Nine commonly made errors in L2- grammar instruction and how to address them

Gianfranco Conti, Phd (Applied Linguistics), MA (TEFL), MA (English Lit.), PGCE (Modern Languages and P.E.) Grammar teaching, Uncategorized

Please note: this post was co-authored with Steve Smith of The Language Teacher Toolkit and Dylan Vinales of Garden International School

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  1. Introduction: Why grammar instruction is often ineffective – a Skill-building perspective

Based on my professional eperience and on my readers’ accounts, much ML and EFL grammar instruction in the UK and, I suspect, across the world, is undermined by a number of shortcomings that stem from a misunderstanding of grammar acquisition and/or ‘sketchy’ curriculum design. In this post I discuss nine of the most serious shortcomings I have observed in 25 years of ML and EFL teaching. Please note that each of the points I make below is valid only if one espouses Skill-theory based theories of L2 language acquisition (also referred to in the literature as Skill-building or Cognitive Code approaches). If you operate within the C.I. / T.P.R.S. paradigm, you are very likely to disagree with every single one of the points I raise below.

  1. The starting-from-zero approach

More often than not, the teaching of a given grammar structure occurs ‘from scratch’, so to speak, with the students having had no previous exposure to it. However, learning – any kind of learning – is much more effective when the students can relate new input to past experiences. This is true of language learning too. That is why the ‘planting the seed’ technique or ‘anaphoric recycling’, facilitates and enhances grammar learning.

‘Planting the seed’ refers to planning the curriculum in such a way that, if you aim to teach, say, the present perfect in week 7 of term 2, the students will have come across several instances of its usage in aural and written texts throughout the preceding six weeks or even earlier – as ‘peripheral’ items. These previous encounters will have provided you and the students, in week 7, with plenty of past experiences of handling the target structure to draw upon and, in many instances, all you will have to do is help the learner connect the dots.

This technique works best when the students are – on each previous encounter – encouraged to notice the ‘seeds’ you are ‘planting’ and are provided with cognitive support when processing them. This does not mean that the ‘seed’ must become the main focus of the lesson – not at all. Nor does this mean that you are going to explain in detail how the structure works every time the students come across it; that would entirely defy the purpose of seed-planting. What I mean is that the unknown structure should not constitute a challenging obstacle to learner comprehension/execution of the task-at-hand. So, for instance, if you are ‘planting the seed’ of the present perfect, you may want to underline, write in bold or colour-code every instance of the present perfect in the written texts you give your students – to promote ‘noticing – whilst providing the translation in brackets or in a ‘help’ box.

You can do this with listening too, through jigsaw listening activities, for instance, in which the ‘planted’ structure is made to stand out through one of the above typographic devices so as for the students to pay more attention to it as they process the aural input.

  1. Minimal receptive practice and the ‘PPP-in-one-lesson obsession’

This refers to one of the greatest shortcomings of grammar instruction. Most grammar lessons unfold through a PPP (presentation, practice, production) sequence which goes way too quickly from the explanation of a grammar point to production. However, a very important stage, which plays a decisive role in grammar acquisition is nearly always missed out: receptive practice through the aural and written medium.

This hyper-neglected stage is very important, especially for the less confident of our learners, for the following reasons; (a) receptive processing is less cognitive challenging than production, especially when effective support/scaffolding is provided; (b) if the texts in use contain language the students are familiar with, they provide old material to hook the new items to, which may facilitate retention; (c) it models the application of the target structure in context, not in a communicative vacuum (as the sentences used by teachers and course-books as examples do); (d) reading allows more time for students to process the new information – production puts much more cognitive and emotional pressure on them; (e) aural modelling through listening – when the transcript of the track is visible to the learners- can be valuable in preventing many decoding/pronunciation errors which may impede acquisition – going back to the English present perfect scenario: think of the pronunciation of ‘I have read’ as opposed to ‘I read’; of ‘I have written’ versus ‘I write’. In French, I have significantly reduced the voicing of ‘-ent’ in the third person plural of the present indicative (e.g. ils parlent) by extensive modelling through listening practice.

Often teachers feel they have to get students to apply the target structure in production before the end of the same lesson in which they first introduce it. It is seen as evidence that ‘progression’ has occurred. However, the learning of any grammar structure – intended as its full automatization – requiring months of practice (see my article on grammar acquisition here), whether students ‘go productive’ or not by the end of the first lesson is not important. The more receptive practice the students actually get, the better. Having every single student leave the room feeling they have fully understood how the target structure works is better than having half of them go out having experienced problems using it in writing or speaking.

In conclusion, give the students lots of modelling of contextualized target-structure usage through receptive practice through lots of reading and listening activities, grammaticality judgment tests and metalinguistic tasks (e.g. Why is X used here and Y there? How many irregular forms can you spot here? Based on the text, how are adverbs used with the present perfect?). Let them experiment with the target structure in oral production in the next lesson.

  1. Building knowledge – not skill

If you were a football coach you would not teach someone how to dribble by simply explaining verbally to them how to do it, right? You would want them to try it out in front of you, give them some feedback on their performance and then get them to try again and practise extensively until you are sure they got it right.More importantly, you would not expect them to do it rightly the next time around – unless they are particularly gifted. You would know from your own experience, that it will take lots of practice before they will finally crack it – if they crack it at all. Finally, you would not assess whether they learnt what you taught them through a quiz at the end of a training session; you would want to see them play a match!

Yet this is what many teachers do when they teach their students grammar. They explain how a grammar rule works; give them a few examples and practise it through a few gap-fill exercises and maybe translations. Another classic is to get them to apply the target structure in some form of written production (e.g. to describe pictures or to write a creative or discursive essay). However, by and large, the typical way they assess uptake will be through a cloze test or a multiple choice quiz – Kahoot being the plenary of election in the UK, these days. A comparison with the football coaching scenario outlined above will clearly show how futile and ineffective this way of teaching grammar is; how little validity assessment carried out through quizzes and gap-fills is. Yet nearly everyone does it.

What this kind of teaching does is working on declarative knowledge of the language; on the understanding of the rules of the L2-system, but it does not bring about acquisition. Acquisition of a grammar rule can only occur through extensive practice across all four skills: Listening, Reading, Speaking and Writing. All four of them. And we may only say a grammar rule is acquired when it can be performed rapidly and correctly under Real Operating Conditions (i.e. in real life situations, whilst performing a real life task). Hence, grammar teaching needs to involve students in activities promoting fluency. But how do we achieve this?

Exactly like a football coach teaching his students how to dribble; first by modelling the use of the target structure to the learners through numerous contextualised examples (the receptive phase discussed above). Then by getting them to practise it in highly structured tasks (e.g. verb drills, gap-fills, easy written and oral translations, role plays). When the students are ready, the teacher will require them to carry out tasks which become less and less structured and pose greater cognitive challenge (e.g. oral picture tasks; solving a real-life problem based on a given scenario and prompts). The process will culminate in the performance of unstructured oral or written interaction under serious time constraints (e.g. an impromptu conversation with questions designed to elicit learner deployment of the target structure).

As one can imagine, this process involves lots of real-life oral and written communication aiming at building skill as opposed to creating knowledge – which sadly accounts for most of the grammar teaching I have witnessed in 25 hours of classroom observations.

Only extensive skill-building practice can bring about acquisition, not a few quizzes and gap-fills or corrections scribbled out in our students’ books or a list of targets. I was disappointed recently at seeing a great grammar lesson packed with oral communicative practice I observed end with a Kahoot; the answers to a multiple choice quiz will not tell us anything about the extent to which a grammar structure has been acquired.

  1. Compartmentalized learning

When the language curriculum is based on the course-book, grammar teaching is often ‘compartmentalized’, so to speak. The teaching of a specific structure is confined to a given unit or sub-unit of the course-book and then virtually forgotten. Although the students may encounter it here and there in future units, there is never evidence of systematic recycling of the target structure(s). Yet it is this systematic recycling that leads to acquisition.

It is paramount when putting together the Curriculum/Schemes of work for a given year group/ proficiency level to identify the core grammar structures you want the students to have acquired by the end of the year and plan for opportunities to recycle them in every single unit of work at receptive and/or productive level. In my career I have never come across Schemes of Work which systematically do this – the greatest flaw of all!

Effective teaching is not simply about good classroom teaching and resources; what it is often forgotten is that curriculum design is nearly as important as the ability to deliver it. This is because of the nature of language acquisition. A well-planned curriculum being a curriculum which aims at ‘making things stick’, an effective curriculum designer never loses sight of any of the target structures; through systematic recycling s/he ensures that every memory trace ‘stays alive and kicking’ and becomes stronger and stronger as the course progresses.

This is relatively easy to accomplish and definitely pay dividends – all teachers need is regular reminders to go back to the structures previously taught every so often. Homework can play an enormous role in this respect by incorporating, say, in the week-8 assignment a section on a grammar structure covered in week 3.

  1. The often-unflipped flippable

Much – not all – grammar learning can be flipped, especially when it comes to less cognitive challenging grammar points and automatization work. Inductive tasks whereby the students are given a number of sentences modelling the use of the target structures (e.g. relative pronouns) and are asked to work out by themselves (by analyzing the sentences and through internet-based research) the rule governing their usage, can be given as assignments prior to the lesson.

Moreover, let us not forget that much of the grammar-learning work that leads to the acquisition of a target structure involves actively processing and/or using it. This can be flipped too. Think about the tiresome mechanical grammar drills that you may not want to do in class for fear of boring the daylight out of your students. Ask them to do this sort of stuff at home and – as I mentioned in the previous point – ensure that the assignments include new and old material.

  1. The tense obsession

In the modern-language-teaching world, less so in EFL instruction, tenses (and moods) dominate grammar teaching, as language-proficiency assessment has been tense driven for decades. Preposterous as this is, this tendency to identify grammar learning with tense-learning still persists even after the old English National Curriculum Levels have been scrapped. In schools where NC levels have not as yet been abolished, students are still being told that tenses are the key to progression along the acquisition continuum. This leads L2 instructors to overemphasize tense-learning at the detriment of other very important grammar structures which play a more important role in the execution of communicative functions.

By so doing, we convey to our students ‘bad’ metaphors of language learning, which they will live by in the years to come should they pursue language learning to higher levels. This is a very likely scenario when you hear students as young as 11 or 12 asking you obsessively “what tense do I need to get to level 5a? And 6b?”. But what about the ability of producing complex sentences, performing communicative functions effectively and accurately or the all-important ability to express oneself fluently under real operating conditions?

  1. Unrealistic expectations

As discussed above, coursebook-based curriculum design, when it comes to grammar instruction, is based on the unrealistic expectation that a given structure is acquired in six to eight weeks or even less. Nothing could be more preposterous. Acquisition meaning that students can perform the grammar structure accurately at (near) real-life speed, it will take way longer than that for students to routinize the application of a grammar rule. Allow more time in your Schemes of Work. The authors of the textbooks you use are not eminent second language acquisition researchers nor experienced curriculum designers – they do not necessarily know much more about teaching and learning than you do. The pace they set is more often than not, in my experience, flawed and unfair to the students; it does not take into account developmental constraints and never allows sufficient time for consolidation.

  1. Flawed assessment

The other day I was shown a grammar test that consisted of a series of gapped sentences to fill in with the present tense of verbs provided in brackets. A classic! I was all but surprised. This practice has been going on for a century or more and nearly everyone does it. Yet, how does that assess L2 students’ acquisition of the present tense? It assesses, at best, their ability to conjugate some regular and irregular verbs in the present tense, in a vacuum, totally divorced from communication. They do not even need to understand the all-important linguistic context surrounding the gaps.

My students conjugate verbs every day on the www.language-gym conjugator (for no more than 5-10 minutes!) often scoring 90 -100 %. Does that mean they have acquired present verb conjugations? Far from it. It is like saying that a five-year-old who has learnt how to kick the ball around his bedroom is fit to play a Premiere League match.

  1. Over-correcting but under-remediating

Based on my discussion above, it will be now pretty clear why spending a lot of time correcting surface level errors in our students’ written pieces is not an effective way to go about improving student grammar proficiency – unless you are prepared to invest a considerable amount of time in the remediation process, that is. Error correction is only the starting point, the awareness-raising ‘bit’ of the error-eradication process.

