What is cross-curricular learning?

Cross-curricular learning involves establishing patterns of information between different academic subjects.
It offers a creative way of developing knowledge, understanding and practical skills through a study of
interconnected topics. A common way of expanding knowledge on a specific subject is to study the history of
that topic and apply that learning to other teaching lessons.

How can cross-curricular learning benefits students?

Cross-curricular learning allows for more inter-connected lessons that capture your students' imagination. It
also enables them to identify patterns of information between subjects that will help to enforce key
knowledge. Good cross-curricular learning can involve a wide variety of different subjects, but it more usually
relies upon links between only a couple of key subjects. Making sure the links between lessons are natural
and not forced is key to a successful cross-curricular learning strategy.

unidad 3
Unit 32 Correcting learners
We correct learners sometimes when they have made a mistake and we want to show them that something
is wrong.
Oral correction
1. Timelines: we can draw a timeline on the board to show learners the relationship between
the use of a verb tense and the time or aspect.
2. Finger Correction: this shows learners where in an utterance they have made a mistake. We
can indicate where the mistake is without speaking and prompt learners to self-correct. We
show one hand to the class and point to each finger in turn as we say each word in the
utterance. This technique is particularly effective when learners have left out a word in an
utterance because we can indicate that something is missing and they can see where in the
utterance the missing word should go.
3. Gestures and/or facial expressions: are useful when we don’t want to interrupt learners, but
still want to show them that they have made a slip. The gestures that teachers use depend on
what is appropriate for their culture and teaching situation.
4. Phonemic symbols: we can use them to focus on mispronounced sounds by pointing at the
relevant symbols on the phonemic chart or writing the symbol on the board.
5. Echo correcting: means repeating what a learner says with rising intonation. Repeating with
rising intonation will show the learner that there is a mistake somewhere because the rising
intonation sounds like a question.
6. Identifying the mistake: sometimes we need to identify the mistake by focusing learners’
attention on it and telling them that there is a problem. This technique is more commonly
used with errors.
7. Delayed correction: sometimes it’s the best not to indicate or correct mistakes at the time
they are made, for example when learners are taking part in a role-play. As a monitor of
fluency activities, we can make a note of any serious mistakes we hear. At the end of the
activity, we can say the mistakes or write them on the board and ask learners what they

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 think the problems are, and suggest corrections without telling learners who made which
mistakes.
8. Peer and self-corrections: peer correction involves learners correcting each other’s
mistakes. Self-correction is when learners correct their own mistakes.
9. Ignoring errors: we ignore errors that are above the learners’ language level. We might
reformulate part of the learner’s utterance but we don’t expect the learner to correct the
mistake. We may also decide to ignore mistakes made by a particular learner because she is
weak or shy. Finally, we often ignore slips as learners can correct these themselves.
10. Reformulating: teachers correct the mistake by repeating the utterance correctly, without
drawing the child’s attention to the mistake.
11. Recasting: sometimes we recast a student utterance by rewording it and saying it back to
the learner in its improved form.
12. Give the rule and an example or definition: it can help learners if we provide the grammar
rule and then give or elicit an example and a definition.
Written correction
Usually, teachers use a correction code to indicate the types of mistakes that the learner has
made. This enables learners to make their own corrections.

We can correct students’ written work using other techniques:

● Teacher correction: the teacher corrects the learners’ mistakes by writing the correct
word/s on the learners’ work.
● Peer correction: the learners read each other’s written work, in a draft or final version and
give feedback. Learners can also correct each other’s work or discuss possible corrections
with each other.
● Self-correction: this is helpful for developing learner autonomy and for helping learners
develop the ability to edit and re-draft their own work. It’s is an important technique for
examinations.
● Ignoring the mistake.

