Three Design Features In Teaching Grammar As A Liberating Force

By Author: peter
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From the foregoing discussion, I propose that an approach to teaching grammar as a liberating force should include the following three elements:

1. Learner choice
Given that the deployment of grammar in communication invariably involves the speaker or writer in making a free and conscious choice (notwithstanding the fact that having chosen a particular grammatical structure there are conventions to observe regarding its acceptable formation), the first element is that the learner must have a degree of choice over the grammatical structures they use, and deploy them as effectively as they can to match specific contexts and meet specific communicative goals. In this respect, an emphasis on grammar as a liberating force would favour a process rather than a product approach to teaching grammar (Batstone 1994; Thornbury 2001), whereby learners are not compelled to use a particular D&G jewelry grammatical structure which has been preselected for them—it would be difficult to conceive of grammar being genuinely a liberating force if they were—but rather they ...
... choose from their stock of grammatical knowledge to express the meanings they wish to convey.

2. Lexis to grammar
If grammar liberates the language user by enabling him/her to transcend the limitations of telegraphic speech (using lexical items alone), there should be a progression from lexis to grammar both in the way language and materials are presented to learners, and in the language we expect them to produce. A grammar production task would typically require the learners to apply grammar to samples of language in which the grammar has been reduced or simplified, as typically found in notes of a meeting or a newspaper headline, where the meaning content is conveyed primarily through lexical items. Such tasks, where the learners are in effect asked to map grammar on to lexis, involve a process known variously as grammaticization (Batstone 1994) or 'grammaring' (Thornbury 2001). By engaging in this kind of activity, learners experience the process of using their grammatical resources to develop the meaning potential contained in the lexical items and express a range of meanings which the words alone could not convey. Such a process is not dissimilar to the processes involved in first language acquisition whereby the child moves from communication through telegraphic utterances involving strings of lexical items to the gradual deployment of morphemes and function words. It is not, however, a process promoted in traditional approaches to grammar teaching such as the presentation-practice-production format, where the learners are typically asked to move in the opposite direction—they begin with a preselected grammatical structure, and then have to slot lexis into it.

3. Comparing texts and noticing gaps
The third element in teaching grammar as a liberating force derives from well-established principles of task-based pedagogy (for example, Willis 1996; Skehan op. cit.) and relates to the importance of allowing the learners to focus on grammatical forms which arise from their communicative needs, and in particular as a result of noticing gaps in their own use of Cartier Jewelry grammar. These gaps are noticed through a process of comparing their output on a language production task with that of other learners or more proficient users, for example, a sample text, or a written transcript of native speakers doing the same task (Willis op. cit.). The focus on grammar is thus 'reactive' rather than proactive (Doughty and Williams 1998), because it arises from the specific communicative needs which the learners discover in the processes of doing the task, reviewing their performance and comparing it with others. In this way learners experience the liberating potential of grammar, not just to help them express their meanings in a particular activity with greater precision, but over time, through a sustained programme of comparing and noticing 'gaps' and differences, to enable them to develop their proficiency and sensitivity in the target language to increasingly more advanced levels.