Let us go back to the football-coaching analogy. If you simply confine your intervention to providing the correction or coding errors and asking the students to self-correct you will be doing the equivalent of the coach telling his student that he should kick the ball differently and showing him how to do it – awareness-raising and modelling. Pretty much the equivalent of telling an alcoholic that drinking is bad, explaining why it is harmful and telling them not to drink again. But what about the all-important extensive practice needed for the student to re-learn how to kick? What about the rehab time and therapy needed by the alcoholic to stay away from drinking?

Unless teachers are prepared to spend hours and hours helping the students re-learn grammar structures, they’d better limit their marking to errors that are common to a fair number of students in the same class and ‘remediate’ them in lessons day-in day-out through regular recycling. A much more efficient and effective use of teacher time.

Here is a simple tool I use to ensure I recycle grammar over and over again across the areas of student structural competence I have identified over the years as the most problematic in French:

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Concluding remarks

Grammar instruction still occurs, in many quarters, through outdated practices which defy neuroscience and, more importantly, common sense. From what we know about how the brain acquires cognitive skills, the way grammar is still taught and assessed in many school settings is highly ineffective. The most important message that I would like any teacher reader to take away from the above is that grammar teaching must be more skill -than knowledge-orientated and that without a carefully planned curriculum design (Schemes of work) which consciously aims at the routinization of the core target structures and strives to recycle them as much as possible throughout the course, across all four skills, effective L2 grammar acquisition cannot occur. Far too often grammar teaching and error correction stops at awareness-raising – the result being children that at best know how grammar rules work but cannot apply them correctly in spontaneous speech and under exam constraints for lack of R.O.C. practice.

To find out more about my views on grammar instruction and acquisition do read the book ‘The Language Teacher Toolkit’ I co-authored with Steve Smith.

How to teach pronunciation

Gianfranco Conti, Phd (Applied Linguistics), MA (TEFL), MA (English Lit.), PGCE (Modern Languages and P.E.) Speaking and phonology, Uncategorized

 

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0.Introduction

In this article I will concern myself with the teaching of pronunciation and decoding skills (i.e. the transformation of L2 graphemes into sounds) within a typical secondary school setting where teacher contact time is limited (e.g. 2-3 hours per week). The present post should be considered as a sequel to a previous blog (‘Nine research facts on the teaching of L2 phonology teaching and learning’) in which I discussed the theoretical background to what I will propose below. Hence, the reading of that post is recommended if you want to have a better grasp of some of the points made below.

  1. Approaches to pronunciation instruction

I could not locate much research on the teaching of pronunciation as integrated within a typical primary or secondary Modern Foreign Language curriculum. This is possibly due to the fact that the Communicative Language Teaching approach does not lay much emphasis on pronunciation and, consequently, many teachers see as the least useful of language skills (Elliott, 1995). In fact, the typical French, Spanish, German or Italian textbooks currently in use in the UK or US hardly deal with the teaching of the L2 phonology system; when they do concern themselves with pronunciation or decoding instruction, they do so superficially never going beyond the mere awareness-raising of key features and providing very limited practice -if any at all –  in the oral production of the target phonemes. Recycling of the target phonemes is also a very rare feature.

In deciding on how to integrate the teaching of pronunciation in the curriculum language instructors ought to consider which one of the following approaches best suits their learning context:

2.1 Accuracy vs Intelligibility – This is the most important decision to make at the very outset of a language course. Curriculum designers must decide what degree of pronunciation/decoding accuracy they aim at. Is it just for students to be understood by an empathetic native speaker? Is near-native accent the aspirational goal? Or are we aiming at a level of mastery somewhere in between? The answer to these questions will determine the emphasis L2 instruction will lay on pronunciation.

In most secondary schools, as far as I know, curriculum designers do not often ask themselves the above questions; yet, in view of the effects that bad pronunciation can have on effective oral communication, listening and reading comprehension and language acquisition in general (Walter, 2008), they really should.

2.2 Intensive vs Extensive instruction – teachers may decide to teach the pronunciation of a specific set of L2 phonemes intensively over a period of a few weeks or whether to do it extensively (a little bit every day) over a period of several months. Whereas I am inclined to opt for the latter approach based on what we know about L2-phonology acquisition, one may want to implement the former in the run-up to a high-stake examination as part of a remedial program (e.g. on realizing that the pronunciation of specific phonemes may seriously impair the students’ performance).

2.3 Deductive vs Inductive – Deductive teaching involves the traditional approach whereby the teacher presents and explains the phoneme(s) to the students – often in a PPP instructional sequence. Inductive approaches (e.g. guided discovery), on the other hand, are student-led; the students are in charge of describing and/or analyzing the target L2 phoneme(s) and/or discriminating between them and similar L1 sounds. The teacher acts as a facilitator, guiding the students with open questioning as they ‘work out’ how the pronunciation of the target sound(s) works . The latter approach has the merit of eliciting greater cognitive investment on the part of the learner, but it is also more time-consuming. I personally like to alternate both.

2.4 Spontaneous vs Planned – A planned approach implements pronunciation instruction in a systematic way, considering the way the target phonemes could be recycled across the various units of work. In this approach the teaching of the target phonemes is carefully embedded in the schemes of work, which is a more pain-staking process, but one that allows for more effective integration within each topic covered.

Spontaneous instruction, on the other hand, is less time-consuming and is based on a ‘if ain’t broke don’t fix it approach’; in other words, if a teacher notices that their students are making mistakes with a particular L2 phonemes in a given lesson, they will impart instruction on that phoneme ad-hoc, on the spot. This approach can work quite well with more advanced classes which generally display good pronunciation and may occasionally exhibit minor flaws here and there. In this approach, the teacher must have an in-depth knowledge of the target language phonology so as to be able to improvise. Ideally they would also have a readily available bank of resources to drawn upon impromptu.

I personally prefer a planned approach with a very prompt start from the very early days of instruction. But do not refrain from spontaneous instruction when the need arises.

2.5 Contextualised vs Discrete – Another decision to be made is as to whether the teaching will be carried out through (1) stand-alone pronunciation lessons; (2) lessons in which pronunciation instruction is embedded within the teaching of other linguistic content; (3) a mix of both. In view of the curricular and time constraints of typical secondary school courses, I suggest following the third approach using the framework I will outline below, as it allows for systematic recycling but also with some degree of flexibility.

2.6 Awareness-raising vs Automatisation – A lot of the pronunciation teaching I have seen in 25 years of career did not consciously aim at automatization, but rather at awareness-raising. Typically, the teacher shows presentations through which they model the pronunciation of the target phonemes first in isolation and then within words; the students repeat the sounds and words aloud. In the best-case scenario they practise the words through tongue-twisters or other drills, and that’s it!

The problem is that the acquisition of L2 pronunciation requires the automatization of at least three sets of skills: (1) being able to discriminate between the L2 target phoneme and the similar L1 sounds in the receptive phase; (2) being able to reproduce the target phonemes accurately in isolation and (3) in combination with other phonemes at word/phrase level in the context of spontaneous oral communication. With this in mind, it is clear that the approach I have just described will never result into acquisition.

In order to develop the three sets of skills just alluded to, pronunciation/decoding instruction should include the following phases:

  • A modelling phase in which the teacher models the target phoneme and/or how to transform the target graphemes into sound;
  • (when necessary) A description and analysis phase in which the differences between similar (but not identical) L1 and L2 phonemes and/or the L1 and L2 allophones of specific graphemes are clearly explained (or arrived at inductively). For instance, when teaching the differences between the Spanish and English pronunciation of ‘t’ the teacher will show how the Spanish ‘t’ is not a plosive sound and how the tongue hits the tooth in Spanish and the pre-alveolar area in English, etc.
  • A receptive awareness-raising and discrimination phase in which the learners receive practice in: (1) matching the target L2 phonemes with letters/combination of letters (i.e. that the sound /uah/ matches the letter cluster ‘oi’); (2) discriminating between the L2 target phonemes and the similar L1 sounds (for instance: students listen to the word ‘bonjour’ first uttered by a French native speaker and subsequently by a non-native speaker pronouncing ‘J’ the English way. The task: to identify the difference). The micro-listening-skills enhancing tasks I described in detail in two previous posts of mine can be used here. Transcription tasks, short dictations on MWBs and songs with transcript can be used, too.
  • A productive phase involving controlled practice in which the target phonemes (pronunciation) and/or related graphemes (decoding) are practised in the context of drills designed in such a way as to elicit a narrow focus on the target sounds (e.g. short and easy role plays and simple tongue twisters).
  • A productive communicative practice phase. This is crucial in bringing about automatization as it is all very well to know how to pronounce sound /decode letters in isolation; but, ultimately, it is the ability of doing that under Real Operating Conditions in the context of words, phrases and sentences that matters. Semi-structured communicative tasks such as surveys, interviews, role-plays, ‘find someone who’, ‘find out what’ , ‘fill in the information gaps’ or oral picture tasks are invaluable ways to train students in pronunciation and decoding. Before engaging the students in the communicative task, the teacher will focus her attention/feedback and her students’ on the target phonemes.

As I will point out below, for the acquisition of L2 pronunciation to occur, the teaching of pronunciation cannot stop at modelling sounds through a few minutes of choral repetition and some tongue-twister practice. Whatever the target phoneme is, it must be practised extensively in the context of oral production tasks which are at the highly-controlled end of the spectrum first and become incrementally more unstructured.

  1. Factors to consider

In implementing pronunciation instruction as embedded in a typical secondary curriculum, instructors must consider a number of important contextual factors (e.g. contact time; examination board assessment criteria; methodology espoused by the institution you work at) and individual and affective variables (e.g. age of learners; levels of motivation; relevance of pronunciation accuracy to their personal goals; ability).

  1. What we know about the acquisition of L2 pronunciation and decoding skills

4.1 The brain ‘hears’ sounds using the L1 phonological filter; hence, an L2 learner will match the L2 sound they hear to the closest approximation they find in their Long Term Memory. For instance, a French or German native speaker will hear the English word ‘thirsty as ‘sirsty’) whilst an Italian will hear ‘Tirsty’ (this phenomenon was discussed at length in my previous post on pronunciation).

4.2 L2 graphemes automatically activate the L1 phonological system in the L2-leaner’s Long-term Memory (also discussed in my previous post). So, words should be taught using visuals or gestures before they are presented in their written form.

4.3 It is better to start teaching pronunciation when the articulators are more ‘plastic’, before puberty. Some research would suggest starting learning pronunciation before the age of 7 (Lennenberg, 1967).

4.4 Pronunciation errors are difficult to correct when they are fossilized (Ellis, 1996) – L1 transfer in pronunciation is a major threat to the acquisition of accurate L2 pronunciation for the reasons alluded in 4.1 and 4.2 above. Hence, pronunciation instruction should be particularly intensive an extensive in the first two or three years of language learning. Students should receive feedback on their pronunciation from the very early stages of instruction in order to avoid fossilization.

4.5 As already discussed above, L2 phonemes require masses of distributed practice in order to be automatized. Learners’ acquisition of the target phonemes usually follows a U shaped developmental curve with a backsliding phase half-way through the process (Pech et al., 2011)

4.6 Working memory resources are limited both in terms of capacity and duration of storage. For instance, we know that words are phonologically stored in working memory for only a few seconds (Walter, 2008). Hence, unless we focus students on the importance of accurate pronunciation and place it firmly in their focal awareness, most of them will not be able to consciously invest their attentional resources long and deeply enough to notice and learn L2 phonemes.

4.7 Pronunciation and decoding skills must be automatized if we want our students to acquire effective speaking and reading skills. Moreover, better pronunciation and decoding skills result in better acquisition of grammar and syntax. As already discussed in my previous post, more effective pronunciation and decoding skills enhance reading and listening comprehension. Finally, as it is obvious, an L2 speaker who struggles to pronounce L2 words for lack of knowledge of the L2 phonology system and pronunciation/decoding practice is likely to experience serious processing inefficiency issues in L2 oral production.

4.8 Some L2 students are genetically more predisposed than others to notice and acquire foreign language sounds (Nardo et al, 2009).

4.9 A positive orientation towards the target language and the target language culture(s) seem to correlate positively with better pronunciation.Marinova-Todd et al. (2000) posit that motivation may play an even more important role than age in the acquisition of native-like pronunciation.

  1. My tips for pronunciation teaching

The following tips are based on my review of the existing literature on the subject, Skill-theories of language acquisition and most importantly, on my classroom experience. Here they go.

