Teaching Grammar

DIANE LARSEN-FREEMAN

In "Teaching Grammar," Larsen-Freeman challenges conventional views of grammar. Instead of simplyanalyzing grammatical form, she includes grammatical meaning and use as well. Then, building on

what is known about the way grammar is learned, she offers ways to teach grammar consistent withcontemporary theory and the need to "focus on form" within a meaning-based or communicativeapproach.

INTRODUCTION

Over the centuries, second language educatorshave alternated between two types of approachesto language teaching: those that focus on analyz-ing the language and those that focus on usingthe language. The former have students learnthe elements of language (e.g., sounds, struc-tures, vocabulary), building toward students'being able to use the elements to communicate.The latter encourage students to use the lan-guage from the start, however falteringly, inorder to acquire it. Early in the previous centu-ry, this distinctive pattern was observable in theshift from the more form-oriented grammar-translation approach to the use-oriented directmethod (Celce-Murcia 1980). A more recentexample of the shift is the loss of popularity ofthe cognitive-code approach, in which analyzingstructures and applying rules are common prac-tices, and the rise of more communicativeapproaches, which emphasize language use overrules of language usage (Widdowson 1978).

Even though such language use approachesas task-based and content-based are in favor thesedays, educators agree that speaking and writingaccurately is part of communicative competence,just as is being able to get one's meaning acrossin an appropriate manner. Further, it has beenobserved that although some learners can "pickup" accurate linguistic form from exposure tothe target language, few learners are capable ofdoing so efficiently, especially if they are postpu-bescent or if their exposure is limited to the class-

room, as is the case when English is taught as aforeign language. In contrast, research has shownthat teachers who focus students' attention on lin-guistic form during communicative interactionsare more effective than those who never focus onform or who only do so in decontextualized gram-mar lessons (Spada and Lightbown 1993;Lightbown 1998). It follows, then, that most edu-cators concur with the need to teach grammaticalform. However, they advise doing so by "focusingon form" within a meaning-based or communica-tive approach in order to avoid a return to ana-lytic approaches in which decontextualizedlanguage forms were the object of study.

Focusing on grammatical form during com-municative interactions rather than forms in iso-lation (Long 1991) is one way to prevent thependulum from swinging beyond its point ofequilibrium. In this chapter, we will encourage abalance between grammar and communication.The first step is to come to a broader under-standing of grammar than has usually been thecase. Equating grammar with form and the teach-ing of grammar with the teaching of explicit lin-guistic rules concerning form are unduly limiting,representing what we have called myths (Larsen-Freeman 1995), which only serve to perpetuatethe pendulum swing between language form andlanguage use. Grammar is about form and oneway to teach form is to give students rules; how-ever, grammar is about much more than form,and its teaching is ill served if students are simplygiven rules.

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Thus, in this chapter, we will entertain amore robust view of grammar. Then, we willbriefly touch upon issues concerning its learning.Finally, we will discuss its teaching.

A Three-Dimensional GrammarFramework

Since our goal is to achieve a better fit betweengrammar and communication, it is not helpful tothink of grammar as a discrete set of meaning-less, decontextualized, static structures. Nor is ithelpful to think of grammar solely as prescriptiverules about linguistic form, such as injunctionsagainst splitting infinitives or ending sentenceswith prepositions. Grammatical structures notonly have (morphosyntactic) form, they are alsoused to express meaning (semantics) in context-appropriate use (pragmatics). In order to guideus in constructing an approach to teaching gram-mar that strives to meet this definition, it wouldbe helpful to have a frame of reference.

Our framework takes the form of a piechart. Its shape helps us to make salient that indealing with the complexity of grammar, threedimensions must concern us: structure or form,semantics or meaning, and the pragmatic condi-tions governing use.l Moreover, as they arewedges of a single pie, we note further that thedimensions are not hierarchically arranged asmany traditional characterizations of linguisticstrata depict.2 Finally, the arrows connecting onewedge of the pie with another illustrate the inter-connectedness of the three dimensions; thus achange in any one wedge will have repercussionsfor the other two.

FORM/STRUCTURE

Morphosyntactic andlexical patterns

Phonemic/graphemicpatterns

Presuppositions about context

MEANING/SEMANTICS

Lexical meaningGrammatical

meaning

USE/PRAGMATICS

Social contextLinguistic discourse context

In the wedge of our pie having to do withstructure, we have those overt lexical3 and mor-phological forms that tell us how a particulargrammar structure is constructed and how it issequenced with other structures in a sentence ortext. With certain structures, it is also importantto note the phonemic/ graphemic patterns (seethe discussion of possessives and phrasal verbsbelow for examples). In the semantic wedge, wedeal with what a grammar structure means. Notethat the meaning can be lexical (a dictionary def-inition for a preposition like down, for instance)or it can be grammatical (e.g., the conditionalstates both a condition and outcome or result).It is very difficult to arrive at a definition of prag-matics distinct from semantics, and thus we aresympathetic to Levinson's (1983) suggestion thatpragmatics deals with all aspects of meaning notdealt with by semantic theory!

Since this definition is too broad for ourpurposes here, however, we will limit pragmaticsto mean "the study of those relations betweenlanguage and context that are grammaticalized,or encoded in the structure of a language"(Levinson 1983, p. 9). We will leave the term con-text broad enough though, so that context can besocial (i.e., a context created by interlocutors,their relationship to one another, the setting), orit can be a linguistic discourse context (i.e., thelanguage that precedes or follows a particularstructure in the discourse or how a particulargenre or register of discourse affects the use of astructure), or context can even mean the pre-suppositions one has about the context.

The influence of pragmatics may be ascer-tained by asking two questions:

1. When or why does a speaker/writer choosea particular grammar structure over anotherthat could express the same meaning oraccomplish the same purpose? For example,what factors in the social context mightexplain a paradigmatic choice such as why aspeaker chooses a yes-no question ratherthan an imperative to serve as a request forinformation (e.g., Do you have the time?versusPlease tell me the time)?

