Chapter 3 Noticing grammar

Instruction +Instruction -

Grammar interpretation

activities

Noticing

Consciousness-raising

Form-focus vs. meaning-focus

Meaning and form together

Presenter

蘇淑貞20978L009

Presenter

蔡鈺顏20978L014

Presenter

胡美英20978L020

1. Instruction + or Instruction –2. Form focus vs. meaning focus

• Presenter: 蘇淑貞 20978L009

Chapter 3 Noticing grammar

Grammar•Less as a set of language facts•More as a kind of mental process•Activated whenever an utterance is in need of fine-tuning•Applying not only to production of language, but to the way grammar develops in both L1 and L2 acquisition

•Many L2 learners do not get very far with these developmental processes•In some cases, little or no grammaring takes place at all.

Instruction + and Instruction -Dialogues taking place in downtown Cairo

•Writer: Hey Hamdi, where are you going?Hamdi: I go to Sporting Club.Writer (unable to resist a change to correct) : Go?Hamdi (impatiently): Oh, go, going, went.

Interpretations about Hamdi’s outburst

1. ‘Correction is for classrooms –the street is for communication!’

2. ‘You understand what I meant, so why the correction?’

3. ‘Search me. I still don’t know the difference between go/going/went.’

4. ‘Don’t expect me to say what I mean and get it right at the same time?’

5. All of the above.

-

A lagKnow what

Can do

Hard to focus

on both at the same time accuracy

communication meaning

form

• Hamdi knowing the difference between go, going and went – not clear

•What Hamdi was trying to say – clear to the writer

A proficient speaker

acquires the ability.

Hamdi’s system may freeze/fossilize at the I go…stage.

Knock-on effect – a whole range of emergent grammatical structures are effectively ‘turned off’

to say what he means.

to get the forms right.

both at the same time

Discovery activity- preventing fossilization from occurring

1. Teaching Hamdi the grammar rules of English and make sure he practises them until he get them right?

2. Correct him every time he makes a mistake?3. Give him books and tapes for exposure to

language in context?4. Send him to an English-speaking country for a

couple of months?5. All of the above?6. None of the above?

Instruction + Instruction -

• ‘learning’• classroom-type

context• grammar rules and

drills• correction• form-focus• accuracy-focus

• ‘acquisition’• natural-type context• exposure/

immersion• comprehensible

input• meaning-focus• fluency-focus

Form-focus vs. meaning-focus• Correction – instruction + solution• Form – instruction +

- getting the forms right for the meanings that are intended.

• Correction – focus on form• Teachers didn’t accept the way their students’

meanings were formed, but understood what they meant.

• The alternative – instruction - a focus on meaning

Case1------ focusing on meaning onlyT What did you do at the weekend, Ana?S I go to the mountains.T Oh, really? Did you go alone?S No, I go with my friend.T How nice. What did you do?S We go skiing…

It is quite possible that the student’s capacity to make the necessary changes to her mental grammar would simple shut

down.

No correction!

Case2--Focusing on form only is not the ideal mindset for exploring the communicative

possibilities of a new language.

T What did you do at the weekend, Ana?S I go to the mountains.T Not go. What’s the past of go? S Goed?T No, it’s irregular. Look. Go – wentS I went to the mountains.T Good. Juan, what did you do at the weekend?

The argument for negative feedback- for correction and a focus on form

A focus exclusively on meaning may not be enough to trigger the reorganization of the learner’s internal grammar.

Students can get very good at communication using only minimal resources.

Case3 –nudging the student to self-correct without interrupting the flow of the talk.

T What did you do at the weekend, Ana?

S I go the mountains.

T Last weekend, I mean.

S Last weekend, I .. Erm.. went to the mountains.

T Did you go alone?

S No, I go with my friend.

T You went with your friend?

S Yes, I went with my friend.

Teacher’s checking draws the student’s attention to the error.

Case 4 – genuine communication breakdowns

S1 How long are you staying here?S2 Three weeks.S1 Oh, so you were here for New Year?S2 No, I arrive yesterday.S1 But you say you are here since three weeks.S2 No, I will be here for three weeks! You ask me

how long I am staying! Etc.

Misunderstanding shocks the

speaker’s system.

So, it may be a useful teaching strategy, a way of showing how form and meaning are powerfully

interrelated.

Case 5 – Ana doesn’t recognize these veiled prompts to self-correction

T What did you do at the weekend, Ana?S I go to the mountains.T Last weekend?S Yes.T Did you go alone?S No, I go with my friend.T You went with your friend?S Yes, I go with my friend, we go skiing.

Anna is Not ready to notice, or too focused on getting her meaning across, or the teacher’s feedback signals are too subtle.

