The Latest Approaches To Teaching Grammar Usage And Correctness

 INTRODUCTION

To anyone just starting out in this exciting field, welcome to the world of English teachers, a world filled to overflowing with multiple content areas and offering conflicting opinions on just about every one of them. Montana standards list, for example, expectations for student expertise in reading, literature, media literacy, speaking and listening, and, finally, writing; each content area enumerates five standards. Given the stress new English teachers face in attempting to formulate lesson plans and units for the multiplicity of content areas for which they are responsible, it is not surprising that the subject of grammar is the least likely to arouse excitement and the most likely to fall haphazardly by the proverbial wayside. A long line of studies, dating back to 1950, appears to prove little to no positive result from teaching grammar with regards to improvement in students’ reading and/or writing skills (Weaver 14, Kolln 27-8)

Moreover, the function of grammar has now all but been relegated to a last resort of editing and proofreading (Elbow 167), and yet some suggest that “students, especially the non-native speakers of English who account for a steadily increasing percentage of school populations at all levels, have the right at all times to ask their teachers why certain elements of grammar operate the way they do” , and that English teachers ought to be able to give students sufficient answers, either off the cuff from knowledge they have already acquired or through a promise to “check on that” and tell them within a day or so . Let’s face it: grammar is just one more content area that any new or pre-service English teacher must master. But in order to teach it, one must first be able to define it, and that is no easy task.

CHAPTER 1 GRAMMAR

What is grammar? Is it necessary to teach grammar? Will grammar help students to better understand and use the language? These are only some of the questions that need to be answered. Grammar is defined in the “THE LONGMAN DICTIONARY OF CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH” as ”(the study and practice of) the rules of a language by which words change their forms and are combined into sentences”.

Unfortunately, in many of the English classes, grammar is taught for its own sake, not with the purpose of being used in communication. The knowledge of the rules of grammar gives the students only some measure of algebraic “accuracy”, which by itself can, and perhaps generally does, help them to pass the examinations in English, but does not give them the ability to communicate meaningfully in real-life situations.

What is needed to remedy the situation is a methodology that can effectively blend “accuracy” and “fluency”, a methodology that aims at developing “communicative competence”. Widdowson (1984:59) points out that: ”Fluency and accuracy are complementary and interdependent phenomena: the problem is to know how the dependency works in natural language use and how it can best be developed in the process of language learning.”

Grammar can be taught in different ways. One of them is when the teacher actually provides the students with grammatical rules and explanations-the information is openly presented, in other words.

Another way is when grammatical facts are hidden from the students-even though they are learning the language. In other words, the students may be asked to do an information gap activity or read a text where new grammar is practiced or introduced, but their attention will be drawn to the activity or to the text and not to the grammar. Jeremy Harmer, calls the first type of teaching grammar-overt grammar teaching, and the second type-covert grammar teaching.

With overt teaching we are explicit and open about the grammar of the language, but with covert teaching we simply get students to work with new language and hope that they will more or less subconsciously absorb grammatical information which will help them to acquire the language as a whole.

The middle way is always the best, so teachers should use both covert and overt grammar teaching during their lessons. Students need to learn how to perform the functions of language, but they need a grammatical base as well. Modern courses often teach a grammatical structure and then get students to use it as part of a functional conversation.

Although at an early stage we may ask our students to learn a certain structure through exercises that concentrate on virtually meaningless manipulations of language, we should quickly progress to activities that use it meaningfully. And even these activities will be superseded eventually by general fluency practice, where the emphasis is on successful communication, and any learning of grammar takes place only as incidental to this main objective.

Many new or pre-service English teachers may not have learned much about grammar during their own school years or throughout their college preparation. This lack of preparedness may cause these instructors to remain apprehensive about teaching a subject they don’t understand very well. Also, the full-fledged grammar classes which a pre-service English teacher might be required to take in college may further intimidate through an immediate, in-depth explication of the subject with complex diagrams and theories before the teaching candidate is even fully aware of the definition(s) of the word grammar. This text functions as an introductory primer to the subject, giving the numerous surface-level definitions for the word grammar, as well as illustrating several of the important second-level connotations which attach to the word, preparing the English teaching candidate for a full-length exploration of the grammar of the English language and its accompanying theories in a college classroom. Critical theories are applied to the subject of grammar in order to shed light on the denotations and connotations of the word, as well as the reasons why this subject is so important. The resulting aim of this text is that new or pre-service English teachers will gain a full understanding of the multiple meanings of the word grammar, the unspoken connotations which follow this word and subject, the ways in which critical theories can bring a new perspective to an old subject, and the necessity of sharing with students these underlying issues in order to revitalize the study of the subject. The conclusion reveals that rather than closing off discussions and hemming in subjects, definitions may be used to open up a subject to endless possibilities.

1.1.DEFINITIONS OF GRAMMAR

Dictionaries define grammar as the rules and explanations which deal with the forms and structure of words (morphology ), their arrangement in phrases and sentences (syntax ), and their classification based on their function (parts of speech).

For a new or pre-service English teacher, the word grammar may set teeth on edge and raise fine hairs along the back of the neck. As a novice, one may be afraid of possessing inadequate knowledge of the subject; one may be horrified that this subject must somehow form part of the domain of a language arts instructor; and, yet, one must nonetheless be prepared to teach it. Granted, this subject is, in and of itself, complex, but even defining the term presents more complications than one would suppose, and no teacher can explicate a subject he or she cannot define.

Unfortunately, many grammar texts, even those supposedly geared toward preservice English teachers, offer little by way of defining the subject they discuss, and the partial definitions they do include appear vague, to say the least. In the first chapter of their text, Understanding English Grammar, Martha Kolln and Robert Funk speak of “language competence” , the “systematic nature of English” , and “our innate, subconscious ability to generate language, an internal system of rules that constitutes on human language capacity” , but nowhere do they give a full definition of the term, and the glossary omits the word altogether. James D. Williams opens his text, The Teacher’s Grammar Book, with a first chapter on ‘Traditional Grammar,” neglecting an introduction which could have provided a reasonable definition. His first chapter relates, instead, the history of the formal study of the subject and its object, prescriptivism .

Finally, mid-way through the chapter, Williams suggests a brief definition with the statement that “Grammar deals with the structure and analysis of sentences” ; however, this single statement contains two separate meanings for the word: “structure” and “analysis” form two distinct categories. In yet another text, Systems in English Grammar: An Introduction for Language Teachers, Peter Master employs the key word grammar as if everyone wholly understood its meaning, emphasizing that “The focus of this text is grammar at the sentence level”, without ever explaining what grammar is.

Even more unfortunate, in attempting to define the term, authors commonly employ the word itself, which does not improve the reader’s understanding. Kolln, writing for the English Journal (1999), restates Patrick Hartwell’s five definitions of grammar and uses the word grammar in each one . To summarize the first part of the problem, instructional grammar text books for new English teachers do not adequately present denotations, or surface definitions, for grammar.

I not only find cause for concern in the lack of surface definitions for the term grammar; the connotations associated with the subject generally go unspoken but carry a powerful impact and may confuse new instructors. Critical theories can illumine many connotations we would not ordinarily notice, and I apply them to my discussion. We could describe each various denotative, i.e. surface, definition as “a first-order system: it involves a signifier, a signified, and their combination in a sign” (Allen 42). However, this word grammar clearly signifies something else, something more, in excess of its surface definitions. According to Roland Barthes, myth—Barthes’ word choice to explain what “presents itself as natural and even timeless but is, in fact, an expression of a historically specific ideological vision of the world” (Allen 34)—alters first-order meanings, changing them into second-order meanings: “a second-order semiological system…is [one in which] a sign (namely the associative total of a concept and an image) in the first system becomes a mere signifier in the second” (rpt. in Allen 43). Barthes relates connotation with second-order meanings .The connotations associated with the word grammar may speak even louder and more insistently than those of its denotation; most of the connotations carry a negative overtone, and yet many of the connotations are based on misunderstandings of the basic definitions of the word.

Developing an awareness of the multiple connotations associated with the subject of grammar may help English teaching candidates to understand students’ potential aversion to studying grammar, as well as their own difficulties or confusions about the subject. We could say that the difficulty in defining the word grammar stems, in part, from the multiplicity of referents for the English word spelled g-r-a-m-m-a-r. However, in order to do this, we must first define referent. Martha Kolln, in her article “Rhetorical Grammar: A Modification Lesson,” explains a referent by telling her students “Every noun has a referent, a reality that the word, or name, symbolizes…the pencil in my hand is a warm body, the referent symbolized by the word pencil”. By this, Kolln seems to indicate an actual pencil, one specific pencil, the one in her hand. In other words, according to Kolln, the referent could be considered the actual or real item. She also mentions that the word pencil is a symbol for the real thing

Also, with an abstract noun like grammar, one couldn’ difficulty in defining the word grammar stems, in part, from the multiplicity of referents for the English word spelled g-r-a-m-m-a-r. However, in order to do this, we must first define referent. Martha Kolln, in her article “Rhetorical Grammar: A Modification Lesson,” explains a referent by telling her students “Every noun has a referent, a reality that the word, or name, symbolizes…the pencil in my hand is a warm body, the referent symbolized by the word pencil”. By this, Kolln seems to indicate an actual pencil, one specific pencil, the one in her hand. In other words, according to Kolln, the referent could be considered the actual or real item. She also mentions that the word pencil is a symbol for the real thing

Also, with an abstract noun like grammar, one couldn’t look at a physical representation of it. This explains why Kolln calls for clear modifiers to help transmit to the listener/reader an image as similar as possible to the one the speaker/ writer holds Since grammar is understood in so many ways, with its many definitions, i.e.meanings, signifieds, referents, it should not be surprising to find the term misunderstood in a number of ways as well. Quite frankly, many people, having no good idea what grammar is, misuse the word on a regular basis. For the purposes of this chapter, a beneficial course of action will be to look at what the word grammar can mean and, second, to look at what it does not necessarily mean. As you will soon be aware, those who have attempted to define grammar in the past have done so using a hierarchical or numerical system, implying that one definition may be considered of primary importance, while others are of less consequence.

This system of rules about how language works is the same system Martha Kolln refers to as “the grammar in our heads—our native competence” , and also “the internalized system of rules that speakers of a language share” (rpt. in Hartwell 189), and it is to this that Kolln points when she says, “If you’re a native speaker of English, you’re already an expert. You bring to the study of grammar a lifetime of “knowing” it—except for your first couple of years, a lifetime of producing grammatical sentences” .

Hartwell sheds more light on the subject of this system by suggesting the “grammar in our heads” is a “tacit and unconscious knowledge,” that these rules are “abstract, counterintuitive,”and, third, that one’s internal grammar “seems profoundly affected by the acquisition of literacy”

1.2.UNITS OF LANGUAGE

The grammatical system of the English language, like of other Indo-European languages, is very complicated. It consists of smaller subdivisions, which are called systems too. In grammar they are morphological and syntactic ones.

In syntax we discriminate between the systems of simple and composite sentences, etc. Prof. V. V. Plotkin suggests the terms ‘morosystem’ implying the grammatical system of the language as a whole and ’subsystem’ and ‘microsystem’ with reference to minor system.

Thus, the systemic character of grammar is beyond doubt. The phonological structure of language is also systemic. The question of the systemic character of vocabulary (word-stock) remains open. But of all lingual aspects grammar is, no doubt, most systemic since it is responsible for the very organization of the informative content of utterance.

Language in general and grammar in particular are materialized in structure. Language structure is represented by a level stratification of its units. This structure is of hierarchical character.Units of language are divided into meaningless and meaningful. Examples of the first kind: phonemes, syllable Meaningful are morpheme, word and others. The latter are called  – language signs. They have both planes: that of content and that of expression. They are signemes.

As to the way of expressing lingual units are divided into segmental and supra-segmental. Segmental units consists of phonemes and form phonetic strings of various status  (morphemes, syllables). Supra-segmental units do not exist by themselves, they are realized together with segmental units and express different modificational meanings which are reflected on the strings of segmental units. Supra-segmental units are intonation contours, streets, pauses and the like.

Units of language on different levels are studied by traditional branches of linguistics such as phonetics, grammar, lexicology, whose subject-matter and the material under study are more or less clear-cut.

It gets more complicated when we talk about the object of research and the material of studies of stylistics. The term itself – stylistics – came into existence not too long ago.

However, the scope of problems and the object of stylistic study go as far back as ancient schools of rhetoric and poetics. It is in rhetoric that we find most of the notions and terms contemporary stylistics generally employs. The most complete and well developed antique system, that came down to us is the Hellenistic Roman rhetoric system. All expressive means (the object of its research) were divided into 3 large groups: Tropes, Rhythm (Figures of Speech), and Types of Speech.

Stylistics, unlike other linguistic subjects, does not study or describe separate linguistic units as such. Roughly speaking, stylistics is a branch of linguistics, which studies the principles, and the effect of choice and usage of different language elements in rendering thought and emotion under different conditions of communication. I.R.Galperin asserts that stуlistiсs is a branch of general linguistics that mainly deals with two interdependent objectives: the investigation of the special language media which secure the desirable effect of the utterance, and the investigation of certain types of texts which (due to the choice and arrangement of language means) are distinguished by the pragmatic aspect of communication. These two tasks of stylistics are clearly discernible as separate fields of its investigation.

The special media are called stylistic devices and expressive means ; the types of texts are called functional styles . The first field of investigation,touches upon such general language problems as: the aesthetic function of language, synonymous ways of rendering one and the same idea,

emotional colouring in language, the interrelation between language and thought, the individual manner of an author in making use of language, etc.

The second field, brings forth the discussion of such issues as: oral and written varieties of language, the notion of the literary (standard) language, the constituents of texts larger than the sentence, the classification of the types of texts, the generative aspect of literary texts, etc.

Stylistics as a branch of linguistics overlaps with such adjacent disciplines as theory of information, theory of communication, literature studies, psychology, sociology, logic and some others. Stylistics, as the term implies, deals with styles. The word style is derived from the Latin word ‘stilus’ (‘stylus’) or Greek ‘stylos’ which meant a short stick sharp at one end and flat at the other used by the Romans for writing on wax tablets. Later it was associated with the manner of writing. Today it can be applied in any activity which can be performed in more than one way (manner), verbal communication including. Hence style presupposes choice.

In linguistics the word ‘style’ has acquired so many interpretations that it gives ground for ambiguity. Style is frequently regarded as something that belongs exclusively to the plane of expression and not to the plane of content because one and the same idea can be expressed in different ways. S. Chatman defines style ‘as a product of individual choices and patterns of choices among linguistic possibilities.’Style is often understood as a technique of expression, i.e. the ability to write clearly, correctly and in a manner calculated to interest the reader. Style in this sense deals with the normalized forms of the language. The generic term ‘style’ is often identified with the individual style of an author, or the authorial style.

I.R. Galperin believes that the individual style of an author is only one of the applications of the term ‘style’. In the case it should be applied to the sphere of linguistic and literary science which deals with the peculiarities of a writer's individual manner of using language means to achieve the effect he desires.

The individual style – as a deliberate choice of an author – he distinguishes from a habitual idiosyncrasy in the use of language units by any individual or an idiolect. Style is frequently treated as the embellishment of language. Language and style as embellishment are regarded as separate bodies when style is imposed on language for artistic effect. Style may also be defined as deviations from the lingual norm (M. Riffaterre, E. Saporta, M. Halliday,
E. Enkvist).

Thus, what is stylistically conspicuous, stylistically relevant, stylistically coloured is a departure from the norm of the given national language. Here arises the problem of norm. There never has been one single norm for all.

On the one hand, the notion of norm implies a recognized or received standard, or so-called pre-established, traditional and conventionally accepted parameters (i.e. characteristics) of what is evaluated (Y. M. Skrebnev).

On the other, the requirements of the uncultivated part of the English-speaking population do not coincide with those of the cultivated one: they merely have their own conception of norm. Thus, the characteristic feature of norm in language is its plurality. Moreover, one of the most essential properties of the norm in a sublanguage is its flexibility. I. R. Galperin defines style ‘as a system of interrelated language means which serves a definite aim in communication.’ Y. M. Skrebnev, acknowledging the split of a language into sublanguages, believes that style is specificity of sublanguage.

Stylistic information, or stylistic colouring of a lingual unit, is the knowledge where, in what particular type of communication, the unit is current. The majority of the words are stylistically neutral. Stylistically coloured words (e.g. bookish, solemn, poetic, official, colloquial, rustic, dialectal, vulgar, etc.) have each a kind of ‘label’ on them, an ‘inscription’, a kind of ‘trade-mark’ showing where the unit was ‘manufactured’ and where it generally belongs. Stylistically neutral words taken separately only denote without connoting. Stylistically coloured words preserve their ‘label’ or ‘trade-mark’ even in isolation. Our verbal experience helps us to identify the appurtenance of words to a certain sphere. Besides occasionally a certain context, a specific distribution may also add some unexpected colouring to a generally neutral word.Such stylistic connotation is called occasional. Stylistic colouring of linguistic units is also the result of their distributional capacities.

The term distribution implies the possibilities of combining the given unit with its immediate environment. Thus it brings to the forefront the notion of a stylistic norm that indicates in what collocations and speech variety certain lingual units are proper or improper. In the following examples we shall observe the opposition of three sublanguages (styles):

The old man is dead (normal literary, practically neutral).

The gentleman well advanced in years attained the termination of his terrestrial existence (high-flown, exquisite, pompous).

The ole (low colloquial for old) bean he kicked the bucket (low colloquial, derogatory).

Besides, stylistics does not study or describe separate linguistic units as such. It studies their stylistic function, i.e. it is interested in the expressive potential or expressive properties of linguistic units and their interaction in conveying ideas and emotions in a certain context. There should be mentioned the following integral peculiarities of a stylistic function: its ‘chameleon’ quality, its implicit character, its accumulative character, and its irradiating character. The ‘chameleon’ quality of the stylistic function means that a certain device does not necessarily perform the same function, it may vary from context to context. E.g. a hyperbole may be used for creating a humorous or dramatic atmosphere. Its implicit character is secured by the connotative meanings of words. Accumulation means that a certain mood or feeling is usually rendered by a group of various means. This phenomenon is also termed convergence of devices. Behind irradiation stands the fact that few or even one lingual unit with an outstanding stylistic function may attach a peculiar sounding to the whole speech unit. According to the type of stylistic research they distinguish linguostylistics (founded by a French linguist Ch. Bally) and literary stylistics. They have some meeting points or links which lie in the study of: the literary language from the point of view of its variability; the individual manner of a writer; poetic speech that has its own specific laws.The points of difference proceed from different points of analysis.

While linguostylistics studies: styles of sublanguages, or functional styles and their specificity, development and current state, language units from the point of view of their capacity to render evaluations and evoke emotions, literary stylistics inevitably overlaps with areas of literary studies such as the theories of artistic imagery and literary criticism, literary genres, the art of composition, the writer's outlook, the peculiarities of a certain trend or epoch, etc. Another distinguished trend of stylistics is stylistics of decoding. It can be traced back to the works of L.V. Shcherba, B.A. Larin, M. Riffaterre, R. Jackobson and many other scholars (mainly of the Prague linguistic circle).

The role and purpose of this trend was summed up by I.V. Arnold in her book on decoding stylistics: ‘Modern stylistics in not so much interested in the identification of separate devices as in discovering the common mechanism of tropes and their effect.’ It is common knowledge that each work of verbal art can be viewed from the point of view of its encoder (the author) and decoder (the reader, the recipient).

If the literary text is analyzed from the author's (encoding) point of view such background facts as the epoch, the historical situation, the personal political, social and aesthetic views of the author, etc. are considered (the analysis of the extralinguistic context). But if the same text is treated from the reader’s (decoding) angle the maximum information is excavated from the text itself: its vocabulary, sentence arrangement, composition, etc. and their interaction in rendering the author’s message (the analysis of the linguistic context) .

The first approach manifests the prevalence of the literary analysis. The second is based almost exclusively on the linguistic analysis.Stylistics of decoding harmoniously combines these two methods of stylistic research and enables the reader to interpret a work with a minimum loss of its purport and message..

Thus, the basic difference between linguostylistics and decoding stylistics is that the latter studies means provided by each level not as isolated devices that demonstrate some stylistic function but as a part of the general system that discloses the overall concept of the author.

In other terms, expressive means and stylistic devices are treated here only in their interaction and distribution within the text as the carriers of the author’s purpose and signs of his vision of the world.

The subdivision of linguostylistics is based on the level-forming approach: sounds, words, phrases and sentences, paragraphs and texts are studied from the point of view of their expressive capacities, or stylistic function. Нere belong:

Lexical stylistics (stylistic lexicology).

It studies the semantic structure of the word and the interplay of the connotative and denotative meanings of the word, as well as the interrelation of the stylistic connotations of the word and the context. Special attention is also paid to the functioning of different set expressions.What unites it with general (i.e. non-stylistic) lexicology is the study of the stylistic differentiation of the vocabulary.

Phonostylistics (stylistic phonetics).

General phonetics investigates the whole articulatory-audial system of language. Stylistic phonetics pays attention to the style-forming phonetic features of sublanguages: it describes variants of pronunciation occurring in different types of speech. Special attention is also paid to the expressive potential of phonetic means as well as the prosodic features of prose and poetry.

Grammatical stylistics.

Non-stylistic morphology treats morphemes and their grammatical meanings in general, without regard to the sphere of their application. Morphological stylistics is interested in the expressive potential of grammatical meanings, forms and categories as well as the deviations from a normative word formation that are peculiar to particular sublanguages, explicitly or implicitly comparing them with the neutral ones common to all the sublanguages. Non-stylistic syntax treats word combinations and sentences, analysing their structures and stating what is permissible and what is not in constructing correct utterances in the given language.

Syntactical stylistics

Is one of the oldest branches of stylistic studies that grew out of classical rhetoric. It investigates the expressive potential and the influential power of the deviations from a normative word order, of types of sentence and of syntactical connection. It also shows what particular constructions are met with (or should be employed) in various types of speech, what syntactical structures are specific in the sublanguage in question. Besides, syntactical stylistics very often operates on longer units, from the paragraph upwards.

Functional stylistics (the theory of functional styles).

Functional stylistics is a branch of linguostylistics that investigates the totality of media typical of varieties of the national language distinguished by the communicative function, sphere of communication and compliance with the norm.