5.1 Start pronunciation instruction very early – in Primary – not only because the learners are more developmentally receptive to it, but also so that you will not have to deal with it any longer later on, when you need to focus on higher order skills. It is also crucial to sensitize the students to the importance of accurate pronunciation at this stage so as to place it firmly into their focal awareness and forge sound learning habits. Students should be given examples of how inaccurate pronunciation can lead to communication breakdown, embarrassing misunderstandings and stigmatization.

5.3 In order to prevent cognitive overload adopt a narrow focus. Select only one phoneme or maximum two per lesson and dwell on it/them for several lessons, whilst recycling the ones you will have taught before in order to keep them in the students’ peripheral awareness at all times. Before any oral communicative activities do ask and frequently remind the students to pay selective attention to the pronunciation of the target phonemes both in production and peer- feedback.

5.4 Integrate pronunciation and decoding instruction in the topic-at-hand using the five-step framework outlined above (Paragraph 2.6). The adoption of a narrow-focus approach means that whilst the first lesson on a given phoneme will be a bit longer, the reinforcement of the same one/two target phonemes over a period of three or four weeks will be much shorter, five to ten minutes every day. The most important thing will be, as suggested in the previous point, to keep the students’ focus on the target phoneme(s) during any oral communicative activities staged in class during the entire reinforcement/recycling period.

5.5 Plan integration opportunistically but judiciously. By this I mean that whilst planning a unit of work, you may find that the vocabulary or grammar structure you intend to teach lends itself beautifully to the teaching of specific sounds. For instance, in teaching animals in French, a few weeks ago, the words ‘chat’, ‘chien’, ‘cochon d’Inde’ and ‘cheval’ prompted me to decide to teach that ‘ch’ is pronounced ‘sh’ in French. However, opportunism should not be the only criterion to be used in selecting the target phonemes: intelligibility impact (the extent to which the sound may affect understanding); learnability (how ready the students are to pick it up) and frequency (how often they are likely to come across that sound) should also be taken into consideration.

5.6. Prefer extensive distributed practice (a little every day over a longish period of time) over massed practice. Extensive practice which recycles the target sounds for a few minutes every day is crucial to the success of pronunciation instruction as L2 phoneme acquisition requires a lot of time and contextualized practice. I keep a chart, on a google doc, in which I tally all the phonemes I teach so as to have an overview of how many times I have recycled each sound.

5.7 Model through detailed description and analysis. In the modelling phase take the learners, possibly using audio-visuals, through every single step involved in the production of the target L2 phoneme. There are plenty of charts available online showing how the different sounds are produced in various languages. Remember: effective modelling and analysis require good knowledge of the target language phonology system. Heads of Depatment ought to provide staff with adequate specialised training.

5.8 Stage critical listening activities with narrow focus. These can be modelled in class and then flipped. They consist of getting students to listen to a peer reading aloud (if the focus is on decoding) or talking in the L2  whilst one or more peers focus their attention and provide feedback on two or three phonemes. Alternatively, you can get the students to record themselves and each other. Critical listening fosters collaborative learning, social strategies and metacognition whilst bringing about deep cognitive investment.

5.9 Alternate inductive and deductive approaches for the sake of variety, but also to foster healthy inquiry skills.

5.10. Prevent automatic activation of L1 sounds as much as possible. Keep pictures on the walls which refer to words containing the key L2 phonemes and most students know very well (e.g. numbers); it is important that they did not learn to pronounce these words through the written medium in the first place. These pictures will be a valuable aid each time you will want to correct phonetic mistakes made by your students without providing them with a written example (as this would automatically activate the student’s L1 decoding system possibly causing L1 transfer issues). So for instance, when reminding a student of the decoding of the consonant cluster ‘oi’ you will point to the number ‘3’ on the wall, ‘trois’, which contains those letters.

5.11 Teach and practise the target phonemes in accessible linguistic contexts. When teaching new phonemes it is vital that the students have enough cognitive space available to focus on them. If the ‘drills’ or communicative tasks are complex, contain masses of new vocabulary, challenging L2 structures or even other difficult sounds they have not yet mastered, this will impact very negatively on learning. Some teachers give fun but very phonetically complex tongue twisters to novice L2 learners who do enjoy the challenge and often have a  real blast in the process, but frequently end up making a complete mess of it. When selecting tongue twisters or any other material for the initial modelling and controlled practice phases, choose texts which pose very little cognitive and phonetic challenge.

5.12 Correct judiciously. Feedback is very important in the teaching of pronunciation and may need to be more frequent than the correction teachers provide on other aspects of performance. This is because pronunciation mistakes tend to fossilize more easily. Hence, teachers need to monitor oral communicative activities very closely and step in – even interrupting – when errors made with the target phoneme(s) (1) are made publically and consequently may affect several students’ perception of what is correct/incorrect; (2) impede intelligibility; (3) are made frequently. However, do not overdo correction as it may affect motivation.

Concluding remarks

In this post I have attempted to provide some tips on the pronunciation of L2 pronunciation and decoding skills. The most important point is that teachers should sensitize their students to the importance of accurate L2 pronunciation from the very early days of instruction. A principled approach to the planning and classroom delivery of L2 pronunciation instruction should be devised which provides extensive distributed practice through a mix of inductive and deductive learning and adopts a narrow focus, i.e. one or two phonemes are taught each time. Last but not least, this approach, which integrates pronunciation instruction within most lessons (a few minutes per session) cannot lead to acquisition of the target phonemes unless these are practised in the context of structured and unstructured communicative activities.

In this post I have also recommended the following framework that I have used successfully over the years and integrates the teaching of pronunciation with communicative language teaching and serve the goals of the curriculum I am charged with delivering. This framework includes five phases

(1) A modelling phase

(2) A description and analysis phase in which the differences between similar (but not identical) L1 and L2 phonemes and/or the L1 and L2 allophones of specific graphemes are clearly explained;

(3) A receptive awareness-raising and discrimination phase;

(4) A highly structured productive  phase;

(5) A productive semi-structured to unstructured communicative practice phase.

It should be reiterated that in the fifth phase, crucial in bringing about automatization, the role of the teacher in monitoring and providing feedback on the phonological level of student output is crucial. Also pivotal is the level of student focus on pronunciation that the teacher will have generated; unless the students are encouraged and motivated to keep the importance of pronunciation in their focal awareness no pronunciation instruction will ever succeed. Unfortunately, these days, pronunciation is but a peripheral concern in most Modern Language classrooms.

You can find more on this in the book ‘The language teacher toolkit’ that I have co-authored with Steve Smith, available here: 

Oxford University ‘legend’, Professor Macaro, reviews ‘The Language Teacher Toolkit’

Gianfranco Conti, Phd (Applied Linguistics), MA (TEFL), MA (English Lit.), PGCE (Modern Languages and P.E.) Uncategorized

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Yesterday I found a new e-mail in my inbox which caused me much apprehension. It contained a review of the book Steve Smith and I published last month ‘The Language Teacher Toolkit’ in which we lay out our approach to language teaching and learning and practical tips on how to enhance classroom practice. The review was authored by an Applied Linguistics legend, Professor Ernesto Macaro of Oxford University.  

Professor Macaro is an inspirational teacher educator, innovative researcher and visionary language scholar who authored seminal work I often quote in my blogs and which has deeply impacted Modern Language Education all over the globe in the last twenty years or so (e.g. Macaro, E. ,2003, Teaching and Learning a Second Language: a guide to current research and its applications. London: Continuum; Macaro, E.,2001, Learning Strategies in second and foreign language classrooms. London: Continuum; and his latest book: Macaro, E. Graham, S. & Woore, R.,2015, Improving Foreign Language Teaching: Towards a Research-based curriculum and pedagogy. Routledge.)

Although all the reviews we have had  thus far have meant a lot to Steve and myself this is particularly important to me as Professor Macaro is not only one of the greatest authorities in the field of Applied Linguistics and a highly influential scholar; more importantly, he was my PhD supervisor and a true Mentor whose forward views on language teaching and learning (especially on learning autonomy) have ignited and shaped many of my beliefs.  What I write in my blogs is often the final  outcome of a process that started fifteen years ago when I was his doctoral student.

In the figure below: Professor Ernesto Macaro

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 I was nervous on  opening the e-mail as I know that Professor  Macaro is a very honest and frank man, ‘senza peli sulla lingua’ – as we say in Italian, and would not just write a ‘nice’ review to please a former student. In fact he was adamant in asking me not to change anything in his review without his approval. And nothing was changed. Here it is:

The Language Teacher Toolkit is a really useful book for language teachers to either read all the way through or dip into. What I like about it is that the authors Steve Smith and Gianfranco Conti are totally upfront about what they believe to be good practice but back it up with research evidence. So for example the ‘methodological principles’ on page 11 are supported by the research they then refer to later in the book and this approach is very similar to the one that we (Ernesto Macaro, Suzanne Graham, Robert Woore) have adopted in our ‘consortium project’ (http://pdcinmfl.com). The point is this: it’s all very well saying there are no ‘methods’ for teaching a foreign language any more but it can’t then be a free-for-all with teachers doing exactly what they want to do. As much as I believe in teacher professional autonomy, language teaching is so complex that you have to have a series of guiding principles.

 So “make sure students receive plenty of meaningful input in the L2” – absolutely! I’ve never come across a successful classroom that doesn’t provide plenty of that.

“make sure students have lots of opportunities to practice orally” again totally agree but I would go a step further and say that they have to take risks with saying things they are not sure are correct. Take a look at “Steve’s tips for developing spontaneous talk’ on page 85, he brings the notion of risk-taking in very nicely but it should be part of the actual principles in my view.

“be prepared to explain how the language works but don’t spend too much time on this” – this is really key! I always use the expression “at what cost?” At what cost, given the amount of teaching time you have,  are you explaining the difference between the perfect and imperfect tenses, in the L1, when they could be doing something much more skilled-based.

So I think the 12 principles are sound (is there some reason there are 12?). I think the last one about ‘a significant focus on the L2 culture’ needs some more unpicking. Exactly what culture are we talking about? Smith and Conti are teachers of French and Spanish I believe. Well ok we can have some notion of the culture of the people who speak those languages and it is possible to give learners some insights into them but we have to be careful a)not to trivialise the culture and b) not to centre it on some European (‘metropolitan’ as the French would say) idealised culture. And then of course if you are a teacher of English as an L2 the notion of culture enters a completely different theme park!

 Anyway take time to read Smith and Conti’s book. It’s packed with lots of interesting and not too ‘whacky’ ideas.

 Ernesto Macaro

Professor of Applied Linguistics, University of Oxford

Here is a link to Professor Macaro’s impressive academic biography and accomplishments

Six things I tried out this year which truly enhanced my teaching

Gianfranco Conti, Phd (Applied Linguistics), MA (TEFL), MA (English Lit.), PGCE (Modern Languages and P.E.) General pedagogy, Uncategorized

 

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Here are six things that I have tried out this year which significantly enhanced my teaching and two which, whilst being much less successful, provided me with valuable insight in my students’ cognition and affect.

1. Six things that worked

1.1Teaching more verbs

The textbooks and the wordlists that one finds in published instructional materials and on language learning websites traditionally tend to mainly focus on nouns, occasionally throwing the odd adjective here and there. Verbs are usually grossly underrepresented in the published vocab lists. However, when we talk about things and people in our daily lives we  do use a fair range of verbs.

Without verbs the communicative power that we provide our students with is seriously limited. It is all very well to teach students the English, French or Spanish words for dog, cat and other house pets; however, if we only teach them how to say ‘I have’ , ‘I like’ and ‘s/he is’ in the target language, we will equip them with very few contexts they can use those nouns with. How about: ‘I walk the dog’, ‘I play with my cat’, ‘I feed my hamster’, ‘I groom or ride my horse’, ‘I look after my guinea pig’, etc.

Moreover, by widening the range of verbs we also provide a larger number of cognitive ‘hooks’ for the target nouns, contextual cues that will facilitate future recall.

Another benefit of teaching more verbs is that the more our students use them the more they are likely to deploy adverbs – a highly under-taught word class.

Finally, the more our students are exposed to the inflected forms of verbs in the comprehensible input we provide them with, the more likely they will be to ‘pick up’ verb endings and conjugations. When one looks at the reading and listening texts found in UK published textbooks one cannot help notice how poor they are in terms of inflected verb forms. Could this be one of the reasons why English learners of modern languages notoriously lack mastery of verb conjugations?

