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Post by Dee Broughton on Jun 28, 2015 15:37:43 GMT 5
The third reading is Brenda Murphy and Ashley Hasting's 2006 article, The Utter Hopelessness of Explicit Grammar Teaching. This week, you'll read the article and respond to it to clarify your own view of grammar teaching. The question of what to do about grammar is still unanswered in ELT. In another paper, Murphy and Hastings (2004) write, "...The question of how grammar is to be taught is at the heart of one of the most enduring controversies in TESOL. A wide range of opinions is found in the field. Some maintain that explicit grammar rules absolutely must be taught and drilled, or students will be condemned to a lifetime of fossilization at an early stage of interlanguage. Some argue that explicit rules and drills are a terrible waste of time, and that comprehensible input is the only effective way to promote the acquisition of grammar. Many occupy positions somewhere between these two extremes, and many others probably have no idea where they stand." In other words, everyone has a opinion, but may not be able to articulate it. We'll try to rectify that for our group.* Hastings, A. & Murphy, B. (2004). Implicit Standards for Explicit Grammar Teaching. WATESOL News, 34:2 Every language teaching professional needs a clear view on grammar teaching. Ideally, you can state your position briefly and clearly in a job interview or Teaching Philosophy Statement. The chances are very good that you teach grammar. Therefore, use the reading, "The Utter Hopelessness of Explicit Grammar Teaching," to justify the type of teaching you do, to state your position on whether what you do is effective or necessary or not. The writing technique we'll use this week makes use of a "template" to partially agree with a source while elaborating where you disagree.
*Notice the use of the quote frame like the one we tried in reading #2. BONUS: For an really interesting take on grammar teaching, explore the work of Bill VanPatten on input processing and structured input. You can start here on this website for a quick idea of what it's all about.
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Post by Dee Broughton on Jun 28, 2015 15:52:16 GMT 5
The chances are very good that you teach grammar. Therefore, use the reading, "The Utter Hopelessness of Explicit Grammar Teaching," to justify the type of teaching you do, to state your position on whether what you do is effective or necessary or not.
The writing technique we'll use this week makes use of a "template" to partially agree with a source while elaborating where you disagree.
This is a very common and useful template in academic writing. Let's call it the "Yes, but..." template as described by Graff and Birkenstein. A template, for our purpose, is a pattern of formulaic language used to connect original ideas. For example, one good template for connecting ideas that you partially agree with, but also disagree with is this one:
Regarding this last point, I am of two minds. I agree that ______ but I cannot agree that _____. On the contrary, I strongly feel that __________ .
Notice that the template contains no ideas of its own. In other words, you cannot tell what the writer is talking about from the template. All the ideas must be added by the writer.
"Yes, but..." means that you concede one point but disagree with another and it's a very common move in academic writing. Here's an example using the second reading from Nation.
The question of what to do about specialized, technical vocabularies remains. Nation (2001) defines special vocabularies as those that are are "made by systematically restricting the range of topics or language uses investigated." However, he also says that some specialized technical vocabularies are "made by experts in the field gathering what they consider to be relevant vocabulary." In other words, he's saying that the vocabularies are made without corpus evidence. Regarding this last point, I am of two minds. I agree that this is a practice, of course, but I cannot agree that such a practice should be recommended. On the contrary, I strongly feel that such a practice is ill-advised; and, given the strong evidence that this practice is often abused or, at best, ineffective, I would like to see Nation caution readers against it.
Notice that the paragraph still uses a frame for the quotes. The template is used to help the writer create a response to the quotes in the frame.
Here are some other templates that make the same move (X is the source):
Although I agree with X to a point, I cannot accept the conclusion that _________________ because _________________.
X makes some strong arguments for _______________, but doesn't go far enough. We must add ________________________.
I heartily agree with the idea that ______________, but take exception to the idea that _________________.
Though I concede that _________________, I still insist that _________________.
To respond to "Utter Hopelessness" choose a template and try to fill it with your own ideas. Feel free to modify it as needed. Be sure to use quotations and referencing where needed and to respond to specific ideas in the text. Use these tools to tell us where you agree and disagree with Murphy and Hastings, relating the reading to your own experience.
