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A SHORT NOTE ON ELT

https://academic.oup.com/eltj/pages/key_concepts (for detailed reference to some concepts)

I. Acronyms and abbreviations

EAP
English for Academic purposes intended for learners who want to go on to (usually) higher
education in an English-medium institution.
EFL
stands for English as a Foreign Language and refers to people learning the language to use it for
social, travel, business or study purposes.
ELT
is a useful catch-all which stands for English Language Teaching. Conventionally, it refers to
teaching the language to non-native speakers.
ESL/ESOL
stand for English as a Second Language / English to / for Speakers of Other Languages and
usually refer to people learning English who already live in an English-speaking community but
do not have English as a first language.
ESP
stands for English for Specific Purposes and these are usually things like Business, technical areas
(English for Metallurgists etc.) and other specific areas. A sub-category is EOP which stands for
English for Occupational Purposes.

II. Learning and the learner

ACQUISITION VS. LEARNING

Acquisition is the 'picking up' of a language through exposure to it and is contrasted
with learning which involves deliberate study and practice. The distinction is often credited to
Krashen.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Reference books:
Stephen D. Krashen: Second Language Acquisition and Second Language Learning [2002]
Stephen D. Krashen & TD Terrell: The Natural Approach: Language acquisition in the classroom [1983]

KRASHEN AND THE NATURAL APPROACH

In 1982, Krashen published Second Language Acquisition and Second Language Learning in which he
set out five hypotheses.
Hypothesis 1: THE ACQUISITION/LEARNING DISTINCTION
Krashen distinguishes between learning (a conscious process) and acquisition (an almost unconscious
process). Acquisition is a process similar to the way in which children acquire their first language(s). It
requires meaningful and frequent interaction in the language in which the speakers are not focused
on form but on meaning. Learning is, in contrast, a formal procedure which focuses on the
explanation of rules and correction of language form. It should be noted that Krashen was not
explicitly stating that one is better than the other. Indeed, he goes to some lengths to state that “the
classroom can be of value, and in fact generally is of value, in language acquisition as well as in
language learning” (Krashen, 2002:48 emphasis in the original). What he is saying is that informal
acquisition, given sufficient and intensive exposure is also an efficient way of acquiring a foreign
language.
Many would agree, drawing on personal experience, that simply picking up a language in informal but
frequent and intensive settings is an efficient and effective way of learning a foreign language and
many would also agree, having unsuccessfully tried to learn a foreign language in a classroom, that
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formal learning settings are not invariably successful. There are also those who profoundly disagree
and aver that language learning is a conscious process.

Hypothesis 2: THE MONITOR HYPOTHESIS

Following on from the primary distinction, Krashen posits that learners actively monitor their output
in a foreign language. To do this they use their learned rather than acquired knowledge. An
utterance is initiated and the learned system is used to monitor its accuracy.
The key point is that monitoring can, of course, only follow production although some have suggested
that some learners delay producing language until they have mentally rehearsed what to say and
monitored it internally. This produces hesitant, slow production. They are over-monitoring. On the
other hand, there are learners who under-monitor, producing immediate but wildly inaccurate
language. In writing, the same considerations apply but monitoring can be an ongoing process
because of the nature of the skill.

Hypothesis 3: THE NATURAL ORDER HYPOTHESIS

With back-up from a body of research and a deal of number crunching in the book, Krashen asserts
that grammatical language morphemes in particular are acquired in a certain order. That order for
English is:
ING (Progressive) + PLURAL + COPULA (to be)
>
AUXILLARY (progressive) + ARTICLE (a, the)
>
IRREGULAR PAST
>
REGULAR PAST + III SINGULAR (s)
>
POSSESSIVE (s)

Hypothesis 4: THE INPUT HYPOTHESIS

The argument here is that, for optimum effect, the input a learner receives should be a)
comprehensible and b) just above the level of the learner. This is sometimes abbreviated to INPUT +
1 or just i + 1. Many see this as an intuitively correct hypothesis for if the input is incomprehensible,
no sense can be made of it and no learning can take place but if the input is below the learner's
competence, he/she is not challenged to improve, given the opportunity to acquire new language or
notice the gap between his / her own production and the heard / read models.

Hypothesis 5: THE AFFECTIVE FILTER HYPOTHESIS

This suggests that high levels of, e.g., stress, or low levels of, e.g., self-esteem will act as inhibitors of
the learning-acquisition process. Low levels of stress and high levels of self-esteem and motivation
will have the reverse effect.

THE NATURAL APPROACH IN ACTION

To give you a flavour of how teaching and learning is carried out following the Natural Approach, here
are some statements from a handbook of the approach (Krashen and Terrell, 1983).

1. Your teacher will speak French exclusively. You may answer in either English or French. You are
free to use English until you yourself feel ready to try speaking French. You should not try to use
French until you are comfortable doing so.
2. When you do try to speak in the new language, the teacher is interested in what you have to say –
not whether you have said it perfectly. Neither you nor the teacher will be overly concerned with
grammar errors in your speech while you are a beginner.
3. You do not have to use full sentences. You may talk in short phrases or even use just one word
when that is appropriate.
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4. Remember that as long as you understand what the teacher is saying you are acquiring
French. This means that you should focus on what is being said, the message, rather than how it
is being said.

The first of these is known as delayed oral practice and has received quite a lot of attention. In the
past, the assumption has been that intensive oral practice from the outset of the learning process will
be effective. This is now not taken for granted and some evidence shows that learners, especially
beginners, need a period of time to assimilate what they hear before being asked to produce the
target language. In other words, to build competence before performance.

Many have noted that this kind of approach is not very far removed from an 'ordinary'
communicative-approach classroom.

CRITICISMS OF THE NATURAL APPROACH AND KRASHEN'S THEORIES

Hypothesis 1: THE ACQUISITION/LEARNING DISTINCTION

There is some implication here that acquisition is in some way better than learning whereas the two
are complementary. Krashen has been quoted as taking the stance that the study of form actually has
no place in the language-learning classroom. As he and Terrell state the case: The mistake the
innovators have made is to assume that a conscious understanding of grammar is a prerequisite to
acquiring communicative competence. That such an understanding might be helpful in some
situations for some students is not in question – that it is a prerequisite for all students is patently
false. (op cit., p16). Others have argued just the opposite: ... language learning is essentially learning
how grammar functions in the achievement of meaning and it is a mistake to suppose otherwise. .... A
communicative approach does not involve the rejection of grammar. On the contrary, it involves
recognition of its central mediating role in the use of and learning of language. (Widdowson, 1990:
97/8)
Hypothesis 2: THE MONITOR HYPOTHESIS
The criticism here is that the existence or function of the Monitor has never been explicitly
demonstrated. The fact that the Monitor can, by definition, only function after an utterance has been
produced seems to imply that it cannot slow down production. It is also, of course, impossible, or at
least very hard, to determine whether a learner is consciously or unconsciously applying a rule.
Hypothesis 3: THE NATURAL ORDER HYPOTHESIS
There's a built-in contradiction here. Having first asserted that language learning (or acquisition) is
not about grammar, Krashen is now proposing that a grammatical, structural syllabus should be
followed. How this can be reconciled with a natural, exposure-rich acquisition programme is not
clear. Secondly, the situation is more complex than it is painted. The order may be different in
production and comprehension, variable across languages, variable depending on the structure of the
learner's first language and so on. Worse, the acquisition of, say, the copular verb in He is a
teacher may not be the same as the acquisition of the verb in He is idiotic.
Hypothesis 4: THE INPUT HYPOTHESIS
First of all, it is very nearly impossible to determine exactly where INPUT + 1 would apply to all
learners in all situations and hard to determine 'level' at all in some cases. Others have pointed out
that Krashen nowhere explains how this works or how it aids learning. It has also been pointed out
that this is, in any case, what experienced teachers do all the time. They alter their own production to
exactly the point where they are understood but challenging. They also select materials in which
some of the input may be beyond i+1 and some below precisely in order to encourage their learners
to notice aspects of the language. It is arguable that there are many more factors at work here.
Hypothesis 5: THE AFFECTIVE FILTER HYPOTHESIS
The argument here is that it is clear that emotional and other factors play a part in language learning
but that there is no need to hypothesise a 'filter' to explain the fact. Furthermore, of course, one
learner's added stress factor is another's motivating challenge. One could argue, for example, that
having the entire lesson content translated into the learners' first language would reduce their stress
but that would fly in the face of the learning/acquisition hypothesis and much else. Furthermore,
much of Krashen's work in this area rests on studies of adolescents and it is unclear how applicable it
is to adults or younger children.
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***

