[EDLING:1402] The Practical Linguist / The firm grip of grammar instruction

[Francis M. Hult]

The Daily Yomiuri

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/features/language/20060331TDY14003.htm

The Practical Linguist / The firm grip of grammar instruction

Marshall R. Childs 

"A century ago!" One reader exclaimed, "Do you mean to tell me they knew a 
century ago they should stop grammar instruction and teach English as 
communication?" Well, yes. Four weeks ago, I quoted the famous linguist and 
teacher Otto Jespersen's 1904 lament that, although we know perfectly well 
that English should be taught as a way of connection between souls, "still the 
old grammar-instruction lives and flourishes with its rigmaroles and rules and 
exceptions." 

Some readers expressed surprise at the quotation. They thought communicative 
language teaching (CLT) has been only recently discovered and that, day by 
day, it is steadily replacing old-fashioned methods. But if experts have known 
for more than a century that CLT is best, these readers wonder, what sinister 
forces have delayed the victory of CLT over grammar-based instruction? 

The answer lies in the attractiveness of grammar. Like sin with its many 
wiles, grammar defies all attempts to eliminate it. 

Oh, I know, the brains of native speakers do not use grammatical rules to 
create or interpret language. Nor do second-language learners gain fluency 
through the use of rules. Yet grammar instruction offers several alluring 
features that beguile administrators, teachers, test-makers and textbook 
companies. Students and parents expect it, and torture by grammar is 
considered a natural form of hazing in the educational system. 

It is not that grammar by itself is attractive. Most teachers share students' 
distaste for it. But grammar instruction persists because bureaucratic, 
economic and social forces promote it. There are not even any people to 
vilify; it is the forces themselves that conspire. Everybody you talk to 
says: "Don't look at me. My hands are tied. It is the next guy's fault." 

Administrators desire order. They want school courses to follow orderly 
progressions of explicit content. This is possible in many courses such as 
mathematics and history. It is natural for administrators to feel that a 
language, too, should follow an orderly progression of explicit content. 

The value of explicit grammar instruction to administrators is that they can 
demand orderly syllabuses and can predict course content. The content can 
follow a scheduled tour of rules, starting from those that are assumed to be 
easy to those assumed to be difficult. 

In the case of language, they assume that explicit content gradually becomes 
automatic, although the failure of students to master some things that are 
taught first, such as subject-verb agreement and articles ("a," "an," 
and "the") should lead administrators to suspect that their assumptions are 
flawed. 

=== 

Orderly textbooks 


Textbook publishers, too, demand an orderly sequence of explicit material. 
Textbooks must have chapters, and one of the selling points is that chapter 
plans follow a progression of explicit rules, often to be found in the 
teacher's introduction or in an appendix, showing what new structures are to 
be studied in each unit. 

How could you persuade a textbook publisher to abandon explicit progressions 
of rules? It is possible, but the only way to do it is to lay out a different 
progression of explicit material, perhaps having to do with typical situations 
or typical genres. Some textbooks do that. 

I have said before that I have never met a textbook I liked, even the ones I 
have written myself. One reason is that textbooks are always written for the 
average level of students, never for those who are faster or slower than their 
peers. An even stronger reason is that any material, once committed to paper, 
is dead. Yet language is a living thing. Like a tennis ball, it should always 
be in motion, always changing, always a little bit unpredictable. 

The textbook industry, however, is huge and persuasive, and has a vested 
interest in promoting explicit materials attractively packaged. As an economic 
force, it will remain a strong promoter of grammar instruction. 

Teachers, too, appreciate textbooks as practical solutions to day-to-day 
demands on their time. Teachers in Japan, particularly, face 35 or 40 students 
in classes and are heavily loaded with duties outside classes. They hardly 
have time to create materials adapted to their students. 

I know a brilliant middle school teacher who insisted on creating unique 
communicative materials for her students, often staying up until late at night 
working on the next day's classes, and creating appropriate and beautiful 
lessons. She is now on sick leave, suffering from mental exhaustion. 

A textbook is a lifeline for a teacher who, not having time to prepare 
relevant lessons, can snatch it up on the way to class and teach it without 
fear of criticism. I have done that. As an assistant teacher, I sometimes 
learned, two minutes before class, that the lead teacher was unavailable. My 
solution, of course, was to turn to the next page in the textbook and teach 
it. 

=== 

Grammar in language tests 


Language test-makers, too, are sorely tempted by the wiles of grammar. The old 
paper-based TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) based one-third of 
the score on "structure." The present computer-based TOEFL counts structure 
for less than one-sixth of the total score, and the next generation Internet-
based TOEFL, soon to hit these shores, will test "integrated skills" without a 
specific section on structure. But it has taken even the expert TOEFL 
designers a long time to drop structure. 

People who are not professional test-makers need to lean strongly on whatever 
body of explicit knowledge they can find, and grammar certainly qualifies. One 
of my students, a high school teacher, says she envies the math department 
because their test questions always have right and wrong answers but we, if we 
do our job right, must think of degrees and appropriateness of communication. 

What hope do we have when even university entrance test committees yield to 
the siren call of grammar? 

As individuals, most university test committee members are not guilty of 
illicit love of grammar. The fact is that, if every member of every test 
committee were forced to retire tomorrow, their replacements would hasten to 
bring grammar in. Grisly, fearsome grammar, to challenge the best minds among 
the candidates. What else can they do? Grammar is an agreed-upon battlefield, 
a well-trodden ground where the rules are familiar or at least discoverable. 
No other material comes close to satisfying the limitations of time and energy 
of entrance test committees. 

It is a peculiarly Western idea that we can teach grammatical forms as 
decontextualized knowledge, separate from particular situations, Some non-
Western language educators question that assumption. 

Lynn Mario T. Menzes de Souza, in his essay, "A change of skin: The grammar of 
indigenous communities in Brazil" (TESOL Quarterly, 2005), wrote of the 
Kashinawa people of the Western Amazon. He said, "They do not recognize the 
modernist concept of objectivity." This is one reason why "Amerindian cultures 
and languages have been resistant to the Western notion of grammatization, 
which is founded on the concepts of decontextualized...information and 
normative...rules." 

We do not have to look so far as Brazil to discover that decontextualized 
grammar is inappropriate. We can all learn from the Kashinawa. 

Maybe we should take a careful look at how the Kashinawa teach and learn 
languages, and how they test the results. Perhaps some day we can get away 
from grammar instruction, increase the effectiveness of language teaching, and 
fittingly honor the memory of Otto Jespersen. 

* * * 

This column is intended to improve collaboration among those interested in 
language teaching in Japan. Send e-mail to childs at tuj.ac.jp. The column will 
return on April 28. 


Childs, Ed.D., teaches TESOL (teaching English to speakers of other languages) 
at Temple University, Japan Campus, in Tokyo. 

(Mar. 31, 2006)