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5993M Puzzling About The Teaching of English in My Context
5993M Puzzling About The Teaching of English in My Context
5993M Puzzling About The Teaching of English in My Context
SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
Essay Title
Introduction:
(SLA). In the past, inheriting the tradition from teaching Latin and Greek, grammar
which is an explicit way of teaching the forms of language (morphology and syntax) in
isolation from context, and was even considered as equivalent to language teaching
(Nassaji & Fotos, 2011). However, with the advent of Communicative Language
Teaching (CLT) in the 1970s, GTM began to lose its appeal because it was believed to
be harmful to the natural process of language acquisition, while the engaging meaning-
researchers such as Krashen (2003) even suggested that grammar teaching should be
excluded from the classrooms in the belief that grammar “will take care of itself” (p. 6).
For example, since 1960s, many immersions projects based on Krashen’s Monitor
Model had been carried out and achieved success in improving language leaners’
fluency, they were not able to help leaners develop advance levels of accuracy in
grammar. Frequent mistakes were made by L2 leaners even after years of immersion
learning.
the classroom. Many researchers and teaching professionals intend to bring grammar
teaching back into the classroom by integrating it with other wider phenomena,
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including lexis, discourse, language functions, and communicative tasks (Borg &
Burns, 2008). It is clear that there are many pedagogical options for teachers now, but
as noted by Ellis (2006a), it remains controversial regarding which is the most effective
of high-stake exams (Nishino, 2012). For me, the key issue is not to find the best
approaches, but the most suitable one in my context. Therefore, in the next part, I will
explore.
My Context
tutorial service for primary and secondary school students to improve their performance
adapt to the new environment as well as acquire the necessary teaching skills for giving
effective English lessons. At the very beginning, my company started with a small
tutorial centre with few teachers who were encouraged to teach in their own ways. As
the business grew bigger, we were opening more branches and hiring more staff. To
lower the cost of operation, facilitate management and hopefully improve teaching
quality, the founders decided to standardise the teaching contents and procedures. Since
our service is to help students improve their English exam performance by reviewing
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and consolidating what they have learnt at school, we adopted the PPP (Presentation,
Practice, Production) Method as a framework to plan English lessons. For one thing,
this method is easy for new teachers to learn because they have a clear three-step
routine to rely on: exposure of target language, controlled practice, and free practice.
For another, to my leaders’ and my best knowledge, it is seemingly the best method to
teach grammar, because we assume that students can internalise the knowledge as long
However, through talking with the new teachers, one common theme is the
complaint about students’ frequent grammatical mistakes. They found it frustrating that
students always made grammatical mistakes in the exams no matter how many times
the target structures had been explained and how many exercises they had done. This is
one of the puzzles I want to solve in this study: Why my students kept making grammar
mistakes even with extensive practice? Why PPP method failed to help students
improve their grammar accuracy in the exam? If PPP is not the suitable method to
contribute to their English exam performance. Before talking about this approach, I first
need to analysis what grammatical challenges that my students are facing in their
English exams. Because of word limit, I will only focus on the English exams in the
secondary school in my city. In the English exams, there are two tasks involve grammar
specially designed to test students’ grammatical knowledge. To figure out the correct
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answers, test takers need to notice the grammatical features being tested in GMC and
use the specific knowledge to select the correct answer from four options. The other
task is writing. In this task, grammar is one of the major criteria. In fact, many teachers
mainly focus on grammar accuracy to grade their writing. In a word, grammar play an
and to enable students to successfully tackle grammar items in language tests. Based on
this assumption, another question I want to find out the answer is that do my students
To answers the two questions mentioned above, the notions of explicit and
between cognitive skills and grammar acquisition will be reviewed in the following
section.