1.2 Much more listening practice and more listening-for-modelling activities

Another substantial change to my classroom practice has involved the greater use of listening activities as a way to model new language to my students – not merely to test or enhance their comprehension skills. I have substantially increased the use of the following in my lessons:

(a) Speaking mats – I put writing mats or sentence builders up on the classroom screen and make up sentences which I utter aloud for students to write on mini-boards in English. I also use speaking mats with younger learner for micro-dictation (students writing sentences on MWBs in the target language)

(b) Working with gapped transcripts of audio-tracks, videos or songs;

(c) Micro-listening-skills enhancers (see my posts on these);

(d) Jigsaw listening activities;

(e) Story-telling to teach tenses and/or vocabulary (with or without images);

This has massively improved my students’ pronunciation and preparation for the communicative activities I usually stage after the listening-as-modelling activities. (see my blogs on listening for more).

1.3 More decoding-skills teaching and emphasis on pronunciation in general

Working on specific phonemes and combination of letters in a structured way in synergy with the activities listed in the previous paragraph has paid massive dividends, this year.

I have focused on one or two sounds per lesson recycling them over and over again for weeks. I have preferred to apply the principle of distributed over massed practice (i.e. a bit every day).

I have made a conscious effort to lay great emphasis on the importance of accuracy in pronunciation with all of my younger learners (year 5s and 7s) and we have a little pronunciation workshop lasting about ten minutes in every single lesson. We do a lot of work on micro-listening / decoding skills, minimal pairs, reflecting on how differently letters are sounded in the target language compared to their native(s) one(s), simple tongue twisters and paired critical listening. It really has paid off! (see my blog on decoding skills for more).

1.4 Vocabulary, Verbs and Speaking ‘flipping’

This year I tried to flip most of the following:

(a)Vocabulary drills – If I am planning to teach topic ‘X’ on Wednesday I flip the learning of the vocabulary related to that topic setting it as homework on Monday. I usually do this using www.language-gym.com. Students send me the screenshot of the page with the score they obtained;

(b) Verb drills – every week I get the students to practise verb conjugation at home using online verb trainers like the www.language-gym.com one

(c) (with my GCSE classes) Speaking practice – every week I ask them to record a dialog  with a partner on one of the GCSE topics using their iPads and forward it to me.

1.5 L.I.F.T

LIFT, or Learner Initiated Feedback Technique is something I have used for very many years. It consists of questions about linguistic items they are using in their written pieces that they annotate in the margin of the page they are writing on. For example, if they are not sure whether a clause requires  the subjunctive or  conditional mood, they will underline or circle the verb and write on margin: “Is this verb supposed to be in the subjunctive? Why/Why not?

This year, I have used it more consistently, extensively and, more importantly I have insisted on higher quality questions. It has made me enjoy giving feedback more and my students have reported benefitting from it. (See my blog on LIFT for more)

1.6 The personal learning afternoons

In my school (GISKL), on Fridays lessons finish one and a half hours earlier. The students leave the premises and teachers engage in a range of professional development activities organized by Jose Diez (Director of Professional Learning). Some write reflective journals; some read research and some, like me, reflect on their practice with other colleagues. This has been a God-sent for me as I conceive a lot of my blogs during these sessions, usually carried out with my very creative, talented and resourceful colleagues Dylan Vinales and Ronan Jezequel.

Brainstorming and bouncing off ideas with colleagues – often after reading a research paper – on a specific area of teaching and learning is a very useful experience. Writing about it a posteriori in a blog not only reinforces the outcome of the sessions, but often help me develop it a notch further.

These personal learning afternoons have deeply impacted my professional development, to a much greater extent than any other CPD I was involved in the past had ever done.

2.Things that worked less well

Two things I tried but did not work so well, were: (1) using retrospective verbal reports (RVRs) and (2) reflective journals (RJs). RVRs consist of short reflections on how a specific task went immediately after it has been performed. I did it a couple of times after essay writing or a speaking session and most of the students didn’t really seem to enjoy or learn from it. As for the RJs half of the students really enjoyed them, writing them every week and discussing at length their learning problems and successes and setting themselves targets; the other half either did not do them or, when they did, they did it very superficially and unenthusiastically.

Overall, less successful than expected.

3.Tips

If you want to have a go at trying any of the approaches described above do not implement them with every single class of yours. I chose to try each of the above only with one group at a time the first time around starting from the group that would pose fewer challenges and would benefit the most from it.

For more on the above strategies and approaches,read the book ‘The Language Teacher Toolkit’, co-authored with Steve Smith and available on http://www.amazon.co.uk.

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Five pronunciation and decoding issues in French-as -a-foreign-language instruction that seriously affect grammar learning and should be targeted as early on as possible

Gianfranco Conti, Phd (Applied Linguistics), MA (TEFL), MA (English Lit.), PGCE (Modern Languages and P.E.) Speaking and phonology, Uncategorized

Please note: this post was co-authored with Steve Smith of http://www.frenchteacher.net

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As I explained in several previous blogs, our students’ ability to decode the target language sounds can seriously impact acquisition. And I am not simply talking of their ability to acquire vocabulary and pronunciation. I am also alluding to the learners potential to notice and internalize grammar. Why? Because receptive decoding, i.e. the way the human brain ‘deciphers’ the sounds we hear, can cue us to certain grammatical features of words (i.e. endings) we process aurally that lead us to noticing and making assumptions about their gender and/or number (for nouns and adjectives), person, conjugation and tenses (for verbs) and other ‘anomalies’ (e.g. ‘l’’ before nouns, the pronoun ‘y’ before a verb).

For instance, today, a student I help outside school, had still not grasped the phonetic difference between ‘ne’ (as it sounds in ‘ne’) and ‘n’ai’ (as in ‘je n’ai’). This has led her for many years to presume that ‘je n’ai pas vu’ was actually spelt ‘je ne pas vu’. This in turn affected her assumptions as to how the Perfect Tense is formed in French which resulted in the mental representation ‘Je + past participle’ (i.e. Je vu). I could not blame her as, evidently, her previous tutor must have not emphasized adequately the difference between ‘Je’ and ‘J’ai’.

In this post I will focus on five pronunciation/decoding issues in FLE (Français Langue Étrangère) instruction which do usually receive some emphasis but are not in my experience duly emphasized and practised in the typical L2-French classroom.

Issue 1: [ə] vs [e] in receptive decoding

This sound is one of the most important to learn in terms of receptive decoding, not only for the ‘Je’ versus ‘J’ai’ distinction alluded to above, but also because of the potential it has for cueing the students to the presence of a plural noun. Take for instance the sentences ‘ le fils de Marie étudie l’anglais’ et ‘les fils de Marie étudient l’anglais’. In this context the inaccurate perception of the sound [ə] as [e] (as in les) may easily cause confusion (is the subject ‘fils’ plural or singular?) – confusion that might exacerbated by the fact that the ‘s’ in ‘fils’ may lead the beginner French learner to believe that the noun is plural.

Another huge issue that novice teachers often overlook is the pronunciation of ‘é’ as [e] or [ə] in active decoding (when reading a word). This is particularly a problem when it comes to the Perfect tense. When a student pronounces ‘j’ai mangé’ same as ‘je mange’ unless there is a time marker (e.g. hier) the potential for confusion and communication breakdown is great.

The difference between the two sounds must be duly emphasized from the very early stages of instruction. Most often teachers do when it comes to the ‘je’ vs ‘j’ai’ dichotomy. I have often witnessed the very good practice of modelling the two sounds by over-emphasizing lip movement in an attempt to create a muscle memory of the articulatory process and through minimal-pair work. What I have not often seen, however, is the teachers recycling those through many other familiar and unfamiliar contexts until the acquisition of those sounds has occurred. To presume that one or two minimum-pair demonstrations will lead to the automatization of the phonemes is over-optimistic; for most students, acquiring the ability to discern between the two sounds in receptive decoding will take several weeks or even months.

As recommended in previous posts, teachers may want to engage students in micro-listening-skill enhancers reinforcing the distinction between the two sounds for a few minutes (10?) per lessons over a period of 4 to 8 weeks in order to obtain very good results.  For the rationale for this approach read my previous post ‘How to teach pronunciation’.

Issue 2: pronunciation of ‘t’ /’d’/ ‘p’ / ‘s’ at the end of words vs same letters + ‘e’ or ‘es’

Learning the correct (active) decoding of  the above consonants with and without ‘e’ or ‘es’ at the end of words from the very early stages of French instruction is of paramount importance. Why? The reason is two-fold. Firstly, if the students are not aware of the distinction ‘t’ vs ‘te’ / ‘tes’, they will not be able to distinguish between masculine and feminine nouns and adjectives – a distinction that many L1 English learners of French find very challenging. Secondly, the pronunciation of ‘t’ / ‘p’ etc. at the end of many words or nouns can cause serious misunderstandings in terms of meaning. Think about the nouns ‘point’ and ‘pointe’; ‘vent’ and ‘vente’; ‘coup’ et ‘coupe’.

Issue 3 – [z] vs [s] in liaison

This is another issue that it is not always tackled effectively. This can cause quite a few problems, the most frequent and important of which pertains to the famous cross-association elles/ils ont vs elles/ils sont. Since this distinction is not often ‘drilled in’ adequately, many learners of French end up confusing the two all the way to year 11 (when they are 16 yrs old). Often, this leads to ‘elles ont treize ans’ being interpreted as ’elles sont treize ans’ and the assumption that the French, too, like the English, use ‘to be’ when telling somebody’s age.

Confusing [z] and [s] is very common and can cause misunderstanding in many contexts, for example: ‘elles avaient beaucoup de choses’ was interpreted by one of my student as ‘elle savait beaucoup de choses’.

Issue 4 – ‘un’ vs ‘une’

The effects of decoding issues with these words on the acquisition of the French grammar are possibly the most obvious. If a learner is not clear about the differences in pronunciation between these two words, they will make incorrect inference as which nouns are masculine and which are feminine. This issue will affect, if unresolved, other more complex structures such as ‘aucun’ vs ‘aucune’.

After modelling the lip-movements through over emphasis of the sound articulation and contrasting English words such as untouchable and unsolvable (in which the two first letters ‘un’ are highlighted in red) with words like Unesco, tune, (where the key letters ‘une’ are highlighted) one may want to reinforce the differences through micro-listening -skill enhancers such as ‘Broken words’ whereby the teacher utters words such lune, lundi, rune, aucun, aucune etc. and the students have to complete the gaps in l__di, r____, auc___, auc____, etc.

Issue 5 –  voicing ‘ent’ at the end of verbs

This is a very common issue that in my experience receives some attention but not as much as it actually requires and deserves. When not acquired effectively, the wrong decoding of ‘ent’ in the third person plural of  the Present Indicative and Subjunctive of verbs can cause quite a lot of problems. In a class I observed recently, for instance, the belief that ‘ent’ is voiced, led to the students often confusing (in a listening activity centred on modal verbs)  ‘veulent’ and ‘veut’, ‘peuvent’ and ‘peut’, and ‘doit’ and ‘doivent’. In the past I have also witnessed issues in the pronunciation of the third person of the imperfect indicative and of the conditional. Another related issue pertains to adverbs (e.g facilement, lentement) which are occasionally mistaken for verbs.

Concluding remarks

Whereas most published course-books usually converge in the way they sequence the teaching of grammar (especially tenses), when it comes to pronunciation they use quite a random approach which does not appear to be principled in any way. I suggest that, pronunciation/decoding skills instruction should first deal with the easiest-to-acquire phonemes and then gradually concern itself with the more challenging ones, another criterion ought to be considered, too; the extent to which, that is, the ineffective mastery of those sounds can affect the acquisition of the grammar of the target language. The five sets of pronunciation/decoding issues discussed above are only but a few examples of the way in which phonological awareness and the ability to transform graphemes into sound can affect the acquisition of the target language grammar. Teachers ought to pay attention to this very important facet of language acquisition and devote sufficient time and effort to it using the research-based framework I outlined in previous posts.

You will find more on this issue in the book ‘The Language Teacher Toolkit’ that I co-authored with Steve Smith and is available for purchase at www.amazon.com

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Reading comprehension problems of intermediate L2 students and implications for teaching and learning

Gianfranco Conti, Phd (Applied Linguistics), MA (TEFL), MA (English Lit.), PGCE (Modern Languages and P.E.) Reading instruction, Uncategorized

Co-authored with Steve Smith of http://www.frenchteacher.net

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Introduction

As a teacher/researcher, I occasionally ‘use’ my students as ‘guinea pigs’ to test new methods and teaching strategies I come up with and to test my ‘hypotheses about language learning. They have become so used to it that some of them are now very proactive in volunteering information about their thought processes, learning problems and successes and have become eager game to my ‘experiments’.