Text stylistics

Is one more branch of stylistic research.There exist various definitions of the term ‘text’. It can be understood as a completed product of speech, representing a sequence of words, grammatically connected and semantically coherent, and having a certain communicative goal. Text Stylistics aims at investigating the most effective ways and means of producing texts belonging to different styles, substyles and genres. It also studies the lingual means through which different types of information and presentational manners are conveyed as well as the verbal manifestation of text categories.

1.3.PARTS OF SENTENCE

In English the structure of a basic sentence is relatively easy to teach because English has rigid word order (e.g., the subject is followed by a verb, which is followed by an object). Although many variations of this skeletal structure are possible, the additions also adhere to somewhat inflexible patterns. For example, a prepositional phrase cannot perform the function of a subject:

Only noun phrases can function as a subject, and a verb must be present in every sentence for it to be grammatical. For example, the structure *For most students go to the U.S. to study is incorrect because a prepositional phrase occupies the subject position.

The simplest approach to teaching the basic sentence structure can take advantage of the relative rigidity in English sentence structure. An example of a basic sentence structure can consist of an optional adverb/prepositional phrase, subject noun (phrase), a verb, and an object if the main verb is transitive (requires a direct object). The essential sentence elements and their positions relative to one another are sometimes called slots, and in many sentences some slots can be empty (e.g., the object slot is not filled if the verb is intransitive—does not require an object). However, in English sentences, for example, the verb slot is never empty because verbs are required for all sentences to be grammatical, and the subject slot can be empty only in the case of imperatives (commands), (e.g., 0 dose the door).

It is important to note that an approach to teaching sentence- and phrase-structure systems of English does not place a great deal of emphasis on conveying a particular meaning.

In general, the breakdown of a sentence into ordered and sequential slots is based on three fundamental principles. The first principle states that sentence units occur not in isolation, but in relationship to other sentence elements (e.g., in most sentences [other than questions], the subject precedes the verb.

According to the second principle, the contexts in which sentence elements occur determine the variation among them (e.g., singular subject nouns require singular verbs or transitive verbs [e.g., construct, develop, make] require the presence of objects that follow them). On the other hand, prepositional phrases are slippery elements, and they can occur in various slots—at the beginnings or ends of sentences and/or following a subject or an object noun phrase.

Sentence structures are always dynamic, but variations among them follow predictable patterns that should be explained to students.

• Subject or object slots can be filled by all sorts of words or phrases that belong in the class of nouns/pronouns—for example,

• proper and common nouns (e.g., John, Smith, desk)

• countable and uncountable nouns (e.g., pens, equipment)

• abstract and concrete nouns (e.g., happiness, a cloud) or gerunds (e.g., reading, writing)

• compound noun phrases (e.g., vegetable soup, a grammar book)

• pronouns (e.g., /, we, they, one)

• sets of parallel nouns (e.g., pens, pencils, and papers; flowers and trees)

Noun phrases include all their attendant elements (e.g., articles, possessives, quantifiers, and numerals—a book, information, their book, most of the book(s), three books). In fact, subject and object slots are usually filled by a noun phrase ratherthan a single-word noun because in real language use single-word nouns are relatively rare (i.e., proper, uncountable, and abstract nouns represent a majority of all cases).

To explain the noun phrase elements to students, the simplest way to proceed is to practice identifying the main noun and all its pieces (e.g., vegetable soup/the blue book—does the word vegetable describe the soup'? the word blue describe the book? do these two words go together; most of the book—do the words most, of, and the refer to the book? do all these words go together?)..

An important and simple technique for identifying entire noun phrases, as well as their elements, and the singular versus plural properties of subjects is to replace phrases with pronouns. For example,

Marie Curie studied the chemistry and medical uses of radium.

She studied the chemistry and medical uses of radium.

Mary Peters and John Smith are planning to attend the conference.

They are planning to attend the conference.

Once the noun phrase is replaced with a pronoun, subject-verb agreement is relatively easy to check. An important step in locating the subject noun phrase is to find the verb and then go to the left to look for the subject noun.

The third principle of the unit organization in a sentence specifies that sentence elements are organized according to a hierarchy based on their importance for a sentence to be grammatical (i.e., each sentence must have the most important elements, such as the subject and the verb, and, in most cases, an object or a subject complement). Other elements, such as adverbs or prepositional phrases, are mobile and can occur in various predictable locations. For example, the next sentence includes several units (prepositional phrases) that are added to the core structure, two following the subject noun phrase and one at the end of the sentence From a practical point of view, for example, explanations of the English sentence structure based on the core elements with other elements added can greatly simplify instruction in learning to identify the subject, predicate verb phrase, and importance of subject-verb agreement. For instance, in the case of a compound noun phrase and/or a compound verb phrase, a similar approach can be useful

For teachers, analyzing sentences as sequences of units that are relative to one another in their order and importance can provide a practical and useful tool for dealing with diverse large and small features of sentences, from subordinate clauses to the role of nouns as subjects or objects, parallel structures, or effects of verb transitivity on the presence of objects

Declarative sentences are typically used to make statements. A speaker uses a statement to assert or deny a proposition, i.e. a claim which can, at least in principle, be determined to be either true or false. Other kinds of sentences, which we will discuss further in later chapters, are typically used to perform other kinds of speech acts: giving commands, asking questions, offering wishes, blessings, curses, etc. Sentences of these kinds cannot be said to be either true or false.

A statement, then, is a sentence which asserts a proposition, i.e. a claim that a certain state of affairs does or does not exist. Normally statements are made about something or someone; they claim that a certain state of affairs is true of a given individual or set of individuals (where the individual may be a person, place, thing, etc.). They may indicate that a certain individual has a particular property or that a certain relationship holds between two or more individuals:

a John is hungry.

b Mary snores.

c John loves Mary.

d Mary is slapping John.

The element of meaning which identifies the property or relationship is called the predicate: the words hungry, snores, loves, and is slapping express the predicates in the above examples. The individuals (or participants) of whom the property or relationship is claimed to be true (John and Mary in these examples) are called arguments. The grammatical unit which expresses a single predicate and its arguments is called a simple sentence, or clause.

As we can already see from example above, different predicates require different numbers of arguments: hungry and snores require just one, loves and slapping require two. Some predicates may not require any arguments at all. For example, in many languages comments about the weather (e.g. It is raining, or It is dark, or It is hot) could be expressed by a single word, a bare predicate with no arguments. When a predicate is asserted to be true of the right number of arguments, the result is a well-formed proposition

1.4.PARTS OF SPEECH

Although English has hundreds of thousands of words, every one can be placed into at least one of eight groups, or classifications. The system of classifying words based on their function is known as the parts of speech. There is a long tradition of classifying words, for the purpose of grammatical description, into word classes (or parts of speech) noun, verb, adjective, adverb, pronoun, preposition, conjunction, numeral, article, interjection. While each of these terms is useful, and they are indispensable for practical purposes, their status in a fully explicit description of a language or in

general grammatical theory remains disputed. Although most of the traditional word class distinctions can be made in most languages, the cross-linguistic applicability of these notions is often problematic.

Words can be classified by various criteria, such as phonological properties (e.g., monosyllabic vs. polysyllabic words), social factors (e.g., general vs. technical vocabulary), and language history (e.g.,loanwords vs. native words). All of these are classes of words, but as a technical term, word class refers to the traditional categories below (plus perhaps a few others), most of which go back to the Greek and Roman grammarians. In addition to the terms, a few examples are given of each word class.

The special status of the classification derives from the fact that these are the most important classes of words for the purpose of grammatical description, equally relevant for morphology, syntax, and lexical semantics. This makes the classification more interesting, but also more complex and more problematic than other classifications of words. Besides the term word class, the older term part of speech (Latin pars orationis) is still often used, although it is now quite opaque (originally it referred to sentence constituents).

The term word class was introduced in the first half of the twentieth century by structuralist linguistics. Another roughly equivalent term, common especially in Chomskyan linguistics is `syntactic category' (although technically this refers not only to lexical categories such as nouns and verbs, but also to phrasal categories such as noun phrases and verb phrases).

The main two problems with this maximal wordclass are (a) that some of the classes intersect (e.g., the English word `there' is both a pronoun and an adverb), and (b) that the different classes do not have equal weight; while most languages have hundreds of verbs and thousands of nouns, there are far fewer pronouns and conjunctions, and often only a handful of adpositions and articles. The solution that is often adopted explicitly for the second problem is to make a further subdivision into major word classes (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs) and minor word classes (all others). (Alternative terms for major and minor classes are content words}function words and, especially in Chomskyan linguistics, lexical categories}functional categories.)

The solution to the first problem that is implicit in much contemporary work is that pronouns and numerals are not regarded as word classes on a par with nouns, verbs, prepositions, and so on. Instead, they are regarded as semantically highly specific subclasses of the other classes. For instance, there are nominal pronouns (e.g., he, who), adjectival pronouns (e.g., this, which, such) and adverbial pronouns (e.g., here, thus). Similarly, there are adjectival numerals ( fifth), adverbial numerals (twice), and nominal numerals (a fifth). Some languages also have verbal pronouns and verbal numerals. Accordingly, this article will not deal withpronouns and num erals.

In all languages, words (and entire word classes) can be divided into the two broad classes of content words and function words. Nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs are content words, and adpositions, conjunctions, and articles, as well as auxiliaries and words classified as `particles' are function words. While there is sometimes disagreement over the assignment of words and even entire word classes to these two broad categories, their usefulness and importance is not in doubt. Content word classes are generally open (i.e., they accept new members in principle) and large (comprising hundreds or thousands of words), and content words tend to have a specific, concrete meaning. They tend to be fairly long (often disyllabic or longer), and their text frequency is fairly low. By contrast, function word classes are generally closed and small, and function words tend to have abstract, general meaning (or no meaning at all, but only a grammatical function in specific constructions). They tend to be quite short (rarely longer than a syllable), and their text frequency is high.

The reason why auxiliaries are not included in the traditional list of word classes is probably merely that they are not prominent in Greek and Latin grammar, but in many languages these `function verbs' are very important (English examples are be, can, must, will, should ). The class `particle' is really only a waste- basket category: function words that do not fit into any of the other classes are usually called particles (e.g., `focus particles,' such as only and also)

The precise delimitation of function words and content words is often difficult. For instance, while the conjunctions if, when, as, and because are unequivocally function words, this is less clear for words like suppose, proviided that, granted that, assuming that. And while the adpositions in, on, of, at are clearly function words, this is less clear for concerning, considering, in view of. In the case of adpositions, linguists sometimes say that there are two subclasses, `function adpositions' and `content adpositions,' analogous to the distinction between content verbs and function verbs (¯auxiliaries). Another widespread view is that word-class boundaries are not always sharp, and that there can be intermediate cases between full verbs and auxiliaries, between nouns and adpositions, and between nouns}verbs and conjunctions. Quite generally, function words arise from content words by the diachronic process of grammaticalization, and since grammaticalization is generally regarded as a gradual diachronic process, it is expected that the resulting function words form a gradient from full content words to clear function words. When grammatic- alization proceeds further, function words may become clitics and finally affixes, and again we often find intermediate cases which cannot easily be classified as words or word-part

The properties of the function words are more appropriately discussed in other contexts (e.g., auxiliaries in the context of tense and aspect, conjunctions in the context of subordinate clauses, and so on). Before asking how nouns, verbs, and adjectives are defined, it must be made clear whether a definition of these word classes in a particular language (e.g., English or Japanese) is intended, or whether we want a definition of these classes for language in general.

The widely known and much-maligned definitions of nouns as denoting `things, persons, and places,' of verbs as denoting `actions and processes,' and adjectives as denoting `properties' is, of course, hopelessly simplistic from the point of view of a particular language. In most languages, it is easy to find nouns that do not denote persons, things, or places (e.g., word, power, war), and verbs that do not denote actions or processes (e.g., know, lack, exist), and many languages also have adjectives that do not denote properties (e.g., urban, celestial, vehicular). However, if the goal is to define nouns, verbs, and adjectives in general terms that are not restricted to a particular language, these simplistic notional de®nitions do not fare so badly.

In the first part of the twentieth century, the structuralist movement emphasized the need for rigorous language-particular definitions of grammatical notions, and notionally based definitions of word classes were rejected because they patently did not work for individual languages or were hard to apply rigorously. Instead, preference was given to morphological and syntactic criteria, e.g., `if an English word has a plural in ±s, it is a noun,' or `if a word occurs in the context the¼book, it is an adjective.' But of course this practice was not new, because words like power and war have always been treated as nouns on morphological and syntactic grounds. Some older grammarians, neglecting syntax, defined nouns, verbs, and adjectives exclusively in morphological terms, and as a result nouns and adjectives were often lumped together in a single class in languages like Latin and Greek, where they do not differ morphologically. But the predominant practice in Western grammar has been to give priority to the syntactic criterion. For instance, adjectives in German have a characteristic pattern of inection that makes them quite unlike nouns, and this morphological pattern could be used to define the class (e.g., roter}rote}rotes `red (masculine}feminine}neuter)'). However, a few property words are indeclinable and are always invariant (e.g., rosa, as in die rosa Tapete `the pink wallpaper'). These words would not be adjectives according to a strictly morphological definition, but in fact everybody regards words like rosa as adjectives, because they can occur in the same syntactic environments as other adjectives.

CHAPTER 2 APPROACHES TO TEACHING GRAMMAR

One of the most contentious issues in the field of language pedagogy and second language acquisition concerns whether one should teach grammar in the classroom. At one extreme, there are those who adopt what Ellis (1995, 1999) calls the zero position. They maintain that grammar does not need to be taught since it contributes little to the acquisition of communicative competence in a second language. Krashen (1982), for instance, consistently argues that grammatical competence can only be acquired if learners are exposed to comprehensible, meaningful, and relevant input materials. Thus, input is deemed sufficient to aid acquisition, and direct intervention of grammar instruction is felt unnecessary. At the other end of the spectrum of pedagogy, there are those who are in favor of grammar instruction. White (1987) claims that grammatical features cannot be acquired simply by exposing learners to comprehensible input, and thus formal instruction is necessary. Celce-Murcia (1991) also asserts that though the debate as to whether or not grammar should be taught still continues, grammar instruction should not be dismissed. Similarly, Larsen-Freeman (1995), while acknowledging the possibility of natural acquisition of grammar, concurs with the teaching of grammatical features. Drawing on the insights from research on language acquisition, Ellis (2002) states that learning a language in a natural setting (i.e., without formal instruction) does not guarantee the acquisition of grammatical competence as adult learners often fail to achieve high levels of accuracy.

With these two conflicting views, language teachers, particularly those who teach English as a foreign language, might be in a state of uncertainty and might ask themselves which of these perspectives is correct. If they adhere to the former, they do not have to bother with the formal instruction. What they have to do is to provide learners with meaningful input materials, through which grammatical features can be unconsciously acquired.

The strong theoretical foundations in favor of formal instruction derive primarily from the psycholinguistic perspective, or, to be precise, from second language acquisition theory. This theory has been put forward as a compelling argument to justify formal instruction in second and foreign language contexts. One of the well-known theories in second language acquisition is input processing theory (Van Patten, 1996). This theory stresses the importance of manipulating input in the process of students’ interlanguage development. The relevance of this theory in grammar teaching is that as students’ interlanguage development can be readily influenced by manipulating input (Ellis, 1995). Pushing learners to consciously attend to specific grammatical features available in the input can promote noticing, which is necessary for the mental representation of the features and the internalization of them. Inducing noticing in learners is deemed critical since it becomes one of the necessary conditions for input to become intake—a subset of input that has been attended or comprehended.

One of the input processing studies was conducted by White, Spada, Lightbown, and Ranta (1991). In an attempt to look at the potential effectiveness of form-focused instruction and correction for the acquisition of English question formation, they compared two groups of French- speaking learners of English: the first group (the experimental group) was exposed to a variety of input enhancement activities on question formation, and their performance – both on paper and pencil tasks as well as on oral communication – was assessed on a pre-post test basis, while the second group (the control group) was given no grammar instruction. The performance of the two groups was then compared. Based on their study, they found that grammar instruction could help learners develop syntactic accuracy, and that the instructed group significantly outperformed the uninstructed group.

Another theory closely related to input processing theory is the Universal Grammar (UG). This theory is also used as the basis that provides a compelling argument in support of formal instruction. According to this theory, human beings are biologically endowed with certain abstract principles together with knowledge of the parameters through which the principles are realized in different language (Ellis, 1999). The learner is said to possess the same language principles irrespective of the languages they learn, the difference being the setting for the language parameters (Cook, 1994). The implication of the UG theory in language pedagogy is that learners need to be exposed to minimal input (in the form of explicit grammar instruction) so that the parameter setting can be activated, and this activation eventually enables them to select the possible parameters.

Another theory that provides justification for formal instruction is called consciousness-raising (C-R). This is a type of form-focused instruction that attempts to draw the learner’s attention to the formal properties of the target language (Rutherford & Sharwood Smith, 1985; Ellis, 1997b), without necessarily requiring them to produce the features.

This can be done by supplying the learner with either positive or negative evidence. “Flooding” the learner at the input stage constitutes positive evidence, while drawing the learner’s attention on the non-occurrence or ill-formedness of the grammatical features in the target language constitutes negative evidence. Negative evidence is, in fact, another term for explicit correction of the learner’s misapprehensions of the grammatical structures.

The use of negative evidence is necessary and even desirable for at least two reasons. First, positive evidence in the form of “input flooding”, although helpful, may not be sufficient to destabilize interlanguage and prevent fossilization (Ellis, 1997b). Second, negative evidence provides the learner with feedback they need to reject or modify their hypotheses about how the target language is formed or functions (Larsen-Freeman, 2001).

The question of when formal instruction should be taught is hotly debated in second or foreign language pedagogy. This controversial issue still persists today. Those espousing the dictum of behaviorism might concur with the teaching of grammar at the early stage of language learning.

The underlying construct of this view is that correct and accurate production of a language from the start should be encouraged so as to become the learner’s habit. As Brooks (1960) asserts, “Error, like sin, is to be avoided at all cost.” This perspective, nevertheless, runs counter to the current pedagogical view. The occurrence of error in language learning is considered normal because as Corder (1981:6) points out, “We live in an imperfect world, and consequently errors will always occur in spite of our best efforts.” Given these contradictory views, the key question now is when grammar should be taught. The variable most frequently referred to in arguments refuting the ineffectiveness of formal instruction is related to the learner’s stage of development. Grammar instruction, as Pienemann (1984, 1985) argues, can be successful in promoting language acquisition provided that the learner’s interlanguage is close to the point when the structure to be taught is acquired in the natural setting. This contention leads Pienemann to propose the so-called “teachability hypothesis”, which suggests that the teaching of grammatical structures of that are beyond the student’s current stage of development may not be effective. In other words, there are psycholinguistic constraints which govern the process of acquiring grammatical structures. It is these constraints that are often used as the basis of invalidating the teaching of grammatical structures to the beginners.

Ellis (2002) proposes two reasons for not assisting beginners with grammar instruction. For one thing, learners do not need grammar instruction to acquire considerable grammatical competence. For another, the early stage of L2 acquisition is naturally characterized by agrammaticality (not really synonymous with ungrammaticality). Language learners begin by learning formulaic chunks, stringing them into sequences that convey meaning. This is demonstrated in the following utterances, typical of children (see Ellis, 2002:23):

Me no (= I don’t have any crayon)

Me milkman (= I want to be milkman)

Dinner time you out (= It is dinner time so you have to go out)

Me no school (= I am not coming to school on Monday)

However, it is important to note here that we cannot simply overgeneralize the above proposal and apply it to all learning contexts. The relative truth of the first reason should not be taken for granted, though it is applicable in certain contexts. However, the ways we assist the beginners with formal instructions proposed here are different from what has been generally assumed. We are certainly not interested in nor do we support the teaching of highly conscious metalinguistic learning of rules or paradigm to the beginners. Nor do we wish to arm the learner with sophisticated and detailed analysis of grammatical rules as mandated by grammar-translation methodology. What we intend to do is to equip the beginner learner with an explicit knowledge of grammatical forms in the framework of a communicative paradigm, which stresses the meaningfulness of the language. There are many ways of drawing the learner’s attention to grammatical forms without indulging in metalinguistic discussion. Using typographical conventions such as underlining or capitalizing is one way (Rutherford and Sharwood Smith, 1985), and exposing the learner to instances of grammatical forms that are germane to the topics they experience everyday and that have a high frequency of occurrence is another. Granted that the rules being taught have a communicative need as well as communicative value and are not so metalinguistically obtuse that the learner must struggle with them, they can offer linguistic insights in a more efficacious manner (Robinson 1996, cited in Larsen-Freeman, 2001).

In the traditional approach of language teaching, grammar was taught to the learner by focusing only on linguistic forms, i.e., the analysis of language elements (e.g., sounds, structure, and vocabulary). However, with the advent of communicative methodology, the goal of language study shifted its orientation from focusing on forms to focusing on meaning and communication. As a result, language is seen as consisting of three interacting dimensions: form (accuracy), meaning (meaningfulness), and function (appropriacy). It is for this reason that grammar is conceived as encompassing not only form (morphosyntactic), but also meaning (semantics) and context of use (pragmatics) (Celce-Murcia, 1991; Celce- Murcia & Larsen-Freeman, 1999; Larsen-Freeman, 2001).

Apparently, other things being equal, grammatical analysis for language learners should embrace the three interacting dimensions of form, meaning and function; that is, the selection of the grammatical structures intended to be taught should take into account these three dimensions (see Larsen-Freeman, 2001 for discussion of ways to teach the grammatical points using the three perspectives of form, meaning and function).

Another possible technique is using what Ellis (1995) calls interpretation activities, which are designed to draw the learner’s attention on the linguistic features in the input by making learners notice and understand the features and the meanings rather than producing them. Noticing, then, becomes a central concern, because as Ellis posits, “no noticing, no acquisition.” (p.89). However, as Ellis (2002) emphasizes, interpretation activities involve more than just simply comprehending the linguistic features; they also require learners to process them. As such, interpretation activities employ bottom-up processing (i.e., attending to the linguistic features) rather than top-down processing (i.e., using the contextual information to process linguistic features). What interpretation tasks and consciousness-raising have in common is that they belong to input processing instruction, and they defer the production of the target language. The difference lies on the fact that consciousness-raising focuses primarily on the linguistics forms, while interpretation tasks deal with not only forms but also meaning. However, the extent to which these two proposed form-focused instructions can effectively assist the acquisition process remains unclear.