NOTE ON ZPD:

A central tenet of Krashen's view is that there is a distinction between learning (a conscious process
of rule gathering) and acquisition (an unconscious, natural process of learning which comes almost
without effort). There are many, however, who do not agree and take the view that learning a
language is a conscious process and noticing is part of that.

Another of Krashen's hypotheses concerns the nature of the input to which a learner is exposed.
The argument here is that, for optimum effect, the input a learner receives should be a)
comprehensible and b) just above the level of the learner. This is sometimes abbreviated to INPUT +
1 or just i + 1. Many see this as an intuitively correct hypothesis for if the input is incomprehensible,
no sense can be made of it and no learning can take place but if the input is below the learner's
competence, he/she is not challenged to improve, given the opportunity to acquire new language or
notice the gap between his / her own production and the heard / read models.

The ZPD is a construct developed by Lev Vygotsky in 1920s-30s and concerns the optimum place in
which learning happens. It may be defined as a task or challenge which the learner can successfully
complete with only a small input from a more knowledgeable other.
Later theorists have tied the idea to scaffolding which is the process by which a teacher (or other
more-knowledgeable other) may lead a learner to a new skill or new knowledge by filling in a small
gap in the learner's ability.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...

BILINGUAL
Noun: a person able to speak a second language as well as if it was his or her first language.
Adjective: describing such a person.
There are also, of course, trilingual and multi-lingual people. In fact, multi-lingual people
outnumber mono-lingual people worldwide.
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COMPETENCE
has two meanings:
1. It refers to a learner's ability to use the language, e.g., communicative competence (the
ability to get and receive messages), linguistic competence (the ability to form accurate
language), discourse competence (the ability to handle interaction and text structures) etc.
2. It refers to the ideal grammar which underlies all speakers' ability to use language. In this
meaning, it is contrasted with performance.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..……....

Reference books:
N. Chomsky: Syntactic Structures [1957]
H.G. Widdowson: Teaching Language as Communication [1978]
D. Hymes: On communicative competence [1971]
N.S. Prabhu: Second Language Pedagogy [1987]

COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING (CLT)

In the 1960s and 1970s of a new approach to language teaching:

• criticisms of structural linguistics (and the growth of descriptive rather than prescriptive
grammars)
• criticisms of behaviourist theories of learning (and an emphasis on cognition)
• a recognition that language is primarily a means to communicate (and not only a set of
grammatical rules and lexis)
• a recognition that learners need to know how to deploy the language they are learning in
order to communicate

led to a new approach usually called Communicative Language Teaching or CLT, sometimes
alternatively called Communicative Language Learning or CLL.

THE ROOTS OF CLT

The roots of CLT run deeper than many realise. As long ago as the 17th century people were
producing guides to learning languages which expressly focused on communicative acts such as
recommending, suggesting and informing. The rise of a range of direct method approaches was also
spurred to some extent by the recognition that people need language for a purpose, not just as an
intellectual exercise which would, eventually, allow access to literature and culture.
It is also arguable that the main aim of all previous approaches to teaching English was linguistic
competence: the ability to manipulate the grammatical and lexical system of the target language to
construct meaning.
The aim of CLT is communicative competence.

DEFINING COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE

Firstly, of course, we need to define what we mean by communicative competence.

Briefly, it is the ability to:
• Apply grammar rules of a language in order to form and recognise grammatically correct
sentences
• this is what is normally understood by structural or grammatical competence, the ability to
produce a structurally accurate sentence that is comprehensible.
• Know where and when to use these sentences to whom
• This includes four further competences:
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o Linguistic competence: knowledge of the grammar alone is not enough. Added to

structural competence we need lexical competence (and that will include a
knowledge of idiomaticity, collocation and so on) in the target language
o Sociolinguistic competence: knowledge of the rules of speaking – speech events,
illocutionary force, address forms etc.
o Discourse competence: knowing how to use and respond to different types of speech
acts – requests, apologies etc. This is sometimes called functional competence and
involves things like adjacency pairs (apologising and forgiving, asking and refusing,
demanding and complying etc.)
o Strategic competence: knowing how to use language appropriately – when is it right
to perform certain speech acts. This is sometimes called cultural competence

Two important points:

1. Communicative competence includes linguistic competence.
2. Communicative competence is not the same as oral ability but includes competence in writing,
reading and listening, too.
It's actually quite difficult these days to find a teacher of English who doesn't claim to teach
communicatively. CLT has become the dominant methodological approach and it is what underlies
many of the criteria which teacher training courses use to assess people. It's attractive, simple to
understand and intuitively 'correct'. It is, however, worth taking a closer look at some of the claims.

COMPETENCE VS. PERFORMANCE

This distinction is usually credited to Chomsky but it is allied to a much earlier distinction described by
de Saussure (sometimes referred to as the father of modern linguistics) and called langue vs. parole.
In both cases, the distinction is between:
the speaker's abstract knowledge of the systems of the language (langue or competence)
This refers to a learner's ability actually to articulate the rules of the language.

For example,
I know that the past tense of most verbs in English is formed by adding -d or -ed to the base form of
the verb
I know that the possessive pronoun in French varies with the gender of the following noun

the speaker's actual use of the language (parole or performance)

This refers to the learner's ability to apply the rules and be able to say, write or understand the value
of, e.g.:
She watched the game
Marie est ma soeur

(In fact, de Saussure's distinction relates to the speech community as a whole, whereas Chomsky is
referring to individuals.) It is clear that CLT focuses on the learners' performance in the language but it
should not be forgotten that this performance is based on competence.

STRONG VS. WEAK FORMS OF CLT

Almost from the outset, two forms of CLT emerged:

Strong form
You can only learn a language through the effort to communicate so: No teaching of language forms –
no pronunciation teaching, no vocabulary teaching, and definitely no grammar teaching. The
classroom is, therefore, the place where people struggle to communicate, get help and guidance and
learn through trying.
Weak form
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The goal of language teaching is communicative competence but all types of teaching are appropriate
providing the goal is maintained. It's also quite hard to find someone who consistently advocates the
strong form these days. So what follows applies to the weak form of CLT.

RULES OF USE

There is a much-cited statement:

There are rules of use without which the rules of grammar would be useless.
[Hymes (1971)]
The key concept here is the illocutionary force of any utterance, i.e., what the speaker intends to be
understood and what the hearer understands. This is sometimes referred to as a statement's
communicative value rather than its significance (following Widdowson).

THREE FORCES

There are, in fact, three forces at work when language is used to communicate.
To explain, we'll use the example of someone saying
It's 8 o'clock.

Before we go on, think for a moment about what that simple statement could actually mean.

Locutionary force
The 'basic' meaning of what you say.
In our example, this would correspond to the meaning that
The time is 20:00 or 08:00.
No more, no less.

