UNIT 12.

THE CONCEPT OF GRAMMAR: REFLECTION UPON THE

LANGUAGE AND ITS LEARNING. FROM TRADITIONAL
GRAMMAR TO THE GRAMMAR FOCUSED ON THE USE OF
LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION.

The topic I have selected is number 12, entitled The concept of grammar: Reflection upon the
language and its learning. From traditional grammar to the grammar focused on the use of
language and communication., which aims to provide a survey on the concept of grammar
and its relationship with the use of language, as well as with language learning, the didactic
implications, a final conclusion and the bibliography.

The unit chosen becomes absolutely indispensable within the curriculum of Foreign Language
(FL), and it complies with the applicable legal framework within this transition period, in
which the Organic Law LOMLOE 3/2020, December 29th, is applied. Therefore, the essence
of this ongoing paper, connected to the methodological block of contents, reinforces the
curricular contents set up for FL as stated in RD 217/2022 for the 1 st and 3rd year of
Compulsory Secondary Education (CSE), RD 1105/2015 for the 2 nd and 4th year of CSE, and
243/2022 for Baccalaureate, more specifically in the stage objective that promotes the need to
understand and express oneself fluently and correctly in one or more languages. Then, it is
undeniable that for an ESL teacher, the richness of subject matters this unit involves is
priceless, especially if we give account for the multiple communicative strategies students
need to master before becoming efficient in English.

The first section of this topic accounts for the concept of grammar. In general terms, grammar
is the way a language manipulates and combines words or parts of words in order to form
longer units of meaning. It comes from the Greek term ‘grammatike’, meaning “to write”. In
fact, in every language there is a ser of rules which govern how units of meaning may be
constructed, knowledge which is essential for its mastery. Therefore, the learning of grammar
should be understood as one of the means of acquiring a thorough control of the language as a
whole, not as an end in itself. Thus, although our role as teachers is to ensure that students
learn certain structures, we should quickly progress to activities that use it meaningfully,
where the emphasis should be placed on successful communication.

Having covered this crucial notion, it is time for us to deal with the different types of
grammar. Most people first encounter grammar in connection to the study of their own
language or even of a second language in school. This kind of grammar is called normative or
prescriptive because it defines the role of the various parts of speech and norms set in a
specific language. In addition, grammarians state how words and sentences are to be put
together so that the speaker will be perceived as having good grammar. On the contrary, other
experts are primarily focused on the changes of words and sentence construction in a
language over the years, approach known as historical grammar. Apart from this, there are
some grammarians “concerned with the analysis and comparison of the grammatical structure
of related languages or dialects.” (Freidin, 1991). Therefore, by looking at similar forms,
specialists in comparative grammar can discover how languages may have influenced one
another. Likewise, some linguists seek to compare languages to identify learning difficulties,
referring to contrastive grammar instead. Then, we also find functional grammar, related to
how words and their order are used in social contexts to get messages across. Still, other
experts investigate how the meaningful arrangement of the basic word-building units
(morphemes) and sentence-building units (constituents) can be best described. This approach
is known as descriptive grammar. Finally, there exists a type of grammar called pedagogic
which provides graded grammatical explanations and exercises with the intention of enabling
a defined set of students to learn that language.

Grammar teaching is particularly liable to be influenced by different views on language

learning. In this sense, the main parameter is the ability to learn a language through deliberate
study and formal practice as opposed to a subconscious absorption of the language through
use. Regarding the contribution of linguistics to foreign language teaching, we should
highlight:

1. Traditional grammar: before the 19th century, language had been studied mainly by
philosophers and grammarians. The study of classical languages, Greek and Latin,
consisted in learning the grammar rules applied to translation. Over the years, this
approach became known as Grammar-Translation Method, mainly characterised by
the use of translation in order to learn to read literary texts, basing the class on the role
of the teacher. In addition, vocabulary was imparted through bilingual word lists,
grammar was taught deductively and oral communication was not addressed.
2. The second contribution we have to focus on is structural grammar, in which two
different approaches to language study unite to form the modern subject of linguistics.
On the one hand, Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) suggested that a language was a
system in which each item is defined by its relationships to all others. Moreover, he
 regarded words as arbitrary signs, with no natural relationship to the things they
represent. Although many of his ideas were expressed with two-term oppositions
(language/parole, syntagmatic/paradigmatic), his contribution to the teaching of
languages influenced the renewal of FLT, laying emphasis on speech over written
language. On the other hand, an American language study was proposed by Leonard
Bloomfield (1887-1949), known as Army Specialised Training Programme or ASTP.
In his book Language (1933), he outlined the methodology for the description of any
language. In due course, his approach came to be called ‘structuralist’ because it used
various techniques to identify and classify features of sentence structure. In fact, these
were applied in the development of training programmes during WWII, time when the
ASTP came into existence, which advocated the following:
- Focus on the phonemic, morphological and syntactic systems underlying the
grammar of a given language.
- Language structures are learned through imitation, repetitions and
memorization.
- Language skills are taught in this order: listening, speaking, reading and
writing, so the focus was clearly on oral activities, and speech had priority in
language teaching.

It is crucial to mention that the most widespread method based on structure-based

principles was the Audiolingual method, which reached its peak in the 1960s, but was
also criticized since students were often unable to translate the skills required into real
communication outside the classroom. The turning point came with Noah Chomsky in
the 20th century, which leads us to the third approach.

