Teaching Grammar, Overtly?

English Grammar, Reflective Teaching, Teaching, Teaching Practices, Teaching Tips 0 comments

Picture taken from http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/dick/kal/why.htm

Teaching Grammar, Overtly?

The enquiry of whether to teach grammar or not –overtly- in class is one of those questions asked over and over again by language instructors worldwide. Many language experts have tried to give a satisfactory answer since grammar has always been on the spotlight; grammar means the search for a better language performance in the eyes of many language teachers. For Swan & Walter (2013), “explicit grammar teaching can lead to sustained improvement in accuracy;” however, accuracy in ELT does not mean “perfection.”

In the search for accuracy, grammar teaching is not just sentence writing with good subject-verb and tense agreement; it also deals with vocabulary use (parts of speech), and it implies being idiomatic (or the use of the grammar of the language as native speakers utilize it). Grammar is then central in language learning and teaching, but the question of what should be taught remains at times being unanswered.

What should be taught? For Swan & Walter (2013), depending on who is being taught, the instructor has to teach basic structures to beginners (or A1 based on the CEFR); and for higher levels (B2 or C1) some remedial grammar or new syntactical items. Hulstijn (1995), also quoted by Swan & Walter (2013), focuses on grammar issues that are: 1) easy to explain, 2) reliable, 3) frequent, and 4) wide scope-oriented. Understanding that the grammar of the target language is impossible to cover, Hulstijn’s approach seems to be reasonable. On the other hand, because many Indo-European languages share many overlapping areas, these are the grammar units that are easy to explain, reliable, frequent, and cover a great scope. Let it be borne in mind that learners will not achieve a perfect grammar, but the grammar they get to learn can improve communication, whether they are the ones speaking or listening.

How should grammar be taught? Different experts suggest different methods, but it must be understood that no single learner gets to learn in the very same way. Some experts claim that self-discovery, grammar journeys, or “guided grammar tours” are the panacea for learners. And what about teachers? Language instructors may also approach grammar teaching quite differently, so no single teacher will teach grammar in the same way.

Principles for Grammar Teaching

Swan & Walter (2013) have come up with a simple and quite effective approach to grammar teaching, which allows instructors to deal with the subject-matter as they consider appropriate and allows learners to grasp new structures appropriately. Let us now explain a bit more extensively what the following steps stand for.

A. Input and Output: As suggested by Penny Ur (1996) in her book, A Course in Language Teaching, language presentations have to be brief and direct to the point bearing in mind learners’ attention span. But if presentations are short, language practices must be ample, and these should include some sort of hands-on grammar in which students can feel free in “manipulating” the grammar point (for some sort of self-discovery on the learner’s side). If students have effective input, output can be greatly accurate.

B. Explanations: Following Penny Ur’s rationale on language explanations (1996) and Swan & Walter’s way of viewing explanations (2013), instructors must keep them short, simple, and clear. The explanation should give room to the self-discovery of rules so that students can better grasp the piece of language they are learning. What still remains quite debatable is the use of students’ mother tongue for shorter and direct explanations. Swan & Walter (2013) back up the idea of using a bit of the students’ mother tongue. No doubt that many teachers worldwide second the idea of the native language to guarantee a quick and direct comprehension of the language explanation.

C. Examples: A very innovative feature outlined by Swan & Walter (2013) in their principles of grammar teaching is that examples should not only be sentences, which is the most common practice held by language teachers. These authors suggest the use of a wider scope of written texts such as public notices, cartoons, ads, poetry, prose, and drama. And with the use of digital media, texts can also be infographics and the like. Teachers have a greater scope of written texts that can be used to illustrate grammar points to students.

D. Exercises: Practice is the core of a language class. For this reason, as suggested by Ur (1996), language instructors have to devote class time to learning with lots of types of practice. Teachers can include mechanical grammar-oriented exercises, communication tasks, and/or all sorts of exercises aiming at different Bloom’s Taxonomy levels to foster the manipulation and usage of the new grammar points. In this way, keeping in mind the self-discovery of grammatical rules, students can fully experiment with the new structures being studied.

According to Swan & Walter (2013), grammar is not divorced from other language skills and sub-skills. Grammar is indeed connected to:

- Vocabulary: Understanding the grammar behind lexical items, their uses by native speakers syntaxwise, etc.

- Reading: Use of realistic samples taken from real texts by native speakers as a means to potentialize student written expression

- Writing: The search for accuracy and grammar self-discovery to help develop good writing skills

- Pronunciation: Better understanding, perception, and production of sounds in all parts of speech like in lexical items that change pronunciation depending on how they are used: record (n) = /’rɛkǝrd/, record (v) = /riy’kͻrd/.