Key concepts
Teachers choose the technique appropriate for the teaching approach, the learning purpose, the activity, the
learner and the context. Overcorrection can result in learners not wanting to say anything in class because
they are afraid of making mistakes. Indicating mistakes and slips to learners so that they can self or peer
correct will help them become more autonomous in their learning. Teachers can try to extend the range of
correction techniques and strategies. Concept questions can be a way of checking if learners have made an
error of use rather than form. When several learners make the same significant mistake during one or more
lessons it sometimes means that the class needs further practice with that area of language in future lessons.

Unit 33 Giving feedback

Feedback is giving information to someone about their learning and/or showing them that you
have understood or not what they have said. In the classroom, teachers can give feedback to
learners, and learners can give feedback to the teacher. When teachers give feedback to
learners, they give them information about their learning. Sometimes we give feedback to the

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whole class, at other times we give feedback to small groups or individual learners. We can give
oral feedback or written feedback. The purposes of feedback are to motivate learners, to
encourage learner autonomy and to help learners understand what their problems are and how
they can improve. When learners give feedback to each other on aspects of their learning this is
called peer feedback.

Teachers can also elicit feedback from their learners. This feedback can give information on
whether learners like what they are doing, whether they are interested in the materials or
activities, or whether they are having problems with the language. Feedback to learners can be
linked to formal or informal assessment and can be given to learners in the classroom or during
individual tutorials. We can also write regular feedback in the form of comments, grades or marks
on a learner’s record sheet. The learner can keep this sheet in their portfolio or we might keep it
with our records of their overall progress and achievement. We can use this feedback when we
make our end of course assessment.

Learners can also give feedback to their classmates. This is called peer feedback. It can be oral
or written. The learners who give the feedback reflect on the work their classmates have done.
The learners who receive feedback are given information on how they can improve. The learners
are often guided by a feedback observation sheet. Peer feedback can have a positive effect on
classroom dynamics and can help to train learners in skills they need to become autonomous.

Key concepts
Feedback should be balanced. It needs to be balanced so that there is comment on positive aspects of a
learner’s work as well as areas he/she needs to improve; focused so that the learner knows exactly what the
good points are and what the problems are: helpful so that the learner knows what steps to take to improve.
Feedback can be given at different stages of a lesson. During class or individual feedback it’s possible to
revisit or recycle language that learners are having problems with, by providing learners with written
exercises, or by including the language for review in an oral activity in the following lesson. Feedback, that is
particularly personal or sensitive, should be given to learners privately and not in front of the whole class.
Written or oral feedback can be given to learners after formal assessment in addition to a mark or grade.

Chapter 4
TEACHING BY PRINCIPLES
The principles are divided into three categories: cognitive principles, affective principles and
linguistic principles.

Cognitive principles
are called like that because they relate mainly to mental and intellectual functions.

Principle 1: Automaticity.

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We commonly attribute children’s success to their widely observed tendency to acquire language
subconsciously. Through an inductive process of exposure to language input and the opportunity to
experiment with output, they appear to learn languages without “thinking” about them. Barry
McLaughlin called automatic processing with peripheral attention to language forms. That is, in
order to manage the incredible complexity and quantity of language both adults and children must
sooner or later move away from processing language unit by unit, focusing closely on each, and
graduate to a form of high-speed, automatic processing in which language forms are only on the
periphery of attention. Children usually make this transition faster than adults.

Important points:
★ subconscious absorption of language through meaningful use
★ focus on the purpose to which language is put
★ automatic mode of processing language forms
★ resistance to the temptation to analyze language forms

What does this principle mean to you as a teacher? classroom learning normally begins with controlled,
focal processing, there is no mandate to entirely avoid overt attention to language systems. That
attention should stop well short of blocking students from achieving a more automatic, fluent grasp
of the language. You could overwhelm your students with grammar. If they become too heavily
centred on the formal aspects of language, such processes can block pathways to fluency.
Principle 2: Meaningful Learning
Meaningful learning “subsumes” new information into existing structures and memory systems, and
the resulting associative links create stronger retention. Children are good meaningful acquirers
of language because they associate sounds, words, structures and discourse elements with that
which is relevant and important in their daily quest for knowledge and survival. The Principle of
Meaningful Learning tells us that some aural-oral drilling is appropriate, selected phonological
taught effectively through pattern repetition.

