How does grammar teaching affect acquisition?
Language acquisition is the study of the process of human language acquisition. As such, language acquisition refers to first language acquisition, studying the acquisition of the mother tongue when you are still in the infinite age of 3,4, or 5. Second language acquisition refers to the ability to master a second language on the basis of the first language. It involves chapter and additional language acquisition for adults.
Second language learners need to learn grammar because it provides some general and systematic guidance on structure and syntax. Grammar is the backbone of language, without which any one thing students know could be constantly changing, and grammar provides the structure students need to organize and express information and ideas. Without a good grasp of the underlying grammatical patterns and structures of the language, students will not be able to express their ideas adequately and accurately. Grammar is essential to mastering a language. However, how do you show students that grammar is what really matters.
To acquire a language is to "pick it up", that is, to develop language ability by using the language in natural, communicative situations. Learning a language is different in that it is about "knowing the rules" and consciously knowing the grammar/structure. Acquisition is the most important means of acquiring language skills. A person's first language (L1) is primarily learned this way. This way of developing language skills often uses implicit grammar teaching and learning.
In the early 20th century, Jespersen, like Boas, thought grammar should be studied by examining living speech rather than by analyzing written documents. By providing grammar in context in an implicit way, we can allow students to do a lot of grammar learning without alienating them from learning English or other foreign languages. However, this does not completely rule out explicit grammar teaching. Some basic features of English grammatical structures are illogical or not similar to speakers of other languages, and are not easily understood well even in context. If features of English grammar are diameterically opposed to or otherwise distinct from the student's native expression, explicit instruction may be required. An exclusive approach that uses either implicit or explicit methods is not as effective as using one or the other as needed. Following Professor Larry Lynch's advice, the best approach may be an inclusive approach to teaching grammar that includes both implicit and explicit features.
What grammar should be taught?
Grammar is how words and phrases are used to create meaningful sentences. The main components of grammar include parts of speech (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs), tenses (past, present, future), sentence structure (simple, compound, compound), and punctuation. It is important to understand how these elements work together to form a correctly structured sentence to convey the intended meaning. Students need to understand word classes, sentence structure, verb tenses, subject-verb agreement, and punctuation. These are essential for effective written and spoken communication in English.
Grammar teaching should be considered from the Angle of strengthening teaching and expanding teaching. Intensive grammar teaching is the teaching of a single grammatical structure, or possibly a pair of contrasting structures, over a sustained period of time. Extensive grammar teaching means teaching a series of structures in a short period of time. Grammar teaching can be centralized or distributed. It can be intensive or it can be extensive. First, we need to consider whether to focus on a short period of time or spread out over a longer period of time.
When and how should it be taught?
Grammar is not a complete language and should not be taught at a certain age. Grammar should be taught as a tool rather than a rule, which means that it should be taught in a specific context because language must be contextualized. There are two main ways of teaching grammar. The deductive method is to propose rules and produce language according to the rules. (The teacher gives the rules.) Induction is a method of inferring rules by some form of guided discovery. (The teacher gave students a way to discover the rules for themselves.) In other words, the former is more teacher-centric and the latter more learner-centric.
The deductive approach can be used for most isolated grammar projects, where the teacher introduces the target language and then gives the student the opportunity to practice through tightly controlled activities. The final stage of the course gives students the opportunity to practice the target language in more free activities. Teachers can time each stage of the lesson fairly accurately, and anticipate and prepare for the problems students may encounter. But when students need to compare and contrast several grammar items at the same time and their language abilities are far less uniform, it becomes less feasible at higher levels.
The combination of grammar and conversation is the best. In fact, a good command of English grammar does not mean that one is able to communicate effectively, and this is the case for students exposed to purely grammatical methods. Many people recite grammar like robots, but cannot convey basic information. Grammar is placed in conversation to help students understand the appropriate language and patterns to engage in communication.
- Real language: Prepare students with real language and real situations. The dialogues in the textbooks can also be integrated into students' real life in the design, and role-play and other ways can be used to let students experience the actual application of the language. Provide students with ample opportunities to practice what they have learned in real or realistic communication situations
- Stimulate curiosity: Before starting to use the new material, students can guess what the material is, and teachers can use this time to introduce new vocabulary related to the topic, so that students have curiosity, pay attention to specific words through vocabulary games, and guide students to use the new structure to make sentences
- Gamification teaching: Grammar is easy to make students tired and feel boring, so teachers must combine classroom activities with games to let students have enough interesting exercises on the new structure, so as to get familiar with the use of the new grammar structure. There are also practice loops after class to reinforce the training
When teaching grammar, we can consider the following questions
How useful and relevant is the language?
What other languages do my students need to know in order to effectively learn new structures?
What problems may my students encounter when learning a new language?
How can I make this lesson interesting, meaningful, and memorable?
Should grammar be taught in an integrated or discrete manner?
Most teachers think that syntactic grammar is more interesting than isolated grammar. It teaches grammar items that are directly related to the needs of students, who are more motivated to pay attention to the teacher's grammar input when it is relevant to the language task they are being asked to complete. In the integrated grammar of the program, this feedback is typically given to individuals or groups when writing drafts, oral presentations, or language highlights, and focuses on specific grammar for the class as a whole. Grammar is often seen as "scary" or "scary" stuff, and teaching grammar in the context of doing other language activities is seen as more attractive and makes grammar less threatening in a certain context, so integrating grammar can be an adjunctive means of teaching grammar more implicitly through language use, thereby stimulating student engagement.
A discrete approach to grammar provides students with more opportunities to apply the form they are learning in an expanded context. This will be of interest to students who want to study grammar in more depth. However, this only seems to apply to a small percentage of students, as many students do not tend to have an analytical mind. Discrete grammar teaching is often explicit, which helps English students understand the meaning of grammatical forms more easily. This approach was more intensive by giving a lot of exercises and/or more focused on grammar compared to the integrated one. Although students were given more language inputs when grammar was integrated into content/skill courses, the amount was still too limited to help them fully understand grammatical meaning by brief or incidental explanation, let alone to figure it out themselves. It seems EFL students needed explicit grammar teaching to help them work out the meaning of grammatical items. Therefore, whether it is comprehensive or discrete, teachers should select teaching methods according to the actual situation of students, which is also the basis of individualized teaching.
References
del Pilar García Mayo, M., Mangado, M. J. G., & Adrian, M. M. (2013). Contemporary approaches to second language acquisition. John Benjamins Publishing.
Juffs, A. (1991). Second Language Acquisition. Language in Society, 20, 483–491. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404500016663
Leighton, L. (2013). No title. 1–1.
Munro, J. (2023, February 6). Learning grammar is just as important as it always was but the way we teach it has changed. The Conversation. http://theconversation.com/learning-grammar-is-just-as-important-as-it-always-was-but-the-way-we-teach-it-has-changed-196285
Seidlitz Education. (2019, January 10). “sheltered instructional approaches” vs. “second language acquisition methods”: Unpacking one change from the revised TAC §89. Seidlitz Education. https://seidlitzblog.org/2019/01/10/sheltered-instructional-approaches-vs-second-language-acquisition-methods-unpacking-one-change-from-the-revised-tac-%C2%A789/
Tatman, R. (2013, February 15). What’s the best way to teach grammar? Makingnoiseandhearingthings.com. https://makingnoiseandhearingthings.com/2013/02/14/whats-the-best-way-to-teach-grammar/
(N.d.). Researchgate.net. Retrieved February 11, 2024, from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/356849520_Language_Acquisition_The_Role_of_Grammar_Acquisition_and_Instruction_in_Second_Language_Teaching_and_Learning