In a more recent treatment of the role of formal instruction, grammar points are taught through contextual analysis, in which grammatical features are presented by taking into account relevant contextual information and the entire co-text (Celce-Murcia, 2002). By having students examine a form, its distribution and its meaning as well as its use in a context. The teaching of grammatical features beyond the sentence level is believed to offer an advantage since it has been convincingly argued that the majority of grammatical problems that teachers of English as a second or foreign language have to deal with are not context free but rather are clearly functionally motivated (Celce-Murcia, 2002), and miscommunications often occur not at the morphosyntactic (formal) level of utterance decoding, but rather at the pragmatic (functional) level of utterance interpretation (Toth, 2004).

2.1.THE GRAMMAR TRANSLATION METHOD 

At the height of the Communicative Approach to language learning in the 1980s and early 1990s it became fashionable in some quarters to deride so-called "old-fashioned" methods and, in particular, something broadly labelled "Grammar Translation". There were numerous reasons for this but principally it was felt that translation itself was an academic exercise rather than one which would actually help learners to use language, and an overt focus on grammar was to learn about the target language rather than to learn it.

As with many other methods and approaches, Grammar Translation tended to be referred to in the past tense as if it no longer existed and had died out to be replaced world-wide by the fun and motivation of the communicative classroom. If we examine the principal features of Grammar Translation, however, we will see that not only has it not disappeared but that many of its characteristics have been central to language teaching throughout the ages and are still valid today.

The Grammar Translation method embraces a wide range of approaches but, broadly speaking, foreign language study is seen as a mental discipline, the goal of which may be to read literature in its original form or simply to be a form of intellectual development. The basic approach is to analyze and study the grammatical rules of the language, usually in an order roughly matching the traditional order of the grammar of Latin, and then to practise manipulating grammatical structures through the means of translation both into and from the mother tongue.

The method is very much based on the written word and texts are widely in evidence. A typical approach would be to present the rules of a particular item of grammar, illustrate its use by including the item several times in a text, and practise using the item through writing sentences and translating it into the mother tongue. The text is often accompanied by a vocabulary list consisting of new lexical items used in the text together with the mother tongue translation. Accurate use of language items is central to this approach.

Generally speaking, the medium of instruction is the mother tongue, which is used to explain conceptual problems and to discuss the use of a particular grammatical structure. It all sounds rather dull but it can be argued that the Grammar Translation method has over the years had a remarkable success. Millions of people have successfully learnt foreign languages to a high degree of proficiency and, in numerous cases, without any contact whatsoever with native speakers of the language (as was the case in the former Soviet Union, for example).

There are certain types of learner who respond very positively to a grammatical syllabus as it can give them both a set of clear objectives and a clear sense of achievement. Other learners need the security of the mother tongue and the opportunity to relate grammatical structures to mother tongue equivalents. Above all, this type of approach can give learners a basic foundation upon which they can then build their communicative skills.

Applied wholesale of course, it can also be boring for many learners and a quick look at foreign language course books from the 1950s and 1960s, for example, will soon reveal the non-communicative nature of the language used. Using the more enlightened principles of the Communicative Approach, however, and combining these with the systematic approach of Grammar Translation, may well be the perfect combination for many learners. On the one hand they have motivating communicative activities that help to promote their fluency and, on the other, they gradually acquire a sound and accurate basis in the grammar of the language. This combined approach is reflected in many of the EFL course books currently being published and, amongst other things, suggests that the Grammar Translation method, far from being dead, is very much alive and kicking as we enter the 21st century.

Without a sound knowledge of the grammatical basis of the language it can be argued that the learner is in possession of nothing more than a selection of communicative phrases which are perfectly adequate for basic communication but which will be found wanting when the learner is required to perform any kind of sophisticated linguistic task. 

2.2.THE AUDIOLINGUAL METHOD 

The Coleman Report in 1929 recommended a reading-based approach to foreign language teaching for use in American schools and colleges. This emphasized teaching the comprehension of texts. Teachers taught from books containing short reading passages in the foreign language, preceded by lists of vocabulary. Rapid silent reading was the goal, but in practice teachers often resorted to discussing the content of the passage in English. Those involved in the teaching of English as a second language in the United States between the two world wars used either a modified Direct Method approach, a reading-based approach, or a reading-oral approach (Darian 1972). Unlike the approach that was being developed by British applied linguists during the same period, there was little attempt to treat language content systematically. Sentence patterns and grammar were introduced at the whim of the textbook writer. There was no standardization of the vocabulary or grammar that was included. Neither was there a consensus on what grammar, sentence patterns, and vocabulary were rnost important for beginning, intermediate, or advanced learners.

But the entry of the United States into World War had a significant effect on language teaching in America. To supply the U.S. government with personnel who were fluent in German, French, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Malay, and other languages, and who could work as interpreters, code-room assistants, and translators, it was necessary to set up a special language training program. The government commissioned American universities to develop foreign language programs for inilitary personnel. Thus the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP) was establislied in 1942. Fifty-five American universities were involved in the program by the beginning of 1943.

The objective of the army programs was for students to attain conversational proficiency in a variety of foreign languages. Since this was not the goal of conventional foreign language courses in the United States, few approaches were necessary. Linguists, such as Leonnrd Bloomfield at Yale, had already developed training prograins as part of their liniguistic research that were designed to give linguists and anthropologists mastery of American Indian languagesand other languager they were studying. Textbooks did not exist for such languages. The technique Bloomfield and his colleagues used was sometimes known as the "informant method," since it used a native speaker of the language – the informant – who served as a source of phrases and vocabulary and who provided sentences for imitation, and a linguist, who supervised the learning experience. The linguist did not necessarily know the language but was trained in eliciting the basic structure of the language from the informant. Thus the students and the linguist were able to take part in guided conversation with the informant, and together they gradually learned how to speak the language, as well as to understand much of its basic grammar. Students in such courses studied ten hours a day, six days a week. There were generally fifteen hours of drill with native speakers and twenty to thirty hours of private study spread over two to three six-week sessions. This was the system adopted by the army, and in small classes of mature and highly motivated students, excellent results were often achieved.

However, it did convince a nurnber of prominent linguists of the value of an intensive, oral-based approach to the learning of a foreign language. Linguists and applied linguists during this period were becoming increasingly involved in the teaching of English as a foreign language. There was a growing demand for foreign expertise in the teaching of English. These factors led to the emergence of the American approach to ESL, which by the mid-fifties had become Audiolingualism.

The Army Method or also the New Key is a style of teaching used in teaching foreign languages. It is based on behaviorist ideology, which professes that certain traits of living things, and in this case humans, could be trained through a system of reinforcement—correct use of a trait would receive positive feedback while incorrect use of that trait would receive negative feedback. This approach to language learning was similar to another, earlier method called the Direct Method. Like the Direct Method, the Audio-Lingual Method advised that students be taught a language directly, without using the students'''' native language to explain new words or grammar in the target language. However, unlike the Direct Method, the Audio-lingual Method didn’t focus on teaching vocabulary. Rather, the teacher drilled students in the use of grammar. Applied to language instruction, and often within the context of the language lab, this means that the instructor would present the correct model of a sentence and the students would have to repeat it. The teacher would then continue by presenting new words for the students to sample in the same structure. In audio-lingualism, there is no explicit grammar instruction—everything is simply memorized in form.

The idea is for the students to practice the particular construct until they can use it spontaneously. In this manner, the lessons are built on static drills in which the students have little or no control on their own output; the teacher is expecting a particular response and not providing that will result in a student receiving negative feedback. Charles Fries, the director of the English Language Institute at the University of Michigan, the first of its kind in the United States, believed that learning structure or grammar was the starting point for the student. In other words, it was the students’ job to orally recite the basic sentence patterns and grammatical structures. The students were only given “enough vocabulary to make such drills possible.” (Richards, J.C. et-al. 1986). Fries later included principles for behavioral psychology, as developed by B.F. Skinner, into this method.

2.3. TOTAL PHYSICAL RESPONSE THEORY 

Originally developed by James Asher, an American professor of psychology, in the 1960s, Total Physical Response (TPR) is based on the theory that the memory is enhanced through association with physical movement. It is also closely associated with theories of mother tongue language acquisition in very young children, where they respond physically to parental commands, such as "Pick it up" and "Put it down". TPR as an approach to teaching a second language is based, first and foremost, on listening and this is linked to physical actions which are designed to reinforce comprehension of particular basic items. A typical TPR activity might contain instructions such as "Walk to the door", "Open the door", "Sit down" and "Give Maria your dictionary". The students are required to carry out the instructions by physically performing the activities. Given a supportive classroom environment, there is little doubt that such activities can be both motivating and fun, and it is also likely that with even a fairly limited amount of repetition basic instructions such as these could be assimilated by the learners, even if they were unable to reproduce them accurately themselves.

The above examples, however, also illustrate some of the potential weaknesses inherent in the approach. Firstly, from a purely practical point of view, it is highly unlikely that even the most skilled and inventive teacher could sustain a lesson stage involving commands and physical responses for more than a few minutes before the activity became repetitious for the learners, although the use of situational role-play could provide a range of contexts for practising a wider range of lexis. Secondly, it is fairly difficult to give instructions without using imperatives, so the language input is basically restricted to this single form. Thirdly, it is quite difficult to see how this approach could extend beyond beginner level. Fourthly, the relevance of some of the language used in TPR activities to real-world learner needs is questionable. Finally, moving from the listening and responding stage to oral production might be workable in a small group of learners but it would appear to be problematic when applied to a class of 30 students, for example.

In defence of the approach, however, it should be emphasized that it was never intended by its early proponents that it should extend beyond beginner level. (In theory it might be possible to develop it by making the instructions lexically more complex (for example, "Pick up the toothpaste and unscrew the cap"), but this does seem to be stretching the point somewhat). In addition, a course designed around TPR principles would not be expected to follow a TPR syllabus exclusively, and Asher himself suggested that TPR should be used in association with other methods and techniques. In terms of the theoretical basis of the approach, the idea of listening preceding production and learners only being required to speak when they are ready to do so closely resembles elements of Stephen Krashen’s Natural Approach.

Short TPR activities, used judiciously and integrated with other activities can be both highly motivating and linguistically purposeful. Careful choice of useful and communicative language at beginner level can make TPR activities entirely valid. Many learners respond well to kinesthetic activities and they can genuinely serve as a memory aid. A lot of classroom warmers and games are based, consciously or unconsciously, on TPR principles. As with other "fringe" methods, however, wholesale adoption of this approach, to the total exclusion of any other, would probably not be sustainable for very long

Asher does not directly discuss the nature of language or how languages are organized. However, the labeling and ordering of TPR classroom drills seem to be built on assumptions that owe much to structuralist or grammar-based views of language. Asher states that "most of the grammatical structure of the target language and hundreds of vocabulary items can be learned from the skillful use of the imperative by the instructor" (1977: 4). He views the verb, and particularly the verb in the imperative, as the central linguistic motif around which language use and learning are organized.

Asher sees language as being composed of abstractions and non-abstractions, with non-abstractions being most specifically represented by concrete nouns and imperative verbs. He believes that learners can acquire a "detailed cognitive map" as well as "the grammatical structure of a language" without recourse to abstractions.

Abstractions should be delayed until students have internalized a detailed cognitive map of the target language. Abstractions are not necessary for people to decode the grammatical structure of a language. Once students have internalized the code, abstractions can be introduced and explained in the target language.

This is an interesting claim about language but one that is insufficiently detailed to test. For example, are tense, aspect, articles, and so forth, abstractions, and if so, what sort of "detailed cognitive map" could be constructed without them?

Despite Asher's belief in the central role of comprehension in language learning, he does not elaborate on the relation between comprehension, production, and communication (he has no theory of speech acts or their equivalents, for example), although in advanced TPR lessons imperatives are used to initiate different speech acts, such as requests ("John, ask Mary to walk to the door"), and apologies ("Ned, tell Jack you're sorry").

Asher also refers in passing to the fact that language can be internalized as wholes or chunks, rather than as single lexical items, and, as such, links are possible to more theoretical proposals of this kind, as well as to work on the role of prefabricated patterns in language learning and language use Asher does not elaborate on his view of chunking, however, nor on other aspects of the theory of language underlying Total Physical Response. We have only clues to what a more fully developed language theory might resemble when spelled out by Asher and his supporters.

Asher's language learning theories are reminiscent of the views of other behavioral psychologists. For example, the psychologist Arthur Jensen proposed a seven-stage model to describe the development of verbal learning in children. The first stage he calls Sv-R type learning , which the educational psychologist John DeCecco interprets as follows:

In Jensen's notation, Sv refers to a verbal stimulus—a syllable, a word, a phrase, and so on. R refers to the physical movements the child makes in response to the verbal stimulus (or Sv). The movement may involve touching, grasping, or otherwise manipulating some object. For example, mother may tell Percival (age 1) to get the ball, and Percival, distinguishing the sound "ball" from the clatter of other household noises, responds by fetching the ball and bringing it to his mother. Ball is the Sv (verbal stimulus), and Percival's action is the response. At Percival's age, children respond to words about four times faster than they respond to other sounds in their environment. It is not clear why this is so, but it is possible that the reinforcing effects of making proper responses to verbal stimuli are sufficiently strong to cause a rapid development of this behavior. Sv-R learning represents, then, the simplest form of verbal behavior.

This is a very similar position to Asher's view of child language acquisition. Although learning psychologists such as Jensen have since abandoned such simple stimulus-response models of language acquisition and development, and although linguists have rejected them as incapable of accounting for the fundamental features of language learning and use, Asher still sees a stimulus-response view as providing the learning theory underlying language teaching pedagogy. In addition, Asher has elaborated an account of what he feels facilitates or inhibits foreign language learning. For this dimension of his learning theory he draws on three rather influential learning hypotheses :

1.      There exists a specific innate bio-program for language learning, which defines an optimal  path for first and second language development.

2.      Brain lateralization defines different learning functions in the left- and right-brain hemispheres.

3.      Stress (an affective filter) intervenes between the act of learning and what is to be learned; the lower the stress, the greater the learning.

Let us consider how Asher views each of these in turn.

Asher's Total Physical Response is a "Natural Method" in as much as Asher sees first and second language learning as parallel processes. Second language teaching and learning should reflect the naturalistic processes of first language learning. Asher sees three processes as central,

(a) Children develop listening competence before they develop the ability to speak. At the early stages of first language acquisition they can understand complex utterances that they cannot spontaneously produce or imitate. Asher speculates that during this period of listening, the learner may be making a mental "blueprint" of the language that will make it possible to produce spoken language later,

(b) Children's ability in listening comprehension is acquired because children are required to respond physically to spoken language in the form of parental commands,

(c) Once a foundation in listening comprehension has been established, speech evolves naturally and effortlessly out of it. As we noted earlier, these principles are held by proponents of a number of other method proposals and are referred to collectively as a Comprehension Approach.

Parallel to the processes of first language learning, the foreign language learner should first internalize a "cognitive map" of the target language through listening exercises. Listening should be accompanied by physical movement. Speech and other productive skills should come later. The speech-production mechanisms will begin to function spontaneously when the basic foundations of language are established through listening training. Asher bases these assumptions on his belief in the existence in the human brain of a bio-program for language, which defines an optimal order for first and second language learning.

A reasonable hypothesis is that the brain and nervous system are biologically programmed to acquire language … in a particular sequence and in a particular mode. The sequence is listening before speaking and the mode is to synchronize language with the individual's body.

Asher sees Total Physical Response as directed to right-brain learning, whereas most second language teaching methods are directed to left-brain learning. Asher refers to neurological studies of the brains of cats and studies of an epileptic boy whose corpus callosum was surgically divided. Asher interprets these as demonstrating that the brain is divided into hemispheres according to function, with language activities centralized in the right hemisphere. Drawing on work by Jean Piaget, Asher holds that the child language learner acquires language through motor movement – a right-hemisphere activity. Right-hemisphere activities must occur before the left hemisphere can process language for production. Similarly, the adult should proceed to language mastery through right-hemisphere motor activities, while the left hemisphere watches and learns. When a sufficient amount of right-hemisphere learning has taken place, the left hemisphere will be triggered to produce language and to initiate other, more abstract language processes.

An important condition for successful language learning is the absence of stress. First language acquisition takes place in a stress-free environment, according to Asher, whereas the adult language learning environment often causes considerable stress and anxiety. The key to stress-free learning is to tap into the natural bio-program for language development and thus to recapture the relaxed and pleasurable experiences that accompany first language learning. By focusing on meaning interpreted through movement, rather than on language forms studied in the abstract, the learner is said to be liberated from self-conscious and stressful situations and is able to devote full energy to learning.

The general objectives of Total Physical Response are to teach oral proficiency at a beginning level. Comprehension is a means to an end, and the ultimate aim is to teach basic speaking skills. A TPR course aims to produce learners who are capable of an uninhibited communication that is intelligible to a native speaker. Specific instructional objectives are not elaborated, for these will depend on the particular needs of the learners. Whatever goals are set, however, must be attainable through the use of action-based drills in the imperative form.

The type of syllabus Asher uses can be inferred from an analysis of the exercise types employed in TPR classes. This analysis reveals the use of a sentence-based syllabus, with grammatical and lexical criteria being primary in selecting teaching items. Unlike methods that operate from a grammar-based or structural view of the core elements of language, Total Physical Response requires initial attention to meaning rather than to the form of items. Grammar is thus taught inductively. Grammatical features and vocabulary items are selected not according to their frequency of need or use in target language situations, but according to the situations in which they can be used in the classroom and the ease with which they can be learned.

The criterion for including a vocabulary item or grammatical feature at a particular point in training is ease of assimilation by students. If an item is not learned rapidly, this means that the students are not ready for that item. Withdraw it and try again at a future time in the training program.

Asher also suggests that a fixed number of items be introduced at a time, to facilitate ease of differentiation and assimilation. "In an hour, it is possible for students to assimilate 12 to 36 new lexical items depending upon the size of the group and the stage of training". Asher sees a need for attention to both the global meaning of language as well as to the finer details of its organization. The movement of the body seems to be a powerful mediator for the understanding, organization and storage of macro-details of linguistic input. Language can be internalized in chunks, but alternative strategies must be developed for fine-tuning to macro-details. A course designed around Total Physical Response principles, however, would not be expected to follow a TPR syllabus exclusively.

We are not advocating only one strategy of learning. Even if the imperative is the major or minor format of training, variety is critical for maintaining continued student interest. The imperative is a powerful facilitator of learning, but it should be used in combination with many other techniques. The optimal combination will vary from instructor to instructor and class to class.

Imperative drills are the major classroom activity in Total Physical Response. They are typically used to elicit physical actions and activity on the part of the learners. Conversational dialogues are delayed until after about 120 hours of instruction. Asher's rationale for this is that "everyday conversations are highly abstract and disconnected; therefore to understand them requires a rather advanced internalization of the target language". Other class activities include role plays and slide presentations. Role plays center on everyday situations, such as at the restaurant, supermarket, or gas station. The slide presentations are used to provide a visual center for teacher narration, which is followed by commands, and for questions to students, such as "Which person in the picture is the salesperson?". Reading and writing activities may also be employed to further consolidate structures and vocabulary, and as follow-ups to oral imperative drills.

Learners in Total Physical Response have the primary roles of listener and performer. They listen attentively and respond physically to commands given by the teacher. Learners are required to respond both individually and collectively. Learners have little influence over the content of learning, since content is determined by the teacher, who must follow the imperative-based format for lessons. Learners are also expected to recognize and respond to novel combinations of previously taught items:

Novel utterances are recombinations of constituents you have used directly in training. For instance, you directed students with 'Walk to the table!' and 'Sit on the chair!'. These are familiar to students since they have practiced responding to them. Now, will a student understand if you surprise the individual with an unfamiliar utterance that you created by recombining familiar elements (e.g. 'Sit on the table!').

Learners are also required to produce novel combinations of their own. Learners monitor and evaluate their own progress. They are encouraged to speak when they feel ready to speak – that is, when a sufficient basis in the language has been internalized.

The teacher plays an active and direct role in Total Physical Response. "The instructor is the director of a stage play in which the students are the actors". It is the teacher who decides what to teach, who models and presents the new materials, and who selects supporting materials for classroom use. The teacher is encouraged to be well prepared and well organized so that the lesson flows smoothly and predictably. Asher recommends detailed lesson plans: “It is wise to write  out the exact utterances you will be using and especially the novel commands because the action is so fast-moving there is usually not time for you to create spontaneously". Classroom interaction and turn taking is teacher rather than learner directed. Even when learners interact with other learners it is usually the teacher who initiates the interaction:

Teacher:  Maria, pick up the box of rice and hand it to Miguel and ask Miguel to read the  price.

Asher stresses, however, that the teacher's role is not so much to teach as to provide opportunities for learning. The teacher has the responsibility of providing the best kind of exposure to language so that the learner can internalize the basic rules of the target language. Thus the teacher controls the language input the learners receive, providing the raw material for the "cognitive map" that the learners will construct in their own minds. The teacher should also allow speaking abilities to develop in learners at the learners' own natural pace.

In giving feedback to learners, the teacher should follow the example of parents giving feedback to their children. At first, parents correct very little, but as the child grows older, parents are said to tolerate fewer mistakes in speech. Similarly teachers should refrain from too much correction in the early stages and should not interrupt to correct errors, since this will inhibit learners. As time goes on, however, more teacher intervention is expected, as the learners' speech becomes "fine tuned."

Asher cautions teachers about preconceptions that he feels could hinder the successful implementation of TPR principles. First, he cautions against the "illusion of simplicity," where the teacher underestimates the difficulties involved in learning a foreign language. This results in progressing at too fast a pace and failing to provide a gradual transition from one teaching stage to another. The teacher should also avoid having too narrow a tolerance for errors in speaking.

You begin with a wide tolerance for student speech errors, but as training progresses, the tolerance narrows…. Remember that as students progress in their training, more and more attention units are freed to process feedback from the instructor. In the beginning, almost no attention units are available to hear the instructor's attempts to correct distortions in speech. All attention is directed to producing utterances. Therefore the student cannot attend efficiently to the instructor's corrections.

There is generally no basic text in a Total Physical Response course. Materials and realia play an increasing role, however, in later learning stages. For absolute beginners, lessons may not require the use of materials, since the teacher's voice, actions, and gestures may be a sufficient basis for classroom activities. Later the teacher may use common classroom objects, such as books, pens, cups, furniture. As the course develops, the teacher will need to make or collect supporting materials to support teaching points. These may include pictures, realia, slides, and word charts. Asher has developed TPR student kits that focus on specific situations, such as the home, the supermarket, the beach. Students may use the kits to construct scenes (e.g., "Put the stove in the kitchen"). Asher provides a lesson-by-lesson account of a course taught according to TPR principles, which serves as a source of information on the procedures used in the TPR classroom.