In the last few months, ten of them have helped me figure out the main comprehension problems year 9 students experience when they read and translate L2 texts, in the context of a little piece of qualitative research into their thinking processes.

Difference between translating and comprehending L2 texts

Obviously, comprehending an L2-text and translating it involve different processes and outcomes. Comprehension entails, as an outcome, the understanding of the message conveyed by the text at different levels; translation involves not only the understanding of a text, but also the ability to put every single word into the correct L1 equivalent, in some cases ensuring that subtle nuances are expressed accurately in the translation.

In the typical CLT (communicative language teaching) approach to language teaching adopted in many British schools, students are not asked to translate word-for-word when grappling with a text; and this is understandable if teachers are involving students in reading practice which aims at developing effective comprehenders of written L2-texts.

However, if teachers are using reading to model the use of new language and teaching new words – which is what I believe reading activities should also be about – simply training students in being able to guess intelligently or infer the meaning of a text may not always be an effective approach, for the following reasons:

(1) it may not explicitly focus students on useful/important details of grammar, syntax and lexical usage;

(2) students may understand what a sentence conveys, but not necessarily what each and every word it contains means (as this may not be necessary to answer five or six comprehension questions).

For comprehensible input to significantly enhance acquisition, it would be desirable for students to be able to translate as many words in a text as possible. Moreover they should be focused on any grammatical or lexical details in the written input worth noticing and learning that they are developmentally ready to acquire. However, much reading instruction carried out in UK secondary schools these days does not encourage this.

Take the typical reading comprehension exercise we give our students. The students are required to read a text and answer a few comprehension questions or ‘true or false?’; then the answers are marked and unless the student is inquisitive and asks questions to teacher or peers or uses a dictionary or other resources, not much will be learnt in terms of vocabulary or grammar – especially in the absence of follow-up which recycles the lexis or structures contained in the text.

Thus, the big decision a teacher has to take is: am I to use a reading comprehension to train students in simply comprehending texts or to learn as much as possible in the process? Or both?

In the little ‘experiment’ I discuss below I wanted to find out what problems students experience as they attempt to comprhend a written text and how accurate their translation of the unfamiliar words in the text was. The findings would inform aspects of my approach to reading instruction.

The ‘method’

The subjects

My ‘subjects’ were ten year 9 students of Spanish of mine grouped, based on their general attainment in Spanish, in 3 High Achievers (HAs), 4 Average Achievers (AAs) and 3 Low Achievers (LAs).

The task

The students were asked to answer 8 comprehension questions on a Spanish text. After answering the questions, they were asked to translate the text word for word.

The text is actually the transcript of the voice-over to a level-B1 video entitled ‘Un dia en la playa’ found at: http://videoele.com/Archivos/B1_Un_dia_en_la_playa_Transc.pdf  .

I chose this text because I was looking for a passage of medium difficulty which would contain quite a few unfamiliar words whose meaning could be fairly easily worked out by the students based on their background knowledge (i.e. what one does normally at the beach) and several contextual cues present in the text (e.g. a fair number of cognates, fairly linear sentence structure, predictable linguistic contexts and clear cohesion devices).

The students could read the passage on my laptop and – during the translation task only – had access to an online dictionary, wordreference.com, open on another tab.

The procedure

The ‘method’ I chose to investigate my students’ reading process was a technique, called ‘concurrent think-aloud’ with introspection, which requires the students to verbalize their thinking as they interpret a text; the teacher can interrupt at any time in order to probe into their thought processes with open or less open questions (e.g. what is the problem you are experiencing here? Why did you translate this word as ‘hat’? Can you think of any other way to work out the meaning of this word? What if you read the whole sentence rather than stopping here?).

This investigative method is far from being scientifically valid in terms of portraying what happens in a student’s head, as a lot that our brain does bypasses consciousness; however, it usually yields some very useful – and often unexpected – information. Every time I have used it with my students it has provided me with a valuable insight into my students’ problems.

The findings

The students did very well in terms of comprehension and managed to translate most of the text correctly. As predictable, the HAs (high achievers) did better than the rest but the other subjects did very well, too, with only two of the LAs (low achievers) experiencing some serious mis-comprehension problems. Most of the comprehension issues occurred at word or phrase rather than sentence level.

Problems identified with the text comprehension and  translation

1. Misuse or insufficient use of bilingual dictionaries – one set of problems related to the misuse and/or underuse of the dictionary (www.wordreference.com). Here they are:

1a. Not checking the ‘grammar’ of challenging words – Students rarely checked the word class of the word they were looking up. This led occasionally to incorrect interpretations of the sentences they were processing. When asked what the word-class of the word they had problems with was, they were often (60 % of the time) unsure or took them quite a bit of time to figure it out. I will go back to this issue below

1b. Superficial handling of dictionary entries – The LAs and AAs did not often go beyond the first translation option offered by the dictionary and rarely looked at the examples provided. This also led to occasional misunderstanding of the text. The HAs were more thorough and explored the various options sometimes even referring to the wordreference.com forum threads to confirm their hypotheses.

1c. Reluctance to use dictionary – Although www.word-reference.com is very easy to operate and the computer was right in front of them, the students, especially the LAs exhibited a general reluctance to using the dictionary, thereby relying almost entirely on their instinct. This occasionally led to mistakes in the interpretation of the text or to a correct overall understanding of the meaning of a sentence, but wrong translation of one or more words. (30 % of the time).

1d. Inputting inflected forms of the verbs in the online dictionary – Some of the students – 3 out of ten – attempted to translate verbs they could not work out the meaning of by entering the verb form they found in the text (e.g. apetecía)– not in the infinitive (apetecer). This led to confusion and occasionally to error.

2. Problems reconstructing the meaning of individual unfamiliar words – Overall, the students exhibited a very good grasp of most of the text and most of them answered all eight of the comprehension questions I asked them correctly. However, when asked to translate the text, their inferencing skills let them down in several contexts in which with a bit more creativity, use of their background knowledge and an analysis of the morphology of they might have guessed intelligently what the words in question meant. The less able students were the ones who particularly struggled in this sense. These were the main issues noticed:

2b. Overly-narrow focus – The AAs and LAs often did not read the whole sentence in order to infer the meaning of the challenging unknown word(s). They only focused on the words immediately surrounding the challenging item; when encouraged by me too look at the sentence as a whole, they managed to work the sentence out 90% of the time.

2c. Inadequate use of L1 words in order to guess intelligently meaning of L2 unfamiliar words of similar etymology- Unless the words were obvious cognates, only two of the learners (both HAs) used English words which shared the same etymology with the Spanish words in the text-at-hand that they were having issues with. So, for instance, when faced with the word ‘crucero’, most of the students failed to relate it to the word ‘cruiseship’; the same happened with the verbs ‘tumbarse’ (to lie down) which only two students related to the English word ‘tomb’and ‘apetecia’ (I wanted; felt like) which was associated with the English word ‘appetite’.

2d. Infrequent use of knowledge of previously learnt L2 words -Only half of the students used their knowledge of Spanish words they already knew to interpret any unfamiliar lexis found in the text. This happened with ‘algunas’ (some; any) and ‘secarse’ (to dry oneself) which was translated successfully by five of the students using the words ‘algo’ (something) and ‘seco’ (dry) to reconstruct their meaning.

2e. Accurate interpretation vs inaccurate word-for-word translation – Students often inferred the general meaning of sentences or phrases correctly; however, the inferences led to the wrong translation of some of the constituents of those sentences or phrases. The best example of this is the sentence: ‘Es necesario ponerse crema para que el sol no queme la piel’. The sense that one should put the sun-cream on in order to protect one’s skin from the sun, was grasped by everyone. However, only one student understood that ‘queme’ means ‘burn’; moreover, none of the students noticed or queried the unusual construction of the sentence (para que + noun + subjunctive) and the unfamiliar subjunctive ‘queme’.

Whilst on a communicative level this may be viewed as an effective handling of the text from an interpretive point of view; in terms of learning this way to go about understanding a text does not lead to much learning, especially considering that only one of the students double-checked their translation of the sentence using the online dictionary.

This impressionistic guessing should be encouraged as a survival and/or test-taking strategies; however, as a learning strategy, teachers should encourage students’ double-checking through dictionary or expert help.

2f. Superficial, insufficient or inaccurate structural analysis – the above problems were compounded by the lack of structural analysis alluded to in the previous paragraph. Only five of the students used their knowledge of grammar (e.g. looking at word-endings, agreement, word order and using dictionary to check word-class) to help them reconstruct the meaning of the challenging words. When structural analysis was used it was successful 80% of the time overall (group mean) but only 60% of the time with the three LAs.

One set of comprehension issues related to small functions words (prepositions, connectives and pronouns), even though in certain instances their meaning seemed pretty obvious, e.g. the word ‘como’ (as, since). Pronouns appeared to be amongst the most challenging elements due, I suspect, to their position in the sentence (different to English) and the absence of the personal pronoun (in Spanish, one would say: ‘it put’ meaning ‘I put it’)

The above are very common issues which are not every easy to address as they require a lot of practice and often of the one-to-one session sort

3. Superficial approach to cognates – To my disappointment, most students were all too happy to translate the more obvious cognates found in the text with the English word they immediately evoked. For instance, ‘precioso’ was translated with ‘precious’ where it actually meant ‘beautiful’ in the text; the same happened with ‘arena’ (= sand) which was translated initially by all of the students as ‘arena’ and rectified only by five of them thanks to the dictionary. Other words this happened with included: ‘flotador’ (translated as ‘floater’ in both instances), ‘algo’ (associated by some with ‘algae’ due to the context, too) and ‘falta’ (associated with ‘fault’).

This is a very common issue which may have to be dealt with at the very beginning of instruction to ensure that student understand the differences between the native and the target language from the very outset of L2 learning. L2 learners must be made aware of the existence of false friends and of the semantic and cultural differences that cognate words often carry.

4. Cross-association of homophones – This is a very minor issue, but one which may require some attention as it may have repercussion for learning if it is not dealt with. ‘hambre’ (hunger) and ‘hombre’ were cross-associated by the weaker learners, thereby creating some initial confusion which was eventually resolved without my intervention. Homophones (words sounding similar) or near homophones co-existing in the same text can cause issues in terms of interpretation giving rise to errors or slowing down comprehension. This is a more important issue in L2 French or English learning where this phenomenon is more recurrent.

 IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHERS

The above findings cannot be generalized to the whole L2 student population and it would be interesting if other teachers had a go at trying my little ‘experiment’ out to see if they observe similar phenomena. In my experience, though, what I found points to issues that are very common amongst L2 learners of this age and proficiency level and that language teachers, myself included, do not tackle systematically enough. For teachers who may have students who experience similar issues, these are my recommendations.

(1) Through the use of think-alouds or other modelling techniques, teachers may want to train students in the use of bilingual dictionaries, targeting in particular the areas (1a to 1d) identified above. A non-time-consuming way of doing this involves the use of checklists reminding the students to:

– use the dictionaries as often as possible ;

– look at the word class of the target word;

– examine the examples provided by the dictionary;

– check the meaning of a verb using its infinitive form.

Obviously, teachers need to ensure that they do model the use of any checklists they devise in order to scaffold the process and reward every instance in which the students demonstrate their use.

(2) teachers may have to train students in the deployment of the following inferencing strategies:

– Applying structural analysis to challenging words and surrounding linguistic contexts (e.g. What word class does this word fall in? Is this an adjective or an adverb?)

– Searching the whole sentence in which the challenging item is located for cues to its meaning (not just its immediate vicinity);

– Creatively using their knowledge of the L1 to infer L2 words (if the two languages share common etymologies);

– Using other previously learnt L2 words to draw inferences about the meaning of an unfamiliar L2 lexical item.

Such training should occur in frequent sessions for it to pay dividends and impact students reading strategies. One-off sessions don’t result in strategy uptake.

(3) students should be made aware of how ‘tricky’ cognates can be and teachers should attempt to provide regular exposure to ‘false friends’ from the early stages of instruction to drive home and reinforce this awareness.