3. Generative Grammar: it is widely known that Chomsky is the most influential linguist
of the 20th century since he has transformed linguistics from a discipline into a major
social science of direct relevance to psychologists, sociologists and others. He was
interested in the creativity of language, that is, the capacity to generate completely
novel sentences, endlessly. This could only be possible if speakers had internalized a
set of rules which specify the sequences permitted in their language, considered as a
biological phenomenon. In this approach, the most influential idea is the cognitive
view of language learning, which implies that learners have cognitive abilities for
learning languages (LAD), including making utterances in a creative way,
constructing rules, trying them out and altering them if the prove to be inadequate, and
 also the treatment of errors, considered as “normal” in the process of learning, since
they are produced by wrong or incomplete hypotheses about the target language.
4. The fourth approach is the functional grammar of the 1980s, proposed by Michael
Halliday, who understands language as a social and cultural phenomenon. Now,
language teaching focuses on communicative proficiency rather than on mastery of
structures. In fact, the Council of Europe incorporated this communicative view into a
set of specifications for a syllabus called The Threshold Level, whose main traits are:
- Language learning is learning to communicate effectively, so interaction
between students is expected.
- Motivation will spring from an interest in what is being communicated, so
teachers are encouraged to develop varied materials on the basis of their
students’ needs.
- Again, errors are considered part of the teaching-learning process, and
translation may be used where students need or benefit from it.

In short, the four views on language (Traditional, Structural, Generative and Functional) have
led to four approaches to language learning and teaching. As we have seen, many different
methods have been devised in the search for the best way of teaching a foreign language. For
that reason, we will focus on theories on first and second language learning in order to
establish the similarities and differences between both learning processes. Let’s start with the
theories on first language acquisition:

1. The psychologist Skinner, in a book called Verbal Behaviour (1957), considered

language to be a process of imitation and reinforcement. Therefore, he applied the
procedure stimulus, response, reinforcement to the way humans acquire a language. In
fact, children learn to speak by copying the utterances heard around them and also by
having their responses reinforced by repetitions, corrections and encouragement
provided by adults. Nevertheless, it has become clear that nowadays, this behaviourist
principle does not fully explain all facts of language acquisition.
2. The limitations of the imitation view led to an alternative theory, innatism, which
came from Chomsky’s generative ideas about language, who maintained that language
is not a form of behaviour. This approach defended that children are born with an
innate capacity for language development thanks to their language acquisition device.
Moreover, he drew a distinction between knowledge, also called competence, and how
it is used to construct sentences, referred to as performance.
 3. Cognition was proposed by the psychologist Jean Piaget. It is related to the fact that
language acquisition is related to a child’s intellectual development. Therefore, before
children acquire the structures of comparison, they need to have developed the
conceptual ability to make judgement of size first.

Having covered the theories on first language acquisition, we are going to deal with those on
second language:

1. As we have already mentioned, in the behaviourist view, L2 learning is seen as a

process of imitation and reinforcement, since learners copy what they hear and,
through practice, they establish a set of acceptable habits in the new language.
2. The following theory is the cognitive one, which maintains that language is not a form
of behaviour, so L2 learning is a process that involves active mental techniques.
According to this, language learning has two features:
- Interlanguage: this term, coined by Selinker in 1972, refers to how LW
learning proceeds in a series of transitional stages. At each one, they have a
language system that is neither L1 or L2.
- Error vs. mistake, since the former are likely to emerge when learners make
wrong deductions of L2, whereas mistakes appear when students do not pay
attention but have the knowledge.
3. Stephen Krashen, in the 1970s, offered an influential view on second language
learning called The Monitor Model view. He established a crucial difference between
acquisition (a subconscious and natural process) and learning (a conscious process).
The emphasis on acquisition led Krashen to propose five hypotheses for L2 learning:
- Acquisition / Learning hypothesis: it is known that learnt rules never lead to
acquired knowledge. For that reason, learning, according to this theory,
cannot lead to acquisition.
- The monitor hypothesis: this is a device learners use to edit their language
performance, so that they can learn knowledge to correct themselves when
they communicate.
- The natural order hypothesis claims that the acquisition of grammatical
structures proceeds in a predictable order because certain processes are
acquired before others in first language acquisition, and a similar natural
order is found in L2 learning.
 - The affective filter hypothesis deals with the emotional state as a filter that
passes or blocks the input necessary for acquisition. The implications for
language teaching are that anything that helps comprehension is important,
such as visual or auditory aids, or even repetitions, and that a relaxed
classroom atmosphere is crucial to activate the affective filter and students’
motivation, among others.

In conclusion, as we have seen, there exist similarities and differences between L1 and L2
learning, as it is established in the following diagram:

SIMILARITIES
- Both are cognitive processes.
- Many errors are similar in both processes.
- Listening is central to students’ learning.
- There is a natural order in both L1 and L2
acquisition.
- Some grammatical forms are acquired before
others.
- Repetition of the model takes place in both
processes.
- Children imitate the parental model they hear, and
L2 students also do so with the teachers’ model.
DIFFERENCES
- L2 learners are different from children since there
is already a language present in their minds that
influences their learning.
- L2 is taught in an artificial situation since the
classroom hardly resembles a L1 natural learning
environment.
- L2 learners have less time and opportunities for
language exposure and practice than a child
acquiring a mother tongue.

Having covered the aforementioned notions, I will proceed to give an overall view of the
different methods of second language teaching. In the long search for the best way of teaching
a foreign language, hundreds of different approaches have been proposed, although none of
them has yet been shown to be intrinsically superior. For that reason, teachers need to be
aware of the range of available methods and approaches to find the most appropriate one for
the learners’ needs and circumstances.