Illocutionary force
The meaning intended or the meaning perceived.
In our example, the statement could mean:
It's time to go
It's time to eat
I'm hungry
You're late, Hurry up!
No need to rush
Turn on the television
Slow down a bit
or any of the possible meanings you identified.
This is the key concept. What an utterance means is dependent on the speaker's intention, the
shared knowledge and the setting, not to mention paralinguistic features such as intonation and facial
expression.

Perlocutionary force
This refers to the fact that an utterance like this may actually produce a reaction in the hearer. If, in
this example, the hearer immediately accelerates a car or stands up and gets her coat or turns on the
television etc., then the perlocutionary force of the statement has been demonstrated.

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN FUNCTION-BASED AND FORM-BASED APPROACHES

The most obvious example of a form-based approach is audiolingualism which is an approach based
on a behaviourist theory of language learning and a structural linguistics theory of language itself.

AUDIO-LINGUAL METHODS COMMUNICATIVE METHODS

Attend more to form than meaning Meaning is paramount
Language items are not necessarily Contextualisation is a basic premise
contextualised
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Grammatical explanation avoided
Drilling is central technique
Use of L1 forbidden
Goal is linguistic competence
Sequencing of items determined by linguistic
complexity
Language is habit so errors must be avoided
Accuracy, in terms of formal correctness is a
primary goal
Any device which helps the learners is accepted
Drilling may occur but rare
Judicious use of L1 acceptable
Goal is communicative competence
Sequencing is determined by considering
function, or meaning
Language is created through trial and error
Fluency and acceptable language is the primary
goal

*** TASK BASED LANGUAGE LEARNING

Task-based language teaching (TBLT), also known as task-based instruction (TBI), focuses on the use
of authentic language and on asking students to do meaningful tasks using the target language. Such
tasks can include visiting a doctor, conducting an interview, or calling customer service for help.
Assessment is primarily based on task outcome (in other words the appropriate completion of real
world tasks) rather than on accuracy of prescribed language forms. This makes TBLT especially
popular for developing target language fluency and student confidence. As such TBLT can be
considered a branch of communicative language teaching (CLT).
TBLT was popularized by N. Prabhu while working in Bangalore, India. Prabhu noticed that his
students could learn language just as easily with a non-linguistic problem as when they were
concentrating on linguistic questions. Major scholars who have done research in this area
include Teresa P. Pica, Martin East and Michael Long.
Task-based language learning has its origins in communicative language teaching, and is a
subcategory of it. Educators adopted task-based language learning for a variety of reasons. Some
moved to task-based syllabus in an attempt to make language in the classroom truly communicative,
rather than the pseudo-communication that results from classroom activities with no direct
connection to real-life situations. Others, like Prabhu in the Bangalore Project, thought that tasks
were a way of tapping into learners' natural mechanisms for second-language acquisition, and
weren't concerned with real-life communication per se.
According to Rod Ellis (Task-based Language Learning and Teaching, 2003), a task has four main
characteristics:
o A task involves a primary focus on (pragmatic) meaning.
o A task has some kind of ‘gap’ (Prabhu identified the three main types as information gap,
reasoning gap, and opinion gap).
o The participants choose the linguistic resources needed to complete the task.
o A task has a clearly defined, non-linguistic outcome.
Although there may be several effective frameworks for creating a task-based learning lesson, here is
a basic outline:
Pre-task
In the pre-task, the teacher will present what will be expected from the students in the task phase.
Additionally, in the "weak" form of TBLT, the teacher may prime the students with key vocabulary or
grammatical constructs; although this can mean that the activity is, in effect, more similar to the more
traditional present-practice-produce (PPP) paradigm. In "strong" task-based learning lessons, learners
are responsible for selecting the appropriate language for any given context themselves. The
instructors may also present a model of the task by either doing it themselves or by presenting
picture, audio, or video demonstrating the task.
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Task
During the task phase, the students perform the task, typically in small groups, although this depends
on the type of activity. Unless the teacher plays a particular role in the task, the teacher's role is
typically limited to one of an observer or counsellor—thereby making it a more student-centered
methodology.
Review
If learners have created tangible linguistic products, e.g. text, montage, presentation, audio or video
recording, learners can review each other's work and offer constructive feedback. If a task is set to
extend over longer periods of time, e.g. weeks, and includes iterative cycles of constructive activity
followed by review, TBLL can be seen as analogous to Project-based learning.
TYPES OF TASK
According to N. S. Prabhu, there are three main categories of task: information-gap, reasoning-gap,
and opinion-gap.
Information-gap activity, which involves a transfer of given information from one person to another –
or from one form to another, or from one place to another – generally calling for the decoding or
encoding of information from or into language. One example is pair work in which each member of
the pair has a part of the total information (for example an incomplete picture) and attempts to
convey it verbally to the other. Another example is completing a tabular representation with
information available in a given piece of text. The activity often involves selection of relevant
information as well, and learners may have to meet criteria of completeness and correctness in
making the transfer.
Reasoning-gap activity, which involves deriving some new information from given information
through processes of inference, deduction, practical reasoning, or a perception of relationships or
patterns. One example is working out a teacher's timetable on the basis of given class timetables.
Another is deciding what course of action is best (for example cheapest or quickest) for a given
purpose and within given constraints. The activity necessarily involves comprehending and conveying
information, as in information-gap activity, but the information to be conveyed is not identical with
that initially comprehended. There is a piece of reasoning which connects the two.
Opinion-gap activity, which involves identifying and articulating a personal preference, feeling, or
attitude in response to a given situation. One example is story completion; another is taking part in
the discussion of a social issue. The activity may involve using factual information and formulating
arguments to justify one's opinion, but there is no objective procedure for demonstrating outcomes
as right or wrong, and no reason to expect the same outcome from different individuals or on
different occasions.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….……………

ERRORS VS. MISTAKES

Error is usually used to refer to a systematic deviation from the rules of language and is seen as
part of the learning process. Errors are contrasted with mistakes which are usually the result of
tiredness, distraction or cognitive overload and are not systematic.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
CATEGORISING ERROR

1. ERROR: Pre-systematic/Systematic/Post systematic

Pre-systematic errors are those made with language the learner has not encountered. For example, a
student guessing that a word is similar in meaning to something which looks the same in her language
or trying to form a complex sentence with relative clauses that she hasn't yet learned how to do.

Systematic errors are those made while learning or acquiring items in the language. If, for example,
you are teaching that the negative of must have is can't have / couldn't have then you can expect
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error with the forms because it's non-intuitive that the negative of must have is not mustn't have (as
it is in many languages).

Post systematic errors are sometimes called 'slips' because they happen with language the learners
have already mastered but are due to carelessness, tiredness or cognitive overload (they have too
much else to think about).

2. ERROR: Productive/Receptive

Productive or Receptive error

Either the error is produced in writing or speaking (it's productive) or in listening or reading
(it's receptive).

3. ERROR: Individual/Group
4. ERROR: Covert/Overt
Covert error is where the teacher can't tell, of course, without finding out what the student actually
wants to say.
Overt error helps the teacher decide whether and how to deal with it.

5. ERROR: Referential or Lexical/ Syntactical or Textual / Phonological / Interpretive /

Pragmatic, Social or Stylistic
Referential or Lexical error: An error in the lexical system
Syntactical or Textual error: An error in the structural or grammatical system
Phonological error: A pronunciation error
Interpretive error: Getting the wrong message
Pragmatic, Social or Stylistic error: Using the wrong style or register

ERROR SOURCES

1. Ignorance: Unfamiliarity with the lexeme or the structure

2. Analogy: Over-generalising from a learned rule
3. Interference: The influence of L1, L2 etc.
4. Teacher induced: Incomplete or poor data, misleading materials etc.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
FIRST LANGUAGE
usually written as L1 or L1 referring to the (or one of the) language(s) in which a speaker is
completely fluent or learnt first. L2 is used to refer to the speaker's second language and
LT (target language) to the language which is being taught/learnt.