Additionally to Swan & Walter’s scope of grammar outline above, it is also necessary to include the following two:

- Listening: Better decoding of messages by receivers especially when new words in their grammatical contexts are very well understood

- Culture: Comprehension of idiomaticity in how native speakers understand and see the world through the grammar they use to explain it

To sum up, grammar could be the door to some good learning of the target language. Grammar is also the door to some great knowledge of a language’s mechanisms to encode meaning in messages. Grammar can also guarantee and/or lead to some great understanding of and communication with native and non-native speakers of the target language.

E To fully develop and comprehend this teaching issue, it’s advisable to research and expand these areas:

1	How to Teach Grammar
2	Should we Use L1 When Teaching Grammar?
3	Grammar and Vocabulary
4	Grammar and Sub-Skills
5	Grammar = Accuracy?

Swan, M. & Walter, C. (2013) Grammar Doesn’t Have to be Grey. IATEFL 2012 Glasgow Conference Selections. Ed. Tania Pattison. Kent: IATEFL

Ur, P. (1996) A Course in Language Teaching. Cambridge: CUP

Professor Jonathan Acuña-Solano

ELT Instructor, Course Designer & Teacher Trainer based in Costa Rica

IATEFL Member and NCTE Affiliate

Resource Teacher at CCCN

Senior ELT Professor at Universidad Latina

Freelance ELT Consultant four OUP in Central America

For further comments or suggestions, reach me at:

@jonacuso – Twitter

jonacuso@gmail.com – Gmail

Other blogs and sites I often write for my students at the university are:

1. Pronunciation 1	2. Readding Skills 1
3. Pronunciation 2	4. Computering Applications in Education

Feel free to download a copy of this article over here.

Teaching Grammar, Overtly by Jonathan Acuña

Saturday, June 15, 2013

Community of Practice

Community of Practice, Hootcourse, Hybrid and Blended Learning, Online Instruction, online learning, Online Teaching Practices, VLEs 0 comments

Community of Practice

A Community of Practice, as defined by BusinessDictionary.com, is “an informal, self-organized network of peers with diverse skills and experience in an area of practice or profession. Such groups are held together by the members’ desire to help others (by sharing information) and the need to advance their own knowledge (by learning from others). Also called community of interest” (2013). This has been the role of Hootcourse, a platform to gather a group of professionals to develop their PLN (Personal Learning Network) beyond their universities or social circles.

http://hootcourse.com/ is an easy-to-use online platform where professionals can become members of a community of interest, whose sole reason of existence is to help its members to learn from one another. By having a Twitter account, anyone can become a member/user of Hootcourse. The platform allows its users to join a course (community of practice) or to create a course (community of interest). If applied to online teaching, this virtual space becomes a “virtual classroom” for students and instructors to share information pertaining to their major or field of study.

Hootcourse, as a Community of Practice platform, allows the instructor and learners to have very well-defined roles. The instructor, by means of hoots also allocated in Twitter, can send reminders of upcoming due dates for papers and assignments. The teacher can also share new information either by providing links or comments to help students focus their learning efforts. It can also be a way to canalize questions and doubts that learners have, since they can be answered by a peer or the instructor.

On the other hand, students can use Hootcourse to send their homework, which can be easily hosted in other connected platforms such as blogs in http://blogger.com, http://posterous.com, or http://WordPress.com or right there in the same Hootcourse site, where it reads essays. By means of the course hash tag (#course), learners –by means of their Twitter accounts- can follow what is new or what is now happening with their Community of Interest, -the course they are taking with you at the university. But what remains important in this case is that students can commit themselves to be checking either their Hootcourse or Twitter account to have access to information being disseminated by the Community of Practice members.

What I like about a Community of Practice such as Hootcourse is the potential it has for sharing and learning. From the instructor’s point of view, I can easily keep track of students’ questions, papers, assignments, and sharing of information with one another or with the group. With no more than 140 characters, I can either provide concrete, timely feedback to students or guide them towards real and meaningful sources on the Web to continue to develop their building of knowledge experientially.

To conclude, I want to ensure that my students understand the importance of what a Community of Practice is and how they can exploit it for their own benefit. As soon as this is understood, I will definitely introduce the platform (Hootcourse) so I can train them on how to join their class online and that they can have access to information on their mobile devices (smartphones, iPods, iPads, iPhones, Android tablets, and the like) 24/7.

E To fully develop and comprehend this teaching issue, it’s advisable to research and expand these areas:

1	Understanding a community of practice
2	Uses of community of practice in education
3	Hootcourse as a community of interest platform
4	Potentializing the use of Hootcourse in college studies
5	Community of Practice as PLNs and VLEs

Professor Jonathan Acuña-Solano

ELT Instructor, Course Designer & Teacher Trainer based in Costa Rica

IATEFL Member and NCTE Affiliate

Resource Teacher at CCCN

Senior ELT Professor at Universidad Latina

Freelance ELT Consultant four OUP in Central America

For further comments or suggestions, reach me at:

@jonacuso – Twitter

jonacuso@gmail.com – Gmail

BusinessDictionary.com (2013): Community of Practice, definition	Retrieved from http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/community-of-practice.html
Ferriman, J. (2013, Feb 17) Social Media in the Classroom	Retrieved from http://www.learndash.com/social-media-in-the-classroom-infographic/

Other blogs and sites I often write for my students at the university are:

1. Pronunciation 1	2. Readding Skills 1
3. Pronunciation 2	4. Computering Applications in Education

Feel free to download a copy of this article over here.

