University of Leeds

SCHOOL OF EDUCATION

Online Submission of Assessed Work

Student Name He Xian

Student ID number 201487126

Degree programme MA TESOL (China)

Module code EDUC5993M

Module title Teaching Oral and Written Skills

Puzzling about the teaching of English in my context:

Essay Title

Word count 5481

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Introduction:

Grammar teaching is a highly contentious issue in Second Language Acquisition

(SLA). In the past, inheriting the tradition from teaching Latin and Greek, grammar

teaching presented itself in the classroom as Grammar-Translation Method (GTM),

which is an explicit way of teaching the forms of language (morphology and syntax) in

isolation from context, and was even considered as equivalent to language teaching

(Nassaji & Fotos, 2011). However, with the advent of Communicative Language

Teaching (CLT) in the 1970s, GTM began to lose its appeal because it was believed to

be harmful to the natural process of language acquisition, while the engaging meaning-

focused CLT was supposed to facilitate L2 leaners’ language proficiency. Some

researchers such as Krashen (2003) even suggested that grammar teaching should be

excluded from the classrooms in the belief that grammar “will take care of itself” (p. 6).

For example, since 1960s, many immersions projects based on Krashen’s Monitor

Model had been carried out and achieved success in improving language leaners’

communicative competence. However, while these programmes were beneficial to

fluency, they were not able to help leaners develop advance levels of accuracy in

grammar. Frequent mistakes were made by L2 leaners even after years of immersion

learning.

Nowadays, there is a general consensus that it is inadequate to purely focus on

meaning in grammar teaching, formal grammar instruction should also be included in

the classroom. Many researchers and teaching professionals intend to bring grammar

teaching back into the classroom by integrating it with other wider phenomena,
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including lexis, discourse, language functions, and communicative tasks (Borg &

Burns, 2008). It is clear that there are many pedagogical options for teachers now, but

as noted by Ellis (2006a), it remains controversial regarding which is the most effective

one. Whether a method can be implemented successfully depends on a variety of

factors, from teachers’ educational experiences to professional training to the constraint

of high-stake exams (Nishino, 2012). For me, the key issue is not to find the best

approaches, but the most suitable one in my context. Therefore, in the next part, I will

give a brief account of my context so as to narrow down the questions I want to

explore.

My Context

I am a teacher trainer of an after-school tutorial chain which mainly provides

tutorial service for primary and secondary school students to improve their performance

in school exams, including exams in English, Chinese, Mathematics, Physics and

Chemistry. One of my major responsibilities is to help preservice English teachers

adapt to the new environment as well as acquire the necessary teaching skills for giving

effective English lessons. At the very beginning, my company started with a small

tutorial centre with few teachers who were encouraged to teach in their own ways. As

the business grew bigger, we were opening more branches and hiring more staff. To

lower the cost of operation, facilitate management and hopefully improve teaching

quality, the founders decided to standardise the teaching contents and procedures. Since

our service is to help students improve their English exam performance by reviewing
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and consolidating what they have learnt at school, we adopted the PPP (Presentation,

Practice, Production) Method as a framework to plan English lessons. For one thing,

this method is easy for new teachers to learn because they have a clear three-step

routine to rely on: exposure of target language, controlled practice, and free practice.

For another, to my leaders’ and my best knowledge, it is seemingly the best method to

teach grammar, because we assume that students can internalise the knowledge as long

as they have enough practice.

However, through talking with the new teachers, one common theme is the

complaint about students’ frequent grammatical mistakes. They found it frustrating that

students always made grammatical mistakes in the exams no matter how many times

the target structures had been explained and how many exercises they had done. This is

one of the puzzles I want to solve in this study: Why my students kept making grammar

mistakes even with extensive practice? Why PPP method failed to help students

improve their grammar accuracy in the exam? If PPP is not the suitable method to

achieve this purpose, which one is?