FOSSILISATION
occurs when a learner's language ability ceases to improve. This is often the result of a fall in
motivation caused by the realisation that the learner's goals have been achieved.

GENERALISATION
refers to the learner drawing parallels and making assumption from the evidence available. For
example, if you have learned that the past tense is often formed by adding -d or -ed to a verb
stem you can generalise from this fact by guessing that the past tense of a verb you have not
previously encountered will be formed in the same way. In the case of, e.g., dishearten you
would be correct in guessing at disheartened but a false generalisation (or over-generalisation)
will lead you to *misunderstanded.
Over-generalisation is also called ignorance of rule restriction.
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INTERFERENCE VS. FACILITATION

refer to the negative or positive influences a learner's first language will have on his/her ability to
learn another.

INTERLANGUAGE
refers to a learner's current command of the target language. The theory is that a learner moves
along a cline from no knowledge of the language to full mastery and at any point on this cline we
can describe his/her interlanguage as the current competence.
This is a key concept and describes where the learners' current language mastery stands on a
scale from knowing nothing of the target language to complete mastery. Diagrammatically, it
can be pictured like this:
1st Language > Level 1 > Level 2 > Level 3 etc. > Target Language

NOTICING
There are two kinds of noticing:
1. noticing the language one sees and hears.
2. noticing the difference between what one produces and what one sees or hears (noticing the
gap).

TRANSFER
has two meanings:
1. the influence of other acquired or learned language(s) on the learning of the target language
(positive or negative transfer).
2. the use of skills deployed in one language in the use of another language.

III. Communication

APPROPRIACY
refers to the acceptability in the speech community of certain forms and expressions. For
example, You are plain wrong might be acceptable informally between peers but wouldn't be
appropriate in a formal situation in a work environment with differences in status and roles.
(Appropriacy refers to levels of formality and register, not simply to whether a piece of material,
for example, is appropriate for a particular group of students. In that sense, the correct noun
would be appropriateness.)

COMMUNICATION GAP
the disparity of information available to people in an interaction. For example, if a speaker
perceives a gap of information he/she may well ask for it. In the classroom, it is often necessary
to engineer a communication or information gap in order to encourage some real
communication.

COMMUNICATIVE ACTIVITIES
are activities designed to get learners to use the language for real purposes rather than merely
manipulating the forms.

COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE
a measure of a learner's ability to communicate effectively.

CONTEXT
the situation in which the language is used. The nature of the context will affect appropriacy, in
particular. It encompasses the topic, the setting and the roles of participants.
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DISCOURSE AND DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

the latter is the study of how language works in real situations which goes beyond considerations
of form, pronunciation and grammar etc. The former refers to any coherent and cohesive text,
written or spoken, which involves language used for interactive and communicative purposes.

FUNCTION
the real meaning of language taking into account its context and the intentions of the user. For
example, Have you got a pencil? probably is not performing the function of asking for
information but that of requesting the loan of one. See illocutionary force below.

INTERACTION
communication between people involving the use of language to get things done. It can be in
writing or in spoken language.

ILLOCUTIONARY FORCE
the purpose for which language is used. For example, It's cold in here is often not intended as a
communication of a piece of information about the temperature but as a request to turn on the
heating, close the window etc.

MARKEDNESS
An item of language is said to be marked if it distinguished in some way from the normal, taken-
for-granted neutral form. For example: The adjective old is unmarked but young is marked
because the usual question is How old are you? not How young are you?
The noun lion is unmarked because it implies both sexes of animal but the noun lioness is marked
for gender. Grammatically, I enjoyed the dessert is unmarked, but It was the dessert that I
enjoyed is marked by the speaker for special emphasis.

USE VS. USAGE

the former refers to the deployment of language for real purposes, the latter to the practice of
language in the classroom in order to get the form right.

IV. In the Classroom and Teaching

AUDIO VISUAL AIDS

equipment such as tape players, CD players, DVD players, smart-boards etc. which help to
expose learners to authentic language use or to organise information intelligibly.

CONTROLLED EXERCISES
the type of exercise in which learners know what to do and how to do it exactly. In this form of
exercise most learners should get most answers right.

CUE CARDS
cards or pieces of paper used either to guide responses to drills or tell learners their role in more
communicative activities.

DRILLS
repetitive exercises designed to form habits in learners and fix the language so that it can be
produced without thought.
13

FEEDBACK
the final stage in a teaching procedure in which the learners and the teacher can judge its
success.

GUIDED EXERCISES
exercises in which learners are guided (perhaps by a model paragraph or set of examples) but
not controlled in terms of what they produce.

MONITORING
1. checking quickly to make sure all learners are on task.
2. moving around the classroom to help individuals or groups of learners while they work on
tasks.

MEANINGFUL VS. MEANINGLESS DRILLS

the former require repetition to fix a pattern but still require learners to understand what they
are saying and make choices. The latter require no understanding once the pattern has been
recognised and may be completed successfully without the learner making any choices or
understanding the language.

PRESENTATION
the stage in the lesson in which the teacher introduces or presents the focus through, e.g.,
explanation, demonstration, elicitation, definition or a combination of techniques.

REALIA
something from the real world brought into the classroom to make the teaching more immediate
and compelling. Bringing a real holiday brochure to practise referring to preferences and choices
is one example.

STAGES IN A LESSON
Approach 1: PPP (Presentation. Practice, Production)
Approach 2: TTT (Test Teach, Test)
The PPP approach is probably better suited to an initial presentation of something new and a TTT
approach to something that is being revised or revisited at a higher level but there's no reason to
confine one that way. There are pros and cons on both sides:
TTT PPP
Some learners like to try things out before Is familiar and reassuring for learners and
they learn but some don’t teachers
Good with learners who likes taking risks Is routine and a bit dull
Often takes longer Is teacher led; may not be based on
demonstrated learner needs
Good for revision Is useful at lower levels because it can focus
on obvious functional skills and structural
needs
Is better targeted to real needs Is useful for system lessons (grammar etc.)
Is useful with more advanced learners who Is time efficient
need to fine tune their language; Is useful for
skills lessons
Can be used inductively or deductively Can be used inductively or deductively
Teachers needs to be reactive and Can be planned in advance carefully; helps
experienced less experienced teachers
14

V. Methodology, methods and approaches

AUDIOLINGUALISM
an approach heavily influenced by Behaviourism which concerns itself with listen-and-repeat
exercises, drilling of form and a focus on accuracy.

BEHAVIOURISM
a theory of learning and language which has two strands:
1. that language is a skill acquired through imitation and the formation of habits.
2. that learning takes place through the application of a stimulus-response-reinforcement cycle.

COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING (CLT)

an approach to teaching which focuses more on successful communication than structural or
formal accuracy. There are two forms: Weak form: in which the study of grammar is combined
with a focus on function but communicative competence remains the objective.
Strong form: in which there is no study of structure or form at all. Competence in this area is
deemed to flow from authentic language use alone.

COGNITIVISM
an approach to teaching and learning opposed to behaviourism (see above) which focuses on the
thinking and problem-solving characteristics of the mind. Theories of cognitivism (as opposed to
behaviourism) underlie much of post-behaviourist language teaching. Cognitivism is concerned
with the investigation of how people think – their internal mental states. In our field, this means
thinking about how people process language and information to construct dependable rules for
its use.

CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS
an analysis which compares two languages to discover similarities and differences.

DEDUCTIVE VS. INDUCTIVE LEARNING

Deductive: given the rule, learners can deduce how to form accurate language.
Inductive: learners can work out the rule from examples of correct usage.