2. When or why does a speaker/writer varythe form of a particular linguistic structure?

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For instance, what linguistic discourse factorswould result in a syntagmatic choice such asthe indirect object being placed before thedirect object to create jenny gave Hank abrand-new comb versus jenny gave a brand-newcomb to Hank?

Despite the permeable boundaries betweenthe dimensions, we have found it useful to viewgrammar from these three perspectives. We trustthat the utility of this approach will becomeclearer as we proceed. A teacher of grammarmight begin by asking the questions posed in thethree wedges of our pie (for the sake of simplic-ity, labeled form, meaning, and use) for any givengrammar point.

Let us consider an example. A commonstructure to be taught at a high-beginning level ofEnglish proficiency is the 's possessive form. If weanalyze this possessive form as answers to our ques-tions, we would fill in the wedges as below (analysisbased on Celce-Murcia and Larsen-Freeman 1999).

Form of Possessive This way of forming pos-sessives in English requires inflecting regularsingular nouns and irregular plural nouns notending in s with 's or by adding an apostropheafter the s' ending of regular plural nouns andsingular nouns ending in the sound /s/. Thisform of the possessive has three allomorphs: /z/,/s/, and /az/, which are phonetically conditioned:/z/ is used when it occurs after voiced consonantsand vowels, /s/ following voiceless consonants,and /az/ occurs after sibilants.

POSSESSIVES

Meaning of Possessive Besides possession, thepossessive or genitive form can indicate descrip-tion (a debtor's prison), amount (a month's holiday),relationship (Jack's wife), part/whole (my brother'shand), and origin/agent (Shakespeare's tragedies).

Also, although all languages have a way ofsignaling possession, they do not all regard thesame items as possessable. For example, Spanishspeakers refer to a body part using the definitearticle instead of a possessive form. ESL/EFLstudents will have to learn the semantic scope ofthe possessive form in English.

Use of Possessive Filling in this wedge requiresthat we ask when the 's is used to express posses-sion as opposed to other structures that can beused to convey this same meaning. For example,possession in English can be expressed in otherways-with a possessive determiner (e.g., his, her,and their) or with the periphrastic of the form (e.g.,the legs of the table). Possessive determiners are pre-sumably used when the referent of the possessoris clear from the context. While ESL/EFL bookswill often say that the of the possessive is used withnonhuman head nouns and 's with human headnouns, we are aware of certain conditions wherethis rule does not apply. For example, nativespeakers often prefer to use the 's even with inan-imate head nouns if the head nouns are per-forming some action (e.g., the train's arrival wasdelayed).4 Finally, students will have to learn to dis-tinguish contexts in which a noun compound(table leg) is more appropriate than either the 'sform or the of the form.

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Thus, by using our ternary scheme, we canclassify the facts that affect the form, meaning,and use of the possessive structure. This is only afirst step. Teachers would not necessarily presentall these facts to students, recognizing that stu-dents can and do learn some of them on theirown. And certainly no teacher would choose topresent all these facts in a single lesson or onone occasion. Nevertheless, distributing the fea-tures of the target grammatical structure amongthe three wedges of the pie can give teachers anunderstanding of the scope and multidimen-sionality of the structure. In turn, this under-standing will guide teachers in deciding whichfacts concerning the possessive will be taughtand when and how to do so.

Before continuing to explore these deci-sions, however, it might be worthwhile to applyour approach to another grammar structure. Letus analyze phrasal verbs this time. By consideringthe three questions posed earlier, we can state thefollowing about phrasal verbs (analysis basedupon Celce-Murcia and Larsen-Freeman 1999):

MEANING

LiteralFigurative

Multiple Meanings

USE

Informal DiscoursePrinciple of Dominance

Form of Phrasal Verbs Phrasal verbs are two-partverbs comprising a verb and a particle (e.g., to lookup). Sometimes, they can be constructed withthree parts in that a preposition can follow theparticle (e.g., to keep up with). As with all otherverbs, phrasal verbs are either transitive or intran-sitive. A distinctive feature of phrasal verbs is thatfor many of them the particle can be separatedfrom its verb by an intervening object (e.g., Alicia

PHRASAL VERBS

FORM

Verb + Particle (or)Verb + Particle +

PrepositionTrans itive/IntransitiveSeparable/InseparableStress and juncture_11 Patterns

looked the word up in the dictionary). Phrasal verbsalso have distinctive stress and juncture patterns,which distinguish them from verb plus preposi-tion combinations:

Alicia looked up#the word.

Alicia walked#up the street.

Meaning of Phrasal Verbs There are literalphrasal verbs, such as to hang up, where if oneknows the meaning of the verb or the particle orboth, it is not difficult to figure out the meaning ofthe verb-particle combination. Unfortunately, forthe ESL/EFL student there are far more instancesof figurative phrasal verbs (e.g., to run into, mean-ing "meet by chance") where a knowledge of themeaning of the verb and of the particle is of littlehelp in discerning the meaning of the phrasalverb. Moreover, as with single-word verbs, phrasalverbs can have more than one meaning (e.g., tocome across, meaning "to discover by chance" as inI came across this old book in the library, or when usedintransitively, "to make an impression" as inRichard came across well at the convention.

Use of Phrasal Verbs When is a phrasal verbpreferred to a single-word verb that conveys thesame meaning (e.g., put out a fire versus extin-guish a fire)? For the most part, phrasal verbsseem to be more common in informal spokendiscourse as opposed to more formal written dis-course. When is one form of a phrasal verb pre-ferred to another; i.e., when should the particle beseparated from its verb (e.g., put out afire versusput afire out)? Erteschik-Shir's (1979) principle ofdominance seems to work well to define the cir-cumstances favoring particle movement: If a nounphrase (NP) object is dominant (i.e., a long, elab-orate NP representing new information), it islikely to occur after the particle; if the directobject is short, old information (e.g., a pronoun),it would naturally occur before the particle.

