MATERIALS FOR VOCABULARY & GRAMMAR

I. MATERIALS FOR VOCABULARY

Vocabulary teaching has the goal of supporting language use. There have been considerable debates about how
can be done. The core of the debate involves the role played by decontextualized vocabulary learning. The arguments
against such learning usually include the following points:
- deliberate learning can only account for a small proportion of the vocabulary knowledge of learners.
- deliberate learning not in a communicative context does not result in much learning.
- deliberate learning not in a communicative context does not help later vocabulary use in communicative
contexts.

3 Important Ideas in Vocabulary Development:

- a planned approach to vocabulary development is not much more effective than dealing with vocabulary in ad hoc
or opportunity ways.

- there are learning conditions that enhance the learning of vocabulary, and a major goal of materials development
should be to design materials that are likely to create these conditions.

- these conditions need to occur in activities that go across the four roughly equal strands of
learning from meaning-focused input, learning from the meaning-focused output, deliberate language-focused
learning, and fluency development.

Planning Vocabulary Learning

Studies of the statistical description of vocabulary confirm that there is a relatively small group of words that are
much more frequent and useful in a very wide range of language uses than other words in the language.
These high-frequency words are the essential basis of all language use and deserve a great deal of attention in
language teaching material. Unless learners have very special needs, it makes little sense to focus on other vocabulary
before most of these high-frequency words have been well learned.

Designing Input Activities to Encourage Vocabulary Learning

- Listening to a text and having to answer questions
- Glossaries
- Extensive Reading

The learner adapts the activity's application:

a) requires the use of the target word.
b) requires the learner to extend the meaning of the word.
c) Requires the word to be used in a linguistic context.
d) Requires the learner to extend the meaning.

Designing Output Activities to Help Vocabulary Learning

Work on communicative activities has shown that careful design of written input can have a major effect on
vocabulary learning. Some design requirements and features of activities to support vocabulary learning are the following:
- The written must contain L2 target words.
- The vocabulary must be highlighted and repeated.
- The communicative task must have a clear outcome.
- It must split information, jobs, or roles.
- The task should be broken into a series of steps.
- Supports the understanding of the target vocabulary.

Fluency Development
The main goal is to make language items readily available for fluent use. Fluency is likely to develop if the following
conditions are met:

- The learners take part in activities where all the language items are within that previous experience.
- The activity is meaning-focused.
- There is support and encouragement for the learner to perform at a higher-than-normal level.
Example of Fluency Activity
The 4/3/2 technique (devised by Maurice in 1983)
In this technique students work in pairs with one acting as the speaker and the other as listener. The speaker talks
in four minutes on a topic while the partner listens. Then the pairs change with each speaker giving the same information
to a new partner in three minutes, followed by a further change and a two-minute talk.

Range of Activities
These examples of activities put into practice the conditions of easy demands, meaning focus, and opportunity to perform
at a higher-than-normal level:
- Blown-up books: a useful way of using listening to introduce learners to reading.
- Listening to stories: suitable for students who read well but whose listening skills are poor.
- Listening corner: learner listens to tape-recorded stories.
- Speed reading training and extensive reading with texts with unknown vocabulary.
- Repeated reading: the same text is reread several times.

II. MATERIALS FOR GRAMMAR

Learners need to realize the functions of the device [i.e. grammar] as a way of mediating between words and contexts,
as a powerful resource for the purposeful achievement of meaning. A communicative approach, properly conceived, does
not involve the rejection of grammar. On the contrary, it involves a recognition of its central mediating role in the use and
learning of language.

Reported speech – an examination.

If we look at what a speaker needs to do in order to produce an utterance in ‘reported speech, we will find things
such as:
• the ability to select a verb that reflects how the ‘reporter’ views the original speech act (e.g., say, tell, explain, suggest,
admit, ask, etc.).
• knowledge of the implications of the verb selection for the following structure (e.g., he asked me if . . . or he asked me to
. . .).
• the ability to refer to periods of time at a deictic distance (e.g., the day before / the following day / three weeks later as
opposed to yesterday/tomorrow / in three weeks’ time etc.), and also to make other deictic references at a remove (e.g., the
house as opposed to this house, etc.);
• when the verb selected for reporting is followed by a ‘that . . .’ verb phrase, the ability to select an appropriate tense form
for the verb in the ‘that’ clause.