DIRECT METHOD
Strictly speaking, any approach to teaching a language through the language.

The direct method of teaching was developed as a response to the Grammar-Translation

method. It sought to immerse the learner in the same way as when a first language is learnt. All
teaching is done only in the target language, grammar is taught inductively, there is a focus on
speaking and listening, and only useful ‘everyday' language is taught. The weakness in the
Direct Method is its assumption that a second language can be learnt in exactly the same way as
a first, when in fact the conditions under which a second language is learnt are very different.

Example:
The teacher explains new vocabulary using realia, visual aids or demonstrations.

In the classroom: Aspects of the Direct Method are still evident in many ELT classrooms, such as
the emphasis on listening and speaking, the use of the target language for all class instructions,
and the use of visuals and realia to illustrate meaning.
15

FUNCTIONAL APPROACH
an approach to teaching which focuses on language functions (such as requesting, apologising,
inviting etc.) rather than on language structures and forms. The approach is akin
to Communicative language teaching. Compare also Audiolingualism and Structural approach.

GENRE APPROACH
a teaching approach which focuses on the ways in which spoken and written texts are conventionally
structured depending on what is being focused on, the intentions of the speaker/writer and the way
grammatical choices are made.

GRAMMAR-TRANSLATION METHOD
The grammar–translation method is a method of teaching foreign languages derived from the
classical (sometimes called traditional) method of teaching Greek and Latin. In grammar–translation
classes, students learn grammatical rules and then apply those rules by translating sentences
between the target language and the native language. Advanced students may be required to
translate whole texts word-for-word. The method has two main goals: to enable students to read
and translate literature written in the source language, and to further students' general intellectual
development. It originated from the practice of teaching Latin; in the early 1500s, students learned
Latin for communication, but after the language died out it was studied purely as an academic
discipline. When teachers started teaching other foreign languages in the 19th century, they used the
same translation-based approach as had been used for teaching Latin.

It is an approach to teaching in which the learners are given the rule (i.e., a Deductive approach) and
from that basis can work out how to translate into and from the target language. Originally, the
approach was aimed at attaining access to the written literature of the target language rather than
the ability to communicate. It is still widely used.

HUMANIST APPROACHES
an influential range of approaches to teaching which focus on the learners as people rather than
students. In most, the teacher takes on the role of counsellor rather than instructor and a 'holistic'
view of the learners is taken.

LEARNER-CENTRED APPROACHES
include all approaches which are based on the needs of the learners rather than the demands of an
externally imposed syllabus. The term also applies to classroom behaviours (e.g., basing feedback on
what emerges from the learners) as well as the design of the syllabus and course content.

NOTIONAL APPROACH
an approach to the design of a syllabus and teaching that considers the aspects of ideas rather than
the functions or structures of the language. For example, the syllabus and teaching focus is on
concepts such as duration of time, size, temperature, futurity, likelihood and so on.

STRUCTURAL APPROACH
teaching the grammar of the language and its individual structures rather than focusing on
communicative intent. Contrasted with a Communicative, Notional or Functional approach.

SITUATIONAL LANGUAGE TEACHING (SLT)

an approach, first developed in Britain, which focuses on language used in specific settings to
exemplify and teach the kinds of language required in different settings, e.g., a customer in a
restaurant, an enquirer at an airport etc. The approach is influential in the design of teaching
materials.
16

VI. Testing and Assessment

ACHIEVEMENT / ATTAINMENT TESTS

a testing procedure which seeks to determine how much of the syllabus has actually been learnt.

CLOZE TEST
in the strict sense, this means the removal of every nth word from a text but is often used to
describe a gap-fill test where words of a specific nature are removed for learners to insert.
A cloze test (also cloze deletion test) is an exercise, test, or assessment consisting of a portion of
language with certain items, words, or signs removed (cloze text), where the participant is asked
to replace the missing language item. Cloze tests require the ability to understand context
and vocabulary in order to identify the correct language or part of speech that belongs in the
deleted passages. This exercise is commonly administered for the assessment of native and
second language learning and instruction. The word cloze is derived from closure in Gestalt
theory. The exercise was first described by W.L. Taylor in 1953.

BACKWASH / WASHBACK
refers to the effect on teaching that an examination or test can have. For example, the demands
of an examination format and type will determine the sorts of practice and language input
undertaken.

CONTINUOUS ASSESSMENT
assessing learning on the basis of the learners' achievements during rather than at the end of a
course.

DIAGNOSTIC TEST
a test designed to identify learners' strengths and weaknesses in order to construct a syllabus.

DIRECT VS. INDIRECT TESTING

the former refers to testing the skill that is being assessed. For example, if we want to see how
well a learner can write an email about a holiday, we get them to do just that and assess the
product. The latter refers to testing the skills that contribute to the successful product (such as
use of the past tense forms, lexis concerning activities and travel etc.).

OBJECTIVE VS. SUBJECTIVE TESTING

the first is a test designed to remove any judgement from its marking. Such tests are usually
multiple-choice or fixed-answer tests. The second is a test which requires the marker to judge
how well a task has been achieved.

PLACEMENT TEST
a test designed to assess learners' current proficiency and place them in a suitable class. It is
often combined with a Proficiency test and a Diagnostic test.

PROFICIENCY TEST
a test which looks forward to determine whether a learner has the ability to undertake future
tasks in the language, such as studying or working.

PROGRESS TEST
a periodic test designed to assess how much of a current teaching programme is being learned
successfully.

RUBRIC
the instructions for a test item.
17

VII. Vocabulary

ACTIVE VS. PASSIVE VOCABULARY

the first refers to those items which a learner knows and can deploy. The second to those items
which the learner can recognise and understand but which are not yet part of his/her
production.

COGNATE
a word in one language which looks similar to and has a meaning equivalent to a word in another
language; e.g. (German/English) besser/better.
A false cognate is a word that looks similar to a word in another language purely by
coincidence. False cognates are not connected in any way or derived from the same source. For
example, the German words haben and the Latin habere both mean have but they are derived
from completely different sources and not connected. False friends are words derived from the
same root in two languages and which look similar but actually have different meanings. For
example, simpatico in Italian does not mean sympathetic in English.

COLLOCATION
refers to the propensity for certain words to occur together such as torrential + rain, mass +
media etc.

CONNOTATION VS. DENOTATION

words denote certain basic concepts but may also have emotional connotations. For example,
the word pig refers to a type of animal but may also have emotional overtones in different
settings.

FALSE FRIENDS
Words which look the same as an English word in another language but have, in fact, a different
meaning. An example is the English word actualize which a German speaker may be tempted to
equate with the German verb aktualisieren. In fact, the German verb means to refresh or update.

IDIOM
an expression which cannot be understood by understanding its constituent parts, e.g., a
political whitewash, under the weather, black sheep of the family, soul of discretion etc.

LEXEME
the technical term used to avoid the ambiguous 'word'. It refers to a unit of meaning and can
comprise more than one word.

THE HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING

I. Definitions of methodology

ANTHONY’S MODEL (ref. Edward M. Anthony: Approach, Method and Technique, ELT Journal, Volume
XVII, Issue 2, 1 January 1963, Pages 63–67)

Methodology > Approach, Method and Technique

18

RICHARDS AND ROGERS’ MODEL (ref. J. C. Richards & T. S. Rodgers: Approaches and methods in
language teaching: A description and analysis, 2001)

Methodology > Approach, Design and Procedure

Approach
For Anthony, an approach was simply a set of principles or ideas about the nature of language
learning. For Richards and Rogers it was similar but explicitly divided into theories of what
language is and theories of how learning a foreign language happens.
The second of these definitions has the advantage of being quite explicit.
Method or Design
For Anthony, method described the plan for the presentation of language which is consistent
with the approach. Richards and Rogers' concept of design is somewhat broader and covered the
practical implications in the classroom: syllabus design, activities and the roles of teachers and
students
These are not all that different but again, the latter one is more explicit.
Technique or Procedure
Technique, for Anthony, was simple any teaching trick or way of doing something in the
classroom such as eliciting, approaching a reading text, encouraging authentic speaking, drill and
so on. For Richards and Rogers, too, the term procedure refers to what we see happening in the
classroom when a particular approach and design are implemented, day to day.