Identifying the Challenge Again, we would liketo underscore the fact that it would not be rea-sonable for the ESL/EFL teacher to present all ofthis information to students at once. The frame-work does, however, help to organize the facts.Furthermore, by doing this, teachers can moreeasily identify where the learning challenge (s)

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will lie for their students. Identifying the chal-lenging dimension ( s) is a key step which shouldbe taken prior to any pedagogical treatment.

All three dimensions will have to be mas-tered by the learner (although not necessarilyconsciously). For phrasal verbs, it is the meaningdimension which ESL/EFL students strugglewith most. It is often the fact that there is no sys-tematic way of learning to associate the verb andthe particle. Adding to the students' woes, newphrasal verbs are constantly being coined. Byrecognizing where students will likely struggle,an important clue is given the teacher as towhere to focus work on phrasal verbs. We willamplify this point later. For now, however, it isworth noting that although it is grammar struc-tures which we are dealing with, it is not alwaysthe form of the structures which creates themost significant learning challenge.

"Grammaring" We should pause here toacknowledge that as important as it is to developour understanding of the grammatical facts of thelanguage we are teaching, it is not these facts thatwe wish our students to learn. We are not inter-ested in filling our students' heads with grammat-ical paradigms and syntactic rules. If they knew allthe rules that had ever been written aboutEnglish but were not able to apply them, wewould not be doing our jobs as teachers. Instead,what we do hope to do is to have students be ableto use grammatical structures accurately, mean-ingfully, and appropriately. In other words, gram-mar teaching is not so much knowledgetransmission as it is skill development. In fact, itis better to think of teaching "grammaring"(Larsen-Freeman 1997; 2001), rather than"grammar." By thinking of grammar as a skill tobe mastered, rather than a set of rules to bememorized, we will be helping ESL/EFL stu-dents go a long way toward the goal of being ableto accurately convey meaning in the manner theydeem appropriate.

The Learning Process

However important and necessary it is for teach-ers to have a comprehensive knowledge of theirsubject matter, it is equally important for them

to understand their students ' learning process.This understanding can be partly informed byinsights from second language acquisition(SLA) research concerning how students natu-rally develop their ability to interpret and pro-duce grammatical utterances . Three insights aregermane to our topic:

1. Learners do not learn structures one at atime. It is not a matter of accumulating struc-tural entities (Rutherford 1987).5 For exam-ple, it is not the case that learners master thedefinite article, and when that is mastered,move on to the simple past tense. From theirfirst encounter with the definite article,learners might master one of its pragmaticfunctions-e.g., to signal the uniqueness ofthe following noun. But even if they are ableto do this appropriately, it is not likely thatthey will always produce the definite articlewhen needed because learners typically takea long time before they are able to do thisconsistently. Thus, learning is a gradualprocess involving the mapping of form, mean-ing, and use; structures do not spring forth inlearners' interlanguage fully developed anderror-free.

2. Even when learners appear to have mastereda particular structure , it is not uncommon tofind backsliding occurring with the introduc-tion of new forms to the learners' interlan-guage. For example, the learner who hasfinally mastered the third person singularmarker on present-tense verbs is likely to over-generalize the rule and apply it to newlyemerging modal verbs, thus producing errorssuch as She cans speak Spanish. Teachers shouldnot despair, therefore, at regressive behavioron the part of their students. Well-formednessis usually restored once the new additionshave been incorporated and the system self-organizes or restructures.

3. Second language learners rely on the knowl-edge and the experience they have. If they arebeginners, they will rely on their LI as asource of hypotheses about how the L2 works;when they are more advanced, they will relyincreasingly on the L2. In understanding this,the teacher realizes that there is no need to

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teach everything about a structure to agroup of students; rather, the teacher canbuild upon what the students already know.It also follows that the challenging dimen-sion for a given grammatical structure willshift from class to class depending on thestudents' L1 backgrounds and level of L2proficiency. Successful teaching involvesidentifying the relevant challenge for a par-ticular group of students.

To these three observations, we will add afourth one that is not to our knowledge treated inthe SLA research literature, but rather one basedupon our observations and supported by learningtheorists (e.g., Gagne and Medsker 1996).

4. Different learning processes are responsiblefor different aspects of language. Indeed,given that language is as complicated as it is,one would not expect the learning process tobe any simpler. It is clearly an oversimplifica-tion to treat all grammar learning as resultingfrom habit formation or from rule formation.Being aware that different learning processescontribute to SLA suggests a need for theteaching process to respect the differences.How the nature of the language challengeand the learning process affect teaching deci-sions is the issue to which we turn next.

The Teaching Process

Consistent with the way we are conceiving gram-mar in this chapter, teaching grammar meansenabling language students to use linguistic formsaccurately, meaningfully, and appropriately. Inthis section we discuss various teaching strategiesthat can be employed to meet this goal.

In keeping with language form approaches,traditional grammar teaching has employed astructural syllabus and lessons composed of threephases: presentation, practice, and production(or communication), often referred to as "thePPP" approach. As we saw earlier, underlying thisapproach is the assumption that one systemati-cally builds towards communication. However,as mentioned in the introduction to this chap-ter, these days, most teachers embrace a more

communicatively oriented approach , startingwith a communicative activity such as task-or content-based material ( see chapters bySavignon and Snow in this volume). The gram-mar that is taught is not scheduled in advance asit is with a structural syllabus/PPP approach, butrather supports students in their completion ofthe communicative task or their making sense ofa particular content area . In addition , or alter-nately, teachers respond to grammar errors thatstudents commit when engaged in communica-tion. As such , it reverses the normal sequence(Skehan 1998b ), putting communication first,rather than selecting and presenting a grammarstructure in advance of its use in context.