Literature Review
having a good knowledge of grammar, often make grammar mistakes in writing and
speaking tasks. They are explicit and implicit knowledge. As noted by Ellis (2006b),
there are mainly seven aspects that can be considered to differentiate the two types of
learnability. The detailed differentces between explicit and implicit knowledge are
Table 1
Although there are marked differences between the two types of knowledge, one
thing should be noticed is that both explicit and implicit knowledge are involved in the
process of performing L2 (Ellis, 2009). While it is clear that both types of knowledge
are needed to make meaning, it remains controversial how the two systems interact
with each other. In terms of the extent to which they affect each other, three positions
were proposed: (1) the noninterface position, (2) the strong interface position and (3)
the weak interface position (Ellis, 2009). The noninterface position posits that explicit
and implicit knowledge are entirely separate systems, excluding the possibility of
interconversion, while the strong interface position suggests that explicit and implicit
knowledge relate with each other in a way as the two ends of a continuum do. This
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speculated relationship implies that explicit knowledge can be transformed into implicit
one by means of practice (Yarahmadzehi, Ghalaee & Sani, 2015). Similarly, the weak
interface position also assumes that the explicit knowledge can change into implicit
one, but with greater constraints, such as whether the learner is in a fit state to acquire
According to Ellis (2006a), the three positions lend weight to three distinct
oriented PPP model, while non-interface position results in zero grammar approach
such as immersion. Unlike the other two positions, weak interface position provides a
valid ground for teaching grammar through CR tasks. In the next part, I will review the
present and explain the rules directly, followed by extensive drills including repetition
and substitution drills which are supposed to lead to the automatic use of grammatical
structure. This is also known as the PPP model whose underlying assumption is that
practice can change the explicit knowledge of the target features into implicit one.
However, plenty of empirical evidence shows that practice often fails to bring about the
transformation. One possible reason for the failure is that “the conditions of practice are
alternative explanation is that learners “seem fall back on their own resources and
ignore the linguistic material they have practised previously in form-focused activity”
No matter what are the reasons behind the failure, there is enough evidence to
question the efficacy of PPP. As a result, the noninterventionists suggested that the
abundant comprehensible input so that the learners can develop the language
proficiency naturally. This also the basis for immersion programmes which has been
verbalising a grammar rule and how it can be used to form words and sentences) rather
Even though Ellis (2002) emphasises that CR will not contribute to the
acquisition of implicit knowledge directly, it does help indirectly in two ways. Firstly, it
paves the way for the internalisation of new grammatical rules by facilitating the
processes of noticing (being aware of the targeted linguistic feature in the input) and
comparing (notice the gap between the target feature and the learners’ mental
grammar). These two processes are prerequisites for the integration of new features as
implicit knowledge. In addition, CR tasks can lead to explicit knowledge and thus help
learner to notice more linguistic features in the input. To sum up, CR contributes to the
Depending on how leaners get grammar rules, the approaches to teach grammar
can be divided into two types: deductive approach and inductive approach. In deductive
themselves from the target language input (Ellis, 2006c). In other words, the deductive
(Widodo, 2006). Both approaches have their own advantages and disadvantages. For
time and energy-consuming and may lead to wrong representation of rules. According
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under debate.
Due to the complexity of grammar, not all rules would favour only one approach.
of learners, the approach that is suitable for one learner might be difficult for another,
although Mohamed (2004) found that leaners showed no preference for one approach
over another. In a word, both deductive and inductive approaches can be effective
are possible in a language” (p. 1). In other words, to a certain extent, grammar is the
system of rules that explain how words are formed (morphology) and how sentences
are constructed (syntax). From a cognitive perspective (Krathwohl, 2002), there four
strategically to convey meaning. These cognitive skills can be further categorised into
three types, the lower level cognitive skills, medium level cognitive skills, and higher
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level cognitive skills. The skill of remembering facts is situated at the lowest level, but
it is very important in learning grammar because there are a large amount grammar
the medium level skills. It is relatively easy for students to remember a lot of facts and
rules of grammar, but it is difficult for them to understand what is behind them (Mayer,
level of cognitive skills, including analysing, reasoning, and evaluating the situations
(Krathwohl, 2002). Grammar mistakes can be caused by the lack of cognitive skills at
different levels, but one thing Mayer (2002) argued is that problems related to cognitive
Research Questions
This study aims to find out the causes of my students’ frequent grammar mistakes
and their perceptions about the efficacy of CR tasks in improving their performance in
their English exams. Therefore, the research aimed to answers the following two
questions:
1. Why my students keep making grammar mistakes even with extensive practice?
Methodology
Participants
Three secondary school students took part in this study. Since they are still
teenagers between 14-15, I requested from their parents to allow the use of the data
generated by the students. To protect students’ privacy and for ease of reference, they
were called Student 1, Student 2 and Student 3. They are all Chinese native speakers,
with English as their L2. The English levels of Student 1, Student 2 and Student 3 range
Procedure
There are two parts in the research. In the first part, students are required to
perform two different CR tasks in the class. After this class, semi-structured interviews
which lasted for 10-15 minutes for each student were carried out to elicit students’
perception about the reasons of making grammar mistakes and their beliefs about CR
tasks. During the interview, I mainly encouraged them to describe their grammar
leaning experience. If they expressed opinions without giving reasons, I would try to
“You mentioned that you had ______; could you tell me more about
that.