Community of Practice by Jonathan Acuña

Infographic taken from http://www.learndash.com/social-media-in-the-classroom-infographic/

Sunday, June 09, 2013

Approaches and Strategies for Online Teaching

Education and Learning, Hybrid and Blended Learning, Online Instruction, online learning, Online Teaching Practices, VLE 1comments

Learning Reflection: Approaches and Strategies for Online Teaching

In hindsight, after a complete module of Hybrid and Blended Education, several ideas are still whirling around my mind that need to be conceptualized and re-conceptualized, too: The way I used to understand blended learning, the dynamics in real online learning contexts, and my vision of what courses with online components must be taught. The experience so far has been enriching and way profitable for my future teaching.

Understanding B-Learning

The idea of blended or hybrid learning had crossed my mind before when I started a pioneering strategy for teaching at Universidad Latina back in 2010. Not having a very clear understanding of what B-Learning is (or was in 2010), many of my efforts to merge virtual learning platforms with F2F teaching were good but random attempts of what I really wanted to achieve. Discussing approaches to online learning with colleagues and my peers in my PLN (Personal Learning Network) over here in Costa Rica somehow shaped my inappropriate comprehension of what blended learning is. It needs to be admitted that there is a confusion of the boundaries between what online learning is with e-learning. As explained by Penn State University, “A blended learning approach combines face to face classroom methods with computer-mediated activities to form an integrated instructional approach.” But we have been using digital materials to support face to face instruction, but not necessarily as true hybrid learning materials in which students can learn and explore new content linked to the class curriculum.

Current Dynamics in Blended Education

Throughout this first module on Hybrid and Blended Education, participants have been somehow exposed to Kolbe’s Learning Cycle of Experiential Learning to live and outlive the experience to really understand the hidden dynamics and the roles of an instructor and course participants. This approach has made us confront ourselves with healthy course management strategies to vividly witness how to deliver ours in the short run. Additionally, once the misconception of what blended learning is has been unlearned and replaced by the new straight conception, we can better comprehend what is expected from us as instructors (or students) and how learners can feel if the “rules” (or practices or management strategies) are not followed or respected. Understanding how one can design courses to foster student learning (see Boettcher, J. V. (2008, March 17). Designing for learning.) can make our and students’ experience gratifying and success-oriented.

Personal Insights and Vision for Future Courses

Universidad Latina in Costa Rica has a very strong Moodle platform called Campus Virtual and, through its partnership with Cambridge University Press, language teachers have another solid learning management system (LMS) to engage students and to encourage them to become fully responsible for their language learning. What I see myself doing in the short and long run is taking learners into making successful and optimal use of these two tools to guarantee that their learning experiences can be encased –as much as possible- within Kolbe’s Experiential Learning, so they can have meaningful and memorable learning experiences.

I am –no doubt- craving for using Hootcourse in my courses to be more accessible to students via Twitter. This way I can also train students how to use Twitter for educational purposes: 1) to be in touch with class members through social media, 2) to ask one another or to ask the teacher for assistance, and 3) to direct learners to sources of practice or information to guarantee learning. By following this way of working, any instructor can ensure his/her teaching presence, student social presence, student cognitive presence.

Online teaching is a challenge that I am looking forward to doing again but with a second wind. Are you also willing to embark yourself into venturing away from F2F traditional teaching?

E To fully develop and comprehend this teaching issue, it’s advisable to research and expand these areas:

1	Advantages of blended learning
2	What blended instruction is
3	Reasons to employ blended learning
4	Kolb’s Learning Cycle in hybrid education
5	Integrating b-learning in one’s curricula

Professor Jonathan Acuña-Solano

ELT Instructor, Course Designer & Teacher Trainer based in Costa Rica

IATEFL Member and NCTE Affiliate

Resource Teacher at CCCN

Senior ELT Professor at Universidad Latina

Freelance ELT Consultant four OUP in Central America

For further comments or suggestions, reach me at:

@jonacuso – Twitter

jonacuso@gmail.com – Gmail

Boettcher, J. V. (2008, March 17). Designing for learning.	Retrieved from http://www.designingforlearning.info/services/writing/ecoach/tenbest.html
Kolbe, D (2003). Learning Styles Models	Retrieved from http://www.businessballs.com/kolblearningstyles.htm
The Pennsylvania State University (2009). What is Blended Learning?	Retrieved from http://weblearning.psu.edu/blended-learning-initiative/what_is_blended_learning