GRAMMAR-TRANSLATION APPROACHES
The 19th century saw the first fundamental change. The importance given to the study of Latin
and Greek as a way of accessing ancient literature bled over into the teaching of modern
languages, too. The approach had (and, indeed, still has) five main strains:

• Conscious memorising of grammatical rules

• Focusing on the sentence as the unit of study
• Conscious memorising of lists of lexis with their mother-tongue translations
• Translating in and out of the target language as practice
• Reading the literature of the target language

The aim of the approach was primarily to allow the student access to the literature of the target
language. Few people travelled widely and there was little need or opportunity to encounter
native speakers or to communicate in the way that, e.g., Huguenot immigrants needed to find
the cheapest coffee shops with free tobacco.

Grammar translation is not, as some fondly imagine, a thing of the past. Its influence is widely
felt. Many self-help teaching manuals (such as the earlier versions of the popular Teach Yourself
... series of books) involve the setting out of grammar rules, followed by a list of translated lexis
to learn and then exercises (including translation) to practise what has been studied. Secondary
(and even primary) schools around the world adopt the approach consistently and it may have
been part of one’s learning experience.

REACTIONS TO GRAMMAR-TRANSLATION APPROACHES AND THE REFORM MOVEMENT

Starting in the 19th century and continuing to the present, the grammar-translation approach
has been criticised primarily because it focuses on form at the expense of meaning and
communicative ability. Many early critics drew on analogies with how we learn our first
language. By the end of the century, the Reform Movement's fundamental principles had been
established by Henry Sweet as: the primacy of speech, the centrality of the connected text as the
19

kernel of the teaching-learning process, and the absolute priority of an oral methodology in the
classroom (ref. APR Howatt, A History of English Language Teaching, 1984).

Methods arising from the Reform Movement include two which are still significantly influential:

1. The Natural Method which sought to emulate the ways in which children learn their first
language and
2. The Direct Method which arose from it and was popularised by Maximilian Berlitz and still in
use in many schools. The Berlitz Method is now a registered trade mark. The Direct Method
was so called because it insists that only the target language is used from day one of the
course and meaning is conveyed by pointing, gestures, tone of voice etc. Of course, today,
many methods take a similar approach, denigrating or forbidding the use of translation.

THE ORAL APPROACH OR SITUATIONAL LANGUAGE TEACHING

Early in the 20th century, there arose in the UK an approach to teaching which relied on two
principles:

• That language should be taught and presented in a social context: a situation.

• That the focus of the syllabus should be on word order, inflexion and the distinction between
structural words and content words.

The outcome of this was productive and many teaching materials still rely heavily on presenting
language, often via dialogues, in settings such as 'at the coffee shop' or 'in the station' etc.
As two of the founders of the approach state

The language a person originates ... is always expressed for a purpose.

[Frisby and Halliday in Richards and Rogers (2014: 48)].

The approach's view about how languages are learned rested on the same basis as the audio-
lingual approach

AUDIO-LINGUALISM: A SCIENTIFIC APPROACH

Richards and Rogers (op cit.: 13) describe the Direct Method as

the product of enlightened amateurism

but change was on its way, as was a world war.

In 1942, the USA found itself in urgent need of a large number of foreign-language speakers and
turned to academia for help. At the time, powerful twin views of language and learning were
emerging in the United States and so was born The Army Specialized Training Program, a fast and
scientifically grounded approach to teaching languages.

TWIN THEORIES OF AUDIO-LINGUALISM

In order for a methodology to be truly recognisable as such, it is arguable that it needs to have a
consistent theoretical basis. Audio-lingualism's claim to have these rests on:
20

1. A theory of language: structural linguistics. Simply put, this is the theory that language is
primarily spoken and understandable in terms of increasing level of complexity: from
phonemes, up through morphemes to words, phrases, clauses and sentences. To this day,
the theory underlies most structural syllabuses.
2. A theory of learning: behavioural psychology. Behaviourism rest on the belief, reinforced by
laboratory experiments on animals, that learning constitutes the acquisition of new
habits. This theory was made explicitly relevant to language learning in Skinner's famous
statement that: We have no reason to assume ... that verbal behaviour differs in any
fundamental respect from non-verbal behaviour, or that any new principles must be invoked
to account for it. BF Skinner (Verbal Behavior 1957: 10)

Briefly following the schema of behaviourism it can be visualised as:

1. The process starts with a stimulus, say, a question from the teacher such as Where did
you go yesterday? put to the organism (in this case, a learner of English). The stimulus
can elicit a variety of responses but only the 'right' one will be reinforced.
2. So, for example, if the organism responds with I go to the cinema the teacher will
negatively reinforce it with No, that's wrong or simply not reinforce it by saying nothing.
3. If, on the other hand, the organism produces the preferred response, I went to the
cinema the teacher will reinforce it with Yes, that's right! (preferably in a loud and
enthusiastic voice because the strength of the reinforcement is critical in instilling the
correct habit). In this case, the reward is the teacher's approval.
4. Enough Stimulus > Response > Reinforcement cycles will see the habit instilled and the
language acquired.

CHOMSKY

Reference book: Naom Chomsky: Syntactic Structures [2002]

Noam Chomsky, an American linguist, is probably most famous in language teaching for his work
on transformational generative grammar but it is his aversion to behaviourist learning theories
and structural linguistics which concerns us here. He is famously cited as asserting (2003:349):
Language is not a habit structure. Ordinary linguistic behaviour characteristically involves
innovation, formation of new sentences and patterns in accordance with rules of great
abstractness and intricacy.

What this means is:

a. structural linguistics is inadequate to describe language and

b. behaviourist learning theories are inadequate to describe how language is learned.

In other words: it's all wrong.

The key criticisms of behaviourism are fourfold (and they aren't all Chomsky's alone):
21

Unpredictability
How do you know what someone will say when presented with a stimulus? In our example,
above, of the teacher eliciting the past tense of the verb go, what happens if the learner (or the
organism) produces the perfectly correct Somewhere I've never been before or What time last
night? or any other of many thousands of possible responses.
Reinforcement
Reinforcement does not occur regularly. Parents and others regularly approve statements that
are true (or cute) rather than grammatically accurate. For example, in response to seeing a
horse if a child produces Look at the big doggy!, many adults might respond positively because
it's a cute and endearing thing to say, albeit wrong. How, then, do children learn to see where
the meanings of words start and stop? Equally, if a child says It a horse! in response to a follow-
up question, adults might well be tempted to approve because it's right rather than correct the
grammar.
Response strength
is variable. We don’t always shout our approval. In fact, it's sometimes more effective to reply
in hushed, awe-struck tones.
Innovation
Speakers of all languages consistently produce novel and unique utterances. For example, I may
say There's a green dodo in my cantaloupe juice. Whatever you may think of my state of mind,
you will understand what I am saying although you and I have never heard or said it before. If
language is a habit structure, how did I do that? By the way, Chomsky's famous example of this
was Green ideas sleep furiously.

