By Betty Azar
Author, Azar Grammar Series
betty@azargrammar.com

I’ve been contacted by an IEP program director outside the U.S. with an all-too-familiar dilemma: how to change entrenched ideas about the role of grammar in the curriculum. She is looking for guidance on how to help her faculty members find the right balance of direct grammar instruction and experiential teaching to meet students’ needs. She writes:

Dear Ms. Azar,

I am currently the Director of an IEP program, but I was an ESL instructor for many years. I have a dilemma and request guidance.

Our IEP is located outside the United States; therefore, most of the students are exposed to English within the classroom and not in the community. All of the students in our program have had English grammar in the public government or private schools. On the initial placement exam prior to admission and in the diagnostics test administered the first week of class, the students fare better in the grammar skills test than in writing, reading, or listening skills tests, substantially better. For example, a typical grammar skills test score for the lowest level course on placement is 65% and in the diagnostic test is 68-70%. On the writing skills test, the students will score 48% on the placement test and 25% on the diagnostic tests. The students have the same placement and diagnostic results in reading and listening as in the writing. The results of the testing appear to indicate the students are aware of grammar rules and patterns but cannot apply the rules and patterns to their productions in writing.

Students attend 20 hours a week, four hours a day, of classroom instruction in reading, writing, listening, speaking, vocabulary and grammar. Additionally, the students are required to attend one hour of lab daily. The lab is equipped with interactive online grammar program and vocabulary builder software. The reading and writing courses use a grammar correction text and the listening and speaking use either the black, red, or blue Azar.

All of the faculty have at minimum a masters in TESOL or a related discipline. I attended the 2008 TESOL convention in New York and I attended the panel discussion with Azar, Swan, and Folse. I shared the panel’s comments on grammar teaching in relation to communicative teaching and grammar teaching in general (the communicative approach is only one of several methodologies used in our classrooms). Some of the instructors hold fast to the notion they must complete every grammar exercise in the book in order for the students to acquire and learn English language. While I recognize the need for grammar instruction to enhance student learning of English through the use of structure and patterns, I have not been able to convince some of the faculty that 300 plus pages of fill-in-the-blank practices does not result in student learning how to apply the grammar to speaking or writing. What I have been unable to instill in the instructors is the need to prioritize the grammar skills needed within their classroom for their student population and disregard exercises that are not essential. I have not been able to persuade some of the instructors that grammar terminology is not an outcome of the course; therefore, terminology is not a tested skill.

As the director, I can mandate what is to be covered or not covered in the classroom but I do not want to micromanage the classroom instruction nor control the curriculum delivered by the instructor who is better able to judge the needs of the students within their classroom. I do need the students to meet the learning outcomes of the course and the program. Grammar terminology is not an outcome but a working ability of standard American English in essays and presentations is. Many of our students do not meet the learning outcomes in speaking, reading, and writing because of the amount of grammar taught. We use another version of the placement exam as the exit exam, and find once again the grammar skills benchmarks increase more than reading, speaking, or writing. What are your suggestions?

Thank you in advance for your attention.

Margaret Combs
Director, Intensive English Program
American University of Kuwait

I’ve consulted with a friend and longtime colleague whose areas of expertise are well suited to addressing Margaret’s quandary. I’ll post her response next week. In the meantime, I’d like to hear your thoughts. How would you advise Margaret?

Please leave a comment or email me at betty@azargrammar.com if you’d like to publish your response as a blog article.

By Ela Newman
Instructor in Developmental Writing and in ESL
University of Texas at Brownsville
newjgea@aol.com

“No, no, definitely no comma here,” insisted my student Tania, who immediately followed her confident statement with an enthusiastic, “We do need that information to know which tourists we’re talking about!” Her group mates nodded in wholehearted agreement. “Yes, Yes! It’s not extra information. It’s necessary information,” added Claudia, who, out of sheer excitement, almost sprang out of her chair.

Who would have thought that working on rules governing the punctuation of defining and non-defining relative clauses could generate such excitement in nineteen-year-olds? All right so we’re not talking El Dorado, but such rules can be quite valuable discoveries to most students.

For me, allowing students to become “grammar explorers” brings several benefits:

1. Because of their “mystery-solving” quality, discovery-based activities can capture and hold students’ attention as effectively as most interactive presentations can, and they demonstrate to students that working with grammar does not have to be dull;

2. Because of students’ personal involvement in exploratory tasks, discovery techniques help them remember rules more easily;

3. Because of their analytical character,these techniques actually show students ways to approach other, unfamiliar grammatical structures;

4. And, perhaps most importantly, because of the independent work requirements integral to discovery tasks, these activities prove to students that they can recognize a rule by themselves, and that they can be active “explorers” of the language even outside the classroom.