Total Physical Response is in a sense a revival and extension of Palmer and Palmer's English Through Actions, updated with references to more recent psychological theories. It has enjoyed some popularity because of its support by those who emphasize the role of comprehension in second language acquisition. Krashen (1981), for example, regards provision of comprehensible input and reduction of stress as keys to successful language acquisition, and he sees performing physical actions in the target language as a means of making input comprehensible and minimizing stress. The experimental support for the effectiveness of Total Physical Response is sketchy (as it is for most methods) and typically deals with only the very beginning stages of learning. Proponents of Communicative Language Teaching would question the relevance to real-world learner needs of the TPR syllabus and the utterances and sentences used within it. Asher himself, however, has stressed that Total Physical Response should be used in association with other methods and techniques. Indeed, practitioners of TPR typically follow this recommendation, suggesting that for many teachers TPR represents a useful set of techniques and is compatible with other approaches to teaching. TPR practices therefore may be effective for reasons other than those proposed by Asher and do not necessarily demand commitment to the learning theories used to justify them.

2.4.THE SILENT WAY 

The idea that a foreign language could be learned by memorising lists of vocabulary and grammar rules and by continual reference to one's native tongue has been rejected by most teachers of foreign languages today. Of the many alternative methods in use now, most have common basic elements: the learning of phrases and sentences instead of single words, the infrequent use of the native tongue, the emphasis on the spoken language, etc., but all still rely on memory as the key to mastery and include a variety of tools to aid memory, including video and audio tapes, drills and exercises. At the same time many of these new methods claim to teach the foreign language in imitation or simulation of the way a baby learns his native tongue.

These approaches overlook some very basic truths. If one considers speaking one's native tongue it becomes immediately clear that one does not remember it, one uses it. Situations trigger verbal responses. It is also evident that memory is one of our weakest faculties and therefore makes a poor basis for learning.

In all languages there are two kinds of words; those which can be simply substituted one for another from one language to the next, and those which cannot be dealt with in this way. The first group includes all names of objects that belong to the environments of the people using the language in question. Most nouns are in this category. These words can be matched in a one-to-one correspondence and we could conceive of them as being in vocabularies only requiring either to be recalled or looked-up. The second category of words is the one that generates the problems in language learning. Since it is not possible to resort to a one-to-one correspondence, the only way open is to reach the area of meaning that the words cover, and find in oneself whether this is a new experience which yields something of the spirit of the language, or whether there is an equivalent experience in one's own language but expressed differently. To make sense of an original text written by a native, one needs much more than a morphological knowledge of the language and the possession of a set of equivalents.

If we consider the problems met in the acquisition of the second group of words mentioned above, it seems obvious that recourse to one's native tongue is not helpful, and the language ought to be blocked. But the acquisition of the mother tongue brings with it an awareness of what language is and it is this that must be retained; it is by keeping in touch with this awareness that a student who has already mastered his first language (at an average age of four or five years old) is in an appreciably stronger position when it comes to tackling a second.

Awareness of what language is includes the use of non-verbal components of language: melody, rhythm, intonation, breathing, inflection, etc. We could add to this awareness connected to the reading of a language: the conventions of writing, the combinations of letters to form the signs of different sounds and the possibility of one sound being represented by more than one combination.

The Silent Way is the name of a method of language teaching devised by Caleb Gattegno. Gattegno's name is well known for his revival of interest in the use of coloured wooden sticks called cuisenaire rods and for his series Words in Colour, an approach to the teaching of initial reading in which sounds are coded by specific colours. His materials are copyrighted and marketed through an organization he operates called Educational Solutions Inc., in New York. The Silent Way represents Gattegno's venture into the field of foreign language teaching. It is based on the premise that the teacher should be silent as much as possible in the classroom and the learner should be encouraged to produce as much language as possible. Elements of the Silent Way, particularly the use of colour charts and the coloured cuisenaire rods, grew out of Gattegno's previous experience as an educational designer of reading and mathematics programs. (Cuisenaire rods were first developed by Georges Cuis­ enaire, a European educator who used them for the teaching of math. Gattegno had observed Cuisenaire and this gave him the idea for their use in language teaching.)

The Silent Way shares a great deal with other learning theories and educational philosophies. Very broadly put, the learning hypotheses underlying Gattegno's work could be stated as follows: learning is facilitated if the learner discovers or creates rather than remembers and repeats what is to be learned, learning is facilitated by accompanying (mediating) physical objects, learning is facilitated by problem solving involving the material to be learned.

The educational psychologist and philosopher Jerome Bruner distinguishes two traditions of teaching ­ that which takes place in the expository mode and that which takes place in the hypothetical mode. In the expository mode "decisions covering the mode and pace and style of exposition are principally determined by the teacher as expositor; the student is the listener." In the hypothetical mode "the teacher and the student are in a more cooperative position. The student is not a bench­bound listener, but is taking part in the "play the principal role in it" (Bruner 1966: 83)

The Silent Way belongs to the latter tradition, which views learning as a problem-solving, creative, discovering activity, in which the learner is a principal actor rather than a bench-bound listener. Bruner discusses the benefits derived from "discovery learning" under four headings: (a) the increase in intellectual potency, (b) the shift from extrinsic to intrinsic rewards, (c) the learning of heuristics by discovering, and (d) the aid to conserving memory (Bruner 1966: 83). As we shall see, Gattegno claims similar benefits from learners taught via the Silent Way. The rods and the coded-coded pronunciation charts (called Fidel charts) provide physical foci for student learning and also create mem-orable images to facilitate student recall. In psychological terms, these visual devices serve as associative mediators for student learning and recall. The psychological literature on mediation in learning and recall is voluminous but, for our purposes, can be briefly summarized in a quote from Earl Stevick:

If the use of associative mediators produces better retention than repetition does, it seems to

be the case that the quality of the mediators and the stu­dent's personal investment in them

may also have a powerful effect on mem­ory. (Stevick 1976: 25)

The Silent Way is also related to a set of premises that we have called "problem­solving approaches to learning." These premises are succinctly represented in the words of Benjamin

Franklin:

Tell me and I forget, teach me and I remember, involve me and I learn.

In the language of experimental psychology, the kind of subject involve­ment that promotes greatest learning and recall involves processing of material to be learned at the "greatest cognitive depth" (Craik 1973) or, for our purposes, involving the greatest amount of problem­ solving activity. Memory research has demonstrated that the learner's "memory benefits from creatively searching out, discovering and depicting" (Bower and Winzenz 1970). In the Silent Way, "the teacher's strict avoidance of repetition forces alertness and concentration on the part of the learners" (Gattegno 1972: 80). Similarly, the learner's grappling with the problem of forming an appropriate and meaningful utterance in a new language leads the learner to realization of the language "through his own perceptual and analytical powers" (Selman 1977). The Silent Way student is expected to become "independent, autonomous and responsible" (Gattegno 1976) ­ in other words, a good problem solver in language.

2.5. SUGGESTOPEDIA 

Suggestopedia is a method developed by the Bulgarian psychiatrist- educator Georgi Lozanov. Suggestopedia is a specific set of learning recommendations derived from Suggestology, which Lozanov describes as a "science . . . concerned with the systematic study of the nonrational and/or nonconscious influences" that human beings are constantly responding to (Stevick 1 9 7 6 42) . Suggestopedia tries to harness these influences a n d redirect them s o as to optimize learning. The most conspicuous characteristics of Suggestopedia are the decoration, furniture, and arrangement of the classroom, the use of music, and the authoritative behavior of the teacher. The method has a somewhat mystical air about it, partially because it has few direct links with established learning or educational theory in the West, and partially because of its a r c ane terminology and neologisms, which one critic has unkindly called a "pack- age of pseudo-scientific gobbledygook" (Scovel 1979: 2 58 ) .

The claims for suggestopedic learning are dramatic. "There is n o sector of public life where suggestology would not be useful" (Lozanov 1978: 2). "Memorization in learning by the suggestopedic method seems to be accelerated 25 times over t h a t in learning by conventional methods" (Lozanov 1978: 27). Precise descriotions of the conditions under which Suggestopedia experiments were run are as hard to come by as are precise descriptions of "successful" classroom orocedures. For example, Earl L.Stevick, a generally enthusiastic supporter of Suggestopedia, notes that Suggestopedia teachers are trained to read dialogues in a special way.

Dr. Georgi Lozanov says that as we get older we accept social norms and adjust our personalities to conform to them (Lozanov, 1978). One result is that we inhibit our learning to conform to these outside limits. The capabilities that we used as children are set aside and no longer used but they are preserved as functional reserves. According to Lozanov people can re-integrate these reserves into the active personality by means of suggestion, which increases enormously the ability to learn, to remember and to integrate what they learn into their personality.

Lozanov (1978) assumes that the only major linguistic problems in the language classroom are memorization of the words and patterns of the language and their integration into the students’ personalities. Suggestopedia was designed primarily to make these two processes more effective. Suggestopedia uses mostly non-verbal forms of the Learning Hypothesis . The supporters of suggestopedia claimed that memorisation in learning through this approach would be accelerated by up to 25 times over that in conventional learning methods . Lozanov (1978) has given classes where the students achieved a memorization rate of 1000 words an hour. It should also be noted that, recall increases with time. Speaking from personal experience, Charles Adamson says: “In the three hours we learned the Russian alphabet, the basic sentence structures, and 156 words. On the test at the end of the class I got 98%. During the following week I did not use Russian. A week later I took up a repeat of the same test. This time I got 99.5%. Other students from the

class reported similar results” .

Lozanov says that the learners need a relaxed but focused state as the optimum state for learning.In order to create this relaxed state (or „relaxed alertness” as Andrea Rohmert calls it) in the learner and to promote positive suggestion, suggestopedia makes use of soothing, rhythmic music, a comfortable and relaxing environment, and a relationship between the teacher and the student similar to the parent-child relationship.

The students’ feelings have an important place. They need to feel confident and relaxed and their psychological barriers must be „desuggested”.

Music, is vital for the approach. The following composers from the baroque epoch (XVIIth c.), recommended by Andrea Rohmert as suitable for suggestopedic learning, have music works, which contain Largo movements: Johann Sebastian Bach, Arcangelo Corelli, Georg Friedrich Händel, Johann Pachelbel, Georg Philipp Telemann, Antonio Vivaldi. Baroque "Largo" movements help the suggestopedic student to reach a certain state of relaxation, which increases receptivity. Experiments by Lozanov and his successors in both Europe and America showed that the following criteria have to be met by a music work to be useful for suggestopedic learning. The music that we want to use should have "largo" tempo (approx. 60 beats/min), regular patterns (works made up by rhythmic and melodic variations on a theme, following a somewhat mathematical pattern), voices (even choirs) and instruments should not stand out against the orchestra because they are likely to distract the student. Ideally, the orchestra must have a neutral colour (the same instruments be played throughout the work) – that is why the best choice is string orchestras . The total effect is further increased by suggestion, especially using the concert session as a placebo. Research by Lozanov (1978) has shown that there is a positive effect when classical music is used during efforts to memorize, even without suggestion. Before the concert session the student is told by an authoritative figure that after the session the material will be memorized. The students notice that their memorization has improved, so they accept the statement of the authority. The result is a huge increase in memorization power .

Unlike other methods and approaches, there is no apparent theory of language in suggestopedia and no obvious order in which items of language are presented. However, Andrea Romhart says that a lesson which involves the learning of vocabulary by means of flashcards has three parts:

– First, an introductory Largo baroque music piece (60 beats/min) helps the learner to relax (approx. 3 min).

– Next, you listen to the recorded flashcards, on a background of soothing baroque music.

– Finally, a faster Allegretto baroque movement (120 beats/min) awakes the student from their half-sleep (3 min).

The speech for each flashcard is recorded following this pattern: Breathe in (2 seconds) – Front/Back (4 s) – Breathe out (2 s) (Typically, Front/Back contain an English word and its counterpart in a foreign language, etc.). The speaker should use different intonations and rhythms, to make each flashcard more impressive. The final recording must be about 20 minutes long (which makes 150 flashcards). It will later be played back along with soothing baroque music .

The suggestopedic session which is based on the memorizing of a text is accomplished through ritualistic concert sessions: an active session and a passive one. During the active session the teacher reads the text to the accompaniment of emotional classical music. The students follow along in their text, underlining, highlighting, or making notes as they wish.

Thus the students have a translation of the text. This translation is collected after the concert session and the students work without it. Here we have the LH/suggestion that since I can work in the class without the translation, I must have learned the text. During the passive concert, after the active session, the students close their eyes and listen to the teacher who reads more or less normally to the accompaniment of philosophic classical music.

“As far as the integrating of the the textual materials is regarded the teacher uses both verbal and non-verbal ways to communicate the learning hypothesis: (X) I am doing this, so (Y) I am learning the language; (X) I did, so (Y) I can use the language. This is a necessary and continuous part of suggestopedic teaching. Now that the student has learned the text, all that remains to be done is to integrate this language into the student's personality. To do this the students read the text aloud stopping here and there for activities. The activities consist of acting out portions of the text, singing specially prepared songs and playing games, telling stories, carrying on short conversations, and psycho-dramas. Throughout this portion, Lozanov calls it the elaboration, the teacher carefully structures the class so that the language used by the students comes mainly from the present text. After the text has been read, the teacher introduces additional activities that allow the student to integrate the present language with that from previous lessons”

The original form of suggestopedia presented by Lozanov made use of extended dialogues about people from the students' country visiting a country that uses the target language, often several pages in length, accompanied by vocabulary lists and observations on grammatical points. Typically these dialogues would be read aloud to the students and were accompanied by music.

In order to stimulate the creativity of the learners suggestopedia uses almost all the categories of art such as music, visual arts, and stage art. The suggestopedic teachers use music as songs in the elaborations and as classical background music in the concert sessions. They hang colorfully made grammar posters among other art posters in the classroom, and sometimes you give the group drawing tasks. They move like actors in the theater, use puppets like a show person, and read the textbook like poets at their recital .

The teacher’s attitude and behaviour in the classroom is one of the key elements which ensures the success of a suggestopedic session. He or she has to establish good human relations in the class so that students would help and praise one another. “The teacher in a suggestopedic course not only radiates effective suggestive stimuli, but also coordinates environmental suggestive stimuli in a positive way for students to learn. One of Suggestopedia's unique goals is to release learners' minds from the existing framework of the <social-suggestive norms> (Lozanov, 1978. p. 252)”

Lozanov trains suggestopedic teachers through an apprentice system at Lozanov's Suggestopedia Institute. Very few working teachers are in a position where they can use this system as it is laid out by Lozanov (1988). Even with the active support of the administration, Charles Adamsom from the Myiagi University found that he could not use the system. Problems such as the length (one month) and size (12 students) of system classes, the cost-effectiveness of recruiting students, scheduling and other administrative factors forced major alterations as he began to use the method. Some methodologists, like Tim Bowen, say that there is little evidence to support the extravagant claims of success. The more obvious criticisms lie in the fact that many people find classical music irritating rather than stimulating (to some cultures Western music may sound discordant), the length of the dialogues and the lack of a coherent theory of language may serve to confuse rather than to motivate, and, for purely logistic reasons, the provision of comfortable armchairs and a relaxing environment will probably be beyond the means of most educational establishments. In addition the idea of a teacher reading a long (and often clearly inauthentic) dialogue aloud, with exaggerated rhythm and intonation, to the accompaniment of Beethoven or Mozart may well seem ridiculous to many people. Another aspect considered negative by some teachers is the use of the native language more than in the case of other approaches. The lack of tests, the correction of errors later during classes and not on the spot, the emphasis laid on listening and speaking more than on reading and writing appeal to most of the students but do not meet the requirements of the schooling system.

It is true that not everyone can reach the levels of Lozanov's classes, but by using some of the suggestopedic methods we can, however, greatly accelerate our students' progress. Certain elements of the approach can be taken and incorporated into the more eclectic approach to language teaching widely in evidence today. The use of music both in the background and as an accompaniment to certain activities can be motivating and relaxing. Attention to factors such as décor, lighting and furniture is surely not a bad thing.

Dialogues too have their uses. Some of the suggestopedic methods like the fact that in class the students take on the names, professions and personalities of native speakers (the LH/suggestion is that since I am now a native speaker, I can speak and understand the language), playing games, narrating stories, the use of grammar and art posters or the special graduation ceremony given at the end of the course are some of the suggestopedic methods employed by teachers at the Land Forces Academy and at the Foreign Language Center in Sibiu. Creating conditions in which learners are alert and receptive has a positive effect on motivation. Another significant fact is that this method can be used with a remarkable mixture of students from different grades (2nd to 8th) and courses (beginners- advanced) like Worowsky uses at the International School of Dusseldorf .

The suggestopedic sessions can also be held on a computer, by way of VTrain (Vocabulary Trainer), a program which includes a sound recorder and a highly customizable slideshow mode.

There is no doubt that suggestopedia has raised some interesting questions and some of its techniques can be successfully used to achieve good results in the areas of both learning and memory.

2.6. THE COMMUNICATIVE LEARNING THEORY

Communicative language teaching (CLT) refers to both processes and goals in classroom learning. The central theoretical concept in communicative language teaching is ‘‘communicative competence,’’ a term introduced into discussions of language use and second or foreign language learning in the early 1970s (Habermas 1970; Hymes 1971; Jakobovits 1970; Savignon 1971). Competence is defined in terms of the expression, interpretation, and negotiation of meaning and looks to both psycholinguistic and sociocultural perspectives in second language acquisition (SLA) research to account for its development (Savignon 1972, 1997). Identification of learners’ communicative needs provides a basis for curriculum design (Van Ek 1975).

Understanding of CLT can be traced to concurrent developments in Europe and North America. In Europe, the language needs of a rapidly increasing group of immigrants and guest workers, and a rich British linguistic tradition that included social as well as linguistic context in description of language behavior, led the Council of Europe to develop a syllabus for learners based on notional-functional concepts of language use. The syllabus was derived from neo-Firthian systemic or functional linguistics, in which language is viewed as ‘‘meaning potential,’’ and the ‘‘context of situation’’ (Firth 1937; Halliday 1978) is viewed as central to understanding language systems and how they work. The syllabus described a threshold level olanguage ability for each of the major languages of Europe in view of what learners should be able to do with the language (Van Ek 1975). Language functions based on an assessment of the communicative needs of learners specified the end result, or goal, of an instructional program. The term communicative attached itself to programs that used a notional-functional syllabus based on needs assessment, and the language for specific purposes (LSP) movement was launched.

Concurrent development in Europe focused on the process of communicative classroom language learning. In Germany, for example, against a backdrop of Social Democratic concerns for individual empowerment, articulated in the writings of the philosopher Jürgen Habermas (1970), language teaching methodologists took the lead in developing classroom materials that encouraged learner choice (Candlin 1978). Their systematic collection of exercise types for communicatively oriented English language teaching was used in teacher in-service courses and workshops to guide curriculum change. Exercises were designed to exploit the variety of social meanings contained within particular grammatical structures. A system of ‘‘chains’’ encouraged teachers and learners to define their own learning path through principled selection of relevant exercises (Piepho 1974; Piepho and Bredella 1976). Similar exploratory projects were initiated in the 1970s by Candlin at the University of Lancaster, England, and by Holec (1979) and his colleagues at the University of Nancy, France. Supplementary teacher resources promoting classroom CLT became increasingly popular in the 1970s (for example, Maley and Du√ 1978), and there was renewed interest in building learners’vocabulary.

Meanwhile, in the United States, Hymes (1971) had reacted to Chomsky’s characterization of the linguistic competence of the ideal native speaker and, retaining Chomsky’s distinction between competence and performance, proposed the term ‘‘communicative competence’’ to represent the ability to use language in a social context, to observe sociolinguistic norms of appropriateness. Hymes’s concern with speech communities and the integration of language, communication, and culture was not unlike that of Firth and Halliday in the British linguistic tradition (see Halliday 1978). Hymes’s ‘‘communicative competence’’ can be seen as the equivalent of Halliday’s ‘‘meaning potential.’’ Similarly, Hymes’s focus was not language learning but language as social behavior. In subsequent interpretations of the significance of Hymes’s views for learners, methodologists working in the United States tended to focus on the cultural norms of native speakers and the difficulty, if not impossibility, of duplicating them in a classroom of non-natives. In light of this difficulty, the appropriateness of communicative competence as an instructional goal was called into question (Paulston 1974)

The communicative style of language teaching began in the 1970s and developed in response to a growing dissatisfaction with prevailing methodologies, and in recognition of theoretical advances. It is not the direct result of any one way of looking at language and language learning, but is effectively the outcome of contributions given by the various different approaches. It started with Chomsky’s Cognitive Approach, paying particular attention to his distinction between performance and linguistic competence, and was developed by the socio-linguist, Hymes, and then subsequently by countless others. A dichotomy was drawn between the structural/behavioral emphasis on manipulating grammatical forms and achieving accuracy, and the new emphasis on communicative competence and the use of language to fulfill its communicative function, concentrating on fluency. Both accuracy and fluency are necessary parts of linguistic competence.

Language was not just thought of in terms of usage, i.e. the manipulation of grammar, but also in terms of use, i.e. the appropriate use of language in a variety of situations and circumstances. In the 70s, grammar was even completely abandoned by some who assumed students would naturally pick it up via communicative learning, but due to a sharp decline in learner accuracy and the realization that grammatical accuracy is a necessary part of linguistic competence and communication, the communicative teaching of grammar was integrated into the overall approach. Grammar was “necessary, but not sufficient” (McDonough and Shaw 1993:25) and the language learner has a whole bunch of other things to keep in mind too, such as:

1. The social and cultural rules which apply to the context or situation.

2. The relationship between the interactants.

3. The purpose of the communication.

4. The topic.

5. How to use the channel of communication (spoken or written) for a specific purpose.

Given the decades of research and experience that has gone into developing it then, the Communicative Approach has a lot to take into account and therefore has a very broad and rich scope of characteristics, the basics of which I have tried my best to lay out here:

1. Both spoken and written language are important. Reading, writing, speaking and listening are all necessary parts of communicative competence, whether it’s reading a menu, ordering the food, or filling in an application form to work at the restaurant.

2. Language is viewed and learned within its social and cultural context, which learners need to develop knowledge of in order to develop appropriate language use, egg talking to friends, facilitating a meeting, or writing a letter. There is an emphasis on the authentic use of language, as it would be used in its real context.

