Inglés (Secundaria) Tema 12 PDF

## **Inglés (Secundaria), Tema 12 (BOE 1993)** ### **TOPIC 12** - Intro: Historical overview - Concl: Eclectic Approaches Nowadays ### **GRAMMAR** **A REFLECTION ON GRAMMAR, LANGUAGE AND LANGUAGE LEARNING** - **Grammar and language** - Traditional definition: Classical grammars - First...

## **Inglés (Secundaria), Tema 12 (BOE 1993)** ### **TOPIC 12** - Intro: Historical overview - Concl: Eclectic Approaches Nowadays ### **GRAMMAR** **A REFLECTION ON GRAMMAR, LANGUAGE AND LANGUAGE LEARNING** - **Grammar and language** - Traditional definition: Classical grammars - First English grammars - Historical grammars - Grammars of language use - **Grammar and language learning** - Environmentalist theories (habits, neural connection) - Nativist theories (UG) - Interactional theories (from function to structure) - Prescriptive grammars - Prescriptive rules - Early descriptive grammars - Descriptive principles - Structural grammars - Generative-transformational grammars **DIDACTIC TRANSPOSITION** **FROM PRESCRIPTIVE GRAMMAR TO FUNCTIONAL AND COMMUNICATIVE GRAMMAR** - **Functional and communicative grammar** - **Definition of functions and structures** **Grammatical competence** **Communicative competence** - **Role of knowing grammar** **Teaching grammar in the communicative approach** ### **FROM PRESCRIPTIVE GRAMMAR TO FUNCTIONAL AND COMMUNICATIVE GRAMMAR** **1. INTRODUCTION** - Grammar and language have long been interrelated terms and different ways of understanding grammar have influenced theories of language teaching. However, the debate over how to teach the grammatical rules of a foreign language is far from being resolved, as current research indicates. - This paper starts with a presentation of various concepts of grammar and their relationship with language from a historical perspective. In the second part, the changing ways of teaching grammar to foreign language learners are reviewed, indicating present-day trends, as reflected in theory and practice. **2. THE CONCEPT OF GRAMMAR: A REFLECTION ON LANGUAGE AND LANGUAGE LEARNING** - **2.1. A REFLECTION ON GRAMMAR AND LANGUAGE** - The traditional view of grammar was that developed by ancient Romans and Greeks and which referred to rules governing the composition of words in sentences. Therefore, it may be said that grammar was synonymous with a set of such rules, laid out in a systematic way in grammar manuals, which were of prescriptive nature. This means that the purpose of determining grammatical rules was to indicate how correct sentences were constructed. Aelfric wrote the first Latin grammar in Anglo-Saxon and he began the tradition of devising English grammar according to a Latin model. - It was not until the 20th century that this prescriptive view of grammar and language gave way to the description of the actual way in which people use language. However, some innovative movements appeared in the intervening period too, such as the Modistae, interested in philosophical aspects of grammar, or the Port Royal group, described by Chomsky as the first transformational grammarians. - A breakthrough in the analysis of grammatical rules of language came with descriptive tendencies in the 19th and early 20th centuries. First descriptions of the actual usage were made by historical grammarians, who tried to establish the relations between what they defined as Indo-European languages. Structural linguists of the 1930s and 1940s were interested in identifying the basic units of language and how they form a regular structure. Later, many viewed language as a type of human behaviour (behaviourism) and, therefore, rather than prescribing its rules, it seemed more adequate to describe the actual way in which people behaved when using it. On the other hand, grammatical rules were no longer seen as a construct of grammarians only. A conviction grew that people were somehow in possession of knowledge of grammatical rules without having to study them (the rules were acquired not learnt). The extreme view in this respect is represented by such nativists as Noam Chomsky, who claims that humans are born with a device in their brains which allows them, relatively quickly, to construct the grammar of any language, as there are certain universals which operate in the same way for all humans and independently of the language they learn or acquire. Chomsky's theory of Generative-Transformational Syntax initially equated the knowledge of grammar (competence) with the knowledge of language. - Competence viewed in this way soon needed a revision because it became obvious that the correct use of syntactic and morphological rules was strictly related to other aspects of linguistic communication. Communicative competence, according to Canale and Swain, consists of sociolinguistic competence, discourse competence, strategic competence and linguistic or grammar competence. The latter involves the mastery of the verbal code, including vocabulary, word formation, sentence formation pronunciation, spelling and linguistic semantics. - **2.2. A REFLECTION ON GRAMMAR AND LANGUAGE LEARNING** - Theories which try to explain