Some classroom implications of the PofML:

1. Capitalize on the power of meaningful learning by appealing to students’ interests, academic goals, and
career goals.
2. Whenever a new topic or concept is introduced, attempt to anchor it in students’ existing knowledge
and background so that it becomes associated with something they already know.
3. Avoid rote learning.

Principle 3: the anticipation or reward

The anticipation of reward is the most powerful factor in directing one’s behaviour. Human beings
are universally driven to act or behave by the anticipation of some sort of reward that will ensure
as a result of the behaviour. Be careful with conditioning by reward because can lead learners to
become dependent on short-term rewards, coaxing them into a habit of looking to teachers and
others for their only rewards and therefore forestall the development of their own internally
administered, an intrinsic system of rewards.

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 1. Provide an optimal degree of immediate verbal praise and encouragement to them as a form
of short-term reward.
2. Encourage students to reward each other with compliments and supportive action.
3. In classes with very low motivation, short-term reminders of progress may help students to
perceive their development.
4. Display enthusiasm and excitement yourself in the classroom.

Principle 4: Intrinsic Motivation

The most powerful rewards are those that are intrinsically motivated within the learner. Because
the behaviour stems from needs, wants, or desires within oneself, the behaviour itself is self-
rewarding: therefore, no externally administered reward is necessary. Teachers perform a great
service to learners and to the overall learning process by first considering carefully the intrinsic
motives of your students and then by designing classroom tasks that feed into those intrinsic
drives. Classroom techniques have a much greater chance for success if they are self-rewarding
in the perception of the learner. The learners perform the task because it is fun, interesting,
useful or challenging, and not because they anticipate some cognitive or affective rewards from
the teacher. The development of intrinsic motivation does indeed involve affective processing, as
most of these first five principles do, and so the argument is appropriate.

Principle 5: Strategic Investment

Teachers focus more on the role of the learner. The methods that the learner employs to
internalize and to perform in the language are as important as the teacher’s methods. Successful
mastery of the second language will be due to a large extent to a learner’s own personal
investment of time, effort, and attention to the second language in the form of an individualized
battery of strategies for comprehending and producing the language.

Two major pedagogical implications:

1. the importance of recognizing and dealing with the wide variety of styles and strategies that
learners successfully bring to the learning process.
2. the need for attention to each separate individual in the classroom.

Learners have a specific style or preferences that a teacher needs to attend to. Learners also
employ a multiplicity of strategies for sending and receiving language and that one learner’s
strategies for success may differ markedly from another’s. Teachers will choose a mixture of
group work and individual work, of visual and auditory techniques, of easy and difficult exercises.

Affective Principles
Principle 6: Language Ego
As human beings learn to use a second language, they also develop a new mode of thinking, feeling,
and acting, a second identity. The new language ego, intertwined with the second language, can
easily create within the learner a sense of fragility, a defensiveness, and a raising of inhibitions.

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All second language learners need to be treated with affective tender loving care. Highly
intelligent adults can be reduced to babbling infants in a second language. Learners feel this
fragility because the strategic arsenals of their native-language-based egos, which are normally
well developed and resistant to attack, are suddenly obsolete. Now they must fend for their
emotional selves with a paltry linguistic battery that leaves them with a feeling of total
defenselessness.

How can you provide support?

1. Display a supportive attitude to your students. Your warm and fuzzy patience and empathy need to be
openly and clearly communicated, for fragile language egos have a way of misinterpreting intended
input.
2. Your choice of techniques and sequences of techniques needs to be cognitively challenging but not
overwhelming at an affective level.
3. Considering learners’ language ego states will probably help you to determine who to call on, who to
ask to volunteer information, when to correct a student’s speech error, how structured and planned an
activity should be…

Principle 7: Self-Confidence
Learners’ belief that they indeed are fully capable of accomplishing a task is at least partially a
factor in their eventual success in attaining the task. It helps a student to hear a teacher affirm a
belief in the student’s ability. Energy that the learner would otherwise direct at avoidance or at
erecting emotional walls of defense is thereby released to tackle the problem at hand. Your
activities in the classroom would therefore logically start with simpler techniques and simpler
concepts. Students then can establish a sense of accomplishment that catapults them to the next
step.