3. Focus is on meaning, rather than language structure, which is seen as a means of aiding the understanding and production of meaning.

4. Both fluency and accuracy are important. Grammar is necessary for communication to occur, but not sufficient by itself. (Socio-linguists have developed a new way of looking at grammar that shows how we change and adapt it according to social function and circumstances, thus improving our knowledge of how language is used appropriately). Students need grammatical explanations, drills and exercises, when and only when they are appropriate.

5. Course content is based on student needs. What do they need to learn/use English for? Interacting with friends? Functioning day to day abroad? Work? Passing their exams?

6. Teaching is more learner-centered. Students are far more involved, rather than listening to the teacher for 50 minutes. Students should be encouraged to contribute as much as possible.

7. The teacher becomes more a planner and facilitator of language learning activities, helping the students throughout, rather than a didactic teacher.

8. Mistakes are only corrected when appropriate, for example, after an activity has occurred, not during. To correct a student while they are communicating wouldhinder the main goal of successful and effective communication. Students will find it useful though to hear what they were doing wrong, once they are done, especially if it is an error common to the whole class.

9. Activities are based on real-life communication because that is what we learn languages for, e.g. “This is my friend, Keiko. She’s from Japan”, rather than “This is a pen. That is a pencil”.

10. Activities are task-based in which language is used for a purpose, often based on an information-gap and/or the sharing of information to achieve such a communicative purpose, e.g. selling fruit, making an appointment, a class survey or debating the pros and cons of school uniform.

11. Course content is more relevant to students’ lives so they can actually use it and are more likely to want to.

12. Use of pair-work and group-work activities is common as well as individual and also teacher-led activities. Varied types of interaction are encouraged and nurtured.

Learners hear more types of language from different sources, interact with more people, use language in context, hear it repeated, rephrased and clarified, ask and answer questions, build confidence and don’t have to speak in front of the entire class.

The above characteristics make up a communicative methodology, which determines the specific, individual methods and activities we refer to as communicative. You can see then, from this and from earlier sections on other approaches, that the larger ideas about languages and how they are learned have a top-down effect on the general methodology we follow and ultimately the individual activities that we pencil into our lesson plans. So, what follows is a brief look at four activities that, after introducing and practicing useful expressions and vocabulary, might be employed in a communicative classroom. Each activity has its strengths and weaknesses.

3.1. NEW WAYS OF TEACHING GRAMMAR IN AN ESL/EFL CLASS

Grammar teaching has always been a matter of heated debate among language teaching professionals. Depending on various methods, grammar teaching has had its ups and downs in recent decades. For instance, in the Grammar Translation Method, form was the central aspect of learning, while in the Direct Method and Natural Approach grammar had a marginalized role (Brown, 2001). At present, the debate is centered on task-based teaching of grammar and consciousness raising activities, in addition to the role noticing, play an important part in grammar instruction (Fotos, 1994; 2005). In order to know the essential knowledge base for an effective ESL/EFL grammar teacher, it is necessary to briefly review some key concepts in grammar teaching.

When we say grammar, we mean a set of rules with which each individual can make sentences in a language. Brown (2001, p. 362) defines grammar as “the system of rules governing the conventional arrangement and relationship of words in a sentence…Technically grammar refers to sentence-level rules only, and not rules governing the relationship among sentences, which we refer to as discourse rules.” Celce-Murcia (1991, p. 465) meticulously draws a chart in which the importance of grammar for adults and children is shown based on different categories like the learners’ age, their proficiency level, educational background, etc. In the following figure, one can see different variables which were highlighted in her model. inductive and deductive approaches. To put it simply, in the inductive approach, the teacher first presents different examples of the target language form and the students should discover the rules themselves. On

the other hand, when utilizing the deductive approach, a rule is explicitly introduced by the teacher and the students should practice it through different examples. Some ESL/EFL practitioners prefer to use a deductive approach, while others stick to an inductive one. A new trend in recent years is the mixed method approach in which both deductive and inductive ways of teaching are combined. focus on forms and focus on form. In this respect, Harmer (2007, p. 53) points out that:

Focus on form occurs when students direct their conscious attention to some feature of the language, such as a verb tense or the organization of paragraphs… It will occur naturally when students try to complete communicative tasks… in Task-based learning…. Focus on form is often incidental and opportunistic, growing out of tasks which students are involved in, rather than being pre-determined by a book or syllabus.

Many language syllabuses and course books are structured around a series of language forms, however. Teachers and students focus on them one by one because they are on the syllabus. This is often called “focus on forms” because one of the chief organizing principles behind a course is the learning of these forms.

Although focus on form has recently been considered as a working strategy for teaching grammar, there are some scholars who are strictly against it. For instance, Sheen (2003, p. 225) believes that “an underlying assumption of a focus on form approach is that all classroom activities need to be based on communicative tasks, and that any treatment of grammar should arise from difficulties in communicating any desired meaning.” However, Ellis (2006) argues that “the grammar taught should be one that emphasizes not just form but also the meanings”, and that focus on forms is valid, provided that students are given chances to use the discrete forms they have studied in communication tasks.

However, it is clear that “an incidental focus-on-form approach is of special value because it affords an opportunity for extensive treatment of grammatical problems (in contrast to the intensive treatment afforded by a focus on forms approach)” (p. 102).

One of the common ways of focusing on form is “noticing”, a concept introduced by Schmidt (1990). Harmer (2007,p. 54) stresses that “noticing is a condition which is necessary for if the language a student is exposed to is to become… language that he or she takes in.” Besides, Lynch (2001, p. 125) contends that “Noticing is certainly part of successful language learning; one can hardly imagine (adult) learners making substantial progress without it.”

In addition to noticing; implicit methodological techniques can be regarded as another influential strategy for teaching grammar. Ellis (2003) maintains that these techniques involve providing feedback on learners’ use of the target feature in a manner that maintains the meaning-centeredness of the task. In effect, this involves the strategic use of the negotiation of meaning…[They provide] a way of teaching grammar communicatively because the opportunities to reformulate deviant utterances occur in the context of trying to communicate and because the learners are not aware that the teacher is intentionally focusing on form (p. 167). It is also important to note that in addition to implicit methodological techniques for teaching grammar, there are explicit methodological techniques which can be categorized as pre-emptive and responsive. In the former “the teacher draws attention to the targeted feature by asking a question or by making a metalingual comment [while] a responsive focus occurs through negative feedback involving explicit attention to the targeted feature” (Ellis, 2003, p. 170).

All of the above mentioned features are important to be fully understood by a good grammar teacher. In other words, a good teacher should know about different approaches to grammar teaching. As a matter of fact, an effective grammar teacher should be aware of the role of grammar and the historical issues in grammar teaching in order to use them at proper times. As Sasson (2007) postulates, the role of grammar needs to be demythisized in today's ESL/EFL classroom.There is too much speculation that students will gain a new grammatical structure simply by noticing it and writing down its rules. Learning to understand its complexity is part of the problem. The other part is how to embark on teaching it. Generally speaking, a good language teacher needs to possess some critical characteristics to be regarded an expert in his or her discipline. Given this, Tsui (2003, p.247) identifies three dimensions for expert language teachers:

(a) How they relates to the act of teaching, and the extent to which they integrate or dichotomize the various aspects of teacher knowledge in the teaching act,

(b) how they relate to specific contexts of work, and the extent to which they are able to perceive and open up possibilities that do not present themselves as such in their specific contexts of work, and

(c) the extent to which they are able to theorize the knowledge generated by their personal practical experience as a teacher and to put theoretical knowledge into practice.

There are also some other characteristics which are essential for a good language teacher, i.e. being a good manager, being patient, being enthusiastic, being flexible, intelligent, to name but a few. In the light of the previously mentioned points, the authors of the present study intend to find the characteristics of a good EFL grammar teacher. A large number of research studies have been carried out on the effective ways of teaching grammar; however, a lack of focus on teachers themselves is obvious in most of these studies. What is it that effective teachers do in their grammar classes and what teaching and learning behaviors can an observer expect to see in the teaching practice of a good grammar teacher? It is this that the present paper is concerned with.

The idea of good or effective teaching is still a vague concept for the TEFL community members. In addition, classroom situation plays a key role in this regard. As van Lier (1998, p. 23) maintains, “We thus have the curious situation that most second language acquisition theorizing ignores the L2 classroom as a relevant source of data and as relevant place to apply findings.” In the case of classroom based research, only those aspects of a teacher’s behavior which are quantifiable seem to have been taken into account by researchers. Such research reflects a quantitative approach to the study of teaching.

Qualitative and quantitative approaches to research are both important for ESL/EFL research studies. It is also important to note that qualitative research studies are interpretive in nature and researchers are in need of them in many cases. As Mackey and Gass (2005, p. 2) claim “qualitative studies… are not set up as experiments; the data cannot be easily quantifiable… and the analysis is interpretive rather than statistical.” Arriving at successful and effective decisions for teaching grammar is the main goal of the present study, which reports on a series of observations and interviews with an effective EFL grammar teacher.

ESL teaching methods have come a long way in the past 60 years. Before the 1950s, language instruction in general was a rather tedious and soporific enterprise that relied heavily on drills, repetition, translation and probably knuckle rapping. The emphasis, at least in the United States, was placed entirely on reading ability and not at all on communicative ability. This was mostly because the American people at that time had little opportunity or reason to communicate with people of different language backgrounds. It was not until the U.S. entered World War II that the government realized how vital oral and aural abilities were in foreign language education, and it was out of this realization that many of the ESL teaching methods used today were born.

The history of foreign language teaching can be traced back to the teaching of Classical languages, Latin and Greek. The Grammar-Translation Method is the first known method to have been used to teach EFL, and from then onwards many different methods and approaches have emerged. This introduction presents a short overview of methods and approaches throughout the years which will be grouped under four headings.

The first group includes what can be considered the “traditional approaches”, including the Grammar-Translation Method, the Direct Method and the Audiolingual Method. Though there are different principles and conceptions underlying these three methods, what they have in common is that they were first used in the 19th and first part of the 20th century and are still used in some teaching situations. They all viewed language teaching as the mere repetition and imitation of language forms.

The second group can be traced back to the 1980s with the emergence of communicative methodologies, which mark the beginning of a “major paradigm shift” (Richards and Rogers, 2001:151) whose influence is still felt today. The most widely known approaches in this group are the Natural Approach, Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), Content-Based Teaching (CBT), the Task-Based Approach, and Cooperative Language Learning. The main assumption underlying communicative methodologies is that communicative proficiency rather than mastery of structures should be sought. 

A third group of approaches can be given the label of “Innovative” or “Alternative” approaches. The starting point of these methods is a particular theory of learners and learning rather than a theory of language and language learning. These are not so widely-known, and in some cases they are movements that emerged within mainstream education and were later applied to EFL. Whole Language, Total Physical Response, the Silent Way, Suggestopedia, and Community Language Learning are some of the methods and approaches that belong to this group. 

There is a fourth group which is not made up of particular methods and approaches, but rather indicates the tendency of the 21st century: eclecticism. The tendency today is not to choose one or another, but rather to select those aspects which are useful and appropriate for certain teaching situations. Some authors, such as Richards and Rogers (2001:246), consider that being aware and knowing different methods and approaches can give teachers an initial practical knowledge base to explore and develop their own beliefs, principles and practices. In keeping with this notion, Larsen-Freeman (2000:IX) claims that “…methods [and approaches] serve as a foil for reflection that can aid teachers in bringing to conscious awareness the thinking that underlies their actions”. 

These methodological perspectives have paved the way for the emergence of a debate over the role of grammar in EFL contexts that has survived over the decades.

 EFL classrooms have long been characterized as contexts for the learning of grammatical rules. This is not a random fact, but the natural result of decades of a prevailing conception of language from a structural perspective which dominated several disciplines. In the field of linguistics, the Transformational-Generative approach proposed by Chomsky and his followers had an unquestioned prevailence for over 40 years. His ultimate aim was to provide a full explicit description of language which could serve as a basis for the provision of rules for grammatically correct sentences. From this perspective, grammar was equated to abstract rules to prescribe high levels of correctness.

 However, language scholars started to perceive several limitations in this approach, mainly limitations in terms of its impossibility to account for individual differences, its view of the language learner as a passive individual, and its absolute neglect of language functions in real communicative events. It was then that some functionalist models emerged. For these scholars language is a form of social action. This focus on the social nature of language brought back the environment –context of situation and culture- into the analysis of language.

 By no means do functionalists claim the uselessness of language structures, they claim that language, its nature, study, description and interpretation go beyond structures and encompass function. In this sense function refers to the purpose for which a language form or phenomenon exists. Function refers not only to individual words and how they relate to each other, but also to how words are used (Thompson, 1996).

 In most EFL educational contexts, a shift in teaching practices and approach has accompanied and evolved along with theoretical contributions. Consistently, educators have become aware that apart from managing the fundamental structures of the target language students also need to be able to link forms to function. They need to be able to describe the uses to which language is put. This means a focus on complete texts with a variety of social and cultural meanings and purposes which take communicative purpose as the key characteristic of human verbal communication, shifting its emphasis from language correctness to language appropriacy.

 The form vs. function debate which emerged in the theoretical and phylosophical arenas of language has undoubtedly led to profound effects in all levels of language education, in the teaching of first as well as second and foreign language in all corners of the world. These effects can be observed in all areas, ranging from material design to evaluation and methodology, all of which reflect and reinforce one or the other perspective. Our Argentinean context is by no means an exception.

Undoubtedly, the primary aim of introducing English as a Foreign Language in our syllabus is to promote the conditions that will enable students to learn the English language; in other words, the main objective of EFL classes is to teach English to foreign students and this priority should never be underestimated. However, because teachers are integrated in a national school system, they have to follow the guidelines and educational policies defined by the Ministry of Education. Consequently, they are expected to contribute to the holistic education of their students, not only to the expansion of their knowledge of the language system, but also to the development of their personalities. Teachers play a crucial role in building up the values and the character of their students as well as their concept of citizenship. When we refer to the ultimate purposes of education, EFL teachers do not seem to value their contributions so highly.

Some of the objectives that current federal legislation establishes for EFL teaching at certainl levels are that apart from developing the four macro-abilities, students are expected to achieve a series of other aims, such as:

•tolerance, justice, solidarity and respect towards the Other

•a combination of the language competence with their personal and social development

•an understanding and respect for socially and culturally differentiated universes

•an appreciation of the sociocultural dimension of language

•critical awareness concerning issues of contemporary world (racism, social injustice, the parent-child relationship, etc). (Ley Federal de Educación)

These objectives are in no way easy to accomplish. Only the implementation of an adequate approach, supported by motivating, culturally rich materials may facilitate this difficult undertaking (Pascual, 2005). It is evident that the implementation of an approach that is based on a conception of language as mere structures will have little possibilities to contribute to the achievement of these more general objectives.

In conclusion:

•Language learning is seen as a linear process, in which a certain structure cannot be taught/learned if the previous one has not been fully consolidated;

•Language is based on grammar rules and structures, disregarding functions, lexis, strategies and the social dimension of language learning;

•Rule application can lead to full command of the language; hence, language learning is viewed as consisting “of little more than memorizing rules and facts in order to understand and manipulate the morphology and syntax of the foreign language” (Richards and Rogers, 2001: 5);

•The mother tongue is the reference system in the acquisition of the second language.

Throughout the history of language teaching, approaches and methods have often been promoted as “all-purpose solutions to teaching problems that can be applied in any part of the world and under any circumstance” (Richards and Rogers, 2001: 248). The proposal in this paper, however, is not an attempt to suggest a method but to suggest some methodological paths that will allow the development of teachers’ flexibility and creativity according to their own contexts. Rather than training in specific techniques and procedures, this paper challenges teachers to reflect upon their own conceptualizations of language, learning and teaching.

Either based on a more cognitive theory of language or on one of a social nature, teachers may profit from the following guidelines, all of which tend to develop an open and critical attitude in both students and teachers, and tend to reflect the idea that learning a foreign language is more than memorizing a set of grammar rules. The guidelines proposed in this paper may be summarized as follows:

•It is important to incorporate content in the EFL class. Content provides students with an opportunity to develop important knowledge in different subject areas. Students are able to practice the language functions and skills needed to understand, discuss, read about, and write about the concepts developed. Another reason is that many students exhibit greater motivation when they are learning content than when they are learning language only. Besides, content provides a context for teaching students learning strategies.

•Language functions intended to foster critical thinking include explaining, informing, justifying, comparing, describing, classifying, proving, debating, persuading, and evaluating. Most of these functions are necessary in all content areas. To accomplish these functions successfully with content requires the use of both lower-order and higher-order thinking skills. Examples of lower- order thinking skills include recalling facts, identifying vocabulary, and making definitions. Higher order thinking skills involve using language to analyze, synthesize, and evaluate. Discrete language elements such as vocabulary, grammatical structures, spelling, and pronunciation are integrated into the language functions used in the content activity, not taught as separate components.

•The acquisition of content-knowledge and the learning of language functions can be greatly facilitated by the use of learning strategies, i.e. “thoughts or activities that assist in enhancing learning outcomes” (Weinstein, 1986, in Chamot and O’Malley, 1994:60). Three types of learning strategies can be considered: metacognitive (planning for learning, monitoring one’s own production and evaluating the results), cognitive (making mental images, elaborating, grouping, taking down notes etc) and social/affective strategies (interacting, learning cooperatively, using affective control to assist learning tasks etc) (Chamot and O’Malley, 1994).

•The need for critical awareness of discourse in contemporary society should make it a central part of language education at all levels and the incorporation of a challenging and motivating approach should be central for all disciplinary areas. In this regard, English should not be an exception. Students should be prompted to analyze different discoursal forms and genres on the basis of what is explicit but should also be encouraged to go further into the analysis of what is implied or even neglected by a text. This can be done by training students to contextualize the language forms they are exposed to not only in relation to the immediate context but also to the context of culture that originated a text.

•In the case of the EFL class, in which most of the materials used are produced elsewhere, the politics of representation becomes increasingly important. Teachers should be aware and foster awareness on the part of their students that all discourses are biased and ideological. So, the questions teachers should ask themselves relate to the nature of those representations, such as who is represented? who gains what from those discourse representations?, what social relations do they draw people into?, what are their ideological effects, and what alternative representations are there?

3.2.ASPECT AND TENSE

More and more linguists and specialists in study of literature attract their attention to problems of Stylistics and Stylistics itself is divided into some special disciplines which tend to differentiate. But at the same time as well as in any other science we can observe the integration of the processes that is the intensification of different parts of knowledge and appearance of new modern synthetic sections. New problems have been involved in the sphere of stylistic researches, a lot of data and programs have been studied and new aspects of language factors and features have been discovered. Our interest in these points is the first reason of the appearance of our paper.

From the point of our view English Grammar is the most difficult subject for study not only for students but everyone who wants to be a professional philologist. That why the second reason for writing of our paper is the complications of the descriptions of some difficult grammar areas especially «verb-section» in the frames of simplicity.

The verb as a party of speech is the most capacious grammar category. In verbal word with all variety of its denotations, meanings and stylistic potentials there are combinations with different grammar forms, organic connections and associations with tenses and aspect, which characterize all verbal system in the whole. So the third reason of our paper is to analyze some verbal factors and features on the «brighter grammar» level with taking into our consideration some interrelations between grammar forms, their functional content and stylistic potential in contexts.

It will be very important to mark that General Morphology (non-stylistic) treats morphemes and grammatical meanings expressed by them in language in general, without regard to their stylistic value. Stylistic Morphology, on the contrary, is interested in grammatical forms and grammatical meanings in the stylistic sphere, explicitly or implicitly comparing them with the neutral forms common for all sublanguages.

There are two forms of tense in English: PRESENT and PAST. The present tense can be used to express present events (e.g. Ronaldo passes the ball to Kaka), a habit or routine (e.g. I go to UCS three days a week), general facts (e.g. The sun rises in the east), an occurrence in the future (e.g. the train arrives at 3 pm) or historic present- in literary English and oral narrative (e.g. He just walks into the room and sits down in front of the fire without saying a word to anyone).

The past tense is used to describe an action, activity, or state that took place in the past (e.g. I watched a movie last night). The present tense form ties the situation described closely to the situation of utterance; on the other hand, the past tense form makes the situation described more remote from the situation of utterance. Some basic meaning distinctions between different tense forms are offered in terms of the REMOTE/NON-REMOTE and FACTUAL/NON-FACTULAL status of perceived situations.

     Examples:  I worked as a translator three years ago. (Past: remote + factual)

                     I study towards my master's at USC.  (Present: non-remote + factual)

The verb form that is traditionally called 'the future tense' is actually expressed via a model verb which indicates the relative possibility of an event. Situations in the future are treated differently. They are inherently non-factual but can be considered as either relatively certain or unlikely or even impossible.

      Examples:  I will see you soon. (Future: non- remote + non- factual)

                        If I was rich, I would change the world. (Hypothetical: remote + non-

                        factual)

Aspect

Unlike tense, which is concerned with the location of a situation, aspect is concerned with the internal dimensions of a situation whether it is fixed or changing, or it may be treated as lasting for only a moment or having duration, and it can be viewed as complete or as ongoing. Aspects can be subdivided into LEXICAL and GRAMMATICAL aspects.

I. Lexical Aspects

The lexical meaning of the verb may convey aspectual meaning. The verbs denoting stative concepts tend not to be used with progressive forms. After buying a house, English speakers are not likely to tell people, I'm having a house now, because that would suggest a process rather than a fixed state. The progressive aspect used with a stative verb often signifies a temporary state: You're being foolish. I'm having a bad day. 

The verbs that typically signify punctual concepts, describing momentary acts, have a slightly different meaning in the progressive form: He's kicking the box, She's coughing.These are interpreted as repeated acts, not as single acts. Dynamic verbs used in the progressive aspect typically signify ongoing activity.

II. Grammatical Aspects

The grammatical aspects are basically versions of the PROGRESSIVE (be + -ing) and the PERFECT (have + past participle). With the progressive, a situation is viewed from the inside as potentially ongoing at that point 'in progress', relative to some other situation. With the perfect, a situation is viewed from the outside, typically in retrospect, relative to some other situation.

Consider the meaning of the following sentences with the simple forms as opposed to the progressive ones:

I raise my arm! (event) / I'm raising my arm. (duration)

My watch works perfectly. (permanent state) / My watch is workingperfectly. (temporary state)

The man drowned.(complete) / The man was drowning (but I jumped into the water and saved him.)

