could_[1] dear_[4] develop_[1] do_[9] dollar_[1] for_[2] four_[1] go_[3] have_[4] he_[5] here_[1] i_[7] if_[1] in_[1] interest_[1] it_[5] just_[2] know_[3] like_[1] make_[2] mean_[1] miner_[3] money_[1] month_[2] name_[1] nature_[1] need_[2] no_[1] not_[9] of_[1] oh_[1] on_[1] only_[1] out_[2] people_[1] reason_[2] see_[1] so_[1] some_[1] take_[1] tell_[1] the_[3] thing_[3] this_[9] through_[1] throw_[1] to_[3] use_[2] very_[1] way_[1] we_[8] well_[3] what_[4] who_[1] why_[1] with_[1] without_[1] work_[1] would_[2] yes_[2] you_[7]
all_[1] away_[1] boy_[1] bring_[1] buy_[2] could_[1] dear_[4] go_[3] here_[1] know_[3] like_[1] make_[2] money_[1] month_[2] need_[2] only_[1] see_[1] take_[1] tell_[1] thing_[3] through_[1] throw_[1] very_[1] way_[1] well_[3] work_[1] yes_[2]

K2 Words:
copy_[1] engine_[3] nice_[1] sudden_[1] nice_[1] sudden_[1]

AWL Words:
AWL families: [1:1:2] manual_[2]

Off-list words:
alright_[1] breeder_[3] breeders_[1] bulletin_[3] fuss_[2] gazette_[3] harvard_[1] jim_[1] magazine_[3] magazines_[1] margaret_[2] poultry_[5] ridiculous_[1] subscription_[1]

The problem with teaching grammar

A teacher asked me: "...how else will a non-native speaker approach the levels of accurately applied grammar needed to pass international standard oral English exams except by studying grammar?"

Well, I would suggest not that way.

Today I was speaking with Jack, an upper intermediate student at an American company, and he was telling me about Tom Hanks and that "she" has made many great movies.

Why did Jack, an upper intermediate student, call Tom Hanks a she? Because he was unfamiliar with the grammar rule? Could the problem be remedied if he had 26 people sitting around him telling him what grammar errors he made?

Immediately, I pointed out the mistake to Jack but in the course of the following conversation and with me continually pointing it out to him he only got it right about 50% of the time. All of you on this list have students like that, don't you? What's the problem with these students? Are they stupid? Are they lazy? I don't think so.

Krashen is not against teaching grammar. He thinks it is useful to round out the training of a student who may be having a particular problem with a particular grammar point.
Some people are better than others at using their Monitor to correct their grammar. Heavy Monitor use hinders fluency. And even for the best of the Monitor users the efficiency of self-monitoring is very limited.

Many teachers will disagree with me but I think some rote learning and rule explanations can be helpful but not necessary to get a learner off the ground. But after the beginner stages the learner will need a lot of comprehensible input.

Then the teacher challenged me: "And is there any evidence, Dave, that CI has demonstrably improved Chinese students with their use of pronouns?"

Please note, I was only using the "he/she" to show in a simple way the difficulty of students employing even the simplest of grammar rules when speaking.

This is not only my observation and not limited to pronoun usage. As another teacher puts it,

"EFL students in Taiwan have studied English grammar extensively. However, it is interesting to note that most of these students make routine mistakes on structures which they know the rules for when speaking.

"Chinese students will, during classroom conversation, regularly omit the s that must be attached to the third – person singular form of verbs. The students indeed know the rules governing the third – person singular, as they have studied English grammar ad nauseam in high school.

"Unfortunately, most of these learners are not able to apply the rules during conversation. Mistakes include, "He live with his sister" or "She go to work at 8 o’clock." Lightbown (Brown, 2000: 275) states that, 'Knowing a language rule does not mean one will be able to use it in communicative interaction.' Chinese students have learned and know many of the formal grammatical rules; however, they have not truly acquired the structures."

Furthermore, Krashen points out that,

"Research consistently shows that conscious grammatical knowledge has a limited function, acting only as an editor of what is already produced.

"In support of this position are studies showing that even advanced students with a great deal of interest and experience with grammar are able to access only a small amount of their grammatical knowledge when actually using language. Even when students are deliberately focused on form and taught rules carefully, the impact of grammar study is weak."