Sandra Fotos

Communicating About Grammar: A Task-Based Approach

Providing learners with grammar problems they must solve interactively integrates grammar instruction with opportunities for meaningful communication. This article reports the results of an exploratory study of the use of a communicative, grammar-based task in the college EFL classroom. The two research questions addressed are whether the task successfully promoted L2 linguistic knowledge of a specific grammar point and whether it produced the kind of negotiated interaction which has been assumed to facilitate L2 acquisition. The limited results of this investigation suggest that the grammar task encouraged communication about grammar and enabled EFL learners to increase their knowledge of a difficult L2 rule.

Integrating Grammar Instruction and Communicative Language Use Through Grammar Consciousness‐Raising Tasks

Grammar consciousness-raising tasks combine the development of knowledge about problematic L2 grammatical features with the provision for meaning-focused use of the target language. However, for this task type to be pedagogically useful in ESL/EFL classrooms, it must be shown that task performance is as effective as a teacher-fronted grammar lesson in promoting gains in knowledge of the target structure and is comparable to performance of regular communicative tasks in terms of opportunities for communicative language exchange. This article reports an investigation of three grammar consciousness-raising tasks dealing with word order. The results indicate that the tasks successfully promoted both proficiency gains and L2 negotiated interaction in the participants, with negotiation quantity being determined by the combination of task features present rather than by the nature of the task content. Thus, grammar consciousness-raising tasks can be recommended as one way to integrate formal instruction within a communicative framework.

6. CURRENT DEVELOPMENTS IN RESEARCH ON THE TEACHING OF GRAMMAR

With the rise of communicative methodology in the late 1970s, the role of grammar instruction in second language learning was downplayed, and it was even suggested that teaching grammar was not only unhelpful but might actually be detrimental. However, recent research has demonstrated the need for formal instruction for learners to attain high levels of accuracy. This has led to a resurgence of grammar teaching, and its role in second language acquisition has become the focus of much current investigation. In this chapter we briefly review the major developments in the research on the teaching of grammar over the past few decades. This review addresses two main issues: (1) whether grammar teaching makes any difference to language learning; and (2) what kinds of grammar teaching have been suggested to facilitate second language learning. To this end, the chapter examines research on the different ways in which formal instruction can be integrated with communicative activities.

Ten Criteria for a Spoken Grammar

In recent papers and books, we have reported some of the findings of our research into the grammatical characteristics of the five-million word CANCODE spoken corpus (Carter and McCarthy 1995; 1997; McCarthy and Carter 1995; 1997; Carter, Hughes and McCarthy 1998; McCarthy 1998; Hughes and McCarthy 1998). Although these works have tended to focus on specific aspects of spoken grammars, a common thread unites them: the belief that spoken grammars have uniquely special qualities that distinguish them from written ones, wherever we look in our corpus, at whatever level of grammatical category. In our work, too, we have expressed the view that language pedagogy that claims to support the teaching and learning of speaking skills does itself a disservice if it ignores what we know about the spoken language. Whatever else may be the result of imaginative methodologies for eliciting spoken language in the second-language classroom, there can be little hope for a natural spoken output on the part of language learners if the input is stubbornly rooted in models that owe their origin and shape to the written language. Even much corpus-based grammatical insight (for example the otherwise excellent early products of the University of Birmingham COBUILD corpus-project) has been heavily biassed towards evidence gleaned from written sources. It is therefore, we believe, timely to consider some of the insights a spoken corpus can offer, and to attempt to relate them more globally to the overall problem of designing a pedagogical spoken grammar. We shall do this in the form of ten principles which might inform any spoken grammar project, and, which we feel, give us a distinct purchase on this relatively recent area of pedagogical interest. Each of the ten