When we arrived she made some coffee. (two events following one another) / When we arrived she was making some coffee. (ongoing action at the time when something else happened)

Consider the meaning of the following sentences with the simple form as opposed to the perfect(ive) form:

We lived in London for two months in 2001. (complete) / We have lived in London since last September (and still do.)

There are two different kinds of information that can be found in academic writings, magazine articles, narrative texts, news reports… (a) Background information where the past tense signifies scene-settings, specific acts or old focus. (b) Foreground information where the present tense signifies changes, general statements, facts ornew focus. For example,

 “One night, when Donald was driving home, his car skidded down Hill Street and was demolished.  Donald was killed in the accident.  This leaves us with Dolly to account for, and what a sad tale we can write for this little girl.  During the months in which her parents’ will is in probate, she lives on charity.

3.3.NOUNS

Nouns (names of people, places, things, ideas) are very important in English. They are used as subjects of sentences and clauses and as objects of verbs and prepositions. There are many different kinds of nouns in English, and they may be classified (divided into groups) in many ways.

A noun is a word that names a person, animal, place, thing, idea, or concept. There are more nouns in the English Language than any other kind of words. 

Noun lists that follow each category are only partial ones.

Noun examples

Persons: girl, boy, instructor, student, Mr. Smith, Peter, president 
Animals: dog, cat, shark, hamster, fish, bear, flea 
Places: gym, store, school, Lake Minnetonka, Minnesota, village, Europe 
Things: computer, pen, notebook, mailbox, bush, tree, cornflakes 
Ideas: liberty, panic, attention, knowledge, compassion, worship

Singular and Plural Nouns 
Formation of Plural Nouns

Singular means one of something. Plural means more than one. 

You can make most nouns plural by just adding -s

 one tree – four trees

 one boat – a river full of boats 

If the noun ends with -s, -ch, -sh, -x, or -z, add -es to make it plural.

 witness–witnesses

 church – churches

 dish– dishes

 fox – foxes

 buzz – buzzes 

If the noun ends with -y and the letter before the -y is a vowel, add -s to make the noun plural.

 boy–boys

 bay – bays

 key – keys

 toy – toys 

If the noun ends with -y and the letter before the -y is a consonant, change the -y to -i and add -es to make the noun plural.

 army – armies

 supply – supplies

 sky – skies 

Nouns ending in -ff become plural by adding -s

 tariff – tariffs

 sheriff – sheriffs

 plaintiff – plaintiffs

The inconsistency of rules is shown in the plurals of nouns which ends in –f or -fe Some become plural by replacing the -f to -v and adding -s or -es

 knife – knives

 wife – wives

 half – halves

 leaf – leaves
Other nouns ending in -f or -fe become plural by only adding -s

 belief – beliefs

 proof – proofs

 chief – chiefs

Common and Proper Nouns

A common noun names any regular, ordinary person, animal, place, thing, or idea. Nothing specific. 
A proper noun names a very specific, very particular person, animal, place, thing, or idea. 
A proper noun always begins with capital letter (is capitalized). 
  List of examples

Concrete and Abstract Nouns

A concrete noun names a person, animal, place, or thing that you can actually see, touch, taste, hear, or smell.

 List of concrete nouns: spaghetti, muffins, perfume, water, book, room, pen, composer, boy, car 
An abstract noun names an idea, feeling, emotion, or quality that cannot be detected by your five senses.

 List of abstract nouns: prettiness, pleasure, annoyance, skill, nature, communication, love, velocity, education

Collective Nouns

A collective noun names a group of people, animals or things. 
  Sample noun lists.

 People: audience, crowd, jury, family, group, nation, staff, cast, gang, team

 Animals: flock, colony, swarm, gaggle, herd

 Things: bunch, bundle, set, stack, cache, batch, bouquet

Compound nouns

A compound noun is made up of two or more words used together. 
  Compound nouns can be

 One word: shoelace, keyboard, flashlight, applesauce, notebook, bedroom

 Hyphenated: sky-scraper, boy-friend, baby-sitter, editor-in-chief, great-grandfather

 Two words: police officer, seat belt, high school, word processor, post office

Countable nouns are individual objects, people, places, etc. which can be counted. Nouns are considered content words meaning they provide the people, things, ideas, etc. about which we speak. Nouns are one of the eight parts of speech.

books, Italians, pictures, stations, men, etc.

A countable noun can be both singular – a friend, a house, etc. – or plural – a few apples, lots of trees, etc.

Use the singular form of the verb with a singular countable noun:

There is a book on the table.
That student is excellent!

Use the plural form of the verb with a countable noun in the plural:

There are some students in the classroom.
Those houses are very big, aren't they?

What are uncountable nouns?

Uncountable nouns are materials, concepts, information, etc. which are not individual objects and can not be counted.

information, water, understanding, wood, cheese, etc.

Uncountable nouns are always singular. Use the singular form of the verb with uncountable nouns:

There is some water in that pitcher.
That is the equipment we use for the project.

Adjectives with Countable and Uncountable Nouns.

Use a/an with countable nouns preceded by an adjective(s):

Tom is a very intelligent young man.
I have a beautiful grey cat.

Do not use a/an (indefinite articles) with uncountable nouns preceded by an adjective(s):

That is very useful information.
There is some cold beer in the fridge.

Some uncountable nouns in English are countable in other languages. This can be confusing! Here is a list of some of the most common, easy to confuse uncountable nouns.

accommodation
advice
baggage
bread
equipment
furniture
garbage
information
knowledge
luggage
money
news
pasta
progress
research
travel
work

Obviously, uncountable nouns (especially different types of food) have forms that express plural concepts. These measurements or containers are countable:

water – a glass of water
equipment – a piece of equipment
cheese – a slice of cheese

Here are some of the most common containers / quantity expressions for these uncountable nouns:

accommodation – a place to stay
advice – a piece of advice 
baggage – a piece of baggage
bread – a slice of bread, a loaf of bread
equipment – a piece of equipment
furniture – a piece of furniture
garbage – a piece of garbage
information – a piece of information
knowledge – a fact
luggage – a piece of luggage, a bag, a suitcase
money – a note, a coin
news – a piece of news
pasta – a plate of pasta, a serving of pasta
research – a piece of research, a research project
travel – a journey, a trip
work – a job, a position

Here are some more common uncountable food types with their container / quantity expressions:

liquids (water, beer, wine, etc.) – a glass, a bottle, a jug of water, etc.
cheese – a slice, a chunk, a piece of cheese
meat – a piece, a slice, a pound of meat
butter – a bar of butter
ketchup, mayonnaise, mustard – a bottle of, a tube of ketchup, etc.

3.4.PRONOUNS

The acquisition of pronouns can be very confusing because of the abstract nature of their existence in the language . In addition, like prepositions, the same pronoun can be used to convey different meanings, depending on how it is positioned in a string of words. We could get along just fine without pronouns, but we use them for reasons of economy of speaking.

At the most rudimentary level, SLPs teach children that a pronoun can replace a noun or another pronoun. You use pronouns like „he,'' „which,'' „none,'' and „you'' to make your sentences less cumbersome and less repetitive.

Grammarians classify pronouns into several types, including the personal pronoun, the demonstrative pronoun, the interrogative pronoun, the indefinite pronoun, the relative pronoun, the reflexive pronoun, and the intensive pronoun.

PERSONAL PRONOUNS

Teaching students the rules for using personal pronouns can be a challenge. Students must understand the different parts of a sentence before they can replace a noun with a personal pronoun. Review of the subject and object in a sentence is key if students are to master the personal pronoun rules.

Personal pronouns can be used to replace nouns acting as subjects, objects, or possessive markers in sentences.

For each of these uses, there is a different set of pronouns so students should be introduced to them separately. These are just some of the pronouns that students will encounter during their English studies however personal pronouns are also some of the most commonly used.

Begin by talking about people so that students can provide some sample sentences to work with in the next section. You can ask questions as simple as “What’s your name?” to start off with. Write sentences you would like to use on the board. You can have students volunteer to answer questions, play a short game, or call on students for this section. Since the introduction may take some time and requires students to really focus, try to conduct an activity that gets them out of their chairs and moving around.

Introduce subjective pronouns I, you, he, she, it, we, you, and they. It is common to make two columns with three rows each so that the singular pronouns are on the left and the plural pronouns are on the right. He, she, and it are generally listed together. Maintaining this format when introducing other sets of pronouns will help students remember them. Once these are on the board do some choral repetition forpronunciation practice and write some sentences on the board. Be sure to have a sentence for each pronoun and ask students to tell you which word or words should be replaced. If students say that David should be replaced with the word she, you can give them another opportunity to provide the correct pronoun and then talk about whyhe is the correct replacement in this case.

Continue to conduct practice activities as a class until you think your students have a good understanding of these new words. You can have students form teams of about four for an activity where when you say a sentence, the first team to write the correct pronoun on the board gets a point. If you say “The dog likes walks.” students should write it on the board. It is a good idea to do activities like this so that as issues come up, you can address them rather than having to go back to clarify certain things after a lot of individual practice has been done. For speaking practiceyou can play Fruit Basket or simply have students do a short writing activity and then ask them to read aloud what they wrote

You can introduce the objective pronouns me, you, him, her, it, us, you, and them as well as the possessive pronouns mine, yours, his, hers, its, ours, yours, and theirs in much the same way you introduced the subjective pronouns above. Students should have an easier time understanding their meaning and memorizing them after having practiced using subjective pronouns. Introduce and practice these pronouns in separate classes until students have a firm grasp on the material

Similar practice exercises to the one you used for subjective pronouns can also be used for objective and possessive pronouns. To keep students engaged and focused on the material, be sure to include some new activities as well. Fill in the blank and multiple choice exercises are both simple ways to check comprehension. Students could be asked to talk about something they own for writing and speaking practice using possessive pronouns. The prompt for the activity could be “This ~ is mine.” and you could require that students bring the item to class and write a certain number of sentences about it.

Once students have covered these three types of personal pronouns, you should do some activities which combine all three. Whether you choose to use worksheets or games to do this is up to you and depends on how well your class usually responds to certain types of exercises. A review class which combines everything they have learned about pronouns may be a challenge but it can also help you discover what students are struggling with and where their confusion lies. If necessary you can address these things in a later lesson.

DEMONSTRATIVE PRONOUNS

Demonstrative pronouns are pronouns that provide additional information about the proximity of the noun replaced by the pronoun to the speaker. This article lists and explains the four demonstrative English pronouns. Also included is a printable study sheet of the four pronouns.

Similar to demonstrative determiners, demonstrative pronouns provide additional information about the proximity of the noun replaced by the pronoun to the speaker in addition to taking the place of a noun, noun phrase, or noun clause. Demonstrative pronouns are pronouns of literal and figurative distance, meaning the distance is physical (spatial deixis, referring to physical space including space resulting from time) or affective (discourse deixis, referring to emotional space). Physical proximity does not necessarily correlate to emotional proximity: a speaker may consider something as both physically and emotionally close and vice versa just as the same speaker may consider something physically close as emotionally distant and vice versa.

So, demonstrative pronouns are pronouns that point to specific things. "This, that, these, those, none and neither" are Demonstrative Pronouns that substitute nouns when the nouns they replace can be understood from the context. At the same time, to indicate whether they are close or far, in space or time, from the speaker in the moment of speaking. They also indicate whether they are replacing singular or plural words. Some grammars describe them as members of the class of function words called "determiners", since they identify nouns and other nominals.

"This" (singular) and "These" (plural) refer to an object or person NEAR the speaker.

"That" (singular) and "Those" (plural) refer to an object or person further AWAY.

For example:

This is unbelievable.
* In this example, "this" can refer to an object or situation close in space or in time to the speaker.

That is unbelievable.
* In this example, "that" can refer to an object or situation farther in space or in time to the speaker.

These are unbelievable.
* In this example, "these" can refer to some objects close in space or in time to the speaker.

Those are unbelievable.
* In this example, "those" can refer to some objects farther in space or in time to the speaker.

The singular proximal demonstrative pronoun in English is this. Singular refers to singular in number, meaning the antecedent refer to only one person, place, thing, or idea. Proximal means "very near or close to." Therefore, the antecedent of this is a single nominal concept that is nearby in physical or emotional distance. For example:

This is my book. (This book is my book.)

This is killing me! (This running is killing me!)

Is this yours? (Is this child yours?)

Please save me this. (Please save me this dessert.)

Give this a good scrubbing. (Give this pan a good scrubbing.)

The singular distal demonstrative pronoun in English is that. Singular again refers to singular in number. Distal means "remote or distant from." Therefore, the antecedent of that is a single nominal concept that is distant in physical or emotional distance. For example:

That is my sister. (That person is my sister.)

That makes me sick. (The thought of child abuse makes me sick.)

Is that his? (Is that car his?)

Give that back to her now! (Give that toy back to her now!)

He mailed the package in that?! (He mailed the package in that box?!)

The plural proximal demonstrative pronoun in English is these. Plural refers to plural in number, meaning the antecedent refers to two or more people, places, things, or ideas. Proximal again means "very near or close to." Therefore, the antecedent of these are multiple nominal concepts that are nearby in physical or emotional distance. For example:

Are these your socks? (Are these socks your socks?)

These make my head hurt. (These assigned readings make my head hurt.)

These belong to her. (These party trays belong to her.)

Postmark these by Friday. (Postmark these letters by Friday.)

Have you listened to these yet? (Have you listened to these CDs yet

The plural distal demonstrative in English is those. Plural again refers to plural in number, and distal again means "remote or distant from." Therefore, the antecedent of those are multiple nominal concepts that are distant in physical or emotional distance. For example:

Those are my brothers. (Those boys are my brothers.)

We bought those last year. (We bought those curtains last year.)

Those were the days! (Those days were the days!)

I am disgusted by those! (I am disgusted by those paintings!)

These boxes are heavier than those. (These boxes are heavier than those boxes.)

The four demonstrative pronouns perform six grammatical functions in the English language. The six functions are: Subject, Subject complement, Direct object, Object complement, Indirect object and Prepositional complement.

For example:

This tastes delicious! (subject)

My books are these. (subject complement)

Mail those to you mother. (direct object)

You painted the wall that?! (object complement)

You should give that a good soaking first. (indirect object)

How can you enjoy listening to this? (prepositional complement)

Similar to the misunderstanding between some indefinite pronouns and determiners, the difference between demonstrative pronouns and demonstrative determiners also sometimes results in confusion for English language students. For example, compare the following two sentences:

These muffins are fresher than those muffins.

These are fresher than those.

In the first sentence, the demonstrative determiners these and those function as determinatives of the nouns muffinsand muffins. However, in the second sentence, the demonstrative pronouns these and those function as the subject and direct object of the sentence, replacing the noun phrases these muffins and those muffins. Although spelled and pronounced identically, the difference between demonstrative pronouns and demonstrative determiners is apparent by the grammatical functions the two grammatical forms can perform.

INTEROGGATIVE PRONOUNS

Interrogative pronouns are aptly named. They basically stand in for the answer to the question being asked. When they are not acting as interrogative pronouns, some may act as relative pronouns. Once again, it depends on their function in the sentence.

Do not confuse them with what most elementary school teachers call the “5 W’s – who, what, where, why, and when,” because in reality, these are not all interrogative pronouns. Keep reading to learn which question words are in fact interrogative pronouns. 

So, an interrogative pronoun is a pronoun used in order to ask a question. Some of them refer only to people, like "who" and others refer to people and objects, etc like "what". They do not distinguish between singular and plural, so they only have one form. Interrogative pronouns produce information questions that require more than a "yes" or "no" answer.

For example:

What is her phone number?

What do you want?

Interrogative pronouns are: What, Which, Who, Whose, Whom. In addition, these pronouns may take the suffixes -ever and -soever.

Forms:
As we can see in the next table, these pronouns could act as a subject, object or possessive in a sentence.

WHAT can be used to ask about objects or people.
For example:

What time is it?

What is your name?

What do you want?

WHICH can be used to ask about objects or people.
For example:

Which chair are you talking about?

Which jumper do you like?

Which is your mother?

WHO can be used to ask about people
For example:

Who are you?

Which is your mother?

Who has been sitting in my chair?

WHOSE can be used to ask about a possession relation.
For example:

Whose is this book?

Whose car did you drive here?

WHOM can be used to ask about people.It is less usual and more formal than "who"
For example:

Whom did you phone?

For whom will you vote?

NOTE: Either "which" or "what" can also be used as an interrogative adjective, and that "who," "whom," or "which" can also be used as a relative pronoun.

For example:

The man whom she chose will do a wonderful job.

Examples

Who is in charge?

Which wants to see the dentist first?

Who wrote the novel Rockbound?

Whom do you think we should invite?

What did she say?

INDEFINITE PRONOUNS

Learning about indefinite pronouns is an important part of mastering the English language and English grammar, but many students become confused about what indefinite pronouns actually are. Many teachers like to explain indefinite pronouns by reminding them of the following phrase: “Is anybody home?”  In this example, we aren’t asking about whether Sally, Hank, or Andrew are home – we are not interested in knowing if a definite person is at home – just whether any humans are on the premises. Keep reading to learn about the indefinite pronoun and to understand more about how these pronouns work.

An indefinite pronoun replaces a noun. There are a few different kinds of indefinite pronouns 

The singular indefinite pronouns are: somebody, someone, something, nobody, no one, nothing, everybody, everyone, everything, another, anybody, anyone, anything, each, either, one, other, neither, and much. These are treated as if they are singular objects, and not plural. Look at the followingexamples, and see how they are paired with a verb that is third-person singular: 

Anyone can be a movie star.

Everything went wrong last night.

The plural indefinite pronouns are: several, many, others, few, both. Here are a few examples of these plural indefinite pronouns in action: notice how they are put together with a verb that is third-person plural. 

Both like to eat cheeseburgers.

Few enjoy doing their homework.

Indefinite Pronoun

When using an indefinite pronoun, make sure that you match it up with the right pronoun later in the sentence. If an indefinite pronoun is third-person singular, then by all means it belongs with other third-person singular pronouns. Look at the examples below: 

Each boy ate their ice cream cone.

Each boy ate his ice cream cone.

Notice that the second one clearly is correct, because “his” is singular, just like “each.” But, what do you do when you are talking about people, and the genders are mixed? You might realize that it is inappropriate to use “it” as a pronoun to talk about a human, and “their” is plural. What do you do? Look at the examples below: 

Each kid ate their ice cream cone.

Each kid ate his or her ice cream cone.

Although it takes a little more effort to say, the second sentence is correct, because each of the pronouns in the latter part of the sentence are singular, and therefore match the indefinite pronoun. 

Conditional Indefinite Pronoun

Indefinite pronouns can be used when the meaning is conditional. Many conditional clauses, in fact, Look at the following examples and see if this concept makes sense to you. In each example, the first sentence uses an indefinite pronoun in a question format, and the second sentence uses an indefinite pronoun in a conditional clause.  

Will someone wait for me? If somebody can wait for me I would greatly appreciate it.

Do you need to eat something? If you need something to eat, I can offer you some pizza.

Would you like another? If you would like another, just ask nicely!

Examples of Indefinite Pronouns

Indefinite pronouns make it easier to talk quickly and efficiently with people. Look at the following two examples: which is easier to understand and quicker to say? 

Is Mary, Paul, Peter, Sandy, Susan, or Matt home?

Is anybody home?

Surely most people would choose to say the second sentence: it covers a lot of information just using one easy indefinite pronoun.  

RELATIVE PRONOUNS

A relative pronoun is "a small group of noun substitutes used to introduce dependent clauses" (Harbrace College Handbook, 11th ed. 571). Relative pronouns may introduce adjective clauses or noun clauses. Relative pronouns are: that, those, who, whom, whose, which, what, whatever, whoever, whomever, whichever. (See handout on "Clauses," if necessary.)

! The relative pronoun that may introduce a relative clause used as an adjective. (Those is the plural of that.)

Sally bought a car that cost over $30,000.

! The relative pronouns that and which replace nouns that refer to things and animals.

Sally bought a car that is very expensive.

Sally's new car, which is green, is very expensive.

! The relative pronouns who and whom replace nouns that refer to people. While in spoken

English, that is sometimes used to refer to people, written English requires the use of who or whom.

I know someone who owns a very expensive car.

! The relative pronoun whose refers to people BUT can also refer to things or animals.

The salesman, whose name I have forgotten, gave Sally a great deal on her car.

Note: DO NOT confuse whose with who's (the contraction for who is).

! The relative pronoun whom is used only to replace object of verbs or the object of a preposition.

Mr. Johnson is the man to whom I sent my application. (Whom is the object of the preposition to.)

The following is an example using a relative pronoun as a subject pronoun

! When combining two sentences, a relative pronoun will most likely replace the subject of the

second example:

Mary's psychology teacher is Dr. Martin.

Dr. Martin has been teaching for 30 years.

Combined example:

Mary's psychology teacher is Dr. Martin, who has been teaching for 30 years.

Object Pronouns. In the following example, the combined sentence uses a relative pronoun to replace the direct object of the second example below.

! The relative pronoun which replaces the direct object of the second sentence.

We installed an alarm in our car.

The insurance company requires an alarm to receive the discount.

Combined example:

We installed an alarm in our car which the insurance company requires to receive the discount.

• COMMON PROBLEMS TO AVOID when using relative pronouns.

Use that in essential clauses instead of which.

Essential clause: a clause necessary to complete the sentence's meaning. An essential clause usually identifies the noun or pronoun it modifies by telling which one and cannot be omitted from the sentence. Essential clauses are generally not set off by commas.

My brother is taking a course that requires research.

Use which only in nonessential clauses or after a preposition.

Nonessential clause: a clause unnecessary to complete a sentence's meaning. A nonessential clause usually describes the nouns it modifies, is set off by commas, and may be omitted from the sentence.

My English class, which is at 8 a.m., is very interesting.

Use who, whom ,and whose as you would use he, him, and his or they, their and theirs. In formal writing if both who and that or both who and which seem possible, use who to refer to people.

! Construct your sentence so that a noun or pronoun is the clear antecedent of the relative pronoun. (The antecedent is the word, phrase or clause to which a relative pronoun refers.)

! Do not punctuate a dependent clause as a complete sentence. When using dependent clauses, remember that the sentence should include an independent clause; otherwise, you will have a fragment. (See handout on "Fragments.")

Incorrect Examples:

Which I fixed for dinner. That you bought in the bookstore.

Whose car is parked on the corner. Who is my oldest brother.

The sentences above are all fragments that can be corrected by adding independent clauses to make complete sentences:

Your recipe for chicken and rice, which I fixed for dinner, is delicious.

The pen that you bought in the bookstore writes well.