Principle 8: risk-taking
If learners recognize their own ego fragility and develop the firm belief that they can indeed do
it, then they are ready to take those necessary risks. They are ready to try out their newly
acquired language, to use it for meaningful purposes, to ask questions and to assert themselves.
Successful language learners, in their realistic appraisal of themselves as vulnerable beings yet
capable of accomplishing tasks, must be willing to become gamblers in the game of language to
attempt to produce and to interpret language that is a bit beyond their absolute certainty. Many
instructional contexts around the world don’t encourage risk-taking instead they encourage
correctness, right answers and withholding guesses until one is sure to be correct. Most
educational research shows the opposite to be more conducive to long-term retention and
intrinsic motivation.

1. Create an atmosphere in the classroom that encourages students to try out language.
2. Provide reasonable challenges in your techniques.
3. Help your students to understand what calculated risk-taking is.

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 4. Respond to students’ risky attempts with positive affirmation, praising them for trying while at the
same time warmly but firmly attending to their language.

Principle 9: The Language-Culture Connection

Language and culture are intricately intertwined. This principle focuses on the complex
interconnection of language and culture. Whenever you teach a language, you also teach a
complex system of cultural customs, values, and ways of thinking, feeling and acting. Classroom
applications include the following:

1. Discuss cross-cultural differences with your students, emphasizing that no culture is better than
another, but that cross-cultural understanding is an important facet of learning a language.
2. Include activities and materials that illustrate the connection between language and culture.
3. Teach your students the cultural connotations of language.
The second aspect of Language-Culture Connection is the extent to which your students will
themselves be affected by the process of acculturation, which will vary with the context and the
goals of learning.

Linguistic Principles
Principle 10: The Native Language Effect
This principle stresses the importance of that native system in the linguistic attempts of the
second language learner. The native language of learners exerts a strong influence on the
acquisition of the target language system. While that native system will exercise both facilitation
and interfering effects on the production and comprehension of the new language, the interfering
effects are likely to be the most silent. In your dealing with the native language effect in the
classroom, your feedback will mast often focus on interference. Learners’ errors stand out like the
tips of icebergs, giving us silent signals of an underlying system at work. Errors are windows to a
learner’s internalized understanding of the second language and therefore they give teachers
something observable to react to.

● Provide appropriate feedback on them.

● Errors of native language interference may be repaired by acquainting the learner with the native
language cause of the error.
● Help your students to understand that not everything about their native language system will cause an
error.
● Try to coax students into thinking in the second language instead of resorting to translation as they
comprehend and produce language.

Principle 11: Interlanguage

The interlanguage principle tells us: second language learners tend to go through a systematic
developmental process as they progress to full competence in the target language, utilizing
feedback from others. At least some of the learners’ language may indeed be systematic. In the

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mind’s eye of learners, a good deal of what they say or comprehend may be logically correct even
though from the standpoint of a native speaker’s competence, its use is incorrect. Classroom
instruction makes a significant difference in the speed and success with which learners proceed
through interlanguage stages of development. This highlights the importance of the feedback that
you give to learners in the classroom. You are the only person with whom the students have real-
life contact who speaks English. All eyes and ears are indeed upon you because you are the
authority on the English language, whether you like it or not. Teachers are engaged in a never-
ending process of making sure that we provide sufficient positive affective feedback to students
and at the same time give appropriate feedback to students about whether or not their actual
language is clear and unambiguous.