Even if the grammar to be worked on isderivative rather than scheduled in advance, ateacher must still decide how to address it. Avariety of options have been suggested (seeDoughty and Williams 1998; R. Ellis 1998),although the research findings underpinningthem are somewhat sparse and sometimes con-tradictory ( see Mitchell 2000 for a recent review).One option is simply to bring to students ' atten-tion , or to promote their noticing of, some featureof a grammatical structure . For example , if a stu-dent makes an error and the teacher decides torespond to it, then the teacher might recast orreformulate what the student has said or writtenincorrectly in a more accurate , meaningful, orappropriate manner. For instance , if it is an errorof form, the teacher would recast the student'sproduction accurately.

STUDENT: This is Juan notebook.TEACHER : Oh. That is Juan 's notebook.

(perceiving the error to be theform of the possessive)

If meaning is the problem, the teacherwould recast what the student has said in ameaningful way.

STUDENT: I need to look at the word in thedictionary.

TEACHER : You need to look up the wordin the dictionary.(perceiving the phrasal verblook up to be a better form forwhat the student means to say)

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And if use is the problem, the teacherwould recast what the student has said in a moreappropriate manner:

STUDENT: I arise at six in the morning.

TEACHER: OK. You get up at six in themorning.

(perceiving that a phrasal verb wouldbe more appropriate to convey thestudent's intended meaning)

A more proactive way to promote students'

noticing a particular grammatical structure is to

highlight it in a text in some fashion. Enhancing

the input (Sharwood Smith 1993) might be an

especially effective way to focus students' atten-

tion on grammar structures that operate at the

discourse level of language, such as articles or

verb tenses. By boldfacing all the normally

insalient articles in a given passage, for instance,

the students' attention could be drawn to them.

Even simply choosing texts in which a particular

structure or structural contrast is especially fre-

quent would enhance its saliency and thus might

promote noticing, a practice sometimes called

input flooding.

Still another option is to use a consciousness-raising task, in which it is the students' job toinduce a grammatical generalization from thedata they have been given. For example, Fotosand Ellis (1991) ask students to work out therule for indirect object alternation in English(e.g., They gave a gold watch to him./They gave hima gold watch.) by giving the students example sen-tences where indirect object alternation can andcannot be successfully applied. Indirect objectalternation is difficult in English and therefore isan ideal candidate for this sort of explicit rulearticulation. Indeed, Carroll and Swain (1993)suggest that when the rules are not that clear-cut,detailed instruction with explicit metalinguisticfeedback may be the most helpful response tostudent errors.

Another option for promoting students'awareness is to use the garden path strategy(Tomasello and Herron 1988; 1989). As appliedto grammar teaching, this means giving studentsinformation about structure without givingthem the full picture, thus making it seem easierthan it is, or in other words, "leading them down

the garden path." If ESL/EFL students were toldthat the English past tense is formed with -ed, forexample, this would be leading students downthe garden path as there are many irregularverbs in English where this rule will not work toproduce the past tense. The reason for givingstudents only a partial explanation is that theyare more likely to learn the exceptions to therule if they are corrected at the moment theovergeneralization error is made than if they aregiven a long list of "exceptions to the rule" tomemorize in advance.

Another technique for directing students'attention to form is called input processing (VanPatten 1996). Rather than working on rulelearning and rule application, input processingactivities push learners to attend to properties oflanguage during activities where the structure isbeing used meaningfully. For instance, if stu-dents are asked to carry out commands thatteachers issue, they are working on matching theimperative form to its use in a meaningful way.

Of course, sometimes a communicative taskitself requires that students attend to relevantfeatures of the target language (Loschky andBley-Vroman 1993), such as when using a partic-ular grammatical structure is essential to com-pleting the task. An example of this is whenstudents have to use particular prepositions toaccurately give each other directions using amap. The added value of using a communicativetask to promote noticing is that students areencouraged to use the target structures, therebygenerating "output" that attracts feedback froma teacher or another student.

Speaking of output, it might be surprising toexperienced teachers to read descriptions of allthese teaching options with very little mention ofstudent production. But, of course, students' pro-duction plays a very important role in learninggrammar. It is not enough to have awarenessesraised if students can't produce the language.Output production is, therefore, extremely impor-tant. For one thing, it pushes students to movebeyond semantic processing to syntactic process-ing (Swain 1985). Then, too, when studentsattempt to produce structures, they get to test theirhypotheses on how the structure is formed or whatit means or when it is used. Following these

Teaching Grammar 257

attempts, as we have seen, they can receive feed-

back on their hypotheses and modify them as

necessary.

Indeed, Donato (1994) has shown how stu-dents' participation in collaborative dialogue,through which learners can provide support foreach other, has spurred development of learners'interlanguage. Other research (Swain and Lapkin1998) corroborates the value of an interactive dia-logue as both a cognitive tool and a means ofcommunication which can promote grammaticaldevelopment.

Beyond these reasons for giving students anopportunity to produce the target grammaticalstructures, we have already presented the ideathat grammar teaching can better be thought ofas developing "grammaring," i.e., helping stu-dents be able to use grammar skillfully, a goalthat requires significant practice. To this point,Gatbonton and Segalowitz (1988) have arguedthat practice of grammatical patterns can lead toautomatization of certain aspects of perform-ance, which, in turn, frees up students' atten-tional resources to be allocated elsewhere.

It used to be that the practice phase of a les-son was devoted almost exclusively to grammardrills and exercises. Ever since the ineffective-ness of using drills which do not engage stu-dents' attention was acknowledged, there hasbeen little by way of guidance offered on how togive students meaningful practice. What follows,therefore, is an attempt to fill this void. Practiceactivities will be addressed in terms of whichdimension of language they relate to.