how we learn languages also account for the role and means of learning grammar. Naturally, the type of theory of language acquisition and learning influences the way in which it explains the whole process. Theories of language acquisition can be grouped into three types: environmentalist, nativist, and interactional. - The environmentalist views started with the above mentioned behaviourism. Acquisition of grammar rules was equated to habit formation in this theory and its special contribution to the theory of foreign language learning was the contrastive analysis of errors and how their appearance is influenced by differences between languages. Studies since then have concluded that it is impossible to predict errors from differences or similarities between languages. Modern environmentalist theories, like Parallel Distributed Processing try to explain the formation of rules in terms of neural connections in response to feedback. The more complex neural connections represent more complex acquired grammar. - Nativist linguists tried to explain the acquisition of language and its grammar by devising a model of Universal Grammar, knowledge of which enables every human to acquire any language. This theory claims that every speaker knows a set of principles which apply to all languages and also a set of parameters that can vary from one language to another, but only within certain limits. Krashen applied the nativist principles to his Monitor Theory, which refers to foreign language acquisition and among others explains how grammar is acquired. For instance the natural order hypothesis states that acquisition takes place in a natural order and that each structure (e.g. negation) also has a predictable acquisition sequence. The teacher should try to follow this order or acquisition will be slower. - Nowadays, it seems justified to consider both innate and environmental factors as equally relevant to language, and therefore, grammar acquisition. Some modern theories share this view, e.g. according to Givon's Functional-Typological Theory, language changes to satisfy a full range of functions. This change starts as a pragmatic requirement and ends in a syntactic form. **3. FROM PRESCRIPTIVE GRAMMAR TO FUNCTIONAL AND COMMUNICATIVE GRAMMAR** - The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are the start of the great era of describing and recording and of prescriptive grammars. It was also a time that looked both backwards and forwards to Classical Rome. It looked back in the sense that ancient Rome was seen as the height of civilization. It looked forward in two senses: England perceived itself as a second Rome, and Latin was the language of international science. One of the most famous writers to pronounce himself on what correct English should be like was John Dryden. Samuel Johnson's famous dictionary also contained prescriptions affecting grammar. The most influential of these grammars was Robert Lowth's "Short Introduction to English Grammar", published in 1761. - The descriptive approach which followed in the 19th and early 20th centuries contradicts most of the principles of prescriptive grammars: - Change is a given. Learners learn a language which changes and some forms are optional. - No value judgement should be placed on changes to a language. - The fact that one language is descended from a second language does not make the first language inferior. Nor does it mean that the first language must be modelled on the second. - Linguistics does not claim any special authority, beyond that of accurate observation or verifiable theory. Claims are open to discussion and require validation before being accepted. - No form of a language is given special status over another. Regardless of who speaks a variation of a language, where it is spoken, or whether it is oral or written, all variations are simply topics to be observed. For example, when Alan Ross and Nancy Mitford coined the phrases "U" and "non-U" for the differences between upper and middle class vocabularies in Britain, they did not mean to suggest that one should be preferred (although others have suggested that deliberately using a "U" vocabulary might be a way to be promoted). - Variations of a language may be more or less suitable in different contexts, but none are right or wrong. The fact that you might speak more formally in a job interview than at a night club does not mean the language of a job interview is proper English, or that the language of the night club is not. - Proper usage is defined by whatever the users of the language generally accept as normal. - A language is not neutral. It reflects the concerns and values of its speakers. For example, the fact that every few years North American teenagers develop new synonyms for "drinking" and "sex" reflects teenagers' immense preoccupation with the subjects. The fact that they also develop new synonyms for "slut" reflects their sexual morality as applied to girls. A similar viewpoint is known in psychology as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. - In the 1970s, the decisive shift towards functional, notional and communicative syllabi (and away from grammar based ones) left teachers with a necessity to find new ideas for teaching grammar, correcting grammatical mistakes and taking decisions about what grammatical items should be taught. - Functional grammars are those which base their presentation and explanation of structures on the uses which these structures can have in concrete situations. Therefore, we would talk about possible structures for describing in formal texts, for example. The primary concern is with the functions of structures and their constituents and with their meanings in context. A grammarian interested in this kind of description is likely to use data from authentic texts (the term text is used for both spoken and written language) in specific contexts. - Communicative grammars shed a new light on the functional approach, identifying grammatical competence as a component of the broader concept of communicative competence. This development gave rise to the appearance of communicative approach in foreign language teaching. Current decrees relating to teaching foreign languages in Andalusia reflect the new communicative approach to teaching grammar. They propose presenting structures in context and in a cyclical way. On the other hand students are expected to induce grammatical rules from the input provided by the teacher. Finally, practising in situations which are functionally meaningful is intended to provide the right context for the gradual acquisition of grammar. - Penny Ur, an EFL author, has summarised the main steps to follow when introducing grammatical structures to students: 1. The exposure of students to structures. 2. Isolation of structures to be taught. 3. Practice. 4. Explanation. - The list of exercises might be very long but there are some basic types, which most often appear in English textbooks. First, there are many exercises which serve to contextualise the use of the structure in question and to provide practice in linguistic functions at the same time. Preparing and acting out dialogues is one example. For instance, in a dialogue students can be asked to relate an incident and, therefore, they practise the function of storytelling. At the same time, past tense forms are practised, too, as an example of a function in which this tense can be used. Other frequently used forms of practising grammar points in functional contexts include, for example, letter writing, working with recipes, filling in questionnaires and debates. - There are also exercises which do not necessarily reflect the functional use of the grammatical points to teach but which are also intended to help students become skilful in the use of grammatical structures by acquiring a certain level of automaticity. Drills in which one element only has to be substituted by another one of the same class is an example taken from the audio-lingual method of teaching. Other exercises of this type include: - Fill-in-the-gaps, where students have to provide items missing from a sentence or a text. - Expressing the same sentential meaning with different words. - Passive/active transformations. - Forming questions for the answers provided and vice versa. - Filling in charts with systematised information, e.g. infinitive, simple past tense form and the past participle for verbs. - Forming sentences with the words provided. - Looking for synonyms, antonyms or homophones. **4. DIDACTIC TRANSPOSITION** - In 1980, Professor Jack C. Richards stated that although grammar had always played a central role in FLT, its importance had to be derived from and related to the proficiencies we plan as the outcomes of language curriculum. - From this perspective, morphological and syntactic patterns and rules have to be taught in communicative contexts and the traditional detailed exposition and/or explanation of rules and structures in an explicit way, say on the smart board or using a digital projector, will be carried out just as a part of the whole process of their acquisition, which should take place through an extensive use of those aspects in communication. - To sum up, we can conclude that the zero grammar approach was flirted with but it never really took hold; also that Grammar has two faces: form and function, and both are important as far as they contribute to the development of our students' ability to use the language in an effective and/or communicative way; and finally, that the CEF (Companion Volume 2020) states that the teaching of grammar helps our students to perform in the FL (can do). **5. CONCLUSION** - As we have seen, different ways of understanding grammar provided different explanations of how it should be taught. Modern classroom practice is eclectic in the use of activities. Therefore, we can find both activities typical of the traditional approaches to Latin and Greek, highly analytical and divorced from any intention to show functionality of language, and activities which are contextualised uses of grammatical items, with a parallel practise of linguistic functions. Both approaches are justified because researchers still haven't been able to answer the question of the best way to teach grammar.