I recently came across a very informative article by Pavel V. Sosoyev entitled “Integrative L2 Grammar Teaching: Exploration, Explanation and Expression“ in which he not only discusses the benefits of discovery techniques, but also shares a sample lesson as well as a questionnaire which he created to explore his students’ views on inductive learning.

And here are four of my own discovery-based lessons:

• Lesson on the Causative “Have”
• Lesson on Punctuating Defining and Non-Defining Adjective Clauses
• Lesson on Reduced Clauses of Reason
• Lesson on Expressing Cause and Effect

It seems to me that discovery techniques have various merits, but they are rather time-consuming and I ordinarily manage to use them only intermittently in a course.

Which grammar structures or concepts do you think might be taught naturally by way of discovery techniques? Do you use exploratory techniques in your classroom? If so, have you found them to be effective usually?

By Ela Newman
Instructor in Developmental Writing and in ESL
University of Texas at Brownsville
newjgea@aol.com

By Ela Newman

Instructor in Developmental Writing and in ESL

University of Texas at Brownsville

newjgea@aol.com

Can we use drills in real and meaningful contexts? Is there a way to avoid rote repetition?

At one point, students are practicing the structure something needs V-ing, and they have to repeat the sentence My washing machine needs fixing a few times during a call to an appliance store because the call keeps getting transferred to different departments of the store. I guess that’s something like an instance of “the run around.”

Activity 2: You Look Different

In these activities, the new structure is repeated out of necessity in a “psychologically authentic” context. It feels natural. There is a “legitimate” reason for a student to repeat the same sentence a few times. It appears to be a good way to practice structures which are genuinely new to students, and could precede activities which allow for greater variation in responses.

By Dorothy Zemach
ESL Materials Writer, Editor, Teacher Trainer
Eugene, Oregon
Email: zemach at comcast dot net

The first time I studied a foreign language was in 5th grade, when my family lived in Geneva, Switzerland. My brother and I attended a private school where we essentially learned French all day, except when we were pulled out for sewing and needlework (girls) or shop (boys) or sports (everyone).

Fresh off the plane, my brother and I began at the beginning: the alphabet, simple greetings, numbers, colors, then verb conjugations.

We completed one lesson in the textbook each day, and the next day were called individually to the blackboard to take a quiz, either oral or written on the board. We were graded instantly, in front of the class.

Classwork consisted mainly of copying out verb conjugations a number of times, completing written exercises, memorizing vocabulary lists, and answering surprise drill questions fired out by the teacher when we least expected it.

Life in the ‘Language Lab’

Every now and then we went off to a dark little room—I guess some precursor to the “language lab”—where we’d watch filmstrips that advanced one frame at a time. A slide would come up, we’d listen to the French, repeat it in chorus, and *beep*! The next slide would come.

Years later, when I was in graduate school, it seemed fashionable to mock the audio-lingual method, rote memorization, drills, choral repetitions, and the teacher-centered classroom. Certainly a lot of what people were saying about a student-centered, communicative classroom did sound more appealing. A gentler, more human approach. Empowering. And yet… and yet… I did learn French, fluently. You could argue that some of that could have been due to my being 11 and living in a French-speaking environment for five months. But to this day I remember those film strips down to the word—and that was 34 years ago (oh, go ahead, do the math, I don’t mind).

• Où est-ce que vous habitez, Jacques? (*beep*!)
• J’habite rue de la Poste (*beep*!)
• En face du cinéma. (*beep*!)

And yes, I have the accent and intonation down too. A frequent criticism of the audio-lingual method is that students can’t substitute freely and correctly with the patterns to make original sentences; yet that certainly wasn’t true for me or my brother.

More Fun, Less Learning

Japanese was my second foreign language. I studied for one semester at a college in Oregon. Our teacher had us memorize a dialogue every day, practice repeatedly with a partner, and recite it in class the next day for a grade. Later, in Japan, I took classes that were much more communicative. And while they were more fun, I never seemed to make any actual progress with learning the language. Even after living there for five years, the vocabulary and patterns I know best are those I learned in the US from constant drilling and memorization.