● Try to distinguish between a student’s systematic interlanguage errors and other errors.
● Don’t make a student feel stupid because of an interlanguage error. Point out the logic of the erroneous
form.
● Your classroom feedback to students should give them the message that mistakes are not bad but that
most mistakes are good indicators that innate language acquisition abilities are alive and well. Mistakes
are often indicators of aspects of the new language that are still developing.
● Try to get students to self-correct selected errors.
● Make sure that you provide ample affective feedback.

Principle 12: Communicative Competence

Communicative competence encompasses a language user's grammatical knowledge of syntax,
morphology, phonology and the like, as well as social knowledge about how and when to use
utterances appropriately.
➔ Remember that grammatical explanations or exercises are only part of a lesson or curriculum;
give grammar some attention, but don’t neglect the other important components.
➔ Some of the pragmatic aspects of language are very subtle and therefore very difficult. Make
sure your lessons aim to teach such subtlety.
➔ In your enthusiasm for teaching functional and sociolinguistic aspects of language, don’t forget
that psychomotor skills are an important component. Intonation alone conveys a great deal of
pragmatic information.
➔ Make sure that your students have opportunities to gain some fluency in English without having
to be constantly wary of little mistakes.

Cross-Linguistic influence and learner language - Chapter 8

Cross-linguistic influence: is typically defined as the influence that knowledge of one language has on an
individual's learning or use of another language. This influence can involve various aspects of language.

The contrastive analysis hypothesis: the study of two languages in contrast. It claimed that the principal
barrier to second language acquisition is the interference of the first language system with the second
language system, Human learning theories highlighted interfering elements of learning, concluding that

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where no interference could be predicted, no difficulty would be experienced since one could transfer
positively all other items in a language. The logical conclusion was that second language learning involved
overcoming the differences between the two linguistic systems.

Hierarchy of difficulty by Prator.

➢ Level 0 Transfer: no difference or contrast is present between the 2 languages. The learner can transfer
a sound, structure or lexical item from their native language. (chocolate)
➢ Level 1 Coalescence: two items in the native language become coalesced into essentially one item in the
target language. (her-his = su)
➢ Level 2 Underdifferentiation: an item in the native language is absent in the target language. The
learner must avoid that item. (do-whose-some)
➢ Level 3 Reinterpretation: an item that exists in the native language is given a new shape or distribution.
(pronunciation)
➢ Level 4 Overdifferentiation: new items must be learned.
➢ Level 5 Split: an item in the native language becomes two or more in the target language, requiring the
learner to make a new distinction.

The attempt to predict difficulty by means of contrastive analysis is what Ronald Wardhaugh called the
strong version of the CAH, a version that he believed was quite unrealistic and impracticable. It was
unrealistic because they were predicting difficulties, it was subjective, they didn’t study actual errors.
Wardhaugh noted, however, that teachers and linguists had successfully used the best linguistic knowledge
available in order to account for observed difficulties in second language learning. He termed such
observational use of contrastive analysis the weak version of the CAH. = cross-linguistic influence.

Markedness Differential Hypothesis by Eckman. Accounted for relative degrees of difficulty by means of
principles of universal grammar. It distinguishes members of a pair of related forms by assuming that the
marked member of a pair contains at least one more feature than the unmarked one. The unmarked (neutral)
member of the pair is the one with a wider range of distribution than the marked one. (a-an= a is te
unmarked form).

!!! Selinker - interlanguage: it refers to the separateness of a second language learner’s system, a
system that has a structurally intermediate status between the native and target languages. An
interlanguage is an idiolect that has been developed by a learner of a second language (or L2) which
preserves some features of their first language (or L1), and can also overgeneralize some L2 writing and
speaking rules. These two characteristics of an interlanguage result in the system's unique linguistic
organization. An interlanguage is idiosyncratically based on the learners' experiences with the L2. It can
"fossilize", or cease developing, in any of its developmental stages. The interlanguage rules are claimed to be
shaped by several factors, including L1-transfer, previous learning strategies, strategies of L2 acquisition (i.e.,
simplification), L2 communication strategies (i.e., circumlocution), and overgeneralization of L2 language
patterns.