Form

From what we know of skill acquisition theory(e.g., Anderson and Fincham 1994), fluency orproceduralization of declarative knowledge(e.g., knowledge of a grammar rule or pattern)requires practice in which students use the targetlanguage point meaningfully while keeping thedeclarative knowledge in working memory(DeKeyser 1998).

It is important to emphasize meaningful prac-tice of form for several reasons. First of all, mean-ingless mechanical drills, such as repetition drills,commonly associated with behaviorist approachesto learning, do not engage the learner in the

target behavior of conveying meaning throughlanguage. Furthermore, because students are notengaged in target behavior, the inert knowledgeproblem (Whitehead 1929) is likely to materialize.Inert knowledge is knowledge that can be recalledwhen students are specifically asked to do so but isnot available for spontaneous use, in, say, problemsolving, even when the knowledge is relevant tothe problem at hand. Knowledge remains inertwhen it is not available for transfer from the class-room context to the outside world. We know thatwhen the psychological conditions of learning andapplication are matched what has been learned ismore likely to be transferred (e.g., Blaxton 1989).Thus, rules and forms learned in isolated mean-ingless drills may be harder to retrieve in the con-text of communicative interaction (Segalowitz andGatbonton 1994). Finally, student motivationis likely to be enhanced if students are able tointeract in a way that is meaningful to them. Then,too, they are likely to be more attentive if they aresaying something meaningful.

Identifying the type of learning involvedhelps us to think about the desirable characteris-tics of any practice activity. For instance, for declar-ative knowledge to be proceduralized a great dealof meaningful practice would be required. Further,students would have to receive feedback on theaccuracy with which they produced the targetform. They would have to be restricted to usingjust the particular target form; in other words,structural diversity would not be permitted.6Finally, for proceduralization to occur, it wouldseem important to concentrate on only one or twoforms at a time, although, of course, the targetform could be introduced in contrast to formsthat the student already controls.

Let us take an example and see how thesecharacteristics are applied. If our students showus that they are struggling with the inversion ofthe subject and operator in yes-no questions, itwould be clear that their immediate learning chal-lenge is linguistic form. We will need to design orselect an activity that encourages meaningful prac-tice of the pattern, not verbatim repetition. Wewant the students to concentrate on producingonly yes-no questions. A game like TwentyQuestions would appear to meet the criteria.Students get to ask 20 yes-no questions about an

258 Unit II E Language Skills/Grammar and Vocabulary

object or person in an attempt to guess the iden-tity; hence, they receive abundant practice informing the questions, and the questions theyproduce are meaningful. The teacher wouldwork with each student to enable him or her toproduce the pattern accurately, perhaps provid-ing an explicit rule, perhaps not.

An example of a game that would work onthe form of the English possessive comes fromKealey and Inness (1997). Students are given afamily portrait in which the child's face is missing.They are also given clues as to what the child lookslike, e.g., the child has the mother's eyebrows orthe father's chin. A person from each smallgroup into which the students are divided comesto the front of the room, takes a clue, memorizesit, and brings it back to his or her group so thatthe feature in the clue can be drawn. This contin-ues until the child, a composite of his mother andfather, is fully drawn.

In sum, certain games are good devices forpracticing grammar points where the challengeresides in the formal dimension. While not anactivity in and of itself, another useful device forworking on the formal dimension is the use ofcuisenaire rods. The rods are ideal for focusingstudent attention on some syntactic propertyunder scrutiny. One example that comes to mindis an adaptation of Stevick's (1980) Islamabadtechnique. Practicing the form of OS7 relativeclauses, students might be asked to use the rodsto construct a view of some spot in their home-town. The students would be encouraged to useOS relative clauses where appropriate (e.g., Thereis a fountain that is located in the center of my town;Around the fountain there are many people who sellfruits, vegetables, and flowers, etc.).

One final example of a type of useful activityfor working on the formal dimension is a problem-solving activity. The problem to be solved could bemost anything, but if we are dealing with the for-mal dimension, then we would want it to conformto the characteristics described above. An examplemight be an information-gap activity where thestudents are given a class information sheet withcertain items missing (see bottom of this page).

Students could circulate asking one anotherWh-questions (e.g., What is Beatriz's major? How oldis Werner?) in order to complete the chart.Another example might be a sentence-unscram-bling task. This is a useful problem-solving activitywhen the challenge is getting students to producecorrect word order, such as when the objective isto have students use auxiliary verbs in the propersequence.

It is important to take note that there isnothing inherent in the three examples we haveprovided (games, use of rods, problem-solvingactivities) which make them useful for address-ing the formal dimension; i.e., we could easilyuse rods to work on some aspects of the meaningor use dimensions. What is significant to remem-ber is that the activity should be structured insuch a way that it is compatible with the charac-teristics presented earlier.

Meaning

If the teacher has decided that the challenge of aparticular structure lies in the semantic dimen-sion, then a different sort of practice activityshould be planned. It would seem that meaningwould call for some sort of associative learning(N. Ellis 1998), where students have opportunities

Name Age Country Language Major Hobby

Beatriz 18 Bolivia Spanish Dentistry

Mohammed 19 Algeria Accounting Goingto the movies

Jean Claude France French Painting

18 Brazil Education Hiking

Werner 17 Swiss German Business

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to associate the form and the meaning of theparticular target structure. It has been our expe-rience that repetition is not needed to the sameextent as it is when teaching some aspect of theformal dimension. Sometimes a single pairingof form and meaning suffices. Due to memoryconstraints, it seems prudent to restrict the num-ber of new items being practiced at any one timeto between two and six (Asher 1996). The stu-dents would receive feedback on their abilityto demonstrate that they had acquired the form-meaning bond.

