Meeting the challenge of

EAQUALS CONFERENCE 2011, PRAGUE
ENHANCING CLASSROOM LANGUAGE LEARNING: THE CHALLENGES FOR
TEACHERS, TRAINERS AND MANAGERS
PARALLEL SESSION
Handling the challenge of grammar teaching to EFL / ESL learners
Eda Gözde Girgin, Bilgi University, İstanbul
([email protected])
Grammar teaching has always been a challenge for EFL and ESL teachers. It is an important
component of language teaching and it can be dealt with in many ways depending on the
approach or method. Currently, the implicit teaching of grammar in an inductive way is
favoured by teachers working with adults. However, another course of action is followed
for young learners, in whose syllabus almost no grammar is specifically included.
The core aim of this study was to introduce a model for the teaching of structural items on
the basis of learner variables. While the needs of the learners are met, the teacher also
incorporates target structures into his/her teaching. Thus, learners can make best use of
the teaching as the teacher gears the model structures to the learners’ needs. The model
borrows theories from such linguistic fields as Universal Grammar (Chomsky, 1986); the
Lexical Approach (Lewis, 1997) and Corpus Linguistics (Stubbs, 2001).
Incorporating the right approach into the classroom teaching of grammar, and also
choosing the effective and right way of presenting the form of these items, are of utmost
importance. Thus, the model presents the inclusion of the lexicon in classroom teaching.
Moreover, components of consciousness-raising protocols with adult learners, after which
the related items can be tested, are expected to create important outcomes.
The ultimate aim; therefore, is to present structural items directly or indirectly within the
level norms of Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) in the Turkish context
with much of the emphasis on cross-linguistic features.
I. Introduction
“If you have anything really valuable to contribute to the world it will
come through the expression of your own personality, that single spark
of divinity that sets you off and makes you different from every other
living creature.”
Bruce Barton
Learning involves a huge variety of contributors such as age, gender, rate of learning, the
amount of instructional time, motivation, past experiences, socio-cultural background and
interests. That is why currently research is being conducted by academics all around the
world to determine the effects of these factors on an individual’s responses to the process
of learning.
As these variables differ for each individual, things cannot be fixed or expected to change
in a short amount of time. That is in a classroom environment, teachers meet students who
show clear individual differences. Thus, it is natural that they give unique responses to
classroom activities. At this point the role of teachers takes on a crucial importance. They
need to reconsider these individual differences, which should result in their giving
different responses to different activities and plan or modify the lessons accordingly. As
Harmer highlights (1991:42), the job of a teacher is to ensure that students get a variety of
activities which foster acquisition and learning, and the teacher can achieve this by
considering the characteristics and the possible responses of the students. In this way, a
teacher can bring out the underlying strength in each and every one of his students by
building up their own confidence and personal skills (Prodromou, 1994:28). That is, the
students can use their full potential, and the quality of learning can be improved.
When it is limited to foreign and second language learning contexts, the process and
determinants of the learning process also include differences between the syntax and the
lexicon of the languages involved. These two elements of the language can have a very
important effect on both analytical and global learners, whose attitudes might differ and
affect their responses. As stated by Prodromou (1994:7), students carry with them an
ideology which may help or hinder the acquisition of a foreign language and this affects
their attitude towards a language. Analytical learners are those who are fieldindependent, reflective. In a Turkish EFL classroom context it could be said that the
priority for the majority of these learners is to learn the syntax and lexicon of the target
language. As Celce-Murcia stated (1991:463), ‘An observant ESL/EFL teacher knows that
individuals learn in different ways (Hartnett, 1985). ‘Some learners, consciously or
unconsciously, have an analytic style and learn best by formulating and testing hypotheses
or "rules." Other learners have a holistic style and learn best by experiencing, gathering,
and restructuring relevant data but doing little or no apparent analysis.‘(Celce-Murcia,
1991:463)
As stated in the CEFR, lexical competence (5.2.1.1) and grammatical competence
(5.2.1.2) play a crucial part in language learning. Each language, however, has its own
features. Thus, I believe that one should also take account of these lexico-grammatical
features when stating the differences between levels since every language has a unique
lexicon and syntax. For instance, in English, type 2 conditionals may fit at A2 level, but in
Turkish they would be more appropriate at a higher level. In the CEFR the levels are
specified according to ‘Can do’ statements and include competence in four skills.
Indirectly, all these skills have their underlying grammar and vocabulary. The notion of
‘unreality’ is not overtly marked in Turkish. In English, however, it is often indicated by a
past tense (e.g. If I had plenty of money… ). Meanwhile it is flexibly marked in Turkish.
