My co-writer and the former secondary teacher with the broadest knowledge of second language learning and teaching research, Dr Gianfranco Conti, has been blogging a lot recently as he pursues his latest speaking tour of the UK. I sometimes wonder if he ever sleeps.
When we wrote our first edition of The Language Teacher Toolkit in 2016 a major source of the material were the blog posts Gianfranco wrote in 2015. Recently, he has produced a spate of informative, research-informed posts which every language teacher should find illuminating.
The easiest way to find them is just to go to his blog at gianfrancoconti.com and browse. In recent weeks he has covered areas such as grammar, listening, sentence builders/EPI and teaching via topics. Notably, he has returned to the work of John Field, a leading writer in the area of listening instruction. We turned his perspective on listening instruction into our book Breaking the Sound Barrier: Teaching Language Learners How to Listen (2019). Another blogger/teacher who has been writing about Field and his process approach to listening is Dr Kedi Simpson. I recommend her posts which get into the nitty-gritty of how students perceive aural language. We don’t think about this enough. Kedi’s blog is here.
Back to Gianfranco’s posts, he recently wrote about the need to prioritise fluency over grammar. Despite the fact that, over the years, greater emphasis has been given to communication and fluency over grammatical accuracy in the UK and elsewhere, textbooks still essentially use a ‘topics and grammar’ syllabus, rather than one based on communicative activities or tasks.
Recent government-sponsored bodies such as NCELP and NCLE still place grammar at the forefront, along with phonics and vocabulary (the controversial ‘three pillars’ model). Ofsted (the inspection body in England) also follows this grammar-centred model.Yet we know from research and experience that grammar demotivates most pupils and that turning declarative knowledge of grammar rules into spontaneous speech and writing is very hard.
In a recent post, Gianfranco picks up on a point made by researcher Robert Dekeyser, as well as teachers working in the TPRS/CI world (mainly in the USA) that this is an issue of social equity. Let me explain: pupils of lower socio-economic status, poor literacy or lower aptitude may struggle relatively more with grammar-focused teaching. If we teach with this focus we are favouring students from certain socio-economic groups and those who thrive in the traditional academic environment. Perhaps a more fluency-focused and communicative approach is fairer for all. (An alternative argument would be that we should allow equal access to a ‘knowledge-rich’ grammatical approach.) By the way, although a case can be made for adjusting methodology to different types of student, I would argue that a communicative approach, in whatever form, not necessarily task-based, is likely to benefit all students, whatever their abilities.
I have come to the conclusion that too much time is spent on grammar. I developed the argument in this post. Traditions are strong - grammar teaching and vocabulary memorisation still hold sway for many.
Anyway, do go and read Gianfranco’s blog, and Kedi’s too. Both informed by research, they focus a lot on the realities of classrooms.
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