Celce-Murcia and Hilles (1988) mentionthat when dealing with the semantic dimension,realia and pictures are very useful. Thus, forexample, if the teacher has decided to work onthe semantics of comparative forms in English tosupport some communicative task or content, heor she might show students pairs of pictures andwork with them to make comparisons using theform that reflects the relation depicted (e.g., as

as, more than, less than).Actions, too, can make meaning salient.

The initial challenge for ESL/EFL studentsgrappling with prepositions is to associate the"core" meaning with each. Thus, prior to havingstudents work on direction-giving tasks usingmaps (Walk to the corner. Turn right at the corner. Thecinema is near the corner, next to the bank.), a goodstrategy might be to work with students on havingthem make an association between a prepositionand its meaning in locating objects in space. Oneway of doing this is to conduct a Total PhysicalResponse sequence where students act out aseries of commands along with the teacher,involving the placement of objects in various partsof the room; e.g., Put the book next to the desk, Putthe pen on the book, Walk to the door, Stand near thedoor, etc. Once students appear to have made theconnection between form and meaning, theteacher can assess their ability to discriminate oneform-meaning bond from another by havingthem carry out commands on their own and byissuing novel commands-e.g., Put the pen on thedesk-and assessing their ability to comply.

We said earlier that a persistent challengefor students' learning phrasal verbs was the factthat the meaning is often not detectable fromcombining the meaning of the verb with the

meaning of the particle. Sometimes teachers havehad their students play Concentration, a versionof the game in which the students have to associ-ate a phrasal verb written on one card with its def-inition written on another card. Another exampleof an activity that would address this semantic chal-lenge is an operation (Nelson and Winters 1993).In an operation, a series of separate actions areperformed to accomplish some task. The teachermight issue commands, or mime the actions withthe students as she or he describes them.

I want to call up my friend. First, I look up

the phone number Then I write it down. I

pick up the receiver and punch in the num-

ber. The number is busy. I hang up and

decide to call back later.

By practicing this operation several times,the students can learn to associate the form andmeaning of certain phrasal verbs (call up, look up,pick up, etc.). If students are given an operationwith which to associate phrasal verbs, recall at alater time will likely be enhanced. To determineif students can distinguish among the variousphrasal verbs, students might be given phrasalverbs out of sequence and asked to mime theappropriate action. Feedback on their ability tomatch form and meaning can be given.

Use

When use is the challenge, it is because studentshave shown that they are having a hard timeselecting the right structure or form for a partic-ular context. Working on use will involve stu-dents learning that there are options to beexercised and that they must select from amongthem the one which best suits a given context.

Thus, relevant practice activities will providestudents with an opportunity to choose from twoor more forms the one most suitable for the con-text and how they wish to position themselves(e.g., in a cooperative way, a polite way, an assertiveway, etc.). Students would receive feedback on theappropriateness of their choice. In some cases,their choice might involve selecting between twooptions (e.g., when to use the passive versus theactive voice). Other times, their choice would befrom among an array of options (e.g., which

260 Unit II E Language Skills/Grammar and Vocabulary

modal verb to use when giving advice to a boss);

hence, the number of forms being worked on at

one time would be at least two, but could involve

many more.

Role plays work well when dealing with usebecause the teacher can systematically manipu-late social variables (e.g., increase or decrease thesocial distance between interlocutors) to have stu-dents practice how changes in the social variablesaffect the choice of form.

For example, if students have shown thatthey do not know how to use modals to giveadvice, they might be asked to role-play having a"dilemma." In this role play, one person has aproblem; (e.g., the keys to the car have beenlost. The car is locked and the person wants toget in.) Students are asked to use modal verbs togive advice to the person with the problem; e.g.,You might try breaking the window, You could try call-ing the police. The teacher could next alter asalient feature of the context, thus creating a newsocial context in which a different modal verbwould be more appropriate. For example, theteacher might ask, "What if it were a young childthat had this dilemma?" A more appropriateform and content for the advice, then, might beYou had better wait for your mother to come!

On another occasion, students might beasked to play the role of an advice columnist.They are to write a column and give advice to aclassmate who is having a particular problem.Having students work with the same structure inwriting and in speaking activities can highlightdifferences between written and oral grammars(Carter and McCarthy 1995).

Role plays are useful for highlighting otherstructural choices as well. Often we find that it isneither the form nor the meaning of the Englishtenses that presents the greatest long-term chal-lenge to ESL/EFL students; rather it is when/whyto use one tense and not the other. In otherwords, it is the pragmatic usage of the tenses thatis the major obstacle to their mastery. Giving stu-dents practice with situations in which a contrastbetween two tenses is likely to arise may sensitizestudents to the usage differences. For instance, anotorious problem for ESL/EFL students is toknow when to use the present perfect versuswhen to use the past tense. A situation where a

contrast between them would occur might be a jobinterview. In such a context, the perfect of experi-ence is likely to be invoked (e.g., Have you ever doneany computer programming?). An elaboration to anaffirmative answer is likely to contain the past tense(e.g., Yes, I have. I once worked on ... or simply, Yes.When I worked at ... ). Students can take turns role-playing the interviewer and interviewee.

As was mentioned earlier, it is not only thesocial context that will be involved in the choice ofwhich forms to use, but also it is often the linguis-tic discourse context that will make a difference.Thus, it is very important to consider teaching dis-course grammar (Celce-Murcia 1991a; Hughesand McCarthy 1998). Such is the case with the pas-sive voice. Its use is not particularly sensitive tosocial factors; i.e., whether one is using the activeor passive voice does not necessarily depend uponwith whom one is conversing. What usually doescause students considerable difficulty with the pas-sive voice, however, is determining when to use it.The fact that the agent of an action is defocusedmotivates the use of the passive. Furthermore, ifthe agent has already been established in the lin-guistic discourse, it would likely not even be men-tioned in subsequent discourse. Thus, most passivesentences are agentless.