Receptive grammar activities

Sentence grammar, deriving as they do from an abstraction away from potential use, pose questions about the
organization of language that seem to have little to do with those engaging the attention of people who are involved in
communicating with others.

Choose the most appropriate verb forms.

•I invited Jim to the party tonight. He said he ________ (wants / wanted) to come.
• John’s going to live in New York next year. It’s odd, because last year he told me he_______ (is going / was
going) to stay in London.
• Don’t worry, Mum. Dad said he ______ (’ll / ’d) pick me up from school this afternoon.
• I don’t know why Jim didn’t come to the party. Yesterday he said he _______ (wants /wanted) to come (etc.).

Grammar and Meaning

Grammar materials can let learners down in other ways as well. When practice activities or exercises are given to
learners to practice a particular aspect of grammar, it would appear to be desirable that the utterances produced in doing
the exercise be ones that are feasible language, and bear some resemblance to language that the learners themselves might
wish to utter. One does not need to look very far to find grammar practice activities in which the learners doing the
exercise will produce language which is at best unlikely.

A random selection from various published coursebooks follows:

• Scientists make a lot of clever inventions. (practicing ‘a lot of’)
• Athletes must train very hard to be champions. (practicing ‘must’ as a modal for obligation)
• Has John heard her latest record? (practicing present perfect simple)
• James and Emma can speak French. (practicing ‘can’ as a modal of ability)

The Principles of Materials Development for Teaching Grammar

Here are some criteria for evaluating the practical approaches that follow.
The principles of materials development for teaching grammar

The E-Factor: Efficiency=Economy, Ease, and Efficacy

 Efficiency, in turn, can be broken down into three factors:
• Economy is a key factor in the trinity of technical skills: when learning how to drive a car or operate a computer,
a little prior teaching seems to be more effective than a lot. The more the instructor piles on instructions, the more
confused the trainee is likely' to become.
• The ease factor recognizes the fact that most teachers lead busy lives, have many classes, and simply cannot
afford to sacrifice valuable free time preparing elaborate classroom materials
• Efficacy, we have to operate more on hunch than on hard data. Learning, like language, resists measurement. Of
course, there are tests, and these can provide feedback to the teacher on the efficacy of the teaching/learning
process.

The A-factor: Appropriacy

Factors to consider when determining appropriacy include:
•the age of the learners
•their level
•the size of the group
•the constitution of the group, e.g., monolingual, or multilingual
•what their needs are, e.g., to pass a public examination
•the learners' interests
•the available materials and resources
•the learners' previous learning experience and hence present expectations
•any cultural factors that might affect attitudes, e.g., their perception of the role and status of the teacher
•the educational context, e.g., private school or state school, at home or abroad

Approaches for Developing Materials for Teaching Grammar

In teaching grammar, there are two approaches that can be applied: deductive and inductive.

Deductive Approach
A deductive approach is derived from the notion that deductive reasoning works from the general to the specific.
In this case, rules, principles, concepts, or theories are presented first, and then their applications are treated.
The deductive approach maintains that a teacher teaches grammar by presenting grammatical rules, and then
examples of sentences are presented. Once learners understand rules, they are told to apply the rules given to various
examples of sentences.

Guidelines
•the rules should be true;
•the rules should show clearly what limits are on the use of a given form ;
•the rules need to be clear;
•the rules ought to be simple;
•the rules needs to make use of concepts already familiar to the learners; and
•the rules ought to be relevant.

Advantages
•The deductive approach goes straightforwardly to the point and can, therefore, be time-saving.
•A number of rule aspects (for example, form) can be more simply and clearly explained than elicited
from examples
•A number of direct practice/application examples are immediately given.
•The deductive approach respects the intelligence and maturity of many adult learners in particular and
acknowledges the role of cognitive processes in language acquisition.
•It confirms many learners’ expectations about classroom learning particularly for those who have an
analytical style.

Disadvantages
•Beginning the lesson with a grammar presentation may be off-putting for some learners, especially
younger ones.
•Younger learners may not able to understand the concepts or encounter grammar terminology given.
•Grammar explanation encourages a teacher-fronted, transmission-style classroom, so it will hinder
learner involvement and interaction immediately.
•The explanation is seldom as memorable as other forms of presentation (for example, demonstration).
•The deductive approach encourages the belief that learning a language is simply a case of knowing the
rule.