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The most obvious approach to analyzing interlanguage is to study the speech and writing of learners, or
what has come to be called learner language. Comprehension of a second language is more difficult to study
since it is not directly observable and must be inferred from overt verbal and nonverbal responses, by
artificial instruments, or by the intuition of the teacher or researcher. Human learning is a process that
involves the making of mistakes. A mistake refers to a performance error that is either a random guess or a
slip in that it is a failure to utilize a known system correctly. They can be self-corrected. An error reflects the
competence of the learner. It is something you don't know. It's grammar you haven't learned yet or
vocabulary you haven't learned yet. Errors are interesting because it gives you a chance to learn something
for the first time.

Error Analysis is one of the major topics in the field of second language acquisition research. Errors are an
integral part of language learning. The basic task of error analysis is to describe how learning occurs by
examining the learner's output and this includes his/her correct and incorrect utterances. What are the types
of error analysis? They are omission, addition, misinformation, and misordering. Errors can be global or
local. Global errors hinder communication, they prevent the hearer from comprehending some aspects of the
message. Local errors don’t prevent the message from being heard, usually because there is only a minor
violation of one segment of a sentence, allowing the hearer/reader to make an accurate guess about the
intended meaning.
Chapter 14
Addressing the Grammar Gap in Task Work
Task-based learning is an approach to language learning where learners are given interactive tasks to
complete. In order to do this, they need to communicate. Once the task is complete, then the teacher
discusses the language used.
The advantages of TBL
● Unlike a PPP approach, the students are free of language control. In all three stages, they must use all
their language resources rather than just practising one pre-selected item.
● A natural context is developed from the students' experiences with the language that is personalised
and relevant to them. With PPP it is necessary to create contexts in which to present the language and
sometimes they can be very unnatural.
● The students will have much more varied exposure to language with TBL. They will be exposed to a
whole range of lexical phrases, collocations and patterns as well as language forms.
● The language explored arises from the students' needs. This need dictates what will be covered in the
lesson rather than a decision made by the teacher or the coursebook.
● It is a strong communicative approach where students spend a lot of time communicating. PPP lessons
seem very teacher-centred by comparison. Just watch how much time the students spend
communicating during a task-based lesson.
● It is enjoyable and motivating.

Present-Practice-Production:

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● First, the teacher presents an item of language in a clear context to get across its meaning. This could be
done in a variety of ways: through a text, a situation builds, a dialogue etc.
● Students are then asked to complete a controlled practice stage, where they may have to repeat target
items through choral and individual drilling, fill gaps or match halves of sentences. All of this practice
demands that the student uses the language correctly and helps them to become more comfortable with
it.
● Finally, they move on to the production stage, sometimes called the 'free practice' stage. Students are
given a communication task such as a role-play and are expected to produce the target language and
use any other language that has already been learnt and is suitable for completing it.

From grammar-focused to task-focused instruction: the belief that a precise focus on a particular form
leads to learning and automatization, no longer carries much credibility in linguistics or psychology. The
communicative task is a piece of classroom work that involves learners in comprehending, manipulating,
producing or interacting in the target language while their attention is principally focused on meaning rather
than form. While carrying out communicative tasks, learners are said to receive comprehensible input and
modified output, processes believed central to second language acquisition and which ultimately lead to the
development of both linguistic and communicative competence.

Differences between grammar-focused activities and communicative task work.

GFA
● reflect typical classroom use of language.
● produce language for display.
● call on explicit knowledge.
● elicit a careful speech style.
● reflect controlled performance.
● practise language out of context.
● practice small samples of language.
TFA
● reflect natural language use.
● call on implicit knowledge.
● elicit a vernacular speech style.
● require the use of improvising, paraphrasing,
repair and reorganization.
● produce language that is not always
predictable.
● require real communication.