You mentioned when you were doing ____, _____ happened. Could
Thinking back to that time, what was that like for you?
You mentioned earlier that you _____. Could you describe in detail
The following questions are used as the semi-structured interview guide. They
5. Compared with today’s teaching method, which one do you think is more useful?
6. Among the two types of tasks, which one do you like better?
The tasks
task. The deductive task called “Direct Task for Relative Clauses” was designed by
Mohamed (2004, p. 235). It consists of two main parts in which students were first
provided with linguistic material comprising the targeted grammar rules and examples.
The targeted features are highlighted so as to facilitate students’ noticing. In the second
part, they were asked to used what they gained from the linguistic input to write
sentences. The other task is an inductive CR task designed by Ellis (2002). It aims to
help students to tell the differences between the prepositions of for and since.
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According to Ellis (2002), when designing this CR tasks, the following principles
were used:
2. Provide enough data to make it easy for learners to be aware of the targeted rules
knowledge
4. Provide chances of applying the rule for the retention of explicit knowledge instead
of practice
Results
straightforwardly. The findings are arranged according to the two research questions.
The first research question required students to talk about the reasons they believe to
cause their frequent mistakes. After analysing the data carefully, four different factors
were identified. The most common one is that they forget about the specific grammar
know it’s necessary to add the verb be in front of unwilling to. I just
The second factor that led to grammar mistakes is the lack of analytical skills.
Both Student 1 and Student 2 mentioned that sometimes she did not know whether the
sentences she write grammatical or not. Although she had been taught that that a simple
sentence just consists of one independent clause, she could not identify different parts
of speech, not to mention what part of speech can act as, for example, the subject or
subjects. Nouns, I only know nouns can, but you know I cannot
understand why verbs can be used as subjects, and verbs have many
My teacher had ever told me infinitive form of a verb can server the
(Student 2)
The third factor which is by no means uncommon is carelessness. All the three
students summarised it as a major factor, but only Student 3 mentioned her experience
of avoiding this type of mistakes. She said that she would write down the wrong items
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in the notebooks, and categorise them into groups according to their specific features.
The last one is caused by mechanical use sentence patterns. Two of the students
2)
mistakes, but it is not always the case. For example, sometimes she would fail to
their performance in grammar items. For the overall impression of CR takes, Student 2
and Student 3 thought that they were useful, while Student 1 did not. Student 2 said that
she had no knowledge about the target grammar structure before doing the task, but she
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reported to have learnt about the grammar rules because of finishing the tasks. In
contrast, Student 1 maintained that, after doing the two tasks, she gained no
don’t just tell us the rules directly so that I can finish exercise
quickly.”
Only Student 3 said she knew how to use the target language features after the
tasks, and she could specify the terminologies such as prepositions and the relative
clause.
Since there are two CR tasks, the deductive one and inductive one. Students were
also asked about their preferences of the two types of tasks. Student 1 dislikes neither
of them. She said if she really had to choose one, she would pick the deductive CR task,
because it told her the rules explicitly. She also mentioned that the inductive CR task
would not work. She believed most of the students just like her would only become
more confused after doing the task. Unlike Student 1, Student 3 were more in favour of
the inductive CR task. “I found it very interesting, I was just absorbed in figuring out
the rules. Although it took me quite a lot of time, the moment I found the regularities, I
was really excited.” She continued, “It’s a challenging job. I compared the data,
identifying the similarities and differences. Because I summarised the rules by myself, I
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won’t forget them.” She also believed this type of task would increase student’s
cracking the test items, because you need to assume, evaluate the
Student 2 showed no preference for one task over another. She thought both were
useful to some extent. For the deductive task, she said it was useful because it gave her
clear rules by which she could used to deal with the grammatical items in the test. For
the inductive task, it made grammar learning more interesting, and thus may lead to
Discission
Regarding the first research question, the data from the semi-structured
interviews show that there are four types of reasons that led to the frequent grammar
mechanic use of sentence structures. The first reason that they forgot to use the
grammar rules they knew in grammar tasks indicates that the kind of knowledge they
forgot is declarative knowledge. This knowledge did not contribute to their automatic
production. In line with Ellis (2002) argument, when performing grammar tasks under
time constraint, language learners will easily only rely on the internalised linguistic
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resources rather than the new learnt declarative knowledge. According to the
noninterface position, they are two separate system, therefore it might take time and
efforts to switch from one to another. At the same time, learners need to give immediate
The second reason given by my students demonstrates that students were not
they could understand the concept of part of speech, however they were not able to use
them to identify different sentence components. Furthermore, they were taught about
the definition of a simple sentence. However, they failed to distinguish what can be a
subject. In agreement with the Coder’s (1967) argument that each individual has their
own syllabuses inside (as cited in Larsen-Freeman, 2015), the finding supports the
argument that the targeted grammar features should be suitable to leaners’ development
stages, so that the effect of instruction can be maximized. While it is impractical for
teachers to design a tailor-made syllabus for every learner, each learner can pick up the
linguistical features that suit their levels through suitable approaches to teach grammar.