Graff, G., & Birkenstein, C. (2010). "They Say / I Say": The Moves that Matter in Persuasive Writing (p. 52). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition. Nation, I.S.P. (2001) Learning Vocabulary in Another Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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margarita
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Post by margarita on Jul 12, 2015 0:15:13 GMT 5
The grammar teaching issue has been under discussion for years, yet educators have not come to agreement on all points. For this reason, there are a considerable number of beliefs and strategies on how grammar of a target language should be taught or whether it should be introduced at all. In their article, The Utter Hopelessness of Explicit Grammar Teaching, Brenda Murphy and Ashley Hastings mentioned for what reasons one might strongly believe in teaching explicit grammar “…teaching grammar is an entrenched habit, one that is accepted by both the student and the teacher. … true language acquisition takes a lot of time… creating the discouraging impression that “nothing’s happening.” People may turn to grammar for the same reason that people in some societies and times have turned to magic: they hope that the impossible can happen if only they say the right words. … language grammars are thoroughly and accurately described in grammar textbooks”. In other words, teaching explicit grammar is driven by the belief that it is a short cut to acquire a foreign language. However, this theory could be challenged by the fact that “…to state rules of grammar completely and accurately, learning the requisite concepts and terminology would take up massive amounts of students’ time and mental energy. Not inconsequentially, the more rigorous the study of grammar becomes, the more remote the language learning process would be from the way that people actually acquire language.” (The Utter Hopelessness of Explicit Grammar Teaching, by Brenda Murphy and Ashley Hastings) That is, theoretical grammar does not enable learners to produce a target language; moreover, it holds them away from practical usage deluding into false hopes to speak the language.
Regarding this last point, I am of two minds. I agree that “natural language acquisition” is the best method to “gain proficiency in a language” and that it is the most efficient method but I cannot agree that the suggested strategy is the only one to become literate in a foreign language. On the contrary, I strongly feel that pointing out grammatical structures will help learners to start noticing them more in inputs and eventually implement them.
Although I agree with that “the actual facts of grammar are too abstract and complex to be taught, learned, or used by ordinary people operating in ordinary educational environments”, I cannot accept the conclusion that “if the grammar is simple enough to teach, it’s inaccurate; yet if it is complex enough to be accurate, it’s impractical to teach” because grammar is usually taught in steps from elementary to more advanced level. For example, for a beginner learner it is not necessary to know all the peculiarities of Present tense. First he needs to be aware of a very simple structure of a sentence in this particular tense and a couple of situations when the tense is used. It is simple enough to be acquired and is 100 % accurate. The higher the level is, the more complex structures are introduced but at the same time it is absolutely practical to teach because new grammatical issues are built on the previous knowledge. In this case, teacher’s job is to widen learners’ understanding of new forms by giving plenty of input.
(The Utter Hopelessness of Explicit Grammar Teaching, by Brenda Murphy and Ashley Hastings)
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Post by Anastasiya on Jul 13, 2015 18:06:52 GMT 5
Murphy and Hastings (2006), arguing against explicit grammar teaching, state that grammar is very complicated issue and even textbook writers fail to write accurate rules for learners to learn grammar. However, while the writers criticize textbooks, in particular the one written by Azar, and highlight the real challenges that explicit teaching is attempting to overcome, they, to my mind, do not go far enough. The authors make some strong arguments for the reasons why grammar is taught explicitly, but they do not think about the settings where grammar is one of the most frequently addressed components in teaching. What I want to add is that in Uzbekistan explicit grammar teaching is inevitable because students are required to pass the high-stakes exams, which are based solely on grammar, to enter the lyceum, university and any graduate level courses. The teachers often times present both terminology and concepts that “take massive amounts of students’ time and mental energy”. Although I agree with the author’s point that very rigorous grammar-oriented language learning distends the learners from real language acquisition, I cannot agree with conclusion that natural language acquisition “is the only practical way for anyone to gain proficiency in language”. In Uzbekistan, where students are not exposed to English on the daily basis, the natural language acquisition is becoming impractical because it does not serve the purposes of language learning for many students (i.e., to enter lyceum, university, etc.) and it is often times replaced by grammar learning.