Challenges of this nature call for text-generation or text-manipulation-type exercises.As the passive is used more often in written thanin spoken English, teachers might give their stu-dents a text-completion exercise in which thefirst few lines of the text are provided. For exam-ple, from the first few lines in the following text,it should be clear to the students that the themeof discourse is on the "issues," not the agents (i.e.,participants), at the town meeting.

Town meetings were held throughoutNew England yesterday. Many issueswere discussed, although the big onefor most citizens was the issue ofgrowth. Many changes have beenmade recently. For example, .. .

Students then are asked to complete the textusing the appropriate voice. As not all the sen-tences should be in the passive voice, students willbe making choices, in keeping with a characteristicof practice activities designed to work on the use

Teaching Grammar 261

dimension. The teacher will give feedbackto the students on the appropriateness of theirchoices.

Before leaving our discussion of the passivevoice, it would be useful to illustrate why we feelthat identifying the challenging dimension is aworthwhile step to take before teaching anygrammar structure. When we are clear wherethe challenge lies, the challenge can shape ourlessons. For instance, as we stated earlier, it hasbeen our experience that the greatest long-termchallenge for students working on the passivevoice is for them to figure out when to use thepassive. Keeping this in mind will help us avoid acommon practice of ESL/EFL teachers, which isto introduce the passive as a transformed versionof the active (e.g., "Switch the subject with thedirect object . . ."). Presenting the passive in thisway is misleading because it gives the impressionthat the passive is simply a variant of the active.Moreover, it suggests that most passive sentencescontain agents. What we know in fact to be thecase is that one voice is not a variant of the other,but rather the two are in complementary distri-bution, with their foci completely different. Wealso know that relatively few passive sentencescontain explicit agents. Thus, from the first, thepassive should be taught as a distinct structurewhich occurs in a different context from theactive. (See Celce-Murcia and Larsen-Freeman1999, for several examples of how to do this.)

It should be noted that the pie chart, theobservations about learning, and the characteris-tics of practice activities enumerated here may notsignificantly alter the way grammar is taught today.Indeed, many of the activities recommended hereare currently being used. What these tools do offer,how-ever, is a principled means for dealing withgrammar. They should help teachers to make cleardecisions they teach grammar. They should helpteachers to design effective activities or to choosefrom among those in a textbook without assumingthat just because a textbook activity deals with thetarget structure, it necessarily addresses the partic-ular learning challenge that their students areexperiencing.

This brings us to the close of our discussionon how to design practice activities for grammarpoints.

Providing Feedback

Providing learners with feedback, negative evi-dence which they can use to correct their misap-prehensions about some aspect of the targetlanguage, is an essential function of languageteaching. Even such indirect feedback as asking alearner for clarification of something he or shehas said may be helpful (Schachter 1986). It hasalways been a controversial function, however(Larsen-Freeman 1991). There are, for instance,those who would proscribe it, believing that ateacher's intervention will inhibit students fromfreely expressing themselves or that there is littleevidence demonstrating that learners make use ofthe feedback they have been given-there is littleimmediate "uptake" of the correct form. Whilethere are clearly times that such intervention canbe intrusive and therefore unwarranted (e.g., inthe middle of a small-group communicative activ-ity), at other times focused feedback is highlydesirable. Further, immediate uptake cannot bethe sole criterion of its usefulness. Negative evi-dence gives students the feedback they need toreject or modify their hypotheses about how thetarget language is formed or functions. Studentsunderstand this, which explains why they oftendeliberately seek feedback.

The same pie chart that we used when iden-tifying the learning challenge and creatingpractice activities can also be a useful aid in diag-nosing errors. When an error is committed by astudent, a teacher can mentally hold it up to thepie chart to determine if it is an error in form,meaning, or use. Of course, sometimes the causeof an error is ambiguous. Still, the pie chart doesprovide a frame of reference, and if the diagnosisis accurate, the remedy may be more effective.More than once we have observed a teacher givean explanation of linguistic form to a student,when consulting the pie chart would havesuggested that the student's confusion lay withthe area of use instead.

As for how the feedback is to be provided, wehave already mentioned several useful options-recasting, for instance. Getting students to self-correct is another (see Lyster and Ranta 1997).Giving students an explicit rule is a third. Someteachers like to collect their students' errors,

262 Unit II E Language Skills/Grammar and Vocabulary

identify the prototypical ones, and then dealwith them collectively in class in an anonymousfashion. Which of these options is exercised willdepend on the teacher's style, the proficiency ofthe students, the nature of the error, and in whichpart of the lesson the error has been committed.

None of these have to be used exclusively,of course. For instance, Aljaafreh and Lantolf(1994) offer a graduated 12-point scale rangingfrom implicit to explicit strategies, beginningwith student identification of errors in their ownwriting, moving to where the teacher isolates theerror area and inquires if there is anythingwrong in a particular sentence, to where theteacher provides examples of the correct patternwhen other forms of help fail to lead to a self-correction on the part of the student.

RELATED PEDAGOGICALISSUESSequencing

Earlier we noted that grammar structures arenot acquired one at a time through a process of"agglutination" (Rutherford 1987). Rather, dif-ferent aspects of form, meaning, and use of agiven structure may be acquired at differentstages of L2 development. This observation con-firms the need for recycling-i.e., working onone dimension of a form and then returning tothe form from time to time as the need arises.To some extent this will occur naturally, as thesame structures are likely to be encountered indifferent communicative tasks and content areas.However, it is also the case that not all linguisticstructures that students need to learn will be avail-able in the language that occurs in the classroom.