One of the potential ones is inductive CR instruction. For one thing, it can increase
noticing and comparing which, according to Ellis (2002), are the prerequisites for the
final process of integrating the explicit knowledge into the mental grammar.
The third reason adds weight to the claim made by Bleske-Rechek, et al. (2002)
that grammar mistakes is related to individual traits. The fourth reason indicates that
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language chunks such as sentence patterns can result in quicker processing of language
features and lower cognitive load. Yet it may not be as effective in increasing grammar
For the second question, the interview data shows that students hold a mixed
attitude toward CR tasks. Two students believe CR tasks to be useful because these
tasks can help them to gain knowledge. On the other hand, Student 1 find it useless
because she could not learn new knowledge after completing the tasks. Even worse, she
found herself confused about the target linguistic knowledge. One thing should be
noted is that Student 1’s English level was the lowest. In other words, she found the
tasks too challenging for her. An interesting fact is that Student 3 who has the highest
level of English proficiency reported the cognitive skills she used in the process of
tackling the inductive CR task. The skills are at the higher level and help her resolve
problem in original manner. It is clear that Student 3 find the inductive CR task
interesting because she was cognitively capable to deal with the challenge. Therefore,
when Student1 and Student 3 are put together, it is likely that the challenge to perform
the CR task is beyond Student 1’s cognitive ability as well as her language proficiency,
thus leading to her negative attitude towards the inductive CR task together. Therefore,
when design CR task it is important to choose grammar structures which are suitable
Conclusion
This study has explored the reasons why students make grammatical mistakes
even with extensive knowledge about the target features. Another question is related to
students’ perception about whether CR tasks are useful to them in the Exam. To answer
these two questions, I first review the notions of explicit and implicit knowledge which
helps to identify three interface positions: the noninterface position, the strong interface
position and the weak interface position. Based on the three hypotheses, three
In order to get a bigger picture, the relationship between cognitive skills and grammar
Under this theoretical framework, a study consist of two parts were carried out.
The first part was to have class with participants by using CR tasks. After the class a
semi-structure interview were conducted. From the research, four factors were found to
be the causes of students’ grammar mistakes. Based on the four causes, the following
knowledge in a real-life communitive activity. There are two possible ways to improve
this situation. One way is to narrow the gap between the tasks practiced in the
classroom and the one in real life. However, the kind of meaning-focused task may not
ensure accuracy. Another way is to reduce cognitive load so that the brain can spare
some energy to monitor the output by using the explicit knowledge of linguistic
features.
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has their own built-in syllabus. If grammatical features beyond their level of
proficiency, they would not be able to internalise them as implicit knowledge. This also
one of the possible reasons why learners always make grammar mistakes. To avoid this
problem, it is important to keep in mind that the design syllabus should be tailor-made
for the learners. However, if the numbers of students in the classroom was too large, it
common for learners to be careless when performing grammar tasks. However, for a
prudent person and self-reflective learner, they can prevent the mistakes from
happening again by improving their awareness of the type of mistakes and reviewing
them regularly.
The fourth conclusion is that using chunks such as sentence pattern is beneficial
the limited number of participants. Therefore, the findings might not be consistent with
those large-scale studies, application of these findings in this paper should be cautious.
References
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Ellis, R. (2006a). Current issues in the teaching of grammar: An SLA perspective.
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Ellis, R. (2006b). Modelling learning difficulty and second language proficiency: The
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