Through reviewing the literature, I found an approach of grammar teaching may

contribute to their English exam performance. Before talking about this approach, I first

need to analysis what grammatical challenges that my students are facing in their

English exams. Because of word limit, I will only focus on the English exams in the

secondary school in my city. In the English exams, there are two tasks involve grammar

knowledge assessment. One is called Grammar Multiple Choice (GMC) which is

specially designed to test students’ grammatical knowledge. To figure out the correct
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answers, test takers need to notice the grammatical features being tested in GMC and

use the specific knowledge to select the correct answer from four options. The other

task is writing. In this task, grammar is one of the major criteria. In fact, many teachers

mainly focus on grammar accuracy to grade their writing. In a word, grammar play an

important role in their English exams. According to Ellis (2002), consciousness-raising

(CR) instruction is an effective approach to facilitate this explicit grammar knowledge

and to enable students to successfully tackle grammar items in language tests. Based on

this assumption, another question I want to find out the answer is that do my students

believe CR can help improve their performance in grammatical items.

To answers the two questions mentioned above, the notions of explicit and

implicit knowledge, different approaches to teach grammar, as well as the relationship

between cognitive skills and grammar acquisition will be reviewed in the following

section.

Literature Review

Explicit and Implicit Knowledge

According to Widodo (2006), drawing a distinction between two types of

knowledge in language acquisition is helpful to understand why L2 leaners, despite

having a good knowledge of grammar, often make grammar mistakes in writing and

speaking tasks. They are explicit and implicit knowledge. As noted by Ellis (2006b),

there are mainly seven aspects that can be considered to differentiate the two types of

knowledge, namely awareness, type of knowledge, systematicity and certain of L2

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knowledge, accessibility of knowledge, use of L2 knowledge, self report and

learnability. The detailed differentces between explicit and implicit knowledge are

summarised and shown in Table 1 below.

Table 1

The distinctions between explicit and implicit knowledge

Dimensions Explicit knowledge Implicit knowledge

1. Awareness
2. Type of knowledge
3. Systematicity and certain of
L2 knowledge
4. Accessibility of knowledge
5. Use of L2 knowledge
6. Self report
7. Learnability
Conscious awareness
Declarative knowledge
Imprecise, inaccurate and
inconsistent
Controlled processing
Under conditions with plenty
of time
Verbalised
Learnable at any age
Unconscious awareness
Procedural knowledge
Highly systematic, more
structured and certain
Automatic processing
Under conditions with limited
time
Unverbalised
Unlearnable after critical period

Although there are marked differences between the two types of knowledge, one

thing should be noticed is that both explicit and implicit knowledge are involved in the

process of performing L2 (Ellis, 2009). While it is clear that both types of knowledge

are needed to make meaning, it remains controversial how the two systems interact

with each other. In terms of the extent to which they affect each other, three positions

were proposed: (1) the noninterface position, (2) the strong interface position and (3)

the weak interface position (Ellis, 2009). The noninterface position posits that explicit

and implicit knowledge are entirely separate systems, excluding the possibility of

interconversion, while the strong interface position suggests that explicit and implicit

knowledge relate with each other in a way as the two ends of a continuum do. This
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speculated relationship implies that explicit knowledge can be transformed into implicit

one by means of practice (Yarahmadzehi, Ghalaee & Sani, 2015). Similarly, the weak

interface position also assumes that the explicit knowledge can change into implicit

one, but with greater constraints, such as whether the learner is in a fit state to acquire

targeted forms (Pienemann, as cited in Pawlak, 2014).

According to Ellis (2006a), the three positions lend weight to three distinct

approaches to teach grammar. Specifically, strong interface position leads to product-

oriented PPP model, while non-interface position results in zero grammar approach

such as immersion. Unlike the other two positions, weak interface position provides a

valid ground for teaching grammar through CR tasks. In the next part, I will review the

three approaches in details.

PPP, Immersion and CR

Traditionally, grammar instruction is about teaching rules explicitly and

deductively in a linear way. Specifically, the first step of grammar instruction is to

present and explain the rules directly, followed by extensive drills including repetition

and substitution drills which are supposed to lead to the automatic use of grammatical

structure. This is also known as the PPP model whose underlying assumption is that

practice can change the explicit knowledge of the target features into implicit one.

However, plenty of empirical evidence shows that practice often fails to bring about the

transformation. One possible reason for the failure is that “the conditions of practice are

so remote from what actually happens to be useless” (Johnson, 1994, p. 126). An

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alternative explanation is that learners “seem fall back on their own resources and

ignore the linguistic material they have practised previously in form-focused activity”

(Ellis, 2002, p. 170).