I later watched my husband struggle with his Japanese class. “What do you want to learn?” asked the teacher. My husband asked for a lesson on food because he was in charge of the grocery shopping. The teacher obligingly handed out a list of what must have been every vegetable ever eaten in Japan, as well as many that have never crossed its shores, and then asked the class (in Japanese), “What are your favorite dishes?” Of course no one could answer, since no one knew the words “favorite” or “dishes, ” let alone how to describe them using only a list of ingredients. The class continued with more “discussion questions” about food, and my husband came home very frustrated.

The Payoff Is Worth the Price

I asked him what he would have preferred. He said (yes, my husband Mr. Visual Learner and General Touchy-Feely Guy) that he would have liked a few short dialogues to memorize and then to have recited them for the entire lesson, doing just simple substitutions, until he had the material memorized cold. He conceded that it would have been dull—but said the payoff of learning the material would have been more than worth it.

Now, I’m not advocating a boring classroom, or saying there’s no place for open-ended discussion or even “free conversation.” But I do think that when communicative language teaching came into fashion, the baby might have been thrown out with the bathwater. If our students want to learn English, then really, what is going to please them most is actually learning English—even if that means some drills, repetitions, and memorization, or even the teacher leading the class sometimes (imagine!). I don’t underestimate the part a relaxed and enjoyable classroom atmosphere can play in a student’s mood and motivation. However, it’s OK to trade some momentary fun in class today for students really knowing some language at the end of the course.

By Tamara Jones
EFL Instructor, SHAPE Language Center, Belgium
jonestamara@hotmail.com

The holidays can be a lonely time to be away from one’s family, so for our first Christmas in Belgium, my husband and I were delighted to host a small dinner party. The guests included a TESOL professional and friend on vacation from the USA, my French instructor, Sandy, and her English partner, Paul. As we finished up the ham, Paul initiated an interesting conversation about the language of language learning.

Voice? Tense? Adverb Phrase? Huh?

Paul had recently started studying in one of Sandy’s classes, and he said that he found her use of grammatical terms intimidating. In a previous blog, I mentioned that Sandy occasionally resorts to English to give precise definitions of vocabulary and for descriptions of complex grammatical concepts. However, for Paul, Sandy’s use of terms like infinitive, passive, and the past progressive actually clouds the issue more than it clarifies it.

I was surprised to learn that, in spite of all I had believed about the traditional nature of the British education system, Paul had never learned to diagram a sentence. In fact, as we went around the table, only Sandy, who had been educated in France, and my husband, a product of the public school system in South Dakota, USA, had ever been exposed in a meaningful way to the nitty gritty of English grammar.

Where IS my verb?

After our conversation, though, I wondered how many of my fellow French students felt the same way as Paul. More importantly, I wondered how many of my EFL students were mystified by my use of grammar terms. When I ask them, Where is your verb? do they wonder what I am talking about? Have we made things much more complicated for our students by forcing them to learn a separate set of vocabulary useful only when dissecting sentences?

Several language teachers believe that, indeed, we should avoid confusing metalanguage. On Debra Garcia’s blog, Teaching ESL to Adults, she cautions us against using metalanguage, suggesting that we “go directly to the target language.” (Garcia, 2008). In an intriguing strand on Dave Sperling’s forum for teachers, several language teachers agree that they prefer to steer clear of grammar terminology so as not to “burden [students] with unnecessary vocabulary and bamboozle them.” Furthermore, at a recent Maryland TESOL conference, a speaker referred to grammar metalanguage as “bombastic and misleading.” (Nelson, J. , Making Grammar a Tool, not a Topic, Presented at the Maryland TESOL Conference, 2007)

Use What Works

However, in my experience teaching both ESL and EFL, most students actually seem to appreciate a quick, metalanguage-heavy explanation to a longer, roundabout one. My students from Asia, South America, and Europe seem to have a much better background in grammar terminology than the average North American or Brit, so why not use what works for them? In fact, recently when working with an Italian couple during their private lesson, I kept referring to the -ing form. The students were totally confused until the wife said, “Oh, you mean the present participle!”

My conclusion, based on nothing more scientific than personal observation, is that most international students are much better equipped to deal with grammar terms than native English speakers. I will continue to do what appears to work best for my students and fling grammar metalangauge about in the classroom. Although I need to pay careful attention for the “deer-caught-in-headlights” stares of students who just aren’t getting it, I don’t want to underestimate my students either.

Having said all of that, I hardly consider myself an expert on this topic. I would be very interested to hear what others’ opinions are. Post a comment to agree, disagree or share your experience.