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Feruza
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Post by Feruza on Jul 19, 2015 8:02:00 GMT 5
Hi, Dear All, Regarding this last point, I am of two minds. I agree that “many common approaches to teaching a second or foreign language continue to assume that explicit grammar teaching is necessary and effective” but I cannot agree that “natural language acquisition, for which the human brain is adapted through ages of evolution, is the only practical way for anyone to gain proficiency in a language” On the contrary, I strongly feel that “the actual facts of grammar are too abstract and complex to be explicitly taught, learned, or used by ordinary people operating in ordinary educational environments” (Murphy and Hasting 2006, p.9). For example, we teach students that we can’t use –ing at the end of some verbs such as love, see, hear, and other words in Present Continues Tense. But when I was in the U.S. I saw an advertisement at MacDonald where the guy says, “I am loving it!” I know that this is a marketing strategy, but how to explain it to the student? Do we say that they can’t use –ing with such verbs, but they can use it as a marketing strategy? I also heard people saying homeworks, instead of homework because it is a non-countable noun. So, how to be in these cases? One of my friends told me that she says homeworks, when she means assignments. It might be true, but it takes a lot of time to explain everything to students.
If we don’t teach grammar, how students will learn to use the verb in simple present, simple past and simple future tenses? I mean at the very beginning of learning English. I think we can give many many examples and ask the students to draw conclusions, but for that we have to create our own materials. It will be hard to find books that will teach grammar in a way that it is integrated into other skills such as writing, reading, and speaking. At least, it is hard to find them in my area. As the authors said, we like teaching grammar because of the “entrenched habit,” and “the true language acquisition takes a lot of time,” (Murphy and Hasting 2006, p.9). In addition, as Anastasiya said, we don’t have native speakers around so students could go and practice what they have learned or listen to English conversations all the time. If students were in the country, where people speak English it might be a different situation.
The Utter Hopelessness of Explicit Grammar Teaching, p. 10 Bests, Feruza
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Post by dilafruz on Jul 19, 2015 15:31:27 GMT 5
HELLO EVERYONE, Importance of explicit grammar teaching in FLL states great debate among educators in last decades. Murphy and Hastings (2006) are against explicit grammar in language learning concluding that “… natural language acquisition, for which the human brain is adapted through ages of evolution, is the only practical way for anyone to gain proficiency in a language." Nevertheless, they also stated that “many common approaches to teaching a second or foreign language continue to assume that explicit grammar teaching is necessary and effective." In other words, language learnt better if it is treated naturally: as brain adapted to do –practically, but years of researches advocates that practice of explicit grammar teaching in FL showed successful results and proved its importance. The idea of avoiding explicit grammar makes some strong arguments for FL learning and teaching, but does not go enough. We must add here the point that sometimes the way or approach to teach FL focused on the purpose as well. And here I support the Anastasiya’s opinion that in Uzbekistan context explicit grammar teaching is essential and productive supported by the fact of exam requirements (one of the essential purposes of learning language is to pass language exams). Although, I heartily agree with the authors’ idea that “...whatever the grammar textbooks are teaching, it is not anything that normal speakers know or use”, but take exception to the idea that “…grammar textbooks do not even begin to describe real grammar accurately or completely” Murphy and Hastings (2006). Noticing several cons in certain grammar book cannot lead us to such conclusion about whole grammar textbooks. I strongly believe that they are very helpful in organizing competent communicative communication. Spoken and spontaneous language may not notice accuracy in language use so much, but in written communication it is too vivid, for example. And the role of grammar is very indispensable. Though I concede that learning language through precise grammar may isolate the process from natural one, keeping people away from acquiring language as authors mentioned (Murphy and Hastings, 2006), I still insist that natural language acquisition is not single way to gain proficiency level. In some specific cases of communication, especially in academic we have to address to grammar rules to be appropriate and competent. Moreover, to make language learning natural we need natural language atmosphere. It may be problematic for our context as we are not using English in a daily use. So, the best solution may concern the point of balancing grammar input in teaching process making it more practical (inductively approaching). (The Utter Hopelessness of Explicit Grammar Teaching, by Brenda Murphy and Ashley Hastings) Regards, Dilafruz.