II. Methodology:
Method: a quasi-experimental design was used with learners in a language-focus lesson.
Setting and Participants:
The research was conducted in an English Preparatory Programme at a private university in
Turkey. The participants in this research were young adults aged between 18- 21, who
were at intermediate level.
Class Profile: There were 9 male and 11 female students in this class. The majority of the
students were usually on-task and tried to participate in the lessons. The range of the
students included:
• students who are analytical learners and may dominate the lesson at times. They
don’t like disruptive behaviour and even warn their peers if they engage in it. They
seem to prefer teacher-centered lessons; they can take notes and do individual
work.
• students who are high achievers, but there were also lower level students.
Timetable fit: In the previous lesson, students had revised conditional clauses, type 0 and
type 1. In the following lesson, students would do further practice of type 2 conditionals
and write conversations in pairs to internalize the structure more. As a further step, ‘wish
clauses’ would be presented later in the week.
Anticipated problems related to the lesson content:
As stated, there were students who might try to dominate the lesson; to minimize the
possibility of this situation the teacher would try to be fair when nominating students.
Because of the nature of the target structure the students might be puzzled by the
meaning, so the teacher did not want to overload the students with too much information.
Instead she would try to elicit from the students the correct use and meaning. If there
were lower level students who still have problems with the meaning, she planned to
monitor them closely and even work with them during the tasks.
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Anticipated Problems related to the linguistic background of the learners
A. Syntactic Features: the fact that Turkish and English have different syntactic forms
causes confusion for Turkish learners. One of the main challenges is that the verb is placed
near the beginning of a sentence in English (SVO word order), while it is placed at the end
of a sentence in Turkish (SOV word order) and this creates problems for the learners to
internalize the language presented. Although numerous differences arise as a result of the
syntactic variation, the ones below are focused on as an example:
I. Inverted structures: Although the students were familiar with type 0 and type 1
conditionals, they might have difficulty in understanding the inverted form of these
structures as in their native language the use of ‘inversion’ is not the same. In Turkish the
verb in inverted form cannot used at the beginning of the sentence. This creates a
challenge when internalizing the meaning and the form of the grammar structure.
Example: Were he to be given some money, he would not cancel his trip for the spring
break.
› Onun biraz parası olsa, bahar tatili için olan geziyi iptal etmez.
II. Modal forms (especially ‘shall’, ‘can’, ‘must’): in Turkish, the speaker/writer gives the
meaning by adding suffixes after the verb, which is usually placed at the end of the
sentences (nflectional morpheme,-meli). However, in English the same meaning is given
through a separate word that is placed between the subject and the verb. Turkish
students try to distinguish the meaning of each modal verb, but have difficulty as they are
not familiar with their structural use in English. Because of this variation between the two
languages, I predicted that the students would also be confused when they are expected to
use type 2 conditional sentences involving modal verbs:
I must be at home by 20:00.
Saat 20:00 ‘de evde olmalıyım.
If I went to Ireland, I could be rich. Irlandaya gitsem, şimdi
zengindim.
III. Hypothetical situations in the present: in this specific lesson, the students were
introduced to the structure of type 2 conditionals and were expected to apply the
structure in a sentence production activity. The students were confused to see that the
past tense was used in such sentences should as they had been introduced to this tense
just to express previous actions that were completed in the past. The analytical learners
especially had difficulty understanding the purpose of this grammar structure.
B. Lexical Features: Lexical competency, a basic element of any language, is necessary
for learners to deliver their message to other parties. In other words, lexical differences
between languages (in this case English and Turkish) pose threats to learners and have a
huge effect on the learner and the learning process. Learners may have problems when
transferring lexical items from one language to the other. For example, one form might
have different uses in the target language, and synonyms or near synonyms could pose
some challenges to the learners. To be more precise, if a Turkish learner chooses to use
the English equivalent of ‘düşün-’ in English, then she is faced with the challenge of
picking the right word from a wide range of items that could be used for the same verb in
English: ‘think’, ‘suppose’, ‘consider’ etc. As an example, when it is searched for in the
corpus, the verb ‘think’ is used in many different ways as follows (see table 1):
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Table 1 – corpus analysis of ‘think’ from the Oxford Collocations Dictionary (2003)
• think :( N ) ( V)- Synonyms :
• verb: consider, imagine, suppose, reckon, deem, meditate, conceive, guess, fancy,
believe, ponder, see, reflect, contemplate, opine
• noun: thought, idea, reflection
▫
An act of thinking:

I went for a walk to have a think
• think Verb
▫
Have a particular opinion, belief, or idea about someone or something:

▫
Used in questions to express anger or surprise:

▫
what would John think of her?
What do you think you're doing?
Used in speech to reduce the force of a statement or opinion, or to politely
suggest or refuse something:

▫
I thought we could go out for a meal
Direct one's mind toward someone or something; use one's mind actively to
form connected ideas:

▫
Take into account or consideration when deciding on a possible action:

▫
think of being paid a salary to hunt big game!
Expect:

▫
I hadn't thought to warn Rachel about him
Imagine (an actual or possible situation):

▫
he thought like a general
Call something to mind; remember:

▫
he was thinking of becoming a zoologist
Have a particular mental attitude or approach:

▫
you can live how you like, but there's the children to think about
Consider the possibility or advantages of (a course of action):

▫
Jack thought for a moment
I never thought we'd raise so much money
Concentrate on imagining what it would be like to be in (a position or role):

she tried to think herself into the part of Peter's fiancée
In contrast to this variety of use, in Turkish learners only use one word ‘düşün-’ to give
the same message. It is a fact that language learning is a complex process which cannot be
reduced to the two components of a language in the form of vocabulary and grammar.
However, incorporated into language skills, these elements of language make up the
backbone, the main frame, on which language skills are built. Various developments hav
underlined the interface between lexical and grammatical features, such as the Lexical
Approach (Lewis, 1997) and corpus linguistics (Stubbs, 2001), implying that a language
teacher has to observe the variations of these features (Chomsky, 1986) between the
mother tongue and the target language.
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Procedure:
PRESENTATION: (set up - run - feedback) syntactic arrangements aimed at contextualizing
the structure were presented. A list of sentences was projected that were related to my
life (fig. 1), and I then elicited the meaning through concept check questions. After asking
what they would do in these situations, there was feedback and oral error correction was
given whenever a student used a sentence incorrectly.
Figure 1 ( set up )
1. I would travel around
the world if I had two
million dollars
2. I would be a singer if
I was talented .
3. I would definitely run away if I
saw a snake in my room.
( Run - Feedback ) In this part students did another activity in which they were given parts
of sentences on paper slips (see table 2).. Students were asked to find partners with whom
they could build up a meaningful sentence. The core aim was to present the meaning and
then to give the form as the main challenge, distinguishing the meaning and the form of
the structure. The learners were told that they should focus not only on the form of the
target structures but also on the meaning. The stage ran smoothly and students were able
to find their correct partners easily. After this stage the learners were asked for the
‘formula’ of the target structure and they differentiated the syntactic use of the verb with
the previously learnt related grammar.
Table 2
If I were Brazilian and beautiful...
How would your life be different … … … … … …
If our teacher was absent… … … … … … .
I would be a super model like Gisele Bundchen
If you spoke English perfectly
we would not do this lesson
PRACTICE: Doing controlled or semi-controlled practice activities provides opportunity for
the learners to reach functional objectives of the target structure and they could see their
errors clearly. For this reason preparing a gap filling activity that students were asked to
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write form of the verb given in the brackets. Then, whole class feedback was given to
analyze the errors if there were any.
PRODUCTION: In this stage posters with half sentences that could illustrate the target