The student whose car is parked on the corner has lost his keys.

Let me introduce you to John Nelson, who is my oldest brother.

! Do not use a relative pronoun and a personal pronoun in the same clause to stand for the same

antecedent.

Incorrect Example:

The book that he borrowed it is very difficult to understand.

book = antecedent that = relative pronoun it = personal pronoun

In the sentence above, that and it refer to book; It is wrong and should be left out:

The book that he borrowed is very difficult to understand.

! Look at the antecedent of who, that, or which to decide whether the verb following should be

singular or plural. (See handout on "Subject-Verb Agreement").

The man who is coming is my father.

the antecedent of who is man (singular), so the verb following who must be singular.

The men who are coming to perform are from my hometown.

the antecedent of who is men (plural), so the verb following who must be plural.

The book that is on the table can be sold now.

the antecedent of that is book (singular), so the verb following that must be singular.

! Do not use which to refer to a whole clause, sentence or paragraph. To write clearly, make sure

the relative pronoun clearly refers to its antecedent.

Ambiguous: The books were standing on the shelves, which needed sorting.

Clearer: The books, which needed sorting, were standing on the shelves.

REFLEXIVE PRONOUN

Reflexive pronouns are used much less often in English than in other languages. This explanation provides an overview to reflexive pronoun use in English with explanations and examples.

English Reflexive Pronouns

I – myself
you – yourself
he – himself
she – herself
it – itself
we – ourselves
you – yourselves
they – themselves

Here is a list of some of the most common reflexive verbs in English:

to enjoy oneself
to hurt oneself
to kill oneself
to market oneself
to convince oneself
to deny oneself
to encourage oneself 
to pay oneself

Reflexive pronouns are used in three instances in English.

With Reflexive Verbs

Examples:

I enjoyed myself last summer.
He's trying to market himself as a consultant.
Sharon pays herself $5,000 a month.
We encourage ourselves to learn something new every week.

As an Object of a Preposition Referring to Subject

Examples:

Tom bought a motorcycle for himself.
They purchased a round trip ticket to New York for themselves.
We made everything in this room by ourselves.
Jackie took a weekend holiday to be by herself.

To Emphasize Something

Examples:

No, I want to finish it myself! (I don't want anyone helping me.)
She insists on talking to the doctor herself. (She didn't want anyone else talking to the doctor.)
Frank tends to eat everything himself. (He doesn't let the other dogs get any food.)

Problem Areas

Many languages such as Italian, French, Spanish, German, and Russian often use verb forms which employ reflexive pronouns. Here are some examples:

alzarsi – Italian / get up
cambiarsi – Italian / change clothes
sich anziehen – German / get dressed
sich erholen – German / get better
se baigner – French / to bathe, swim
se doucher – French / to shower

In English, reflexive verbs are much less common. Sometimes students make the mistake of translating directly from their native language and adding a reflexive pronoun when not necessary.

Examples:

I get myself up, shower myself and have breakfast before I leave for work. SHOULD BE I get up, shower and have breakfast before I leave for work.

She becomes herself angry when she doesn't get her way. SHOULD BE She becomes angry when she doesn't get her way.

 TEST

Fill in the gaps with the correct pronouns:

1) The door opens ________________ when someone comes near it.
2) Look at your umbrella! You should buy ________________ a new one.
3) There was so much noise, I couldn't make ________________ heard. 
4) "- Who taught you Latin?" || "- I taught ________________ ."
5) They lost the match and were ashamed of ________________ .

ANSWERS:
1) itself | 2) yourself | 3) myself | 4) myself | 5) themselves

INTENSIVE PRONOUN

The following words are reflexive pronouns. They may also be known as intensive pronouns. The word reflexive as used in the term reflexive pronoun means to reflect. The pronoun renames the subject of the sentence.

reflexive or intensive pronouns

singular

myself, yourself, himself, herself, itself

plural

ourselves, yourselves, themselves

Consider the following sentence. The birds are grooming. We don't know what the birds are grooming. A reflexive pronoun completes the expression.

reflexive

The birds are grooming themselves.

The best comedians disparage themselves.

Stanley freed himself from the wrecked automobile.

intensive

You must understand the subject, yourself, before you can explain it to other people.

John, himself, is a comedian.

I, myself, am a graduate of that college.

Intensive pronouns create a redundancy.

Recommendation: Do not use intensive pronouns.

3.5.ADJECTIVES AND ADVERBS

Definitions:

Adjectives are words that describe nouns or pronouns. They may come before the word they describe (That is a cute puppy.) or they may follow the word they describe (That puppy is cute.).

Adverbs are words that modify everything but nouns and pronouns. They modify adjectives, verbs, and other adverbs. A word is an adverb if it answers how, when, or where.

The only adverbs that cause grammatical problems are those that answer the question how, so focus on these.

Rule 1

Generally, if a word answers the question how, it is an adverb. If it can have an -ly added to it, place it there.

Examples:
She thinks slow/slowly.
She thinks how? slowly.
She is a slow/slowly thinker.
Slow does not answer how, so no -ly is attached. Slow is an adjective here.
She thinks fast/fastly.
Fast answers the question how, so it is an adverb. But fast never has an -ly attached to it.
We performed bad/badly.
Badly describes how we performed.

Rule 2

A special -ly rule applies when four of the senses – taste, smell, look, feel – are the verbs. Do not ask if these senses answer the question how to determine if -ly should be attached. Instead, ask if the sense verb is being used actively. If so, use the -ly.

Examples:
Roses smell sweet/sweetly.
Do the roses actively smell with noses? No, so no -ly.
The woman looked angry/angrily.
Did the woman actively look with eyes or are we describing her appearance? We are only describing appearance, so no -ly.
The woman looked angry/angrily at the paint splotches.
Here the woman did actively look with eyes, so the -ly is added.
She feels bad/badly about the news.
She is not feeling with fingers, so no -ly.

Good vs. Well

Rule 3

The word good is an adjective, while well is an adverb.

Examples:
You did a good job.
Good describes the job.
You did the job well.
Well answers how.
You smell good today.
Describes your odor, not how you smell with your nose, so follow with the adjective. You smell well for someone with a cold.
You are actively smelling with a nose here, so follow with the adverb.

Rule 4

When referring to health, use well rather than good.

Example:
I do not feel well. You do not look well today.

Note: You may use good with feel when you are not referring to health.

Example:
I feel good about my decision to learn Spanish.

Rule 5

A common error in using adjectives and adverbs arises from using the wrong form for comparison. For instance, to describe one thing we would say poor, as in, "She is poor." To compare two things, we should say poorer, as in, "She is the poorer of the two women." To compare more than two things, we should say poorest, as in, "She is the poorest of them all."

Examples:

Rule 6

Never drop the -ly from an adverb when using the comparison form.

Correct:
She spoke quickly.
She spoke more quickly than he did.

Incorrect:
She spoke quicker than he did.

Correct:
Talk quietly.
Talk more quietly.

Incorrect:
Talk quieter.

Rule 7

When this, that, these, and those are followed by nouns, they are adjectives. When they appear without a noun following them, they are pronouns.

Examples:
This house is for sale.
This is an adjective here.
This is for sale.
This is a pronoun here.

Rule 8

This and that are singular, whether they are being used as adjectives or as pronouns. Thispoints to something nearby while that points to something "over there."

Examples:

This dog is mine.
That dog is hers.
This is mine.
That is hers.

Rule 9

These and those are plural, whether they are being used as adjectives or as pronouns.These points to something nearby while those points to something "over there."

Examples:
These babies have been smiling for a long time.
These are mine. Those babies have been crying for hours. Those are yours.

Rule 10

Use than to show comparison. Use then to answer the question when.

Examples:
I would rather go skiing than rock climbing.
First we went skiing; then we went rock climbing.

Adjectives modify nouns. To modify means to change in some way. For example:

"I ate a meal." Meal is a noun. We don't know what kind of meal; all we know is that someone ate a meal.

"I ate an enormous lunch." Lunch is a noun, and enormous is an adjective that modifies it. It tells us what kind of meal the person ate.

Adjectives usually answer one of a few different questions: "What kind?" or "Which?" or "How many?" For example:

"The tall girl is riding a new bike." Tall tells us which girl we're talking about. Newtells us what kind of bike we're talking about.

"The tough professor gave us the final exam." Tough tells us what kind of professor we're talking about. Final tells us which exam we're talking about.

"Fifteen students passed the midterm exam; twelve students passed the final exam." Fifteen and twelve both tell us how many students; midterm and final both tell us which exam.

So, generally speaking, adjectives answer the following questions:

Which?

What kind of?

How many?

The Basic Rules: Adverbs

Adverbs modify verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs. (You can recognize adverbs easily because many of them are formed by adding -ly to an adjective, though that is not always the case.) The most common question that adverbs answer is how.

Let's look at verbs first.

"She sang beautifully." Beautifully is an adverb that modifies sang. It tells us how she sang.

"The cellist played carelessly." Carelessly is an adverb that modifies played. It tells ushow the cellist played.

Adverbs also modify adjectives and other adverbs.

"That woman is extremely nice." Nice is an adjective that modifies the noun woman.Extremely is an adverb that modifies nice; it tells us how nice she is. How nice is she? She's extremely nice.

"It was a terribly hot afternoon." Hot is an adjective that modifies the nounafternoon. Terribly is an adverb that modifies the adjective hot. How hot is it? Terribly hot.

So, generally speaking, adverbs answer the question how. (They can also answer the questions when, where, and why.)

Some other rules:

Most of the time, adjectives come before nouns. However, they come after the nouns they modify, most often when the verb is a form of the following:

be

feel

taste

smell

sound

look

appear

seem

Some examples:

"The dog is black." Black is an adjective that modifies the noun dog, but it comes after the verb. (Remember that "is" is a form of the verb "be.")

"Brian seems sad." Sad is an adjective that modifies the noun Brian.

"The milk smells rotten." Rotten is an adjective that modifies the noun milk.

"The speaker sounds hoarse." Hoarse is an adjective that modifies the noun speaker.

Be sure to understand the differences between the following two examples:

"The dog smells carefully." Here, carefully describes how the dog is smelling. We imagine him sniffing very cautiously.

But:

"The dog smells clean." Here, clean describes the dog itself. It's not that he's smelling clean things or something; it's that he's had a bath and does not stink.

Exercise:
Circle the correct adjective or adverb in parentheses. Remember that adjectives modify nouns or pronouns; adverbs modify verbs, adjectives, or adverbs.

1. Have you ever seen (real, really) emeralds?
2. Arpine always dresses (neat, neatly). 
3. Jose, a college student, is a (high, highly) gifted person.
4. Are you (sure, surely) this train stops in Santa Barbara? 
5. She will (glad, gladly) help you with your homework.
6. Sarah (haste, hastily) wrote the essay, leaving out the thesis. 

Most adjectives and adverbs have three forms: positive, comparative, and superlative. The positive form is the form that appears in the dictionary. 
The living room is very large.

The comparative of an adjective or adverb compares two persons or things, indicating a more or less scenario.
Nancy is more studious than Brian.

The superlative of an adjective or adverb compares three or more persons or things, indicating a most or least situation. 
Homer is the laziest of the three brothers

3.6. CONDITIONAL SENTENCES

A conditional sentence expresses action that only occurs if a certain condition is fulfilled. Conditional sentences, which are sometimes referred to as conditional clauses or "if" clauses, have an antecedent ("if") and a consequent ("then"). Conditional sentences often follow the pattern "If X, then Y." However, conventional sentences vary in structure and do not always use the word "if." They can also use past, present or future tense.

Introduce students to the "possible" type of conditional sentence. A possible conditional sentence states that a condition may be fulfilled and that when that condition is fulfilled, action will take place. For instance, "If I have a party, I will invite her."

Introduce students to the "improbable" conditional sentence, which uses simple present tense and future tense. An improbable conditional sentence states that a condition is unlikely to be fulfilled, but that action will take place if it is fulfilled. "If I found her phone number, I would invite her." An improbable conditional sentence uses simple past tense and conditional tense.

Introduce students to the impossible conditional sentence, which states that a condition was not fulfilled and therefore action did not take place. For instance, "If I had hosted a party, I would have invited her." This kind of conditional sentence utilizes the past-perfect tense and the conditional tense with a past participle.

Teach students to identify conditionals that are expressed without an "if, then" construct. Provide examples of conditional sentences that do not use the words "if" or "then" anywhere in the sentence. For instance, "Unless you hurry, you will miss the bus." Ask students to reword this conditional sentence using "if" and "then" (e.g. "If you do not hurry, then you will miss the bus." This exercise reinforces the concept of conditional sentences, forcing students to think about how and why conditional clauses are used.

CHAPTER 4 WAYS OF CORRECTING GRAMMAR MISTAKES. EVALUATING METHODS

Corder identified three stages in error analysis: recognition, linguistic description and psycho-linguistic explanation (1974). Both automatic error detection tools and error annotation schemes tend to provide a description in terms of a category or a suggested correction, whereas neither usually includes a higher-level explanation, partly because the necessary information is unavailable.

Exactly what constitutes an error is a controversial topic, but at the same time crucial for annotation, identification being a prerequisite. Our concept of error is close to James’s provisional definition of ‘a language error as an unsuccesful bit of language’ (1998, p. 1). This includes in particular the subclass of errors (sensu lato) variously termed mistakes, slips or lapsi calami, namely deviances which the writer would have been able to correct himself if someone had drawn his attention to them; this is convenient for error annotation since the writer’s intention cannot normally be established for instances of deviant language in a corpus, and one of the strengths of automatic error detection tools is exactly that they can draw the writer’s intention to differences between what he wrote and what he meant to write.

To our best knowledge, the study of errors committed by professional writers — and, more generally, native speakers from all walks of life in different writing situations — remains sporadic and unsystematic; no serious effort seems to have been made to characterise with any level of precision the types of error typically found in either edited or unedited text (apart from some studies on keyboard-related typographic errors, e.g., MacNeilage 1964, as well as smaller-scale collections akin to the one included in Foster 2004), leaving authors of writer’s guides and developers of software tools with no option but to rely on intuitive and impressionistic approaches. Significant practical and technical hurdles would have to be overcome to obtain a representative and sufficiently large sample of unedited text in particular, not to mention the appointment of a team of experts with sufficient authority to add the appropriate amount of proverbial red ink.

It has been argued that non-native speakers should be regarded as competent users of their own, personal idiosyncratic dialect, whereby constructions that sound ungrammatical to native ears should not be labelled as such, since ‘they are in fact grammatical in terms of the learner’s language’ (Corder 1971, original italics). Needless to say, moving the goalposts to a different field altogether is utterly unhelpful for someone who wants to improve his foreign-language skills; it may well be true that a thorough analysis of ‘the learner’s language’ qua language can be illuminating when subsequently compared to the grammar of the ‘real’ language, but a reverence for individual differences does not seem wholly justified in this case given that a learner’s grammar will often be internally inconsistent in ways geographical dialects are not, and more importantly that a learner’s unintentional deviation from the norm is quite different from a dialect speaker’s adherence to a different norm. A more valid criticism is that a lop-sided focus on errors obscures what the non-native speaker gets right as well as more subtle linguistic deviation not normally covered under the concept of error.

Dictionaries of errors are organised alphabetically, at least on a superficial level, although extensive cross-referencing may allow a more systematic approach than one might at first suspect. Other similar books are explicitly divided into separate sections corresponding to different types of error, such as Fitikides’ classification into five major categories (1936):

1. Misused forms (wrong preposition, wrong tense, etc.);

2. Incorrect omission (missing preposition, missing auxiliary, missing morpheme such

as plural -s or past tense -ed, etc.);

3. Unnecessary words (superfluous article, superfluous to, etc.);

4. Misplaced words (e.g., adverbials);

5. Confused words (wrong preposition [sic], wrong noun, etc.).

Similar surface structure taxonomies have been discussed more recently, for instance by Dulay, Burt & Krashen, who noted that ‘[l]earners may omit necessary items or add unnecessary ones; they may misform items or misorder them’ (1982, p. 150, original italics), or by James, who preferred a quintipartite division into omissions, overinclusions, misselections, misorderings and blends (1998, p. 111). Surface structure taxonomies have been critisised for not taking into account the modern view of language as fundamentally hierarchical rather than as a concatenation of words like beads on a string, but surface structure is still used for error annotation, partly because it provides a practical approach, but it has also been argued that the concept of surface structure is psycholinguistically sound in the sense that language users often think of errors in such terms (e.g., an error involving the use of a definite plural noun phrase instead of an indefinite one would typically be conceptualised as a superfluous the).

In general, local errors such as spelling mistakes are easier to detect and correct reliably than global ones such as discourse errors (which have, at least partly for this reason and perhaps regrettably, been somewhat neglected in practical corpus annotation work, but that is not our concern at this stage). However, as pointed out by Lennon, the degree of localness depends not only on the ‘extent’ of the error, but also on ‘the breadth of context [ . . . ] criterial for whether error has occurred’, its ‘domain’, which may vary from a single morpheme to, in the extreme case, extralinguistic context (1991). In other words, even a trivial typographic error may require a large amount of contextual information to become apparent, in which case detecting it may not at all be a simple task despite its minute extent.

There is thus no absolute correlation between the level at which an error belongs in the linguistic hierarchy and the ease with which it can be handled. For this purpose, a more appropriate linguistically motivated hierarchy might be based on the level of descriptive detail needed to detect that something is amiss, originally proposed to explain degrees of grammaticality (Chomsky 1961): at the lowest level, any sequence of English words is acceptable; at the next level, words are divided into parts of speech and their combination must conform to certain syntactic rules, which would exclude something like the *cater ate my gymsuit; at a higher level, verbs may be subdivided into ‘pure transitives, those with inanimate objects, etc.’, nouns subdivided similarly, and the rules refined accordingly, at which point sufficient information would be available for an anomaly like the *khat ate my gymsuit to be detected. The practicality of an error classification scheme along these lines, as well as the adequacy of the resulting categories, remains to be established.

A related problem appears when a given error can be corrected in more than one way, such as *friends his for his friends (word order error) or friends of his (missing preposition). In this particular case, having a category for ‘incorrect possessive formation’ would circumvent the issue, but specific guidelines are typically needed to deal with such cases in a consistent manner. Another option would be to assign a given error to multiple categories, but this is usually not considered, not least because the annotation task becomes even harder if one has to ensure that all error categories corresponding to equally good or atleast plausible corrections are included consistently. Most error taxonomies devised for corpus annotation combine surface structure and linguistic categories, as for instance the scheme used in the clc ;the majority of the error types indicate both the part of speech involved and the general category of error, expressed either in terms of word-level surface structure modification (missing word, unnecessary word, etc.) or in terms of linguistic category (agreement, derivational morphology, etc.); additional error types are used when multiple parts of speech are involved (e.g., word order) or when the part of speech is found to be irrelevant (e.g., spelling or register). Errors at the word level and below are categorised along lines similar to James’s linguistic taxonomy, whereas syntactic errors are dealt with in terms of surface structure.

Something that seems to be missing from almost all approaches to error annotation is a perspective of how it can interact with other means of corpus analysis. For instance, adding part-of-speech tags is all very well, but this is perhaps something that could be done automatically, especially if a corrected version of the erroneous passage is provided anyway; conversely, information latent in the error annotation could be helpful for parsing syntactically incorrect sentences successfully. More generally, when multiple types or levels of annotation are to be added to the same text, taking advantage of interdependencies between them to avoid encoding essentially the same information several times can greatly reduce the amount of work involved, a principle referred to by Pienemann as ‘economical exploitation’ of pre-existing annotation (1992).

For a rather isolating language like English, with limited derivational and inflectional morphology, non-words can be identified fairly reliably by looking up word forms (sequences of letters delimited by punctuation marks or white space) in a lexicon. For this to work well, the lexicon should be of limited size and adapted to the writer: it should ideally be not only sufficiently comprehensive to include any word used in a text and thus avoid flaggingcorrect words as misspellings, but also sufficiently limited not to include infrequent words, technical terms outside the author’s field or variant forms belonging to other dialects given that the chance of an accidental match between a misspelling of one word and the correct spelling of another increases with the size of the lexicon. The standard approach is to include a medium-size dictionary of fairly common words and give the user the ability to addwords to a personal word list.

After half a century of existence, non-word detection is often regarded as a solved problem, but there is still room for improvement, for instance when it comes to proper names or handling of white space (or absence thereof) in noun compounds, not to mention consistency checking in cases where more than one spelling is acceptable (e.g., -ise/-ize verb suffixes).

The methods mentioned so far are unable to detect real-word errors, a category found to constitute between 25 and 40 per cent of the total number of errors in two empirical studies (Kukich 1992). Classical approaches include hand-written rules, grammar-based techniques and n-gram statistics (see ibid. and Dickinson 2006). n-grams are usually made up of either words/lemmata or parts of speech, but the two can of course be combined, or another variation on the theme can be devised, like Huang & Powers’s reduction of content words to affixes, combined with complete function words (2001). Lexical bi- or trigrams can potentially handle local errors like *piece prize for peace prize, but n-grams are not suitable for modelling slightly less immediate contextual effects such as the likelihood of desert being a misspelling of dessert in the neighbourhood of creme br ` ul ˆ ee´ and crepes .

In a similar vein, Hirst & Budanitsky presented a method for detection and correction of semantic anomalies (e.g., it is my sincere *hole/hope) by considering local and global context and looking for orthographically related and contextually plausible alternatives to a contextually anomalous word.

Context-dependent spelling errors are similar to syntactic and stylistic errors in that more than a single word must be considered in order for them to be identified, and many of them are typically handled by ‘grammar checkers’ rather than ‘spelling checkers’. Perhaps the first widely available tool to deal with syntactic and stylistic issues was the Writer’s Workbench (Macdonald & al. 1982); during the 1980s, several tools were developed and commercialised as separate products, and more advanced syntactic checking was gradually added; in 1992, Microsoft Word and WordPerfect both integrated grammar checkers as part of the word processor, which has since become ubiquitous and thus made grammar checking readily available to the general public.

Automatic writing aids have the merit of being able to point out errors that the writer might not have spotted if left to his own devices, but an author is well advised not to rely on a grammar checker; currently popular commercial systems have not only low recall, which means that many common errors will remain undetected, but also limited precision, which means that correct language will sometimes be flagged as questionable or incorrect, leading to errors being introduced, induced by the grammar checker, if the user puts too much trust in the suggestions provided by the machine. The imperfect nature of such tools is not only problematic for poor spellers and people who find it difficult to express themselves well in writing; competent writers can fall under the computer’s spell by being lulled into a false sense of security and actually produce texts containing more errors than they would without mechanical assistance (Galletta & al. 2005).