The criticisms of structural linguistics are quite technical and complex. Here we will take just
two:

Ambiguity
Take this famous example: Visiting aunts can be boring
It could mean:
Aunts who visit can be boring
Visiting your aunts can be boring
If we want to understand the sentence we need to go beyond the rules of structural linguistics
and consider what is called 'deep structure'. We do this by considering whether the
word visiting is a participle adjective describing aunts or a gerund of the verb visit.
Rules of use
This is a famous citation from Hymes (1971:278): There are rules of use without which the rules of
grammar would be useless. For example, if I say It's cold in here I may be asking you to shut the
window, telling you to put the heating on, advising you to get dressed or any number of other
things and we don't know what it means solely by applying grammatical rules. We use rules of
use.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

PART 1: TRANSFORMATIONAL-GENERATIVE GRAMMAR (TGG)

Background: Structural Linguistics

Attached to the name of Leonard Bloomfield and his followers, Structural Linguistics is/was the
attempt to apply a truly scientific approach to grammar. Although all linguists are concerned to
study structure, or patterns and regularities, in language, of course, Bloomfield's central concern
was with a mechanistic and purely empirical approach to language study, looking for structure,
not meaning. Structural linguistics defined the essential building blocks of language as phonemes
and morphemes, the latter consisting of combinations of the former, and the approach to
analysing grammar was to divide the language up into its 'Immediate Constituents'. Hence, we
22

have IC analysis. The details of IC analysis need not concern us here but the result was to analyse
language according to a branching tree diagram. IC analysis can be quite illuminating. Here's an
example of what is meant. If we analyse the sentence

The large dog with huge teeth chased the man from the room

into its immediate constituents we can do so like this:

This kind of analysis can be fruitful because it is simple to see that we can substitute the
sequences of morphemes in the bottom row with others and, while maintaining the same
analysis, apply it to any number of sentences.

problem 1: embedding

This all works very well when sentences behave themselves and come along quietly with all the
constituents in order. However, the first problem strikes when we consider sentences such as:

1. She messed the whole thing up.

2. Is John going home?

The problem is that while it's easy to see that the verb in sentence 1. Is mess + -ed + up and in
sentence 2. it is primary auxiliary + stem + -ing but no simple tree diagram will allow this
separation of verbs by objects (sentence 1.) or verbs by subjects (sentence 2.).

problem 2: ambiguity

The problem here is to know how to divide the constituents up and what class of words to
assign. Try analysing Eating apples can be pleasing this way and you'll see what is
meant. What's the difference between the following?

The only difference is in how we describe the first word. If it's an adjective then it refers to the
fact that the sorts of apples we call 'eating apples' can be pleasing but if it's a noun (i.e., a
gerund), then we are referring to the act of eating apples which can be pleasing. If we remove
the modal, it becomes clear:

1. Eating apples are pleasing.

23

2. Eating apples is pleasing.

A more famous example of this problem for structural linguistics is: Visiting aunts can be boring.
Is it the action of visiting aunts or the aunts themselves who/which can be boring?

TRANSFORMATIONAL-GENERATIVE GRAMMAR TO THE RESCUE

Clearly, Chomsky's ideas have two parts so we'll take them individually.

Transformational rules

Instead of relying on tree diagrams to represent how sentences were constructed from individual
morphemes, Chomsky was concerned to discover the patterns by which one sentence could be
transformed into another. The classic example is the passive in English.
How is

Mary allowed Peter to go home

transformed into

Peter was allowed to go home, by Mary?

Here's how (Chomsky, 2002:43):

If S1 is a grammatical sentence of the form

NP1 — Aux — V— NP2,

then the corresponding string of the form

NP2 — Aux + be + en — V — by + NP1

is also a grammatical sentence.

To explain:

S1 is the first or kernel sentence.

NP1 and NP2 are the noun phrases (Mary and Peter in our examples).

V is the verb (allow in our examples)

Aux stands for the tense marker, not necessarily an auxiliary verb, (the past of allow and be in
our examples) en is the marker for past participle.

So the rule for transforming the active, kernel sentence into the passive is:

1. put NP2 first

2. add the tense of the verb be
3. add the past participle of the main verb
4. add by
5. insert NP1
24

Easy, and the last two steps are optional, of course.

Instead of the cumbersome tree diagrams for every sentence, we now have a set of rules to work
from to transform kernel sentences (i.e., the original from which we make the transformations)
into others and we have a way of dealing with both the embedding problem and the ambiguity
problem we met above.

Disambiguating

The often-cited example of an ambiguous statement which transformational-generative

grammar can deal with is:

The shooting of the hunters was terrible.

The ambiguity, of course, is that we don't know whether the hunters were bad shots or whether
they were shot.
Here's how TGG can unravel the problem:

1. The key noun phrase is the shooting of the hunters

2. This noun phrase can come from two possible kernel sentences:
a. The hunters shot (something)
b. The hunters were shot
3. Once we know which of the kernel sentences produced the noun phrase we have
disambiguated the sentences.

This is an example of the workings of deep structure. I.e., the structure of the sentence which
derives from the nature of the kernel sentences and is below the surface structure traditionally
analysed in structural linguistics. There are two possible deep structures here identifiable from
the two possible kernel sentences.

Generative

The idea of a grammar being generative is the second string of the theory.

Simply put, this means that the grammar must be capable of generating 'all and only' the
grammatical sentences of the language. This does not mean that it must do so, only that it must
be capable of doing so. For example, a generative grammar must be able to produce She likes
apples but not Like apples she and so on.

There is a fundamental difference of approach here from that taken by structural linguists.

1. Structural linguists were concerned to identify the sentences of the language and then
analyse them. In other words, they collected a corpus of data and then analysed the data
working from the phonemes making up each morpheme upwards to make the tree diagram
we are familiar with.
2. A generative approach is not concerned with what has been observed but with what is
possible. A corpus of data (even a huge, modern computer-based one), however large,
cannot contain all the sentences of a language and will inevitably miss some out. This is
because any language contains an infinite number of possible sentences.
For example, I can say, The man who was in the room was reading. I can then add another
relative clause to make The man who was in the room which was on the second floor was
reading and I can continue to add clauses to make, e.g., The man who was in the room which
was on the second floor which was part of the building which was in the High street was
25

reading and so on ad infinitum. There is theoretically, no limit although the sentence will, of
course, become unmanageable and harder and harder to understand as it grows. That's not
the point; the point is that it is theoretically possible never to come to the end of the
sentence.

In Syntactic Structures, Chomsky demonstrates the generative nature of this sort of

grammar by considering the form of the negative in English. This is not the place to repeat all
the steps but the conclusion is (op cit:62):

The rules (37) and (40) now enable us to derive all and only the grammatical forms of
sentence negation

As you may imagine, rules 37 and 40 are somewhat complex but that they can be used to
produce all and only the grammatical forms is not in dispute.

Competence and performance

The key here is that TGG is not concerned with analysing that which is actually said but with
establishing the rules concerning what can be said. For many, involved as they are in analysing
what people actually say and write, this is a central weakness of Chomsky's position.

• What is actually said by speakers of the language is called performance and is not the
concern.
• What is possible for a speaker to say is called competence and is the concern.

According to the theory, then, what happens is that speakers of a language work to an
internalized set of rules from which they generate grammatically accurate language. The proper
concern of grammar studies, then, is to find out what these rules are and that cannot be done
solely by looking at what is said but by considering what can be said.

Re-write rules

Re-write rules look similar to the structuralist tree diagrams we have seen above but they are
different insofar as they are intended to generate grammatical sentences rather than
simply analyse them. Here's an example to generate (not simply analyse) the sentence
The woman ate a pear.