Shekan distinguishes between a strong and weak form of a task-based approach. A strong form sees tasks
as the basic unit of teaching and as driving the acquisition process. A weak form sees tasks as a vital part of
language instruction but as embedded in a more complex pedagogical context. The strong form of task-
based teaching suggests that form will largely look after itself with incidental support from the teacher.
Grammar has a mediating role, rather than serving as an end in itself. The teacher and the learner have a
remarkable degree of flexibility, for they are presented with a set of general learning objectives and problem-
solving tasks, and not a list of specific linguistic items.

Problems with task work: one relates to claims made for modification of the learner’s linguistic output
through the process of negotiation of meaning. Another concern is the effect of extensive task-work activities
on the development of linguistic competence. In task work, communicative competence is a term for
communication in spite of language rather than communication through language. Shekan suggests that the
level of communication often observed during task work results from students relying on a lexicalised system

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of communication that is heavily dependent on vocabulary and memorised chunks of language as well as
both verbal and nonverbal communication strategies to get meanings across.
Grammar in relation to second language acquisition processes: five stages of the learning process by Van
Patten, Ellis, and Shekan.
1. Input: refers to language sources that are used to initiate the language learning process. Exposure to
comprehensible target-language input is in itself sufficient to trigger acquisition. Grammatical
simplification is seen as essential in proving input that is at an appropriate level of difficulty. At the input
stage in language learning, an attempt may be made to focus learners’ attention on particular linguistic
features of the input:
❖ Simplification of input (restricted set of tenses and structures)
❖ Frequency of exposure (frequently)
❖ Explicit instruction (how it is used + practice)
❖ Implicit instruction (a word that triggers the rule or system and how it is used)
❖ Consciousness-raising (make learners aware of certain linguistic features in the input)
2. Intake: Van Patten defines intake as that subject of the input that is comprehended and attended to in
some way. It contains the linguistic data that are made available for acquisition. Factors thought to affect
how items pass from input to intake include:
● Complexity: items should be at the appropriate level of difficulty.
● Saliency: items must be noticed or attended to in some way.
● Frequency: items must be experienced with sufficient frequency.
● Need: the item must fulfil a communicative need.
3. Acquisition: this refers to the processes by which the learner incorporates a new learning item into his or
her developing system or interlanguage. Learners don’t pass from a state of not knowing a particular
target structure to a state of knowing and using it accurately. A number of processes appear to be
involved:
➢ Noticing: learners need to recognise differences between forms they are using and target-
like forms. A learner won’t be motivated to try out a new linguistic structure if he or she isn’t
aware of the differences between his or her current interlanguage system and the target-
language system. Consciousness and unconsciousness discovery of rules are involved.
➢ Discovering rules: according to the theory of Universal Grammar, learning also involves the
identification of the grammatical variables which operate in the target language and which
account for the specific linguistic characteristics of that language, such as the rules
underlying target-language word order, clause patterns, nominal groups, phrase structures
and so on.
➢ Accommodation and restructuring: Van Patten describes these processes as those that
mediate the incorporation of intake into the developing system. Since the internalization of
intake is not a mere accumulation of discrete nits of data, data have to fit in in some way and
sometimes the accommodation of a particular set of data causes changes in the rest of the
system.

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 ➢ Experimentation: much of the learner’s output in the target language can be described as the
result of experimentation as the learner forms hypotheses about the target language and
tests them out. It is important the context.
4. Access: it refers to the learner’s ability to draw upon his or her interlanguage system during
communication. The context in which the learner is using the language, as well as its purpose, may affect
the extent to which he or she is successful in calling up aspects of the acquired system. Skehan refers to
this process as fluency, which concerns the learner’s capacity to mobilize an interlanguage system to
communicate meanings in real-time. Access may be totally, partially or not at all successful, depending
on task demand, previous experiences and other factors.
5. Output: it refers to the observed results of the learners’ efforts. It is more likely to facilitate acquisition
when the learners are pushed, that is, required to reshape their utterances and to use the target
language more coherently and accurately.