The same occurs in children learning L1Child: Want other one spoon, Daddy.Father: You mean, you want the other spoon.Child: Yes, I want other one spoon, please Daddy.Father: Can you say ‘the other spoon’?Child: Other … one … spoon.Father: Say ‘other’.Child: other.Father: ‘Spoon’.Child: Spoon.Father: ‘Other spoon’.Child: Other … spoon. Now give me other one spoon?

Conclusion-

• When focusing on meaning, they find it very difficult to focus on form.

• Yet, unless they focus on form, there is a danger that their capacity to restructure will close down.

• The great challenge of teaching, then, is to set up activities which are essentially meaning-focusing, but with which a focus on form can be engineered.

1. Noticing2. Consciousness-raising

• Presenter: 蔡鈺顏 20978L014

Chapter 3 Noticing grammar

Noticing• In the cases above, the student didn’t notice the subtle correction that the teacher was offering.

•The notion of noticing is a key one in the study of second language.

• For example: Being taught a new word in a second language, and subsequently seeing it everywhere. It must be there before, but you simply didn’t notice it.

Noticing – first suggested by Richard Schmidt

• One effect of the Portuguese classes he initially enrolled in was that they seemed to prime him to notice things later, when he was simply chatting with friends:

Journal entry, week 6

This week we were introduced to and drilled on the imperfect. ……I noticed that his speech was full of imperfect……(P35)

Discovery activity• Reflect on your own experiences of noticin

g when learning a second language.For example:the Spanish expression ¡Ni se te occura! In a comic strip – the context suggested that this might mean ‘Don’t even think of it!’.

•Confirming it with a friend.•Coming across the expression in an interview•Now, waiting for an opportunity to try it out

The author’s own learning experience

Schmidt’s conclusions1. Classroom instruction was useful.

2. However, he also needed to notice it being used naturally.

Complement with each other

Instruction + Instruction -

Both kinds of learning required a degree of attention.In other words, language learning involves

conscious processes.

Conscious processes –

applying to Hamdi’s case

Hamdi’s need Teacher’s need

To notice the way the present continuous is preferred when talking about activities in progress

To provide opportunities for Hamdi to become aware of the distance to be covered between the present state of his L2 and the target forms of that language

To summarize: in order to learn a language

• Learners must pay attention to linguistic features of the input that they are exposed to

• Learners must notice the gap, ie they must make comparisons between the current state of their knowledge, as realized in their output, and the target language system, available as input

Getting Hamdi to noticing the gap• One way is to give him feedback when he

makes a mistake. HoweverToo much correction The learner shuts up.

Too little or too subtle

The learner simply doesn’t notice.

•One possibility is to encourage learners to compare their output on a specific task with the output of a more profici

ent speaker on the same task –the grammaring activities in chapter 2

Consciousness-raising

• Providing learners with feedback on their output is one way

Consciousness-raising activities –

Activities designed to make students aware of features of the language – to notice them

Consciousness- raising Traditionally – by the teacher’s explanations and presentation

T ‘the presentation continuous is formed by the auxiliary verb be plus the present participle. We use the present continuous to describe things happening now. For example, the sun is shining. Is that clear?’

Hamdi probably is thinking of the tennis match he’s playing after class.

An alternative

• T watch me. (walks across room) I am walking across the room. I am walking. I am walking. I am walking. What am I doing?

• S You are walking.

• T Good. Everyone, repeat.

• Ss You are walking.

Shortcut the explanations by using actions to associate a form with a meaning.

Another one

• The teacher draws two figures on the board to have a situation or a context.

• Ex: He names one Chris and the other Kim. He tells the class that one day Chris meet Kim in the street. Kim is carrying a tennis racquet. The teacher say: ‘Chris says to Kim’ “Hi Kim, where are you going?” Kim says “I’m going to the club.” ‘OK,’ says the teacher, ‘repeat: I’m going to the club. Everybody: I’m going to the club.’ Class repeat in unison.

The summary of the 3 presentations

• We would seem to have all the necessary ingredients (a context , a situation and natural-sounding language) to guarantee that the students, including Hamdi, can make the connection from the classroom context (the context of learning) to the real-life context (the context of use), when and where it occurs.

The problem of the presentations

• The clarity and relevance of the presentation are no guarantee that the transfer from classroom to real-life will take place.

• Researchers have been saying for some time that the process of learning( a language at least) is not a mechanistic, linear, input-output one.

The process of learning a language

• Diane Larsen-Freeman

• Learning linguistic items is not a linear process-learners do not master one item and then move on to another. In fact, the learning curve for a single item is not linear either. The curve is filled with peaks and valleys, progress and backslidings.