Inductive Approach
When we use induction, we observe a number of specific instances and from them infer a general principle or
concept.
 This approach involves learners’ participating actively in their own instruction. In addition, the approach
encourages a learner to develop her/his own set of strategies for dealing with tasks. In other words, this approach attempts
to highlight grammatical rules implicitly in which the learners are encouraged to conclude the rules given by the teacher.

Advantages
•Learners are trained to be familiar with the rule discovery; this could enhance learning autonomy and
self-reliance.
•Learners’ greater degree of cognitive depth is “exploited”.
•The learners are more active in the learning process, rather than being simply passive recipients. In this
activity, they will be motivated.
•The approach involves learners’ pattern-recognition and problem-solving abilities in which particular
learners are interested in this challenge.
•If the problem-solving activity is done collaboratively, learners get an opportunity for extra language
practice.

Disadvantages
•The approach is time and energy-consuming as it leads learners to have the appropriate concept of the
rule.
•The concepts given implicitly may lead the learners to have the wrong concepts of the rule taught.
•The approach can place emphasis on teachers in planning a lesson.
•It encourages the teacher to design data or materials taught carefully and systematically.
•The approach may frustrate the learners with their personal learning style, or their past learning
experience (or both) would prefer simply to be told the rule.

with the number of English learners. The publishing industry, web entrepreneurs, respected institutions, and enthusiasts
who just want to help are producing a staggering amount of materials aimed at getting people to understand, speak, and
write in English. Some of the materials are good, some of them not so much, and to help you figure out which is which,
we’ve compiled a list of the ten best resources you could be using to learn English grammar.

Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White

The Elements of Style, commonly known as “Strunk and White,” is a classic style guide every American student is
familiar with. It helped shape how the English language is used in the United States, for better or for worse, and as such is
a required read for English language learners.

Oxford Modern English Grammar by Bas Aarts

Oxford Modern English Grammar is a precious tool for any English language learner who needs a deeper understanding
of how the English language works. It covers both British English and American English, and it uses examples from
written and spoken English to explain the most basic grammar points as well the most complex.

Purdue Online Writing Lab

From grammar to individual resources for English language learners, professionals, and English teachers, Purdue OWL is
as comprehensive as English learning resources can get.

Grammar Exercises from the University of Bristol’s Faculty of Arts

Learning and testing go hand in hand. The University of Bristol’s Faculty of Arts hosts extensive grammar learning
materials on their website, which include exercises to help you practice using punctuation, discern between commonly
confused words, use the subjunctive, and plenty other things.

Grammar Monster
Grammar Monster is a website that offers both quick information and detailed explanations about everything that has to
do with grammar. Plus, it also has a short test for each of its sections, so you can gauge how well you understood the
section’s contents.

UsingEnglish.com
UsingEnglish.com is not the place to go looking for lessons on English grammar, but as far as grammar glossaries go, it
hosts a very comprehensive one. The site also offers a vast number of tests and quizzes that can keep you occupied for a
long time.

Edufind.com
Edufind.com is a website with a very simple layout that allows you to navigate through it quickly. Even though the
website’s materials aren’t organized in the form of lessons, they are written in simple, easy-to-understand language, so
you can use them as a learning resource.

Oxford Dictionaries
OxfordDictionaries.com is a fun website where you can read the Oxford Dictionaries’ blog, watch their videos, and find a
dictionary that can help you learn new words. There’s also a grammar section where you can learn everything you need to
know about English grammar.

British Council
The British Council has a long tradition of helping people around the world learn English, and their website contains
everything from lessons, grammar explanations, and a glossary to games and apps. It’s an excellent resource for English
language learners of all proficiency levels and from all walks of life.

Cambridge Apps
Cambridge University Press’s Grammar in Use series of apps contains three apps: one for beginners, one for intermediate
learners, and one for advanced English language learners, each corresponding to a book published by CUP. While the apps
do not contain all the materials from the books, they are chock-full of activities that can help you practice English
grammar anytime, anywhere.

Conclusion
The ultimate goal of teaching vocabulary and grammar is to provide the students with knowledge of the way
language is constructed so that when they listen, speak, read, and write, they have no trouble applying the language that
they are learning. Materials and practice activities should also be evaluated according to efficiency and appropriateness.
Language teachers are, therefore, challenged to use creative and innovative attempts to teach grammar so that
such a goal can successfully be achieved. In other words, whatever exercises are given, the most crucial thing is that the
teacher provides the students with an opportunity to be able to produce the grammatical item making use of syntactically
and semantically correct examples of sentences comprised of appropriate and relevant vocabulary.