(4) Teachers ought to ensure that reading tasks do not stop at comprehension questions but regularly feature

– requiring students to translate the meaning of individual words (e.g. what does word X on line 4 mean?) or match a set of L1 words to their L2 equivalent in the text-at-hand;

– analysis of the grammar of the words and sentences in the text (e.g. identify the adjectives and adverbs found on line 3? Why does adjective X have a plural ending? Why is verb Y in the subjunctive?). These ‘old school’ questions get the students in the habit of analyzing the way words relate to one another and how they affect each other;

– ask them to identify L2 words in the  text that resemble L1 words that they may relate to semantically (e.g. find a word in the passage that reminds you of ‘cruise ship’. Answer: ‘crucero’).

(5) instruction should focus much more on the teaching of function words, especially connectives and pronouns in general. Connectives often cued the HAs and AAs to the understanding of unknown words. Unsurprisingly so, as they direct and signpost discourse.

Finally, teachers may want to prep students prior to reading the text-at-hand by designing tasks which, with the above issues in mind, activate any necessary knowledge of the world thematically related to that text. With the reading passage used in the experiment in mind, for example, one could ask them to brainstorm in Spanish as many activities people carry out during a day on the beach as they can think of. How many L1 cognates of the Spanish words they have just brainstormed can they come up with? How many objects can they think of in Spanish that one would bring along to the beach?  Can they think of any other objects that they would need but they do not know the Spanish equivalent of and look them up using an online dictionary? Etc.

Concluding remarks

My little ‘experiment’ identified some of the typical problems L2 intermediate students encounter in grappling with texts which contain a fair number of unfamiliar words. The lesson I learnt from my findings is that inferring the meaning of such words is not as easy for learners at this level of proficiency as one might expect. Hence teachers should ensure that they prep the students adequately by training them in the use of inferencing strategies which address the deficit areas my ‘experiment’ identified.

You can find more on this topic in the book ‘The language teacher toolkit’ I co-authored with Steve Smith and available for purchase at http://www.amazon.com

The Language Teacher Toolkit – Why we wrote it and how it may enhance your practice

Gianfranco Conti, Phd (Applied Linguistics), MA (TEFL), MA (English Lit.), PGCE (Modern Languages and P.E.) General pedagogy, Uncategorized

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Both as a teacher trainee twenty years ago and as a teacher trainer later on in my career I always lamented the absence of a book or set of resources for language instructors that would bridge the gap between research and classroom practice. That would not be written in the complex jargon of university professors and yet would provide the novice or inquisitive teacher with a framework or guiding principles informed by the latest language learning research acquisitions whilst being grounded in the invaluable pragmatism and wisdom of veteran teachers ‘who have been there and done that’.

A book that would not be biased towards one methodology or another, prescribing dogmatic solutions. Rather, a book that would provide teachers with a wide range of strategies, rooted in neuroscience and common sense applicable to a broad spectrum of classroom scenarios and learning settings from the Americas to the Far east. In other words, a universal language teacher tool-kit through and through that any classroom practitioner (novice or experienced) could draw on to better comprehend the ‘why’ of language teaching and learning and the ‘how’ of its day-by-day implementation. Accessible whilst credible.

After searching for that book in vain, for two decades, on ‘meeting’ Steve Smith of www.frenchteacher.net  a man whose French teaching resources – like thousands of other teachers around the world – I had been using for years, it suddenly dawned on me that his background and experience perfectly complemented mine and would have created the perfect synergy required to produce such a book.

Besides being a first class practitioner with a highly inquisitive and reflective mind and 35 years of teaching experience, Steve is also a very clear, concise and no-nonsense writer. With a Master’s degree in Language Education, a wealth of reading in Applied Linguistics and a 360-degree awareness of teachers’ every day challenges and needs, Steve was the perfect partner in crime for this ambitious enterprise.

‘The Language Teacher Toolkit’, finally completed a couple of weeks ago and available on http://www.amazon.com in a few days, is the result of months and months of blending together two approaches to language instruction – Steve’s and mine –  which do not necessarily always converge but feed on each other thereby producing a very comprehensive and eclectic pedagogic framework and repertoire of teaching strategies.

In our work we have endeavored to cover every single area of competence that an effective language teacher ought to master, providing a balanced mix of theory and practice and ensuring that research findings were always discussed in clear and simple language and systematically related to the nitty gritty of every-day teaching and learning. To make sure that we catered for the needs of language teachers worldwide we have gathered data through social media, specialized forums and research studies into teacher cognition thereby identifying the areas that most teachers are concerned about or interested in.

The content includes: methods, target language teaching, developing spontaneous talk, classroom oral techniques, teaching grammar, vocabulary, listening, reading and writing. We also have chapters on motivation, behaviour management, technology, advanced level teaching, assessment, and differentiated teaching.

With more than 50 years of teaching experience as classroom practitioners and over a century as polyglot language learners between the two of us we have written this book with the following framing questions in mind:

  • What does a language teacher need to know?
  • What is the most concise and user-friendly way of putting this across?
  • How does this translate into concrete lesson planning and classroom implementation?
  • What are the obstacles in the way of putting this into practice with various types of learners in a range of learning contexts?
  • What are the possible solutions to such obstacles?

As far as I am aware this 22-chapter book is one of a kind not merely because of its unique combination of the latest research in language pedagogy with no-nonsense effective classroom strategies, but also, and more importantly, because it is not written by educational consultants or university professors, but by teachers for teachers. Designed with the average teacher’s every-day needs, challenges and concerns in mind. This is why we have provided lots of practical tips as well as a vast array of minimal-preparation high-impact activities (in every chapter) and lesson-plans (at the end of the book) which will hopefully make teachers’ life easier whilst not compromising the quality of their instructional input.

Steve and I are very grateful to Elspeth Jones (Steve’s spouse) for editing and formatting the book and to Steve Glover (renowned resource writer and passionate linguist) for reviewing it and providing us with invaluable recommendations. We would also like to thank the distinguished language educators from various corners of the world who gave us lots of encouragement and insightful feedback throughout the process, e.g. Sara Cottrell of http://www.musicuentos.com.

The book can be found at:  http://www.amazon.co.uk/Language-Teacher-Toolkit-Steven-Smith/dp/1523214821/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1455183687&sr=8-3&keywords=the+language+teacher+toolkit

Lessons in demotivation – forty years of uninspiring modern foreign languages curriculum design

Gianfranco Conti, Phd (Applied Linguistics), MA (TEFL), MA (English Lit.), PGCE (Modern Languages and P.E.) General pedagogy, Uncategorized

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Please note: This post was co-authored with Dylan Vinales of Garden Internationa School

Last week I had one of those weird out-of-the-body experiences whereby you watch and listen to yourself teach. To my dismay, during my quiz-starter I was uttering to my very keen year 7 French students – armed with MWBs- the sentence: “j’aime les lapins car ils sont mignons, poilus et joueurs” (= I like rabbits because they are cute, furry and playful”). My heart sank. Mon Dieu ! What was I teaching them?

Truth is, I was following the Expo-One- based schemes of work – Unit 3 animals, etc. And, fortunately, our students are intrinsically motivated third-culture kids who love learning languages! Still, why would 21st century teen-agers want to spend six weeks of their French learning talking about pets? How relevant is that to their daily life, personal interests, academic goals? Do not get me wrong, I am an animal lover and I do believe that the topic lends itself to the teaching of some useful linguistic content; however, emotional response to and relevance of the to-be-learnt information to one’s personal interests and goals being important components of motivation in any learning, I wondered: what’s in it for them? Why should they be interested in this?

The same applies to many other topics included in current MFL course-books based on the England and Wales curriculum. Take for example the topic ‘house-chores’ notoriously one of the things teenagers hate the most about their daily life – how inspiring is such a topic going to be for year 8 students of French, Spanish or German? Even the topic ‘Jobs and future career’. Yes, I see the value of reflecting on their future life in year 9 as this is the time in which they usually choose their GCSE options and a lot of career orientation goes on. But really? Does anyone in their right mind think that teen-agers would enjoy talking about future careers – in French! – at the age of 13?

The list of uninspiring topics and sub-topics that books and teachers teach in foreign language lessons is endless and is partly influenced by the GCSE examinations topics. However, in my opinions, the main culprits are textbook writers and, to a less degree, teachers who are often not in touch with teen-agers’ lifestyle, interests and aspirations. Yet teachers often complain about students not being engaged and motivated. Would you be, if you were in their shoes? Having to talk in your early teens about pets, house-chores, pencil case objects, part-time jobs or future careers, a fictitious boy or girl’s trip to Normandy (to see the Bayeux tapestry of all things!) and other topics which are kind of useful but do receive, in my view, too much emphasis when one considers the relevance and the surrender value that they hold for pubescent language learners.

Teachers and curriculum designer, especially when they are not blessed with intrinsically motivated children, should ask themselves the following questions, when creating schemes of work: what topics and/or sub-topics are my students REALLY interested in? What words do they really need to learn and which ones would they enjoy learning? How may meeting their needs and preferences impact their preparation for GCSE or whatever examinations they will sit later on?

Of course, no curriculum should be entirely based on students’ preferences; adults do have the ethical responsibility to ensure that the teaching imparts knowledge, values and skills that student may not necessarily see as relevant or interesting. However, I wonder to what extent, as adults, curriculum designers and teachers are truly aware of what their teen-age students actually do outside school, what they watch on television or on Youtube; what books they read; what music they listen to; what they share on their favourite social media; what their main concerns and anxieties are; what they truly enjoy about life. And if they are mindful of this in their short-, medium- and long-term planning.

After all, although the new 21st centuries technologies and societal changes have exacerbated the already big generational gap that has always existed between parents and their children, the textbooks topics and vocabulary content has not massively changed. Take the Tricolore series – apart from some cosmetic changes, it is basically the same book I used to teach from 25 years ago…

For some teachers the answer would be to adopt a PBL approach. I do not agree, however, as I have strong reservations about it that I have already expressed in previous posts. The main ones: (1) students do not get enough aural and oral practice; (2) they spend too much time producing artefacts; (3) the focus is often on developing the final product rather than on language skills.

As far as I am concerned, in an ideal world the solution would be for curriculum designers, textbook creators and teachers to find out what students are really interested in; what they see as relevant to their personal needs, goals and aspirations; what they enjoy talking about; and use this information to create more motivating and inspiring linguistic content and learning activities.

Grammar translation and Communicative Language Teaching Compared

Gianfranco Conti, Phd (Applied Linguistics), MA (TEFL), MA (English Lit.), PGCE (Modern Languages and P.E.) General pedagogy, Uncategorized

Please note: this paper has been written in collaboration with Steve Smith of http://www.frenchteacher.net and my G.I.S.K.L. colleague Dylan Vinales.

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In this paper I shall compare two different language teaching methodologies, the Grammar-Translation methodology, still used in quite a lot of institutions worldwide ( e.g. some UK and Malaysian universities) and the Communicative Language Teaching approach, possibly today’s most popular instructional method worldwide . It should be pointed out that the labels ‘Grammar Translation’ (GT) and ‘Communicative Language Teaching’ (CLT) do not refer to two fixed sets of instructional frameworks whose principles have been formally and permanently codified by their founders or proponents. On the contrary, GT is a term used by specialized authors in their reviews of the history of Applied Linguistics (e.g Brown, 1994) to describe the oldest documented form of L2 teaching in man’s history.

The label CLT, on the other hand, does indeed designate meaning-based methodologies described in great detail by its many proponents and supporters in numerous manuals, papers and conferences. However, it has been applied very flexibly over the last 30 years or so to losely describe teaching methods that share a common core of pedagogic principles but can in fact differ greatly from one other in a number of ways. Some approaches, for instance, ban grammar teaching and correction altogether and employ communicative tasks with little or no structure which aim at fostering spontaneous interaction (Littlewood’s, 1984, ‘strong’ CLT approaches); others are less radical and do include some grammar teaching and correction and employ more structured activities in order to exercise some control over learner output (Littlewood’s, 1984, ‘weak’ CLT appraoches).

It is beyond the scope of this post to discuss all the many shapes and forms that GT and CLT over the decades. Thus, in discussing both approaches I shall limit my focus to the main pedagogic principles both methodologies rest upon and the basic teaching activities they employ, evaluating their merits in the light of current theories of L2 –acquisition and cognitive psychology. After discussing each methodology I shall proceed to compare them drawing my conclusions as to which one of them I consider as the more conducive to effective language learning providing the rationale for my choice. In my conclusions I shall also discuss my views on how elements of each methods could be combined in order to produce an integrated teaching methodology which, I believe, has greater potential for learning than either one of the two approaches.