No matter what are the reasons behind the failure, there is enough evidence to

question the efficacy of PPP. As a result, the noninterventionists suggested that the

teaching of grammar should be stopped. Instead, learners should be immersed in

abundant comprehensible input so that the learners can develop the language

proficiency naturally. This also the basis for immersion programmes which has been

criticized for not enabling learners to develop high levels of accuracy.

Compared to immersion, CR is a more balanced way of instruction combined with both

teachers’ intervention and learners’ initiatives. CR encourages students to discover the

underlying grammar features in the carefully-designed input, helping students develop

their own understanding of language features. Unlike the product-oriented PPP, CR

targets at the representation of declarative knowledge of linguistic features (i.e.,

verbalising a grammar rule and how it can be used to form words and sentences) rather

than procedural knowledge (i.e., applying a rule of grammar for communicative

purposes). As defined by Ellis (1997), a CR task is

“a pedagogic activity where the learners are provided with L2 data

in some form and required to perform some operation on or with it,

the purpose of which is to arrive at an explicit understanding of some

linguistic property or properties of the TL.”(as cited in Nitta &

Gardner, 2005, p.3).

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Even though Ellis (2002) emphasises that CR will not contribute to the

acquisition of implicit knowledge directly, it does help indirectly in two ways. Firstly, it

paves the way for the internalisation of new grammatical rules by facilitating the

processes of noticing (being aware of the targeted linguistic feature in the input) and

comparing (notice the gap between the target feature and the learners’ mental

grammar). These two processes are prerequisites for the integration of new features as

implicit knowledge. In addition, CR tasks can lead to explicit knowledge and thus help

learner to notice more linguistic features in the input. To sum up, CR contributes to the

acquisition of linguistic features with “a delayed effect” (Ellis, 2002, p.172).

Deductive and Inductive Approaches

Depending on how leaners get grammar rules, the approaches to teach grammar

can be divided into two types: deductive approach and inductive approach. In deductive

teaching, learners gain knowledge of linguistic features through teachers’ explanation,

whereas in inductive teaching leaners are encouraged to discover the rules by

themselves from the target language input (Ellis, 2006c). In other words, the deductive

approach is rule-driven learning, while the inductive is rule-discovering learning

(Widodo, 2006). Both approaches have their own advantages and disadvantages. For

example, deductive approach is straightforward and time-saving in explaining grammar

rules, but discourages immediate involvement and interaction. In contrast, inductive

approach enhances learners’ autonomy, motivation, and problem-solving skills, but it is

time and energy-consuming and may lead to wrong representation of rules. According
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to Mohamed (2004), which approach is more effective in teaching grammar is still

under debate.

Due to the complexity of grammar, not all rules would favour only one approach.

As shown in the studies by Dekeyser (1995) and by Robinson (1996), explicit-

deductive learning worked better in grasping of simple rules and implicit-inductive

learning produced more desirable outcomes in learning complex grammatical features

(as cited in Larsen-Freeman, 2015). In addition, due to the idiosyncratic characteristics

of learners, the approach that is suitable for one learner might be difficult for another,

although Mohamed (2004) found that leaners showed no preference for one approach

over another. In a word, both deductive and inductive approaches can be effective

depending on learners’ style and grammar forms presented.

Cognitive Skills and Grammar Acquisition

According to Thornbury (1999), grammar is “the study of forms (or structures)

are possible in a language” (p. 1). In other words, to a certain extent, grammar is the

system of rules that explain how words are formed (morphology) and how sentences

are constructed (syntax). From a cognitive perspective (Krathwohl, 2002), there four

dimensions of knowledge. For example, to acquire grammar knowledge involves

remembering grammatical terminologies, understanding the interrelationship of forms,

developing procedural knowledge of grammar rules and using grammatical rules

strategically to convey meaning. These cognitive skills can be further categorised into

three types, the lower level cognitive skills, medium level cognitive skills, and higher
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level cognitive skills. The skill of remembering facts is situated at the lowest level, but

it is very important in learning grammar because there are a large amount grammar

rules and terminologies needed to be memorised. Understanding concepts belongs to

the medium level skills. It is relatively easy for students to remember a lot of facts and

rules of grammar, but it is difficult for them to understand what is behind them (Mayer,

2002). In order to solve problems in original manner, such as using grammar

knowledge appropriately to communicate with others, students need to develop higher

level of cognitive skills, including analysing, reasoning, and evaluating the situations

(Krathwohl, 2002). Grammar mistakes can be caused by the lack of cognitive skills at

different levels, but one thing Mayer (2002) argued is that problems related to cognitive

skills is one of the major causes for grammar mistakes.

