TEACHING

GRAMMAR

Larsen-Freeman, 2001
 IN GENERAL TERMS…
• Few learners are capable to pick
up language from pure exposure.

• Most classroom have an EFL

environment.

• Form is important to be considered

within communicative interactions
and meaningful contexts (Spada
and Lightbrown, 1993; Lightbrown,
1998)
A THREE-DIMENSIONAL
GRAMMAR
FRAMEWORK
 FORM
• Morphosyntactic and
lexical patterns

• Phonemic/ graphemic
patterns

• How is it formed?
 MEANING
• Lexical meaning

• Grammatical meaning

• What does it mean?

 USE
• Social context

• Linguistic Discourse
context

• Influence of Pragmatics

• Why/when is it used?
 EXAMPLES
• Possessives:
1) Form:
o Inflecting nouns
o Allomorphs

2) Meaning:
o Possession
o Description
o Amount
o Relationship
o Part/Whole
o Origin /Agent
 EXAMPLES
3) Form:
o ‘s versus possessive determiner

o ‘s versus of the

o ‘s versus noun compounds

 THE
CHALLENGE
• All three dimensions have to be
mastered by the learner (although
not necessarily consciously)

• Important imformation by
recognizing where students need to
be reinforced.

• It is not only the form of the structures

what creates conflict in students and
the most significant challenge.
 “GRAMMARIN
G”
Thinking of
grammar as a
skill to be
mastered

(Larsen-Freeman, 1997; 2001)

 THE LEARNING
PROCESS
SLA reasearch on how students
develop their ability to
interpret and produce
grammatical utterances:

1) First encounter – Processing –

Usage: not acuumulation of
structures.
E.g. The definite article.
 THE LEARNING
PROCESS
2) Interlanguage and Backsliding

3) SL learners rely on the knowledge

and the experience they have.

4) Different learning processes are

responsible for different aspects
of language (Gagne and Medsker,
1996)
If we understand
our students’
learning processes,
we will be able to
make the right
teaching decisions
 WHAT DOES
TEACHING
GRAMMAR MEAN?
“It means enabling language
students to use linguistic
forms accurately,
meaningfully, and
appropriately”

(Larsen-Freeman, 2001)
 LANGUAGE
APPROACHES
• Traditional Grammar
teaching: PPP

• Task or Content Based

approach.
 APPROACHES ON
HOW TO ADDRESS
GRAMMAR
• Recasting

• Enhancing Input or Input

Flooding (Sharwood Smith, 1993)

• Consciousness-raising Task
(Fotos and Ellis, 1991)
 APPROACHES ON
HOW TO ADDRESS
GRAMMAR
• The Garden Path (Tomasello and
Herron, 1988-89)

• Input Processing (Van Patten,

1996)
 OUTPUT
PRODUCTION
• Hypothesis -Testing Process

• Collaborative Dialogue
(Donato, 1994; Swain and Lapkin, 1998)

• ‘Grammaring’
 OUTPUT
PRODUCTION
• Meaningless mechanical drilling
not longer useful

• Students not engaged: Inert

Knowledge

• Motivation can be enhanced if we

give students meaningful contexts.

• From decalarative to procedural

knowledge: meaningful practice
 EXAMPLES OF
OUTPUT ACTIVITIES
REINFORCING FORM

• Twenty Questions
• Game on Possessives
• Information-Gap Activities
• Sentence Unscrambling
 EXAMPLES OF
OUTPUT ACTIVITIES
REINFORCING MEANING

• Realia and pictures

• TPR Activities
• Concentration Games
• Operations
 EXAMPLES OF
OUTPUT ACTIVITIES
REINFORCING USE

• Role plays
• Dilemmas
THE IMPORTANCE OF
FEEDBACK
• Zero Teacher Intervention

• Collecting Mistakes

• Classifying errors according

to the Pie Chart.