Grammar Translation (GT)

This approach is based on the Classical Humanistic educational philosophy which views teaching as the passing-on of a body of knowledge from one generation to the next; not as the passing of skills necessary to function effectively and independently in the real world in a way which is beneficial for society. In this educational paradigm, language is therefore taught as something to know, as a set of rules and words to memorize rather than an instrument to use in a real-life communicative context.

As the name suggests, this instructional methodology focuses mainly on the explicit teaching of grammar in the belief that the mastery of the morphology, syntax and the other mechanics of the target language (TL) is the key to effective L2-acquisition. In its purest form this methodology will follow a Structural Syllabus (White, 1998) that is a syllabus in which each unit of work centres around a core grammatical structure. The teaching of lexis usually co-occurs, but holds a peripheral role and receive less emphasis and recycling within a typical lesson.

Although instruction rarely concerns itself explicitly with the teaching of translation skills and dictionary use, the learners are often engaged in translation activities from the L1 to the L2 and vice versa, aimed at reinforcing the target grammatical structures. Such activities typically follow the explanation of a morpheme / grammar rule which is usually taught deductively rather than inductively. Other activities of election are grammar exercises which train the learners in the manipulation of the morphology of the various parts of speech with model phrases which are usually learnt out of context. Such model phrases are usually void of communicative value and rather than being selected for their surrender value usually serve a purely demonstrative purpose. Aural/ oral skills are rarely if ever practised. The only oral work the students are likely to engage in is usually when the teacher addresses one of the students to ask them to demonstrate their grasp of a grammar structure through a translation task.

The elective form of correction is explicit error correction, possibly supplemented with rule explanation; in other words, the/a correct TL alternative is provided. The teacher usually practises all-out correction and would prioritize accuracy over fluency, form over communication, product over process. Hence, in the assessment of learner output the teacher would particularly penalize grammar mistakes.

The typical GT classroom sees the teacher as the ‘dictator’ of learning and the students as the passive recipients of his/her input. The learners usually commit lexical items to memory by rehearsing wordlists and are tested on their ability to recall them totally out of contexts. Pronunciation is taught through parroting and the learners usually are taught phonetics and practice reading the phonetic transcriptions of words found in the dictionaries and textbooks. L2-Writing tasks consist of: (a) translating words with the dctionary or (b) writing model sentences over and over again manipulating their morphology or syntax to obtain formally corrected (but not necessarily meaningful) output.

It should also be pointed out that in this instructional methodology the L2 taught is normally the standard variety in its purest and prescriptive form and in its highest register. Thus, the syntax the students will learn is more than often the language of literature or academia. Occasionally, both the lexis and the syntax taught is anachronistic and may occasionally sound flawed to a non-scholarly native ‘ear’.

In evaluating the merits of this methodology one needs to consider that the epistemological foundations of Grammar Translation approaches are not rooted in any systematic theory or model of L2-acquisition. Rather, they are based on the pre-cognitivist overly simplistic assumption that a grammatical rule can be acquired by simple explanation and rote learning. The main shortcomings of this approach stem from these epistemological premise: that by understanding and/or memorizing a grammar rule students ‘acquire’ it.

Today, cognitive research in the way humans acquire and process languages rules out that L2-grammar can be acquired by simply accruing (declarative) knowledge about it. Although cognitive theory does allow for declarative knowledge (conscious knowledge about the L2 grammar) to become proceduralised (i.e. automatic), the proceduralization process is very long and requires extensive practice (Anderson, 2000). Also, Cognitivist theory postulates that unless a learner is developmentally ready to acquire a given structure, teaching it to him/her is likely to be a sheer waste of time (just as you would not ask a beginner driver to drive a Ferrari on a busy highway). GT is not usually mindful of this.

Moreover, current psycholinguistic research has clearly demonstrated that language is a complex cognitive skill involving a series of psycho-motor sub-skills (de Bot, 1992) and that performing these sub-skills effectively is a function of the power law of practice (Anderson, 2000). Since a language is processed through four different modalities (speaking, hearing, reading and writing) each of them governed by different processes, it is flawed to presume that what is learnt by writing or reading can be effectively used by the other two modalities. Information processing theory clearly indicates that processing language effectively in each of the above modalities requires more than knowing words by heart. The brain’s working memory’s ability to process language in each modality requires a lot of modality-specific practice (Anderson, 2000).

It should also be pointed out that apart from very few studies (e.g. Lighbown and Spada, 1992), most experimental research in the effectiveness of explicit grammar teaching has yielded little evidence that it actually works (Brown, 1994; Ellis, 1994, Macaro, 2003). The same applies to error correction research (Truscott, 1994).

Finally, in GT students are usually assessed based on the number of errors in their output. The teacher/assessor has a pre-conceived target language model and the learners’ translation, utterance or composition are evaluated on the basis of how deviant they are from that model. This encourages the learners to prioritize the development of accuracy over fluency and may inhibit risk-taking (a valuable learning strategy – Brown, 1994). Moreover, teacher feedback which is product\-based does not help the students improve the skills (i.e. the process) involved in the execution of the target task. Teacher feedback, to be helpful, needs to identify the issues relative to the various processes involved in task performance, identify the flaws and advice the learners on how to address those issues.

In conclusion the main features of GT are:

1. It is teacher centred and does not aim to cater for every learner’s individual needs

2. The emphasis is on grammar learning through verb drills, the translation of written texts and the memorization of wordlists

3. The focus is on the product rather than the process of learning

4. Language is viewed as a body of knowledge rather than an instrument for communicating and functioning effectively in the real world

5. Linguistic practice is confined to the memorization of words and rules

6. Instruction aims at the mastery of the written medium rather than oral communication

7. Accuracy rules over fluency

8. Correction is all-out and punitive

9. The L2-model adopted is elitist and so is the educational philosophy

10. Feedback on learner performance is not likely to be helpful as it is solely accuracy-based

Its main shortcomings are that (1) it does not train learners in using the language to communicate; (2) it does not provide enough practice in oral and aural skills; (3) the emphasis on grammar may alienate students who are not analytical learners; (4) the emphasis on accuracy and correction may demotivate less able learners more prone to inaccuracies ; (5) it does not develop independent learners. Its main strength is that it develops grammar and lexical accuracy. However, by not promoting oral/aural skills, the students’ are likely to be very slow at producing spoken output and seriously impaired when confronted with the task of understanding L2-native speakers .

Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)

CLT has altogether different objectives to GT as it rests on diametrically opposite educational philosophy and epistemological assumptions. In fact, unlike GT, it prioritizes teaching skills rather than knowledge (Littlewood, 1994). Moreover, this approach is based on Social Constructivism, a pedagogical philosophy which aims at empowering the learners with the tools which allow one to function effectively in society (White, 1998). Consequently, in CLT L2- grammar knowledge becomes a secondary concern; language use across the four core skills of Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing takes priority because conveying and understanding messages is what makes one get by in the real world. Thus, the teaching of Functions (e.g. expressing an opinion, apologizing, giving directions, ordering), Notions (e.g. Time, Size, Space) and of the vocabulary (words and lexical phrases) needed to express those functions and notions is the primary instructional focus. Also, since the learners will one day have to cope with the challenges that the real world will pose to them, the target functions, notions and language items are usually contextualized in situations and tasks which replicate real-life.

CLT’s epistemological premises rest on the Skill-theory postulate that language is a complex goal-orientated cognitive skill, made up of sub-skills which are acquired after extended practice (Anderson, 2000). CLT translates this postulate into its instructional practice as follows: (a) since ‘goal-orientated’ implies that language has to be used for a purpose, learning activities must have a clear and tangible communicative goal; (b) since each skill involved in language reception and production has to be automatized in order to be acquired, the CLT teacher must give learners plenty of opportunities for practicing all four skills.

CLT is also based on cognitive models of L2 acquisition which posit that declarative knowledge about the L2 and procedural knowledge (the ability to use it) are two different abilities. Thus, acquiring declarative knowledge does not automatically lead to being able to use the L2.

The emphasis on empowering the individual with skills that will render him self-reliant and the skill-theory assumption that skills must be practised frequently and meaningfully in order to be acquired are at the root of CLT’s pupil-centred orientation. Unlike GT, in fact, CLT aims at obtaining productive learning outcomes from all the students in the classroom (Littlewood, 1994). They all have to take part in the tasks-in-hand. This entails that the teacher, in order to practise speaking, must set group-work tasks which involve interpersonal negotiation of meaning; thus, the students talk to each other rather than to the teacher (as happens in the traditional L2 classroom).

Consequently, unlike the GT teacher, the CLT teacher does not spend most of the lesson at the front of the classroom. S/he sets the students communicative tasks designed to practise the target lexis, morpheme, function, phoneme, etc. and then goes around the classroom HELPING the students, FACILITATING their learning. In fact, the proponents of the CLT approach (e.g Littlewoods, 1984) reiterate – often ad nauseam –  the concept that the CLT teacher is a facilitator not a dictator of learning. In this capacity, s/he abdicates part of the responsibility for the learning to the students as they have to manage the group-work activities set.

This ‘facilitator’ role also entails a different approach to error correction. The proponents of the CLT approach criticized the GT and Audio-lingual approaches for being too intolerant of error (Edge, 1992). ‘Facilitating’ the development of oral and written fluency calls for a different attitude to error, one which recognizes that correcting every single error a student makes can be harmful to their self-esteem and to the development of fluency (especially if the teacher’s correction interrupts their speaking). Thus, the CLT teacher corrects the learners selectively, prioritizing certain errors over others. Since CLT concerns itself with functioning effectively in real life, it gives priority to errors which impede meaning (Walz, 1982). Frequency and Irritability of errors, (respectively how often and how irritating they can be to the interlocutor/reader) are the next most important criteria adopted in selecting which errors to correct (Brown, 1984). Moreover, the correction must not disrupt the flow of conversation. Thus, the CLT teacher tends to delay the correction, making notes as s/he goes around the classroom from group to group ‘coaching’, advising, listening in. S/he will only interrupt the conversation when there are serious breakdowns in communication (Edge, 1992).

The ‘facilitator’ role has also implications for the CLT teacher’s general attitude towards the students. The CLT class being about collaboration and helping the learner to grow, the relationship between the teacher and the learners is different; the teacher is ‘closer’ to the students, sits with them, helps them by giving feedback on the process of their learning rather than simply on the product (Littlewood, 1984). S/he is less judgmental on the quality of their output because the CLT approach acknowledges an important principle of language acquisition: as they acquire the L2 learners build a system, called Interlanguage (Selinker, 2000) which is bound to contain mistakes as it is based on hypotheses and guesses based on their L1 and of their approximate knowledge of the L2 (Brown, 1984). Thus, CLT recognizes that learners need a nurturing, motivational, tolerant environment rather than the academic environment of the humanistic GT classroom. In such an environment, the learners will not feel intimidated by bad marks and lots of red ink and will take risks as they speak or write. Krashen (1981) expressed in his affective-filter theory his belief that such an environment is a categorical imperative for L2-learning to happen. An overly intolerant, critical environment would, on the contrary, ‘raise’ the learner’s ‘affective filter’ serious hindering learning.

Krashen (1981) and other educators have stressed the importance of avoiding correcting learners‘ output altogether in the belief that in order to motivate learners one has to let them talk and write at length and without any interruption. This stance is accepted by strong CLT approaches (Prabhu, 1987). Most CLT instruction still supports the use of correction but emphasizes giving the learners fluency-orientated instruction where the learner’s recourse to survival communication strategies such as Coinage (coining new words), Approximation (using words close in meaning to the target word), Paraphrase, Foreignization (adapting an L1 word to make it sound L2-like) is not only tolerated but even encouraged as they often allow an individual to put the intended message across effectively (Macaro, 2003).

The oral/written activities adopted by CLT usually include all of the following features:

1. They involve an information gap that the learners have to fill through interaction in the L2. For example, two learners need each other’s information to complete a table. Their task is to elicit the needed information by means of asking each other questions in the L2;

2. They have a communicative purpose . Language is an instrument to complete them not the main outcome ( as in a grammar exercise or translation task)

3. They are inspired by real-life tasks (e.g. asking for directions., describing a criminal to a policeman, ordering food, etc.)