Research Questions

This study aims to find out the causes of my students’ frequent grammar mistakes

and their perceptions about the efficacy of CR tasks in improving their performance in

their English exams. Therefore, the research aimed to answers the following two

questions:

1. Why my students keep making grammar mistakes even with extensive practice?

2. Do they think CR tasks useful to their performance in grammar task items?

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Methodology

Participants

Three secondary school students took part in this study. Since they are still

teenagers between 14-15, I requested from their parents to allow the use of the data

generated by the students. To protect students’ privacy and for ease of reference, they

were called Student 1, Student 2 and Student 3. They are all Chinese native speakers,

with English as their L2. The English levels of Student 1, Student 2 and Student 3 range

from A2 to B1 of CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference).

Procedure

There are two parts in the research. In the first part, students are required to

perform two different CR tasks in the class. After this class, semi-structured interviews

which lasted for 10-15 minutes for each student were carried out to elicit students’

perception about the reasons of making grammar mistakes and their beliefs about CR

tasks. During the interview, I mainly encouraged them to describe their grammar

leaning experience. If they expressed opinions without giving reasons, I would try to

prob deeper by using sentences patterns as follows:

“You mentioned that you had ______; could you tell me more about

that.

You mentioned when you were doing ____, _____ happened. Could

you give me a specific example of that?

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Thinking back to that time, what was that like for you?

You mentioned earlier that you _____. Could you describe in detail

what happened?” (Roulston, 2010, pp.12-13)

The following questions are used as the semi-structured interview guide. They

were modified slightly according the answers of different students:

1. Have you ever made grammar mistakes?

2. Can you give me an example?

3. Why do you think are the causes of the mistake?

4. How do your English teachers at school usually teach your grammar?

5. Compared with today’s teaching method, which one do you think is more useful?

6. Among the two types of tasks, which one do you like better?

The tasks

Two types of CR tasks were chosen: a deductive CR task and an inductive CR

task. The deductive task called “Direct Task for Relative Clauses” was designed by

Mohamed (2004, p. 235). It consists of two main parts in which students were first

provided with linguistic material comprising the targeted grammar rules and examples.

The targeted features are highlighted so as to facilitate students’ noticing. In the second

part, they were asked to used what they gained from the linguistic input to write

sentences. The other task is an inductive CR task designed by Ellis (2002). It aims to

help students to tell the differences between the prepositions of for and since.
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According to Ellis (2002), when designing this CR tasks, the following principles

were used:

1. Identify a difficult grammar feature for focused attention

2. Provide enough data to make it easy for learners to be aware of the targeted rules

3. Include minimal production to facilitate the formation of explicit grammatical

knowledge

4. Provide chances of applying the rule for the retention of explicit knowledge instead

of practice

5. Take formats for applying rules should be various

Results

This section is to present what participants reported in the interview

straightforwardly. The findings are arranged according to the two research questions.

The first research question required students to talk about the reasons they believe to

cause their frequent mistakes. After analysing the data carefully, four different factors

were identified. The most common one is that they forget about the specific grammar

rules when performing the tasks. For example, as Student 1 noted,

“When writing the sentence, many people are unwilling to do

housework, I omitted the link verb are. It is not because I didn’t

know it’s necessary to add the verb be in front of unwilling to. I just

forgot at that moment. After my teacher underlined the missing part

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without giving me the correct answer, I noticed something wrong

with this sentence, and figured it out by myself”.

The second factor that led to grammar mistakes is the lack of analytical skills.

Both Student 1 and Student 2 mentioned that sometimes she did not know whether the

sentences she write grammatical or not. Although she had been taught that that a simple

sentence just consists of one independent clause, she could not identify different parts

of speech, not to mention what part of speech can act as, for example, the subject or

object of the sentence.

“Sometimes I was really confused about what can be used as

subjects. Nouns, I only know nouns can, but you know I cannot

understand why verbs can be used as subjects, and verbs have many

forms. They are just confusing. For example, to do sport is fun. In

this sentence, I though sport was the subject, because it is a noun.

