Teaching Grammar - Week 4 - Grammar as a Process

Introduction: Hello and welcome to Week 4 of the course Teaching Grammar for the Licenciatura in English Teaching at ULACIT Term IIIC 2023. In this class we will do several activities to challenge the traditional view of grammar as a product and instead consider how it can be seen as a process. We will also look at a model for language acquisition called Processing Instruction and explore a teaching technique associated with it called Structured Input. 

Today's Goals:

• Discuss ways grammar can be viewed as a dynamic process or action rather than a product or object.
• Describe the relationship between grammar and context.
• Consider the three stages of Processing Instruction as a model for grammar learning and teaching.
• Analyze sample Structured Input activities to identify their key features.

Guiding Questions:

• What are some differences between product and process views of grammar?
• What is the relationship between grammar and context?
• How can Processing Instruction (PI) provide a model for grammar acquisition?
• What are the features of a Structured Input activity?

Task 2: Group Discussion - Grammar as a Process

For homework you read the chapter "Grammar as a Process" from the book Uncovering Grammar (Thornbury, 2001). Take a few minutes to discuss the questions below to review some of the concepts.

• Thornbury begins the chapter by asking the question "Is grammar a thing or is it something that happens?"

•  What does he mean by that? 
• In what ways can we think of grammar as a noun and in what ways can we think of grammar as a verb?

• Consider this quote from the beginning of the chapter. Read it carefully with your partners then describe what it means to you and what you think about it.

• "Inferring the process of language acquisition from its product (grammar) is like inferrring the process of 'omeletting' from the omelette... It ignores the fact that the product and the process are two quite different things - that there is grammar and there is grammaring, and the latter is not easily inferable form the former. In short, a description of used language is not the same as language being used."

• Another part of the chapter descriped situations in which very little (if any) grammar is needed to communicate and other situations in which grammar is needed to "fill in the gaps". 

• What are some examples of situations where less grammar is needed? 
• In other situations, what are the kinds of gaps that grammar is needed to fill?

• There chapter also contained the first two diagrams below talking about the relationship between context and grammar. I also added a third diagram to illustarate the influence of social distance and status on grammar. Explain in your own words what you undertand these diagrams to mean.

Click to view full size image.

• In the chapter there were two sample dialogues. Read each one aloud with your partners then discuss these questions.

• Which dialogue sounded more natural? Why?
• Which circle(s) from the diagrams above help does this example help to illustrate?

Click to view full size image.

Task 3: Input Processing and Structured Input Activities

Let's consider one popular theoretical model that has been proposed to explain the process of language acquisition and also to explore a grammar teaching strategy in alignment with that theory . We will look at Bill VanPatten's 1993 article Grammar Teaching for the Acquisition Rich Classroom to explore his idea of Processing Instruction.

• "...there are no cases of successful first or second language acquisition without some form of comprehensible input present during learning. Conversely, an absence of comprehensible input is consistent with unsuccessful first and second language acquisition.”

• “From second language research, we also know that the output of learners is not simply a reflection of the input. First, something happens to the input as it is processed. In addition, there is nonlinear development of the learner’s linguistic system over time. Thus, the output of learners at any given stage may bear only a partial resemblance to the input that they have been exposed to (pp. 435-436)."

Task 4: Analyzing Structured Input Activities

Now you will take a look at some sample Structured Input tasks. Since this teaching strategy was first designed for Spanish as a foriegn language classes, I think it would be nice to see some examples. Then you will also analyze some English examples made by your teacher. Open each document and quickly skim through the activities. For each one, answer the following questions.

• What are students asked to do with the input?
• How are they processing the form-meaning relationship?
• If there is an extension activity, what are they asked to do?

• Sample Spanish Activities: CLICK HERE
• Sample English Activities: CLICK HERE

 

References:

Thornbury, S. (2001) Uncovering Grammar. Macmillan Education.

VanPatten, B. (1993). Grammar Teaching for the Acquisition-Rich Classroom. Foreign Language Annals 26(4). 435-450. 1111/j.1944-9720.1993.tb01179.x