The aural/reading comprehension tasks often involve authentic or pseudo-authentic materials in order to better prepare the learners to cope with the challenges posed by the target language environment.

The CLT assessment of learner performance is usually criterion based. The learners are usually graded based on multi score proficiency scales (e.g. Polio, 1997) which identify the skills/proficiency areas (e.g. grammatical accuracy, range of vocabulary, fluency, style) involved in the performance. The learners are awarded marks on each trait which are finally added up. Each mark refers to a level which is described in detail to make the grading process more accountable to the learner. For example, a top mark on the accuracy scale could be described as follows: accurate use of complex structures; very few mistakes, mostly involving mistakes not impeding intelligibility. An average of the scores is calculated. The learners are usually given both the total and the trait-specific scores thereby obtaining an insight in the area of their performance they should pay more attention to in the future. This type of evaluation has a greater potential learning outcome for the students than GT’s.

In conclusion, the main pedagogical principles advocated by CLT are:

1. It is pupil-centred rather than teacher-centred

2 The emphasis is on communication and effective interactional skills

3. The focus is on the process rather than the product of learning;

4. Language is viewed as a skill to learn rather than a body of language

to pass on to the pupil

5. Linguistic practice occurs through communicative activities

6. Instruction aims at the mastery of all of the four core language skills

7. Fluency rules over accuracy

8. Correction is selective and non-judgmental

9. The L2-model adopted is flexible and can deviate from the L2-standard

Form

Its main weakness relates to the fact that by prioritizing communication and fluency development it does not emphasize grammar sufficiently. Thus, learners often develop a pidgin ridden with grammatical flaws at morphological and at grammatical level. Because the teacher corrective intervention is selective and focuses mainly on errors that impede understanding, learner’s mistakes often become automatized and consequently difficult to eradicate. Also, the scarce focus on grammatical knowledge does not help the learners develop the metalinguistic and analytical skills necessary for L2-students to learn grammar independently and to produce and comprehend texts that contain sophisticated syntax. In other words, whereas it may train students to successfully cope at survival and basic conversational level, it may fail to prepare the learners for communication in professional or academic contexts where accuracy and sophisticated language and register are required.

Conclusions and Implications for L2-pedagogy

In conclusion, the two methodologies are very different in their philosophy, goals, and in the way they conceptualize language acquisition. CLT appears, at least in theory, as a more effective approach because it aims at preparing the learners for effective interaction in the real world. Moreover, being based on current models of language acquisition it advocates methods and procedures that are more likely to lead to successful acquisition because they are consistent with the way humans learn and process information and language. However, in my opinion it does not focus learners on accuracy as much as it should. This is particularly counterproductive in acquisition-poor learning environments, that is environments where the learners’ exposure to the target language is minimal (e.g. the two hours a week of a typical secondary school course).

Unlike students learning the L2 in an L2-speaking country, learners receiving instruction in acquisition-poor environments (i.e. with little contact with the L2) do not have many opportunities to internalize grammar subconsciously through frequent exposure; for the latter type of learners error correction and focus on L2 morphemes are crucial in order to learn accurate syntax.

Moreover, current theories of second language acquisition posit that Noticing is often crucial to L2 learning (Schmidt, 1990). Noticing refers to the process whereby the learners realize that a structure works differently in the L2 system compared to its L1 equivalent. This realization, which often marks the beginning of L2 acquisition, is not fostered by strong meaning-based methods like CLT. Explicit grammar instruction on the other hands promotes Noticing, especially when it presents students with bilingual input illustrating the usage of the target L2 structures.

Thus, I believe that CLT and GT should be integrated within an eclectic syllabus with a variable focus  where functions and notions are still prioritised over form. In a seminal article that every language teacher should read, Lighbown and Spada (2008) provide very interesting suggestions as to how this can be done through both inductive and deductive approaches (http://www.ub.edu/GRAL/Naves/Courses/ELTM/Miscelaneous/Spada-Lightbown2008Form-Focused-Instruction.pdf). One approach involves addressing grammar instruction as of when it arises from the context the class is operating in; so, for example, the teacher would not teach a given grammar structure because the books or the schemes of work say so, but simply because the specific topic or text one is dealing with require the students to understand and/or being able to use it. This approach is referred to as ‘Focus on form’ as opposed to ‘Focus on forms’ (the more traditional grammar teaching approach).

The bias should still be on communication, though, and teachers should find creative ways to teach grammar through communicative activities. There should be, however, space for drills and other behaviouristic (habit-forming) activities which serve the purpose of paving the way for less structured information-gap based activities involving negotiation of meaning in the  context of learner-to-learner oral or written activities. Translations also should be used, if sparingly, in order to focus learners on grammatical, lexical and stylistic accuracy. Also, as Conti (2001,2004) maintains, instruction should include an emphasis on modelling self-monitoring skills to ensure that learners become more effective editors and auditors of their output.

REFERENCES

Anderson, J.R. 2000. Cognitive psychology and its implications (5th edition). New York: Worth Publishing.

Brown, H.D. 1994. Principles of language learning and teaching (3rd edition). Englewood Cliffs,

NJ: Prentice Hall.

de Bot, K. 1992. A bilingual production model: Levelt’s ‘Speaking’ model adapted. Applied Linguistics. 13(1): 1-24.

Edge, J. 1989. Mistakes and correction. London: Longman.

Ellis, R. 1994. The study of second language acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Eysenck, M.W. and Keane, M.T. 1995. Cognitive psychology: A Student’s Handbook (4th edition). Hove: Psychology Press.

Ferris, D.R. 1999. The case for grammar correction in L2 writing classes: A response to Truscott (1996). Journal of Second Language Writing. 8(1): 1-11.

Krashen, S.D. 1981. Second language acquisition and second language learning. Oxford: Pergamon press.

Lightbown, P. M. and Spada N. 1992. How Languages are Learned. (2nd Ed.) Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Littlewood, W. 1984. Foreign and second language learning, language acquisition research and its implications for the classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Macaro, E. (2003) Teaching and Learning a Second Language: a guide to current research and its applications. London: Continuum

Pienemann, M. 1984. Psychological constraints on the teachability of languages. Studies in Second Language Acquisition. 6(3): 186-214.

Polio, C. 1997. Measures of linguistic accuracy in second language writing. Language Learning. 47(1): 101-143.

Prabhu, N.S. 1987. Second language pedagogy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Walz, Joel. 1982. Error correction techniques for the foreign language classroom. Washington: Centre for Applied Linguistics

White, Ronald V. 1998: The ELT Curriculum: Design, Innovation and Management. London: Blackwell. Applied Language Studies. Editors: Crystal & Johnson

How verb conjugation drills can enhance oral and written fluency. A skill-building perspective

Gianfranco Conti, Phd (Applied Linguistics), MA (TEFL), MA (English Lit.), PGCE (Modern Languages and P.E.) Grammar teaching, Uncategorized

TES3

It sounds like a paradox, right? It goes against everything you have been taught on your teacher training course, doesn’t it? How can grammar drills ever improve fluency? It’s learning grammar by rote! It’s what language teachers used to do in the 50’s!

In actual fact, as I shall argue below, verb conjugation drills can indeed enhance the ease and speed at which L2 learners produce spoken and written output. To understand why, let us look at how L2 output is produced.

How L2 output is produced

Every time an individual produces linguistic output, they will have to translate the idea / message they are trying to convey (or proposition, as cognitive psychologist call it) into language. This process happens at very high speed with native speakers (Anderson, 2000). However, with novice target language speakers the process is much slower, especially when they are producing complex sentences which pose a heavy cognitive load on Working Memory. Imagine an intermediate student of average ability wanted to convey the following, in French:

Yesterday we went to the cinema with them (feminine). The film was great but the cinema was packed.

First, the student will have to retrieve all the vocabulary they need from Long-Term Memory. At this point Working Memory, that can only contain 5 to 9 digits at any one time for around 15-to-30 seconds (without rehearsal), will be already stretched in terms of storage capacity. Whilst holding the words in Working Memory, the brain has to ensure that each lexical item is arranged in the correct syntactic order and that the rules of tense and agreement are applied correctly. This requires a number of cognitive operations some of which involve sub-operations (e.g. ‘they arrived’ in French require the perfect tense; however it is a verb requiring the verb ‘to be’ as an auxiliary; also ‘they’ being plural I will have to add ‘-s’ to the ending of the verb).

If a student has not automatized verb formation and the application of the various rules of tense and agreement involved, the process will be extremely cumbersome and may lead to error. For instance, a typical intermediate student of average ability will master most of the vocabulary in the sentence above. However, they may struggle with the translation of ‘we went’ (being a verb requiring the auxiliary Etre in the Perfect tense); they may be undecided as to whether to use eux, ils or se for ‘them’; moreover, they may have problems deciding if ‘Was’ should be translated using the imperfect or the perfect tense; etc. Each and every decision has to be taken whilst simultaneously the brain has to rehearse every single vocabulary item in Working Memory. This is an ominous task for an intermediate learner and the slightest interference can cause Working Memory loss, leading to processing inefficiency errors.

It is easy to see how, in this and other linguistic contexts, the automatization of verb formation would contribute to speed up the process of output production; one less cognitive operation to worry about. And when the conjugation drills involve oral production, they have the added benefit of automatizing the pronunciation of verb forms; this will further ease up the cognitive load of the pre-intermediate to intermediate learner as pronunciation will require less conscious attention, freeing up more Working Memory space.

The best verb drills are those which train students to retrieve the target verb forms quickly. My favourite ones involve the use of online conjugation trainers such as the one I created at www.language-gym.com – which, incidentally, is free. Why? Because they offer support (‘cheat sheets’ with the solution); they are self-marking; they provide stats (numerical and visual) which give you a clear idea of how the students are doing and – in the case of the Language Gym conjugator – they have images and English translation which help memorize the meaning of the verbs.

The objection often made by the critics of verb drills is that the students do not learn the target verbs in context. However, such criticism stems from a misunderstanding of the role of these activities. Verb conjugation drills do not aim at the acquisition of verbs; their goal is the automatization of one aspect of verb acquisition: verb formation. Hence, they are only a small but very important cog in a very complex mechanism. Unlike in behaviourist L2 pedagogy models, verb conjugation drills should not dominate our lessons. Not at all. They only make sense as a means to support the development of communicative competence. Their merit lies in focusing Working Memory’s attentional systems solely on verb morphology in a ‘stress-free’ environment, where there is no communicative pressure nor high levels of cognitive challenge. Hence, they should be used with discernment.

I usually flip verb-conjugation practice at home using the www.language-gym.com verb-conjugation trainer (I ask the students to send to my school e-mail account the screenshots of the score obtained at the end of each session). In class, I use verb drills (whether through MWB, or the online verb trainer) only as a pre-task activity before a communicative oral or written task, in order to:

  • Activate the verb forms relative to the tense(s) the to-be-staged communicative activity is likely to elicit;
  • Focus the students on the issue of agreement and verb accuracy in general, verb-endings being one of the first things that the students neglect when working under communicative pressure;
  • Get a good overview of each student’s level of verb-formation automatization before the activity; this information will be useful when the teacher walks around the classroom monitoring the students as they carry out the oral tasks in that it will cue him/her to whom will require more support.

Another important merit of verb conjugation drills is that, as a spin-off, students often acquire the meaning of a wide repertoire of verbs. Macaro (2007) makes the very important point that L2 learners need a wide repertoire of verbs – wider than the average UK GCSE learner currently gets –  to become effective autonomous speakers of the target language.

Concluding remarks

In conclusion, verb conjugation drills have been written off by the advocates of strong CLT and Nativist approaches (e.g. TPRS) as legacy methods which are of no use in L2 pedagogy. However, as I argued above, they can play a crucial role in enhancing fluency by bringing about the automatization of verb formation thereby facilitating speech production by reducing the cognitive load on L2-learner working memory.

Online verb-conjugation trainers are particularly effective in this regard, in that they force the learner to be accurate (the program only accept 100% accurate input); they foster independent learning (as they are self-marking); they train students to retrieve the target verb forms quickly (as the students usually perform against the clock) and, finally, they offer support in the way of conjugation lists, which make the process less threatening for them. Add the fact that ways can be easily found to add a competition element to the tasks. Moreover, when using online verb trainers the children are usually quiet and concentrated- at least in my experience. I recommend getting the student to carry out verb drills (whether flipped or in class) in small doses several times a week.