Subject: Re: Teaching Grammar

Date: Fri, 08 Oct 1999 17:34:11 +0200

From: Timothy Mason To: Foreign Language Teaching Forum FLTEACH@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU

David

while I agree with much of what you say in your reply to Blane Ray - I have never, in the thirty years I've been teaching, met a dumb student, although I've met some who were pretty impermeable to what I wanted them to acquire - I think there's more to it than that. There are two basic areas of disagreement to be peered at.

First, there is the question of how important grammar is in the encoding and decoding of comprehensible communication through language.

Then there is the question of whether explicit presentation of grammatical rules helps.

Let's look at the first. You cite the evidence of your test, which demonstrated to your satisfaction that grammar was necessary, and that vocabulary was insufficient on its own (I'm in fairly full agreement with the second part of the statement). But what, then, do you make of the fact that both Chelsea and Genie were/are able to communicate, although neither of them master standard grammars?

I think that this suggests that, within small-scale groupings, where most interaction is on a face-to-face basis, grammar is not the most important of sequencing principles : the taken-for-granted background to the majority of communications in such social systems is sufficient to enable people to talk to each other without paying a great deal of attention to linguistic form. As societies/groups become more hierarchically differentiated - or, as Durkheim puts it, as mechanical solidarity gives way to organic solidarity - so social intercourse tends to become more often disembedded from the immediate context. This becomes particularly acute in societies which develop a written code - you may, if you've been bothering to read my recent posts, remember me referring to Jack Goody's observation that there is no term for 'word' in a number of pre-literate societies of which he has cognizance. It is when we write things down that words emerge from utterance, and that grammar becomes possible. And it is as the need arises to converse between individuals and groups whose life-experiences are diverse, and who do not necessarily share basic meanings, that greater attention needs to be paid to the linguistic parameters that impinge upon sequencing.

You will note that if anything I'm saying here makes any sense whatsoever, it is unlikely that there is an innate and complex mental organ given over to the production of the linguistic rules underlying Language. On the other hand, there may very well be an innate and complex mental organ dedicated to analysing and handling social relationships within relatively large-scale groupings - McLennan's ideas about acquisition or Robin Dunbar's on the genesis of language might suggest this. But even this basic skill varies quite widely in its manifestations from one group to another : such matters as how far away you stand from someone, whether you stand face-to-face or sideways on, or how often you seek eye-contact during conversation, all vary. Americans, even if they speak excellent Spanish, are, I am told, often hopelessly misunderstood by Latin Americans because they disregard these differences.

All of this - and more - is what Dell Hymes means when he talks about 'communicative competence'. Grammar, then, I would surmise, is of limited use in most face-to-face interactions (If you don't believe this, look at some of the conversations recorded by ethnomethodologists and socio-linguists : even over the telephone, people who know each other well produce what, from the point of view of the grammarian, can be described as fragmented and partial utterances. This doesn't mean that they are not following rules - simply that the rules of grammar are not the most salient sub-set of rules governing conversational interaction).

Grammar becomes important in more formal settings, where there is a greater need to be explicit and to foreground areas of possible disagreement. I think we can agree that school systems are expected to groom pupils for the public domain rather than for private gratifications. So I will also agree with you in your belief that pupils - school-children - need to attain some mastery of the rules of grammar. The question then arises as to whether they need explicit instruction in those rules.

I am probably of the opinion - at least, I think I might be - that this is a question that should be addressed from a general theory of learning, on the one hand, and a specific theory of educational systems on the other. The former - I'm thinking mainly of Gagné here - suggests that *some* explicit instruction, delivered at point of need, can have a positive effect. The latter, on the other hand, suggests that the vast majority of bits of information delivered explicitly by school-teachers in classrooms is forgotten very very quickly once the immediate need - mainly the need to score well on tests and exams - is out of the way.

Most of the time used in language classes on explicit explanation of grammar might very well be used more profitably otherwise. Grammatical syllabuses are based upon no firm understanding of pupils' real needs - and often enough on no firm understanding of the underlying rules themselves. For my part, I believe that it is most probably the case that exposing the children to a large sample of well-formed language within meaningful contexts, and expecting them to produce - under conditions of perceived need - a fair number of well-formed utterances is probably the least-worst solution under presently prevailing conditions. If you see what I mean.

Timothy Mason

IUFM de Versailles

tmason@timothyjpmason.com