Breaking this down, we can get:

1 S → NP + VP i.e., the Sentence should be re-written as Noun Phrase + Verb Phrase

2 VP → V + NP i.e., a Verb Phrase consists of a Verb + a Noun Phrase
3 NP → Det + N i.e., a Noun Phrase consists of a Determiner + a Noun
4 V → ate i.e. the verb in this case is the past form of eat
5 Det → the, a i.e., there are two distinct determiners (both articles)
6 N → woman, pear i.e., there are two nouns

We can, of course, represent this sort of phrase structure analysis in the same kind of branching
tree diagram we saw above. So we get:
26

What is exemplified here, by the way, are PS-rules (phrase structure rules).
There are two things to note:

a. Rules like these will generate a number of different sentences, e.g.

The woman ate the pear
A woman ate the pear
A woman ate a pear.
The rules will also generate unacceptable sentences, however, such as
The pear ate the woman
A pear ate a woman
The pear ate a woman.

b. We can combine re-write rules with transformational rules and that, as we saw above, can
transform
The woman ate a pear
Into
A pear was eaten by the woman
by the removal of the second noun phrase to the front of the sentence and making
changes to the verb as above. In other words:

active passive
— Aux — by
NP1 NP2 → NP2 — Aux + be + en—V— NP1
V— +
The tense of the transforms The tense participle form the
by
woman verb (ate) pear into pear of be (was) (eaten) woman

However, getting around the problem of generating statements such as A pear ate a
woman is not an easy matter. This is done by stating upfront what kind of main verb is
permitted with what kind of noun. We forbid a certain class of noun (i.e., here, ones as
subjects which are not animate) and certain classes of verb (i.e., ones which are not
transitive). Then the restrictions only have to be stated once in either our phrase-
structure or transformation rules which we apply. So we get
27

Now this form of phrase-structure analysis cannot generate The pear ate the woman
or because The pear is not animate.

What's more, applying these restrictions to the kernel sentence means that our
transformational rules cannot produce The woman was eaten by the pear but will
generate The pear was eaten by the woman.

Each and every sentence produced in this way will be grammatical.

PART 2: THE LANGUAGE ACQUISITION DEVICE (LAD)

The rules governing the generation of grammatically correct sentences are subtle and at
times very complex. The question naturally follows: How do we learn the rules?

A behaviourist view of learning would state that we simply hear and repeat correct
utterances in our first language and attend to the feedback (positive or negative) that
we get from, e.g., parents and other adults. We adjust what we say according to the
type of feedback we get like this:

• Reject language behaviour which is negatively or not reinforced.

• Commit language which seems to be approved to our longer-term memory.

The fundamental problems Chomsky (and others) see with this are:

1. There aren't enough data: Children acquire language very quickly and are making
complex, grammatically correct sentences at a very early age. By this stage in their
development, they simply haven't been exposed to adequate information about the
language to be able to do so. This is a debatable point because, in fact, normally
brought up children are exposed to enormous amounts of data, certainly enough to
base a linguistic corpus on before they are five years old.
2. The data are not always grammatical: Studies show that carer-speak is focused on
meaning not structure and that very young children in particular are exposed to a lot
of language which is ungrammatical. If that is the sole source of their production,
much of it would remain at the 'Get choo-choo' level of speech. This, too, has been
challenged and, for example, one study found that of 1500 utterances analysed,
only one was ungrammatical (or a disfluency, in the jargon). The study found that
the speech of carer directed towards children was 'unswervingly well formed'
(Newport, Gleitman and Gleitman, 1977:121, cited in Moerk 2000:96)
3. Reinforcement is unreliable and inconsistent:
• adults do not consistently respond positively to grammatically correct
utterances. They respond to meaning (and sometimes cuteness) more
often than not, however malformed the child's language output is.
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• adults do not always provide loud and enthusiastic reinforcement (as the
behaviourist theory would require). They often speak quietly, or even not at
all, in response to whatever the child produces.

Chomsky states it this way:

Language is not a habit structure. Ordinary linguistic behaviour

characteristically involves innovation, formation of new sentences and patterns
in accordance with rules of great abstractness and intricacy. [Chomsky (2003) p
349]

There's an allied problem that, although many animals communicate with each other
(sometimes sending quite sophisticated signals), only humans have developed such a
complex and subtle system of communication: language. The conclusion is that
something else is going on. What is going on according to Chomsky is that the child is
using a genetically inherited Language Acquisition Device which is hard-wired in the
structure of our brains. We are, therefore, inherently prepared to analyse the structure
of whatever first language(s) we are exposed to as infants. What this means is that,
before we even leave the womb, our brains are prepared for the kinds of phrase
structures and transformational rules we will need to process the language we hear.
Some have compared this to a kind of internal switchboard with which we can
categorise input making guesses and assumptions such as "Aha! This language uses a
Subject - Object - Verb ordering but seems to place adjectives after nouns"

The LAD can be visualised as operating in combination with phrase-structure and

transformational rules something like this:

PART 3: UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR (UG)

An allied theory is that there is, therefore, something called Universal Grammar. This is
supposed to be a set of categories and rules common to all languages, no matter what
their individual grammatical structures are like and no matter what sorts of languages
they are (isolating, agglutinative, synthetic and so on).
The basis for this reasoning is that without such a UG, children would have nothing on
which to use the LAD.

This has obvious implications for teaching:

29

• If a UG exists then our learners already have the concepts of things such as noun
phrases, adjectives, verb phrases and so on and can use these universal concepts to
understand the structure of a language they are learning.
• It is not, in other words, new to them that we can use the kinds of tree diagram,
phrase-structure analysis we saw above.
• It will also not be new to them that we can, by employing comprehensible rules,
transform a set of kernel sentences into a new structure.

Not to take advantage of learners' inherent knowledge would seem, therefore, to be

somewhat perverse, wouldn't it?

As teachers, however, one will do well to bear in mind that, in D. Hymes' words (On
Communicative Competence, 1971:278):

There are rules of use without which the rules of grammar would be useless.

So, before one get too enthusiastic about using Chomskyian theories to inform our
teaching we should remember that he was addressing the ways in which:

• the language is structured at an abstract level (i.e., at the level of competence not
performance).
• our first (not subsequent) languages are acquired.

Chomsky is not fundamentally concerned with second language teaching and learning.

COGNITIVISM
Theories of cognitivism (as opposed to behaviourism) underlie much of post-behaviourist
language teaching. Cognitivism is concerned with the investigation of how people think – their
internal mental states. In linguistics and ELT, this means thinking about how people process
language and information to construct dependable rules for its use.

If you are given a rule and then told to apply it by deducing what the correct form should be, you
are using your brain to extrapolate from a rule to a single example of language.
For example, if you are told the rules to form regular past tenses in English and then asked for
the past tense of smoke, live, pack etc., you should be able to come up with the correct forms.
That's deductive learning.

If, on the other hand, you are given the examples first (pack-packed, live-lived, smoke-smoked,
type-typed, garden-gardened etc.) and then asked to state the rule you could use your brain to
generalise that verbs ending in -e take -d and those not doing so take -ed.
That's inductive learning.

This is a fundamental distinction. There are those who will aver that one or the other is 'better'
but that's an oversimplification. It may be that some of us are better at one form of thinking
than the other or that some forms of problem are more susceptible to being solved by one way
of thinking than the other. It may also be a combination of the two.
Either way, looking at learning through this lens focuses on the fact that humans make sense of
the data they are given by making hypotheses about the truth. That's a cognitive view of
behaviour and learning.

WHERE NEXT?
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Taken together, the following led to a rise in the 1960s and 1970s of a new approach to language
teaching:

• criticisms of structural linguistics (and the growth of descriptive rather than prescriptive
grammars)
• criticisms of behaviourist theories of learning (and an emphasis on cognition)
• a recognition that language is primarily a means to communicate (and not only a set of
grammatical rules and lexis)
• a recognition that learners need to know how to deploy the language they are learning in
order to communicate

That approach is usually called Communicative Language Teaching or CLT. It has become so
dominant that there is a guide devoted to it linked in the list of related guides at the end.