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Post by ninaev on Jul 19, 2015 19:07:52 GMT 5
I don’t agree with the conclusion of my colleagues that B. Murphy and A. Hastings are against explicit grammar teaching, because the authors stipulate at the beginning of the article that “ It is common knowledge that normal people find it extremely difficult to understand or learn technical information about the grammar of any language” p. 9. I think that the authors want to say that the grammar rules and true language acquisition is two different things. In my teaching practice, the most difficult thing is teaching students making up questions for dialogues. And at the begging of my carrier I usually spend a lot of the time explaining the “terminology and concepts”(at B. Murphy and A. Hastings p.11) like auxiliary verbs, question words, main verbs and etc. The input was very pure. And now I suggest the dialogue models and students make up questions using the example dialogue.
Moreover, I am sure that the authors are against implicit belief in grammar textbooks. The authors analyze the grammar rules which were worked out by Betty Azar // at B. Murphy and A. Hastings p. 10. Actually, I studied the grammar in B. Azar textbooks when I was a student at PALS course. Unfortunately, the books by Azar are always distributed to foreign students because they are very primitive. In my case, the textbook was not useful because the reading and writing modules required more sophisticated grammar.
So I absolutely agree that the teachers should teach grammar but only through “practical way” in order to make language acquisition more natural // at B. Murphy and A. Hastings p. 11.
Nina
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Post by Dee Broughton on Jul 22, 2015 16:09:45 GMT 5
For example, we teach students that we can’t use –ing at the end of some verbs such as love, see, hear, and other words in Present Continues Tense. But when I was in the U.S. I saw an advertisement at MacDonald where the guy says, “I am loving it!” I know that this is a marketing strategy, but how to explain it to the student? Do we say that they can’t use –ing with such verbs, but they can use it as a marketing strategy? This is actually a good example of the point that the authors of "Utter Hopelessness" are making. It is that this "rule" that is being taught is simply wrong. The use of "I am loving it" is not an odd exception, purely for marketing, rather the simplistic rule being taught is mistaken. I have seen this many times. Recently, I was told that, in Uzbekistan, students are taught that "food," "bread," and "meat" can only be collective nouns. The teachers telling me this did not want to use the common words "foods," "breads," and "meats" in a context where they were clearly and correctly called for because they didn't want to violate this "rule," but the rule is simply wrong. Those words are commonly used as countable when talking about different types of "foods," "breads," and "meats." As the article is bringing up, if we are to defend the teaching of rules that we know are wrong, we should have some good reason, but we don't seem to have one.
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Post by Dee Broughton on Jul 22, 2015 16:17:44 GMT 5
Nevertheless, they also stated that “many common approaches to teaching a second or foreign language continue to assume that explicit grammar teaching is necessary and effective." In other words, language learnt better if it is treated naturally: as brain adapted to do –practically, but years of researches advocates that practice of explicit grammar teaching in FL showed successful results and proved its importance. As you try out these templates, be careful that your paraphrases accurately reflect the meaning of the authors. This particular quote refers to what the authors, in the next sentence, call a "delusion". In other words, they are saying that this assumption is wrong, not that it's been shown to be successful or important. If you want to state, "years of researches advocates that practice of explicit grammar teaching in FL showed successful results and proved its importance," you would need a template or structure that expresses disagreement with the authors and gives evidence for your contrary opinion.
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Post by Dee Broughton on Jul 22, 2015 16:28:59 GMT 5
Regarding the exam question: This came up in Phase 3 training. Can anyone post sample questions from exams that you feel are really "based solely on grammar"?
Wouldn't such a test that requires explicit grammar instruction be something only a student of linguistic or grammar theory could expect to pass? In other words, you certainly wouldn't expect an educated proficient user of the language who had not had grammar instruction to pass it just as you would not expect an educated proficient user of the language who had not taken courses in literature to pass a literature exam. Is this really the case?
