VoyForums
[ Show ]
Support VoyForums
[ Shrink ]
VoyForums Announcement: Programming and providing support for this service has been a labor of love since 1997. We are one of the few services online who values our users' privacy, and have never sold your information. We have even fought hard to defend your privacy in legal cases; however, we've done it with almost no financial support -- paying out of pocket to continue providing the service. Due to the issues imposed on us by advertisers, we also stopped hosting most ads on the forums many years ago. We hope you appreciate our efforts.

Show your support by donating any amount. (Note: We are still technically a for-profit company, so your contribution is not tax-deductible.) PayPal Acct: Feedback:

Donate to VoyForums (PayPal):

[ Login ] [ Contact Forum Admin ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: 1, [2], 3, 4 ]

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Date Posted: 19:53:36 11/30/04 Tue
Author: Maria tereza
Subject: Re: Final Paper
In reply to: Verônica 's message, "Re: Final Paper" on 06:16:42 11/28/04 Sun

>VERÔNICA I THINK YOUR THESIS STATEMENT SHOULD BE PLACED ON THE SECOND PARAGRAPH. IF I´M NOT MISTAKEN YOU ARE DEFENDING THE IDEA THAT TEACHERS SHOULD NOT TEACH GRAMMAR TO BEGINERS IN A SECOND LANGUAGE COURSE.


Some Perspectives of Teaching Grammar in a
>Second/Foreign Language Curriculum
>
>
>It is possible to classify grammar into two different
>ways: descriptive grammar and pedagogical grammar
>(Lewis, 1986: 7). A descriptive grammar is the one
>produced by linguists who classify and describe the
>language based on an enormous number of examples of
>it (OF IT IS NOT NECESSARY). This kind of grammar is as difficult as a
>technical book to use because it contains long,
>complicated and accurate description of a rule. A
>pedagogical grammar is the one used by foreign
>language students. It is smaller and easier to use and
>contains simplified language. Instead of describing
>how the language is used, it tells how the language
>should be used, conciliating accuracy and
>accessibility. In this way, teachers must know
>pedagogical grammar enough to be able to apply it.
>Lewis (Lewis, 1986: chapter 2) says that analyzing the
>pedagogical grammar it is possible to note that it
>contains three kinds of information that must be
>considered while teaching grammatical structures. Fact
>is a non-generative information. It means that if you
>know one rule it will not help you to understand the
>others. “The information given is generally accepted
>by all native speakers of English”. Pattern is a
>generative information. It means that once the
>students have acquired the pattern of some subject, it
>will help them to understand the whole topic. Primary
>Semantic Distinctions are kinds of information that
>are related to meaning. In this case, the emphasis
>will be on understanding rather than memorizing the
>subject.
>Despite pedagogical grammar being more accessible it
>is not advisable to teach grammar to beginners in a
>second/foreign language course. The first reason why
>we should not teach grammar to beginners is that
>learners do not need grammar instruction to acquire
>considerable grammatical competence. Students that
>have many opportunities to interact in the second
>language are able to acquire basic word order rules
>without assistance. For instance, according to Rod
>Ellis “Students do not put the adjectives after the
>noun, even when this is the ordering in their first
>language. They are also able to acquire the English
>auxiliary system and, over time, use this in a
>target-like manner in interrogatives and
>negatives.”(Ellis,2002:22). A second reason for not
>teaching grammar to beginners is that the early stage
>to second language acquisition (like the early stage
>of first language acquisition) is naturally
>agrammatical. Language learners begin by learning
>items (words or chunks). According to Ellis “Students
>communicate by linking the structures into sequences
>that convey meaning contextually, as shown in the
>following examples (Ellis, 2002:23):
>
>- me no (= I don’t have any crayons)
>- dinner time you out (= It’s dinner time so you have
>to go out)
>- me no school Monday (= I am not coming to school on
>Monday)
>
> such utterances are usual in the spontaneous,
>communicative speech of beginners second/foreign
>language learners, both child and adult. It is only
>later that learners begin to grammaticalize their
>speech. According to Ellis (2002), they do this by
>extracting rules from the items they have learned. In
>this way, the early stages off language acquisitions
>are lexical than grammatical.
>It must be remembered that over some easy explanations
>to form a rule there is a problem: the “simplified
>rule” may be helpful just for some time. In fact the
>rule that has been made can bring to the students some
>trouble once the rule will not always be used for the
>exceptions that may appear. Then students can feel
>even discouraged once they have to “learn” (or
>memorize) the rule taught plus the exceptions it
>carries. Making rules in class in order to clear
>things to the learners besides taking a lot of
>“precious” time will not be a “universal truth” which
>students can make use of in exercises given. Teachers
>must be aware that rules and explanations are divices
>that have a small part to play in the classroom while
>other methods of teaching should have a bigger part to
>play in the class. Certainly the most important thing
>would be if teachers helped their students to run the
>risk of guessing the rules by themselves instead of
>giving everything ready to them. Of course the first
>option demands more work and time but is what can be
>called of a “significative language learning” (Lewis,
>1986: 19) for students in general.(YOU SHOULD START A PARAGRAPH HERE) Finally, the ideal
>way of teaching/learning a second/foreing language
>would be the use of several different approaches and
>strategies that really aim to challenge the learners
>to use their previous knowledge, instinct and above
>all their reasoning towards what is being proposed.
>
>Reference:
>
>Hinkel,E; Fotos, S.(Ed.). New perspectives of teaching
>grammar in second language classroom. Mahwah: Lawrence
>Erlbaum. 2002.
>Lewis, M. The English verb: an exploration of
>structure and meaning. Hove: LTP.1986.

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]
[ Contact Forum Admin ]

Forum timezone: GMT-8
VF Version: 3.00b, ConfDB:
Before posting please read our privacy policy.
VoyForums(tm) is a Free Service from Voyager Info-Systems.
Copyright © 1998-2019 Voyager Info-Systems. All Rights Reserved.