My teacher had ever told me infinitive form of a verb can server the

function as a subject, but I never make clear about the terms.”

(Student 2)

The third factor which is by no means uncommon is carelessness. All the three

students summarised it as a major factor, but only Student 3 mentioned her experience

of avoiding this type of mistakes. She said that she would write down the wrong items
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in the notebooks, and categorise them into groups according to their specific features.

In this way, she found it to be useful.

The last one is caused by mechanical use sentence patterns. Two of the students

reported to use this strategy to reduce their grammar mistakes.

“Writing sentences is difficult for me, but when I learn to utilise

fixed sentences patterns, it becomes as easy as doing grammar

substitution drills. I mean, all I need to do is to replace one subject

with another. For example, in the sentence pattern, … be highly

beneficial to …, a grammatical sentence can be constructed by adding

a subject and an object into it. I no long need to consider which

preposition always occur together with the word beneficial.” (Students

2)

According to Student 2, by using sentence patterns, she made few grammar

mistakes, but it is not always the case. For example, sometimes she would fail to

change the tense of the verb.

The second research question is whether my students think CR tasks useful to

their performance in grammar items. For the overall impression of CR takes, Student 2

and Student 3 thought that they were useful, while Student 1 did not. Student 2 said that

she had no knowledge about the target grammar structure before doing the task, but she
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reported to have learnt about the grammar rules because of finishing the tasks. In

contrast, Student 1 maintained that, after doing the two tasks, she gained no

grammatical knowledge. She said,

“I really have no idea what I need to do in task 2, the one requires

me to infer grammar rules. I think it is perplexing. I wonder why you

don’t just tell us the rules directly so that I can finish exercise

quickly.”

Only Student 3 said she knew how to use the target language features after the

tasks, and she could specify the terminologies such as prepositions and the relative

clause.

Since there are two CR tasks, the deductive one and inductive one. Students were

also asked about their preferences of the two types of tasks. Student 1 dislikes neither

of them. She said if she really had to choose one, she would pick the deductive CR task,

because it told her the rules explicitly. She also mentioned that the inductive CR task

would not work. She believed most of the students just like her would only become

more confused after doing the task. Unlike Student 1, Student 3 were more in favour of

the inductive CR task. “I found it very interesting, I was just absorbed in figuring out

the rules. Although it took me quite a lot of time, the moment I found the regularities, I

was really excited.” She continued, “It’s a challenging job. I compared the data,

identifying the similarities and differences. Because I summarised the rules by myself, I
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won’t forget them.” She also believed this type of task would increase student’s

accuracy in the exam, especially in the GMC task.

“The process of figuring out the rules is similar to the process of

cracking the test items, because you need to assume, evaluate the

data, and to notice the rules being tested.” (Student 3)

Student 2 showed no preference for one task over another. She thought both were

useful to some extent. For the deductive task, she said it was useful because it gave her

clear rules by which she could used to deal with the grammatical items in the test. For

the inductive task, it made grammar learning more interesting, and thus may lead to

better acquisition of grammar knowledge.

Discission

Regarding the first research question, the data from the semi-structured

interviews show that there are four types of reasons that led to the frequent grammar

mistakes. They are forgetfulness, disability to analyse structures, carelessness, and

mechanic use of sentence structures. The first reason that they forgot to use the

grammar rules they knew in grammar tasks indicates that the kind of knowledge they

forgot is declarative knowledge. This knowledge did not contribute to their automatic

production. In line with Ellis (2002) argument, when performing grammar tasks under

time constraint, language learners will easily only rely on the internalised linguistic
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resources rather than the new learnt declarative knowledge. According to the

noninterface position, they are two separate system, therefore it might take time and

efforts to switch from one to another. At the same time, learners need to give immediate

responses to maintain communication. To avoid being cognitive overloaded, falling

back to implicit knowledge seems to be a strategy used by the brain.