Addressing grammar within task work: Doughty and Williams suggest that focus on form entails a
prerequisite engagement in meaning before attention to linguistic features can be expected to become
effective. Skehan proposes the following principles as the basis of a methodology that includes a focus on
form as part of an overall communicative approach to teaching:
➔ exposure to language at an appropriate level of difficulty.
➔ engagement in meaning-focused interaction in the language.
➔ opportunities for learners to notice or attend to linguistic form while using the language.
➔ opportunities to expand the language resources over time.

Addressing accuracy prior to the task: pre-task activities have two goals, (1) to provide language support
that can be used in completing a task; (2) to clarify the nature of the task so that students can give less
attention to procedural aspects of the task and hence monitor the linguistic accuracy of their performance
while carrying out a task.
A. by pre-teaching certain linguistic forms that can be used while completing a task.
B. by reducing the cognitive complexity of the task.
C. by giving time to plan the task.

Addressing accuracy during the task: a focus form can be facilitated during the completion of a task by
choosing how the task is to be carried out. Task implementation factors include: participation (individual or in
groups); procedures (the number of steps involved in completing the task); resources (materials); order (the
sequencing of tasks in relation to previous tasks); product (the outcome).

Addressing accuracy after the task: grammatical appropriateness can also be addressed after a task has
been completed. Activities of this type include the following: public performance (sts carry on the task in
front of the class), repeat performance ( the same activity might be repeated with some elements modified)
and other performance (sts might hear more advanced learners completing the same task and focus on
some of the linguistic and communicative resources employed in the process.

chapter 15

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 Grammar Teaching - Practice or Consciousness-raising?

Practice Consciousness-raising
Mechanical practice: consists of various types of It involves an attempt to equip the learner with an
rigidly controlled activities. understanding of a specific grammatical feature - to
develop declarative rather than procedural
Contextualised practice: is still controlled, but knowledge of it. The main characteristics of
involves an attempt to encourage learners to relate consciousness-raising activities are the following:
form to meaning by showing how structures are 1. attempt to isolate a specific linguistic feature
used in real-life situations. for focused attention.
2. learners are provided with data which illustrate
Communicative practice: entails various kinds of the language and they may also be supplied
gap activities which require the learners to engage with an explicit rule describing the feature.
in authentic communication while at the same time 3. learners are expected to utilise intellectual
keeping an eye, as it were, on the structures that effort to understand the targeted feature.
are being manipulated in the process. 4. clarification in the form of further data and
description or explanation if they don’t
1. attempt to isolate a specific grammatical understand the language.
feature for focused attention. 5. learners may be required to articulate the rule
2. learners are required to produce sentences. describing the grammatical structure.
3. learners will be provided with opportunities for
repetition of the language. The main purpose of consciousness-raising is to
4. there is an expectancy that the learners will develop explicit knowledge of grammar. CR doesn’t
perform the grammatical feature correctly. involve the learner in repeated production. It’s a
5. learners receive feedback on their potential facilitator for the acquisition of linguistic
performance. competence and has nothing directly to do with the
use of that competence for the achievement of
Effectiveness of practice: Pienemann proposed that specific communicative objectives or with the
some structures are developmental in the sense achievement of fluency.
that they are acquired in a defined sequence. It’s
impossible for the learner to acquire a CR is directed at the formation of explicit
developmental structure until the psycholinguistic knowledge. We need implicit knowledge when it
processing operations associated with easier comes to communicating. CR has a delayed effect.
structures in the acquisitional sequence have been Tasks can be inductive or deductive. (1) the learner
acquired. is provided with data and asked to construct an
explicit rule to describe the grammatical feature
which the data illustrate. (2) the learner is supplied
with a rule which is then used to carry out some
task.

Process:
1- Noticing (st becomes conscious of the language
in the input)
2- Comparing (st compares the input with their

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 mental grammar)
3- Integrating (integrates the new item into their
mental grammar)

Grammar teaching can involve a combination of practice and CR.

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