By Maria Spelleri
Instructor, Department of Language and Literature
Manatee Community College, Florida, USA

As the saying of disputed origin goes, we remember only 10% of what we read, 20% of what we hear, 30% of what we see, 50% of what we see and hear, and 90% of what we do and say.

I don’t know how accurate that really is. Nonetheless, every version of this adage shows that retention peaks with the modalities that involve our greatest participation- movement and speech.

Can we learn a language as passive observers? I remember a discussion in a teacher training class about Krashen and the Input Hypothesis. We wondered if a person could learn a second language if that person never spoke a single word of the language, never wrote, never produced any output at all, but got rich input at just the right i + 1 level. Would it be possible to acquire a second language?

Or do we have to be active participants? Do we have to involve movement and speech for efficient language learning? My personal second language learning experiences reflect the saying at the beginning of this post. What has stuck with me over time is the language that I did and said – not the language that I read in a book as I tried to self-study, nor the language I heard a teacher say in class.

Years ago, I took a Spanish class where the instructor basically lectured to us in English and smattered in some Spanish words. We followed along in the text book and listened. It was normal to pass an entire hour without the chance to utter a word in Spanish. Not only was I bored to tears, but even in the immediate weeks after, I had ZERO retention of anything from that class.

My French class, on the other hand, became my model of good language teaching and proved to me the power of doing. The instructor loaded the class with cultural activities that we learned about and participated in while speaking French. I learned how to play roulette on a mini-roulette wheel in the classroom- in French. Along the way, I learned some colors, numbers, and a rich vocabulary like “No more bets!” I participated in fencing classes- in French. I learned body parts and movements (in addition to vocabulary for blade types and protective gear!) We went to French restaurants and prepared French food. We discussed pictures in French fashion magazines and tasted wine, as we learned adjectives from “ridiculous” (some fashion) to “smooth” (some wine). (It was night school…. it was the 80s……at least we didn’t mix the alcohol with the gambling!)

Back then, I had no urgent need to learn French. Yet, twenty years later, I remember the vast majority of what I learned in that class. In contrast, a few years after the French class, I had a lot of motivation and a real need to learn Spanish. From that class, I remember nada. Almost.

Thankfully, it is the memory of that happy, Gallic experience that guides my classroom teaching and prompts me to infuse all my classes with doing. We might not be playing 21 and sipping Manhattans, but doing is also standing up and shaking hands in a lively role play, or asking a student to lead a class activity from the front of the room. Doing is when a student teaches others origami or leads the class in a jumping, stomping Lebanese dance.

Engaged, focused students who no longer watch the clock. What more could a teacher want? The proof is in the doing.

By Ela Newman
Instructor in Developmental Writing and in ESL
University of Texas at Brownsville
newjgea@aol.com

My early excitement about learning English was extinguished in a flash. I was nine years old and eager to learn English, but my teacher was dreadfully uninspiring, bored with teaching, and oblivious to the effects of his sarcasm.

The French teacher described in David Sedaris’s “Me Talk Pretty One Day” is, I imagine, the female equivalent of my teacher.

After my first English class, I was convinced that:

• I should be ashamed of every mistake I make. (Yes, my teacher would sigh and roll his eyes at our mistakes.)
• My errors are funny to others, so it is better to be quiet than to make a fool of myself. (Yes, my teacher would comment sarcastically on pupils’ errors and the class would laugh.)
• I have no talent for learning languages. (My teacher would explain grammatical structures and I wouldn’t be able to use many of them correctly the first time.)

Many language learners feel vulnerable or mentally limited when their communication skills, so essential to adult life, are reduced to simple sentences, single words, even gestures. I find that learners’ apprehension can be lowered if they are made to feel genuinely comfortable in the classroom, but also if they are informed about the ins and outs of the learning processes that they are experiencing.

In my classroom, I do three things to create an atmosphere conducive to learning:

• Instill a sense of safety. I try to give my students senses of safety and confidence so that they feel free to experiment with language.
• Turn errors into welcome learning opportunities. I try to get my students to view their errors and mistakes not as failures which should make them ashamed or which deserve ridicule, but as clues to their unique language abilities.
• Instill a sense of progress and accomplishment. I encourage my students to be patient with their own learning processes. I create activities that will allow me to demonstrate to students that by the end of every class, they are capable of expressing themselves a little bit better, and that their efforts have paid off.

Luckily for David Sedaris, his French teacher’s comments–”Every day spent with you is like having a cesarean section” and “You exhaust me with your foolishness and reward my efforts with nothing but pain”–turned out to be motivating for him. Entertaining as it is, his story, as far as I know, presents a rare picture.