structures in correlation with the meaning were posted in advance. They were supposed to
choose three of the posters and write the rest of the sentences. Giving flexibility to the
students is always beneficial to enable them to make their personal choices. As stated by
Hadley (2000:124), the techniques used should reduce the anxiety in the group to a
minimum and promote the free expression of ideas and feelings. The examples had been
chosen on purpose so that students were repeatedly reminded of the hypothetical meaning
of the structure. The students were divided into groups of three and given board markers
to walk around and write accurate clauses that could complete the other half of the
sentence. The core aim was to have students go further than recognition and apply the
rules that had been previously elicited.
Figure 2: (sentence completion samples produced by students)
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Discussion and conclusion
The outcome of this experimental lesson also proved the importance of the learners’ L1 in
foreign and second language contexts. It seems entirely reasonable that learners use their
own strategies when learning a newly introduced language point. The learners analyzed
the structure in their own ways and compared it with parallels in Turkish. As Brown
highlights, “While we all exhibit inherently human traits of learning, every individual
approaches a problem or learns a set of facts or organizes a combination of feelings from a
unique perspective”(2000:112). It is impossible to overestimate the value of L1 in the
classroom context, and teachers can use this as an opportunity to exploit the contribution
of one language to the learning of another.
It is undeniable that learners need as much exposure as possible when they are in a
language learning process; however, negotiating the meaning, having opportunities for
authentic outcomes, and even taking risks in L2 can be listed among the major concerns.
Teachers should be aware of the syntax and lexicon in L1 and teach accordingly. Moreover,
every teacher should apply the principles of the CEFR to their unique classroom context
(this may vary from language to language) taking into account the lexico-grammatical
features of the mother tongue of the learners.
References
Brown, H. D. (2000). Principles of language learning and teaching, New York: Longman.
The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages is published in English by Cambridge
University Press - ISBN Hardback 0521803136 Paperback: 0521005310 - www.cambridge.org
Celce-Murcia M. (1991). ‘Grammar pedagogy in second and foreign language teaching’, TESOL
Quarterly, vol. 25, no. 3, pp.459-480.
Chomsky, N. (1986). Knowledge of language: Its nature, origins and use. Praeger, New York.
Hadley, A. (2000). Teaching language in context. Boston: Thomson Heinle
Harmer, J. (1991). How to teach English. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited.
Hatch, E. (2004) Discourse and language education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lewis, M. (1993). The Lexical Approach: The State of ELT and a Way Forward. Hove: Language
Teaching Publications.
Nunan, D. (1989) Understanding language classrooms: A guide for teacher-initiated action.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Oxford Collocations Dictionary (5th ed.). (2003). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Parrott, M. (2005) Grammar for English language teachers, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Prodromou, L. (1994) ‘The good language teacher’, in Kral, T. (ed.) Teacher Development: Making
the Right Moves: Selected Articles From the English Teaching Forum 1989-1993, Washington,
DC: Information Agency.
Stubbs, M. (2004). ‘Language corpora’ in Davies, A. and Elder, C. (ed.) The Handbook of Applied
Linguistics (pp. 106-133). Wiley-Blackwell.
Thompson, L. (2003) ‘Turkish speakers’, in Swan, M. and Smith, B. (ed.) Learner English (pp. 214227). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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