CHAPTER 5 CASE STUDY

According to some researchers, the difference between first language (L1) and second language (L2) is the age at which a person learns the language. For example, linguist Eric Lindbergh (1960) defines second language as the language consciously acquired or used after puberty. In most cases, people never achieve the same level of fluency and comprehension in second language as in their first language. These views are closely linked to the critical period hypothesis.

In the acquisition of L2, Hyltenstam (1992) found that the age of six or seven seems to be the tipping point for bilingual parents to achieve such mastery. After this age, children can still learn an L2 and master it in a way close to their mother tongue, but their language then usually includes a few errors, which distinguish them from other groups who acquire their second language at an earlier age. As Hyltenstam (1992) puts it, "The age of 6 or 8 seems to be an important period in the discrimination between the mother and the mother, such as near to the final … more specifically, it may be suggested that AO interacts with the frequency and intensity of use of language," (p. 364).

Later, Hyltenstam & Abrahamsson (2003) customized their age cut-offs to argue that after childhood, in general, it becomes more and more difficult to acquire native-like-ness, but that there is no cut-off point in specific. In addition, they discuss a number of cases where a native-like L2 was acquired for the duration of adulthood.

Audiolingual method, the communicative approach, or task-based learning have advocated L2 only method. One reason of using this method is that the exposure to L2 outside the classroom is rather scarce. As Cook says that “the use of L1 is perceived to hinder the learning of L2 “ (as quoted in Zacharias 2000). On the contrary, many ELT professionals have suggested reexamining the English only approach in the L2 classroom. Prodromou reminds us that there is much potential for using L1 in language learning contexts rather than abusing it (as quoted in Juarez and Oxbrow 2008). Therefore, when not used excessively, L1 is beneficial in L2 classroom.

First of all, the use of L1 enhances relaxed classroom atmosphere. Both teacher and students are given the opportunity to use L1 in certain situations. In such a less threatening classroom, students’ anxiety can be minimized. Rivera finds that allowing students to use L1 makes them feel less intimidated (Auerbach 1993). In addition, students feel freer to express their ideas. Whenever they do not know a particular lexical item in L2, they can switch to the one in L1, for example “How do you say menerkam in English ?” Bolitho sees this phenomenon as a valuable humanistic element in the classroom (Atkinson 1987). When this happens, learning takes place.

In addition, L1 is useful in managing the class. Explaining grammar concept through L1 saves time. Piasecka states that for novice students, grammar explanation in L2 is useless because their language repertoire is limited (as quoted in Auerbach 1993). Atkinson advises teachers to use L1 “when a correlate structure does not exist in L1 such as a verb tense” (as quoted in Harbord 1992). Checking students’ comprehension and correcting errors can be conducted in L1, too. This strategy is believed to be very helpful to avoid misunderstanding (Harbord 1992). Giving instruction in L1 helps teachers keep the class moving at early levels. Harbord (1992) asserts that teacher can use L1 to simplify a complex activity. Moreover, a research done by Lameta-Tufuga reveals that students can fully understand the content of the written task through L1 (as quoted in Nation 2003). Eventually, these procedures help teachers to achieve the objective of the lesson.

Most important, permitting students to use L accelerates students’ L2 acquisition process. Students learn new vocabulary faster through L1. Laufer and Shmueli claim “studies comparing the effectiveness of various methods for learning always come up with the result that an L1 translation is the most effective” (as quoted in Nation 2001). If students are aware of similarities and differences between L1 and L2, they can avoid errors which could be derived from the transfer of their L1. Ferrer (2005) takes the view that the use of L1 enable students to “notice the gap between their inner grammars and the target language and ultimately, through constant hyphotesis testing, achieve higher levels of grammatical as well as communicative competence”. This awareness contributes to L2 acquisition process.

Even though many language teachers oppose the issue of L1 use in L2 classroom, literature provide evidence that L1 use in L2 classroom is advantageous if not overused. Due to friendly classroom atmosphere, students feel more comfortable so they are motivated to learn. The use of L1 makes it possible for teacher to manage the class more effectively. Through L1, students experience faster L2 acquisition process.

Contextualization cues, defined as linguistic, paralinguistic, or interactive features habitually used and perceived by interlocutors in order to realize this signaling effect, take many different forms such as the selection of a certain style or code, the use of certain syntactic or lexical forms, and strategies involving conversation openings and closings, just to name a few (Gumperz, 1982).

The following brief dialog has a number of contextualization cues and other discoursive structures contributing to the establishment of a shared understanding of what is actually happening between the two interlocutors:

A: Are you going to be here for ten minutes?

B: Go ahead and take your break. Take longer, if you want.

A: I’ll just be outside on the porch. Call me if you need me.

B: OK. Don’t worry.

Gumperz argues that if these two interlocutors’ knowledge about their language is limited to a sentence-level, grammatical correctness, such a simple message as a request and its acceptance can not be interpreted and therefore not successfully exchanged. For example, B’s understanding of A’s first utterance as a request was possible because B was aware of the illocutionary force of A’s question and used conversational inference to arrives at a correct interpretation of A’s intention. Conversational inferences such as this are cued contextually, according to Gumperz (1997), by rhythmic organization, utterance prominence to highlight some elements, the signaling of turn-taking, the choice of discourse strategies that influ- ence their interpretation, and so on. In summary, Gumperz’s view of a person’s language competence is that it is a matter that always has to be discussed in relation to interaction, and the appropriate contextualization to mark communicative conventions is an indispensable factor for the success in conversational exchange.

In their often – cited article on communicative competence in relation to second language pedagogy, Canale and Swain (1980) proposed a theoretical framework in which they outline the contents and boundaries of three areas of communicative competence: grammatical, sociolinguistic, and strategic competence. Sociolinguistic competence was further divided by Canale (1983) into two separate components:¡ sociolinguistic and discourse competence. He defines communicative competence as “the underlying systems of knowledge and skill required for communication” (Canale, 1983: 5). What is intriguing about their framework of communicative competence is that even the aspects of skills that are needed to employ the knowledge are now assumed to be part of one’s competence. The communicative competence is, then, distinguished from what Canale calls “actual communication,” which is defined as “the realization of such knowledge and skill under limiting psychological and environmental conditions such as memory and perceptual constraints,fatigue, nervousness, distractions, and interfering background noises” (Canale, 1983: 5). If we are to compare Canale and Swain’s construct of communicative competence with that of Chomsky’s in a broad sense, Chomsky’s “competence” is equivalent to the “grammatical competence” mentioned by Canale and Swain, and all other areas of their framework are lacking in Chomsky’s definition.

As far as performance is concerned, Chomsky’s performance and Canale and Swain’s actual communication point to roughly the same phenomenon of uttering sentences in real communicative situations.

The mastery of L2 phonological and lexicogrammatical rules and rules of sentence formation; that is, to be able to express and interpret literal meaning of utterances (e.g., acquisition of pronunciation, vocabulary, word and sentence meaning, construction of grammatical sentences, correct spelling, etc.)

The mastery of sociocultural rules of appropriate use of L2; that is, how utterances are produced and understood in different sociolinguistic contexts (e.g., understanding of speech act conventions, awareness of norms of stylistic appropriateness, the use of a language to signal social relationships, etc.)

The mastery of rules concerning cohesion and coherence of various kinds of discourse in L2 (e.g., use of appropriate pronouns, synonyms, conjunctions, substitution, repetition, marking of congruity and continuity, topic-comment sequence, etc.)

The mastery of verbal and non-verbal communication strategies in L2 used when attempting to compensate for deficiencies in the grammatical and sociolinguistic competence or to enhance the effectiveness of communication (e.g., paraphrasing, how to address others when uncertain of their relative social status, slow speech for rhetorical effect,etc.)

As it is clear from the way their framework is described, their intention was to discover the kinds of knowledge and skills that an L2 learner needs to be taught and to develop the theoretical basis for a communicative approach in the second language teaching based on an understanding of the nature of human communication (Canale and Swain, 1980).

METHODOLOGY

Using a different terminology for the object of description (Bachman calls it “communicative language theory,” which is abbreviated as CLT), he developed three central components for CLT that are essential to define one’s competence in communicative language use: language competence, strategic competence, and psychophysiological mechanisms. Of the three, though, only language competence is dealt with here. The first component he termed as language competence consists of two parts : organizational competence and pragmaticcompetence.

Adoption of the communication – oriented foreign language teaching, popularly known as Communicative Language Theory (CLT), in English classrooms has been repeatedly stressed by SLA researchers, and indeed, there have been many studies attempting to determine its effects on L2 learners (Breen and Candlin, 1980; Canale, 1983; Canale and Swain, 1980; Fillmore, 1979; Kasper and Rose, 2002; O’Malley and Chamot, 1990; Oxford, 1990; Swain, 1985; Skehan, 1995; Tarone and Yule, 1989; Widdowson, 1978). In discussing syllabus design, for example, Canale and Swain (1980) justify the application of CLT by defending it against the claim that the communicatively oriented syllabus tends to be disorganized in terms of acquisition of grammar. They believe that there are no empirical data to support it and that the functionally organized communicative approach is more likely than the grammar-based approach “to have positive consequences for learner motivation” (Canale and Swain, 1980: 32) as it provides a form of in-class training that makes learners feel more comfortable, confident, and encouraged, with a clear, visible purpose for L2 learning, namely successful communication.

Brown (1994a), viewing CLT as an approach (that is, a theoretical position about the nature of language and of language teaching), rather than a specific method of teaching, describes four underlying characteristics in defining CLT in a second language classroom, which are summarized below:

Focus in a classroom should be on all of the components of communicative competence of which grammatical or linguistic competence is just part. Classroom activities should be designed to engage students in the pragmatic, authentic, and functional use of language for meaningful purposes. Both fluency and accuracy should be considered equally important in a second language learning classroom. And they are complementary. Students have to use their target language, productively and receptively, in unrehearsed contexts under proper guidance, but not under the control of a teacher.

It is clear from these characteristics that CLT is a major departure from earlier pedagogical approaches, particularly grammar translation methods that pay special attention to overt presentation of grammatical rules and translation. And yet there seems to be a little consensus as to what actually to present to the learners or what lesson “techniques” (Brown, 1994a) to use to enhance their communicative competence and not just their grammatical commands through CLT.

L2 learners can benefit from viewing and reviewing audiovisual recordings such as videotapes and visual hypermedia software of their own communicative interactions and model interactions by native speakers. In learning how to make requests, for example, the students can not only participate in, say, pair work as part of their function-building exercise, but also film their actual performance to collect data for analysis. The data ideally cover a wide range of situations in which they make or receive requests, in terms of social status and role of interlocutors, degree of imposition internal to the act of the request being made, and so on. Through close examination of their recordings and introspection, the students will have a chance to reflect on what they said to make requests (grammatical competence). To measure the success of the students’ performance, the teacher can, then, play a video clip that shows model performance by native speakers of the target language, in order for them to see how different or similar their communicative performance of requests is, when contrasted with how native speakers execute the same act.

Here, the students can both review their grammatical precision in use and learn about the sociocultural appropriateness of the communicative event. Moreover, the very nature of the audiovisual material enables the students to see and analyze their own and native speaker’s nonverbal communication as well. It is, thus, advisable that the students study their own communicative experience and the nature and characteristics of social interaction in their target language so as to develop their L2 sociolinguistic competence(Erickson, 1996).

One major difficulty facing the use of videotapes this way, however, is the lack of availability of sources of the model interaction.

Unlike the environment that surrounds students learning English as their second language in English speaking countries, which most likely provides them with lots of language input, whether they be communicative or not, outside their classroom.

This limitation makes it difficult for the teacher to collect audiovisual data on video. One way to compensate for that problem is to ask native speakers of the students’ target language to perform the relevant acts and film them, although what the students look at is then no longer a naturally occurring conversation. Or, the teacher may turn to existing audiovisual materials, such as TV talk shows, TV dramas, or movies. We may not be able to draw a direct comparison between the students’ performance and that of TV personalities, in terms of the contents of request and social situations in which the act of request is made.

Role-play is an effective way to develop students’ communicative competence, especially the sociolinguistic and strategic competence discussed in Canale and Swain’s (1980) framework. It also helps the students acquire what Saville-Troike (1996) describes as interactional knowledge. Learning a language for a wide range of social and expressive functions requires more than just learning word- and sentence-formation, correct pronunciation, and orthography; rather, one learns “a system of use whose rules and norms are an integral part of culture” (Schiffrin, 1996 : 323). In other words, language learning should be a dynamic process and a means to acquire knowledge to act appropriately in a cultural group. For this end to be met, a teacher needs to provide the students with chances to act and interact verbally in the classroom. In the discussion of the use of audiovisual recordings above, it was suggested that the students tape-record their own communicative performance for introspection and reflection. Their performance to be recorded can best be analyzed for this purpose through spontaneous role-plays. Usually, role-plays are properly framed, yet open-ended, bilateral, interactive, and above all, highly contextualized in nature.

Going back to Brown’s (1994b) list of the six key words of CLT, we can say that role – plays that encompass the role – negotiating aspects in them have, though in a loose sense, all six characteristics. They are learner-centered activities that call for collaboration of the interacting participants, and there are invariably communicative goals to be accomplished by the participants, who produce and interpret sentences for the exchange of social as well as referential meaning. This approach makes role-plays one of the most effective or even crucial techniques to be employed in CLT to build one’s sociolinguistic and strategic competence.

Example: two students, playing the role of classmates, are instructed to perform the speech act, according to a pre-selected situation in response to the Discourse Completion Task. Student B borrowed Student A’s notebook for an upcoming exam, but accidentally ruined it. Now, Student A asks Student B to return it to her.

Student A : I need the notebook I lent you. Do you have it now?

Student B: I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I was bad. I’m sorry . Can you excuse me?

Student A:Well …

There is clear evidence of pragmalinguistic failure in Student B’s apology, namely a linguistically inappropriate way of making an apology that fails to conform to the native-speaker norm. First, B does not respond to the question “Do you have it now?” with a yes or no. Then, B repeats “I’m sorry” three times with a semantically incorrect sentence of “I was bad” (the student may have meant “I did a bad thing”) followed by, again, semantically and pragmatically inappropriate “Can you excuse me?” at the end. Student B’s apology, if used in a real communicative situation with a native speaker of English, will most likely be unacceptable under normal circumstances. It is clear that students will not be able to make an apology or a request, or express gratitude by learning discrete grammatical items. There will be very little room in a grammar-focused syllabus to offer the students a chance to know that the english more or less tend to include an explanation of why and how something happened that leads them to apologize (Yoshida et al., 2000).

Moreover, the number of “I’m sorry” uttered in their act of apology does not determine how sincerely they are apologizing. Also, in this example, we can note a clear-cut case of L1 transfer in the repeated use of “I’m sorry” and the lack of explanation, which are often seen in the style of apology. All this indicates that the students do not necessarily “pick up” complex speech behavior and sociocultural strategies and sociolinguistic forms. Therefore, explicit teaching of speech act strategies will be needed for students to gain illocutionary competence (Cohen, 1996).

RESULTS

One thing that the teacher must keep in mind when incorporating the practice of speech acts in the form of, say, role-play, into his or her syllabus is that students should not be drawn by the teacher to blindly accept the native-speaker norms of performing an act. Speech acts are culture specific and some students consciously avoid “imitating” native-speaker norms and choose to stick with their own styles. After all, language learning is very much reflected in the degree to which one identifies with the target culture, and if we would like language learning to be communicative, the learner’s autonomy should be maintained as much as possible. As foreign language teachers, our contribution will be to inform the students what native speakers in general tend to say to apologize, for example, and how and why they say it, as a mere fact. Then, it is up to them to adopt the native-speaker norms of apology and practice them on their own. As we have seen, the ability to perform speech acts is an important aspect of one’s communicative competence. But at the same time, because it is deeply related to the cultural values of speakers, the teacher should deal with it with care.

CONCLUSION

CLT has been defined and discussed in many different ways by language scholars of different fields.

There is, however, one thing in common that is seen in the writings of all these scholars: linguistic, or grammatical competence, should be considered just one aspect of overall competence an individual has with language. With the change of focus from grammar to communication within linguistic theories (as the field of sociolinguistics developed), L2 language teachers and researchers, too, have shifted the object of their linguistic analysis accordingly. Although teachers and researchers are aware of the need to improve students’ communicative competence and try out new ideas to contribute to meeting that need, there seems to be still a long way to go. In this paper, three suggestions were made to add extra communicativeness to the teaching syllabus. They are not new ideas for L2 teaching, but each one of them has a place in CLT and will help language learners acquire the knowledge of appropriateness in all facets of their target language.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bachman, L. F. (1990). Fundamental Considerations in Language Testing . Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Bachman, L. F., & Palmer, A. S. (1982). The construct validation of some components of communicative proficiency. TESOL Quarterly , 16 (4): 449-65.ɉ

Breen, M. P., & Candlin, C. N. (1980). The essentials of a communicative curriculum in language teaching. Applied Linguistics , 1(2): 89-112.

Brown, H. D. (1994a). Principles of Language Learning and Teaching . New Jersey: Prentice Hall Regents

Brown, H. D. (1994b). Teaching by Principles. An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy . New Jersey: Prentice Hall Regents.

Canale, M. , & Swain, M. (1980). Theoretical bases of communicative approaches to second language teaching and testing. Applied Linguistics , 1 (1): 1-47.

Canale, M. (1983). From communicative competence to communicative language pedagogy. In J. C. Richards and R. W. Schmidt, eds. Language and Communication . New York: Longman.

Carroll, J. B. (1961). The nature of data, or how to choose a correlation coefficient. Psychometrika , 26 (4): 347-72.

Carroll, J. B. (1968). The psychology of language testing. In A. Davies, ed. Language Testing Symposium: A Psycholinguistic Perspective . London: Oxford University Press.

Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the Theory of Syntax . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Clark, J. L. (1987). Curriculum Renewal in School Foreign Language Learning . Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Cohen, A. (1996). Speech acts. In S. L. McKay and N. H. Hornberger, eds. Sociolinguistics and Language Teaching . Cambridge :Cambridge University Press.

Coulthard, M. (1985). An Introduction to Discourse Analysis . NewYork: Longman.

Duranti, A. (1988). Ethnography of speaking: Toward a linguistics of the praxis. In F. J. Newmeyer, ed. Linguistics: The Cambridge Survey, Volume Ə Language: The Socio -cultural Context ,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Erickson, F. (1996). Ethnographic microanalysis. In S. L. McKay and N. H. Hornberger, eds. Sociolinguistics and Language Teaching . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Fillmore, C. J. (1979). A grammarian looks to sociolinguistics. In J.B. Pride, ed. Sociolinguistic Aspects of Language Learning and Teaching . Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Goffman, E. (1981). Forms of Talk . Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press.

Gumperz, J. J. (1982). Discourse Strategies . Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.

Gumperz, J. J. (1997). Communicative Competence. In N. Coupland and A. Jaworski, eds. Sociolinguistics: A Reader and Course-boook . London: Macmillan Press.

Gumperz, J. J. (2001). Interactional sociolinguistics: A personal perspective. In D. Schiffrin, D. Tannen, and H. E. Hamilton, eds.

The Handbook of Discourse Analysis . Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Hymes, D. H. (1972). On communicative competence. In J.B. Pride and J. Holmes, eds. Sociolinguistics . Harmondsworth,England: Penguin Books.

Hymes, D. H. (1974). Foundations in Sociolinguistics: An Ethnographic Approach . Philadelphia: University of PennsylvaniaPress.

Jaworski, A. and Coupland, N. (1999). Perspectives on discourse analysis. In A. Jaworski and N. Coupland, eds. The Discourse Reader . London: Routledge.

Kasper, G. (1997). Beyond reference. In G. Kasper and E. Kellerman, eds. Communication Strategies : Psycholinguistic and Sociolinguistic Perspectives . New York: Addison Wesley Longman.

Kasper, G. and Rose, K. R. (2002). Pragmatic Development in a Second Language . Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Komiya Samimy, K., & Kobayashi, C. (2004). Toward the development of intercultural communicative competence: Theoretical and pedagogical implications for Japanese English teachers. JALT Journal , 26 (2): 245-261.

Kramsch, C. (1993). Context and Culture in Language Teaching . Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Lado, R. 1961. Language Testing . New York: McGraw-Hill.

O’Malley, J. M. and Chamot, A. U. (1990). Learning Strategies in Second Language Acquisition . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Oxford, R. (1990). Language Learning Strategies . Rowley, MA : Newbury House.

Pawley, A., & Syder, F. H. (1983). Two puzzles for linguistic theory: Native-like selection and native-like fluency. In J. C. Richards and R. W. Schmidt, eds. Language and Communication . New York: Longman.

Rubin, J. (1979). What the “good language learner” can teach us. In J. B. Pride, ed. Sociolinguistic Aspects of Language Learning and Teaching . Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Saville-Troike, M. (1989). The Ethnography of Communication : An Introduction . Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Saville-Troike, M. (1996). The ethnography of communication. In S. L. McKay and N. H. Hornberger, eds. Sociolinguistics and Language Teaching . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Schiffrin, D. (1996). Interactional sociolinguistics. In S. L. McKay and N. H. Hornberger, eds. Sociolinguistics and Language Teaching . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Skehan, P. (1995). Analysability, accessibility, and ability for us. In G. Cook and B. Seidlhofer, eds. Principle and Practice in Applied Linguistics . Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Swain, M. (1985). Communicative competence : some roles of comprehensible input and comprehensible output in its development. In S. M. Gass and C. G. Madden, eds. Input in

Second Language Acquisition . Rowley, MA: Newbury House.

Tarone, E., & Yule, G. (1989). Focus on the Language Learner .Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Thomas, J. (1983). Cross-cultural pragmatic failure. Applied Linguistics , 4: 91-112

Verhoeven, L. (1997). Sociolinguistics and education. In F. Coulmas, ed. The Handbook of Sociolinguistics . Oxford: Blackwell.

Wardhaugh, R. (1998). An Introduction to Sociolinguistics . 3rd ed. MA: Blackwell.

Widdowson, H. G. (1978). Teaching Language as Communication .Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Wolfson, N. (1983). Rules of speaking. In J. C. Richards and R. Schmidt, eds. Language and Communication . New York: Longman.

Yoshida, K., & Sophia University Applied Linguistics Research Group. (2000). Heart to Heart: Overcoming Barriers in Crosscultural Communication . Tokyo: Macmillan LanguageHouse.