The second reason given by my students demonstrates that students were not

developmentally ready to internalise certain kind of grammatical features. For instance,

they could understand the concept of part of speech, however they were not able to use

them to identify different sentence components. Furthermore, they were taught about

the definition of a simple sentence. However, they failed to distinguish what can be a

subject. In agreement with the Coder’s (1967) argument that each individual has their

own syllabuses inside (as cited in Larsen-Freeman, 2015), the finding supports the

argument that the targeted grammar features should be suitable to leaners’ development

stages, so that the effect of instruction can be maximized. While it is impractical for

teachers to design a tailor-made syllabus for every learner, each learner can pick up the

linguistical features that suit their levels through suitable approaches to teach grammar.

One of the potential ones is inductive CR instruction. For one thing, it can increase

learners’ involvement and motivation. For another, it contributes to the processes of

noticing and comparing which, according to Ellis (2002), are the prerequisites for the

final process of integrating the explicit knowledge into the mental grammar.

The third reason adds weight to the claim made by Bleske-Rechek, et al. (2002)

that grammar mistakes is related to individual traits. The fourth reason indicates that
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language chunks such as sentence patterns can result in quicker processing of language

features and lower cognitive load. Yet it may not be as effective in increasing grammar

accuracy in some cases.

For the second question, the interview data shows that students hold a mixed

attitude toward CR tasks. Two students believe CR tasks to be useful because these

tasks can help them to gain knowledge. On the other hand, Student 1 find it useless

because she could not learn new knowledge after completing the tasks. Even worse, she

found herself confused about the target linguistic knowledge. One thing should be

noted is that Student 1’s English level was the lowest. In other words, she found the

tasks too challenging for her. An interesting fact is that Student 3 who has the highest

level of English proficiency reported the cognitive skills she used in the process of

tackling the inductive CR task. The skills are at the higher level and help her resolve

problem in original manner. It is clear that Student 3 find the inductive CR task

interesting because she was cognitively capable to deal with the challenge. Therefore,

when Student1 and Student 3 are put together, it is likely that the challenge to perform

the CR task is beyond Student 1’s cognitive ability as well as her language proficiency,

thus leading to her negative attitude towards the inductive CR task together. Therefore,

when design CR task it is important to choose grammar structures which are suitable

for leaner’s level of proficiency.

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Conclusion

This study has explored the reasons why students make grammatical mistakes

even with extensive knowledge about the target features. Another question is related to

students’ perception about whether CR tasks are useful to them in the Exam. To answer

these two questions, I first review the notions of explicit and implicit knowledge which

helps to identify three interface positions: the noninterface position, the strong interface

position and the weak interface position. Based on the three hypotheses, three

approaches of grammar teaching are evaluated and discussed.

In order to get a bigger picture, the relationship between cognitive skills and grammar

acquisition are reviewed.

Under this theoretical framework, a study consist of two parts were carried out.

The first part was to have class with participants by using CR tasks. After the class a

semi-structure interview were conducted. From the research, four factors were found to

be the causes of students’ grammar mistakes. Based on the four causes, the following

conclusions and implications can be made.

Firstly, it is a common phenomenon for learners to ignore their explicit

knowledge in a real-life communitive activity. There are two possible ways to improve

this situation. One way is to narrow the gap between the tasks practiced in the

classroom and the one in real life. However, the kind of meaning-focused task may not

ensure accuracy. Another way is to reduce cognitive load so that the brain can spare

some energy to monitor the output by using the explicit knowledge of linguistic

features.
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In addition, because of the sequence of language development, each individual

has their own built-in syllabus. If grammatical features beyond their level of

proficiency, they would not be able to internalise them as implicit knowledge. This also

one of the possible reasons why learners always make grammar mistakes. To avoid this

problem, it is important to keep in mind that the design syllabus should be tailor-made

for the learners. However, if the numbers of students in the classroom was too large, it

would be impractical to follow this suggestion.

What is more, grammar mistakes are also related to an individual’s traits. It is

common for learners to be careless when performing grammar tasks. However, for a

prudent person and self-reflective learner, they can prevent the mistakes from

happening again by improving their awareness of the type of mistakes and reviewing

them regularly.

The fourth conclusion is that using chunks such as sentence pattern is beneficial

to fluency, but sometimes harmful to accuracy.

Finally, my students’ opinions about CR tasks varied. One explanation may be

the limited number of participants. Therefore, the findings might not be consistent with

those large-scale studies, application of these findings in this paper should be cautious.

Furthermore, leaner level of proficiency and cognitive seem to influence their

preference to the CR tasks.

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