Language development is more organic than mechanistic.

The difference of consciousness-raising

• Reduced expectation

• not the expectation of immediate and consistently accurate production

Two Views: PP & C-R

• 1. PP (Presentation + Practice)

input output

• 2. C-R (Consciousness-raising)

input noticing intake output

1. Meaning and form together2. Grammar interpretation activities

• Presenter: 胡美英 20978L020

Chapter 3 Noticing grammar

Meaning and form together

• The probably best kind of feedback –sending a signal to the student that their

message is unclear or ambiguousboth

a different message

ill-formed message

The learner noticesMeaning and form together

the long-term effects of

restructuring

the effect that grammatical choices

have on meaning

To notice the effect of grammatical choices on meaning

Starting with meaning

The frequent and repetitive occurrence of a language item – not enough

Learners need to realize why the choice of that item matters.

The example

Presenting and practicing the present perfect to a class of adult students in

Egypt

The pattern: Have you done X yet?

Hisham – incapable of retrieving the correct form, present perfect

• The sole purpose of the drill: practicing the form of the present perfect

• As the attention shifted to the meaning, the form went out the window, and Hisham reverted to his default setting, the past simple

ReasonsThe drill required no decision-making.

The drill did not allow the student to appreciate the effect on meaning of the ‘marked’ form, the present perfect, over the default form, the past simple.

The present perfect wasn’t made to matter.

Not mattering, it wasn’t noticed.

An suggested activity

Ben is back in the UK after a three-week holiday in Egypt.

Berry is half-way through her three-week

holiday in Egypt.

Ben Betty

The teacher is having a three-way conversation with Ben and Berry by phone.

A meaning-focused task

The students have to attend to the form

Past simple or present perfect?

The only clue is the form of the verb phrase

The form of the verb is made to matter.

An AlternativeStudents are going to listen to some answer

phone messages that the teacher has just

received.

All the messages are from friends who are on holiday or who have just returned from holiday.

The students’ first tast is to guess which city or country each message refers to. Here are the messages:

Then ask the students to listen again and tell the

teacher which of his friends are still on holiday and which are back home.

The activity – almost wholly meaning focused

The first task is easy, requires students to pick out a few proper names.

The second task is much more subtle, cannot be done without paying attention to the verb forms.

The second task forces student to notice the distinctions of forms.

Grammar interpretation activities

Both the preceding activities –called either

The principles underlying them have been elaborated by the writer and researcher Rod

Ellis

grammar interpretation

activities

structured input tasks

consciousness-

raising tasks

called

Ellis’ ViewThat comprehension is a prerequisite for

acquisition.Preferably comprehension without immediate

production.Forcing production of a newly learned item too

soon may be counter-productive, in that the effort involved in articulation diverts attention away from simply understand how the new item works.

Hence, the two tasks above require students simply to listen and understand. This is why

they are called grammar interpretation activities.

Task 1 p40

• The choice of verb form depends on their understanding of the context.

• The fact that Kerouac is dead and Snyder is alive will, in some cases, determine a different choice of verb form (past simple or present perfect)Kerouac wrote a number of novels…Snyder has written a number of books…

Task 2 p41• Students do not have to produce the targeted

verb forms.

• So, it is a true grammar interpretation activity.The assumption – Understanding precedes production.Start with Task 2 and then follow with task 1.The ‘slow release’ principle –It might be better to delay the production task.‘Learning is remembering understanding something’ –Two tasks could complement each other neatly.

Ellis identifies three main goals for grammar interpretation tasks:

1. To enable learners to identify the meaning(s) realized by a specific grammatical feature;

2. To enhance input in such a way that learners are induced to notice to a grammatical feature that otherwise they might ignore;

3. To enable learners to notice the gap between the way a particular form works to convey meaning and the way they themselves are using it.

Anything that promotes noticing, after all, must be of enormous benefit to the

learner.

SummaryThe

importance of consciousness, in particular of noticing

The choice of form impacts on meaning.

Notice the gap between

‘know how’ and ‘can do’.

Restructuring of the

learners’ mental

grammar will occur.

both

A focus on form can be integrated into message-focused activities

a) By providing feedback on the effectiveness of the learner’s message-making, even if, sometimes, we have to pretend we don’t understand.

b) Another activity, the grammar interpretation task, a way of enhancing input so as to optimize noticing.

• Chapter 2, grammaticization tasks, which are output oriented.

• Chapter 4, a closer look at restucturing and integrating it into a view of language learning that sees grammar(ing) as being an emergent phenomenon

• Chapter 5, implications for the teacher’s role