It seems rather important that we know this, because, if it's not the case, we could safely teach for proficiency instead of incorrect grammar rules.
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Post by ninaev on Jul 27, 2015 19:35:55 GMT 5
Exams at schools are usually oral. It consists of two tasks: the first is retelling the text, for example “Marketing” at the 9th form; the second is speaking topic, for example “My hobby”. I want to add that there is a mismatch in context between school exams and entrance exams at colleges. The students take tests when they enter colleges. Moreover, the tests are worked out to check grammar. However, the concept of teaching English at schools dictates that there mustn’t be explicit grammar teaching at the classes. Also the concept of teaching foreign languages at school focuses on developing speaking skills and teachers have to avoid explaining grammar rules at all. Here I agree with state concept, but the school textbooks suggest the students very elementary speaking models and . The entrance exams at colleges require more complicated grammar and rich vocabulary. Nina
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Feruza
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Post by Feruza on Aug 5, 2015 9:51:58 GMT 5
For example, we teach students that we can’t use –ing at the end of some verbs such as love, see, hear, and other words in Present Continues Tense. But when I was in the U.S. I saw an advertisement at MacDonald where the guy says, “I am loving it!” I know that this is a marketing strategy, but how to explain it to the student? Do we say that they can’t use –ing with such verbs, but they can use it as a marketing strategy? This is actually a good example of the point that the authors of "Utter Hopelessness" are making. It is that this "rule" that is being taught is simply wrong. The use of "I am loving it" is not an odd exception, purely for marketing, rather the simplistic rule being taught is mistaken. I have seen this many times. Recently, I was told that, in Uzbekistan, students are taught that "food," "bread," and "meat" can only be collective nouns. The teachers telling me this did not want to use the common words "foods," "breads," and "meats" in a context where they were clearly and correctly called for because they didn't want to violate this "rule," but the rule is simply wrong. Those words are commonly used as countable when talking about different types of "foods," "breads," and "meats." As the article is bringing up, if we are to defend the teaching of rules that we know are wrong, we should have some good reason, but we don't seem to have one.
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Feruza
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Post by Feruza on Aug 5, 2015 10:05:12 GMT 5
I think we should teach the rules,but also point out to students that those rules do not always apply as the overall rules dictate for certain types of concepts. People are People and they either break the rules or use the rules for similar concepts like "food" and "foods" when they mean types of "foods". When my students ask me about such inconsistencies in English grammar rules, I start my answer wityh "It depends..." and explain more. Also we can ask students of what they think about these kinds of exceptions to the rules? And explain that the language is not like "math" where you haver the correct answer, but rather the language is complex system and only by rule alone you cannot learn the language. Some expressions, especially phrasal verbs or idioms are developed in the minds of the foreign language learners when they hear them more often in the authentic language environment. It would be great that students are immersed into the language atmospher where they can hear a lot of those language patterns, but it might be difficult to create that environment here. However, our materials should include authentic language samples that would help the students to experience it. Bests, Feruza
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Feruza
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Post by Feruza on Aug 5, 2015 10:08:35 GMT 5
Exams at schools are usually oral. It consists of two tasks: the first is retelling the text, for example “Marketing” at the 9th form; the second is speaking topic, for example “My hobby”. I want to add that there is a mismatch in context between school exams and entrance exams at colleges. The students take tests when they enter colleges. Moreover, the tests are worked out to check grammar. However, the concept of teaching English at schools dictates that there mustn’t be explicit grammar teaching at the classes. Also the concept of teaching foreign languages at school focuses on developing speaking skills and teachers have to avoid explaining grammar rules at all. Here I agree with state concept, but the school textbooks suggest the students very elementary speaking models and . The entrance exams at colleges require more complicated grammar and rich vocabulary. Nina
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Feruza
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Post by Feruza on Aug 5, 2015 10:12:24 GMT 5
I agree with you Nina, There are so many mismatches between the university entrance exams and the school program.I think that universities should accept the students on the bases of TOEFL or IELTS that assesses four skills. If TOEFL and IELTS expensive for the students to take, then universities should develop similar exams. bests, Feruza
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