Therefore, it will be necessary for theteacher to "fill in the gaps," i.e., to introducestructures that don't naturally arise in classroomdiscourse (Spada and Lightbown 1993). For thisreason, teachers might think in terms of a gram-mar checklist, rather than a grammatical sequence.By this, I mean that it would be a teacher's respon-sibility to see that students learn certain gram-matical items by the end of a given course or

period of time, but not by following a prescribedsequence. Many structures would arise naturallyin the course of working on tasks and content andwould be dealt with then. Other structures mightbe introduced as the teacher determined that thestudents were ready to learn them. Rather thanadhering to a linear progression, the choice ofsequence would be left up to the teacher andwould depend on the teacher's assessment of thestudents' developmental readiness to learn.

Many teachers, of course, have little controlover the content or sequence of what they workon. They must adhere to prescribed syllabi ortextbooks, although even in such a situation, itmay be possible for teachers not to follow asequence rigidly. But for those teachers who havemore flexibility, research on acquisition orders isgermane. Some SLA research has shown thatlearners progress through a series of predictablestages in their acquisition of particular linguisticforms. One explanation for the order rests onthe complexity of the speech-processing strate-gies required. Thus, all structures processable bya particular strategy or cluster of strategiesshould be acquired at roughly the same develop-mental stage. This approach has been shown toaccount for certain acquisition orders in ESL(Pienemann and Johnston 1987).

Despite these findings and their potentialimplications for grammatical structure sequenc-ing, there has been no definitive acquisitionorder established, and thus teachers are still leftto their own resources for judgments on how toproceed. We should also note that even if anacquisition order were to be fully specified forEnglish, there might be justification for preempt-ing the acquisition order when students' commu-nicative needs were not being met and when,therefore, certain structures would need to betaught, at least formulaically. Furthermore,Lightbown (1998) has suggested that even if stu-dents are asked to work on structures before theyare ready to acquire them, such effort may not bein vain because such instruction might prime sub-sequent noticing on the part of the students,thereby accelerating acquisition when they areindeed ready.

TeachingGrammar 263

Inductive Versus DeductivePresentation

An additional choice teachers face is whether towork inductively or deductively. An inductiveactivity is one in which students infer the rule orgeneralization from a set of examples. In a deduc-tive activity, on the other hand, the students aregiven the rule and they apply it to examples. Forinstance, when practicing an inductive approachto the mass/count noun distinction in English,students could be presented with a language sam-ple, such as a grocery advertising circular. Theythen would be encouraged to make their ownobservations about the form of mass and countnouns. The teacher might listen to their observa-tions and then might summarize by generalizingabout the two categories of nouns. If practicing adeductive approach, the teacher would presentthe generalization and then ask students to applyit to the language sample.

As we see, if a teacher has chosen an induc-tive approach in a given lesson, a further optionexists-whether or not to give or have studentsarticulate an explicit rule. Earlier, we stated thatequating the teaching of grammar with the pro-vision of explicit rules was an unduly limitedview of what it means to teach grammar. We saidthis because what we are trying to bring about inthe learner is linguistic behavior that conformsto the rules, not knowledge of the rules them-selves. Having said this, we see no reason toavoid giving explicit rules as a means to this end,except perhaps if one is working with young chil-dren. Usually students request rules and reportthat they find them helpful. Moreover, stating arule explicitly can often bring about linguisticinsights in a more efficacious manner, as long asthe rule is not oversimplified or so metalinguis-tically obtuse that students must struggle harderto understand the rule than to apply it implicitly(Robinson 1996).

Returning now to the inductive versusdeductive question, we again find that the choiceis not one resolvable with an either/or approach.There are many times when an inductiveapproach such as using a consciousness-raisingtask is desirable because by using such an

approach one is nurturing within the students away of thinking, through which they can arrive attheir own generalizations. In addition, an induc-tive approach allows teachers to assess what thestudents already know about a particular struc-ture and to make any necessary adjustments intheir lesson plan. Clearly, a teacher's anticipationof where the challenge lies is not always borne outwhen he or she assesses students' actual behavior.

Other times, when students have a particularcognitive style that is not well suited for languageanalysis or when a particular linguistic rule israther convoluted, it may make more sense topresent a grammar structure deductively.

Indeed, Corder's sensible observationsoffer comfort:

What little we know about ... secondlanguage learning ... suggests that acombination of induction and deduc-tion produces the best result.... Theold controversy about whether oneshould provide the rule first and thenthe examples, or vice versa, is nowseen to be merely a matter of tactics towhich no categorical answer can begiven (Corder 1973 in Rutherford andSharwood Smith 1988, p. 133).

Patterns and Reasons , Not Rules

Before concluding, we should make two finalobservations about grammar teaching. With theincreased access to large corpora of languagedata that computers afford, it has become clearthat grammatical structures and lexical itemsoccur in a large number of regularly occurringpatterns (Sinclair and Fox 1990; Biber, Conrad,and Reppen 1998). Not all lexical items can befreely substituted into a particular pattern. Onceone lexical item is selected, the likelihood of aparticular item or phrase following is increased.For example, if the verb insist is chosen, either onor that is very likely to follow. An implication ofcorpus-based research is that teachers of gram-mar should pay more attention to conventional-ized lexicogrammatical units, and not simplyfocus on teaching grammatical rules (Pawleyand Syder 1983; Nattinger and DeCarrico 1992;

264 Unit II E Language Skills/Grammar and Vocabulary

Lewis 1997). Indeed, connectionist modelinghas demonstrated that morphology (Ellis andSchmidt 1997) and syntax (MacWhinney 1997)acquisition may be accounted for by simple asso-ciative learning principles (N. Ellis 1998), ratherthan as a product of rule application.

Another challenge to equating the teach-ing of rules with the teaching of grammar comesfrom Larsen-Freeman's (2000a) suggestion thatteachers concentrate on teaching "reasons, notrules." Larsen-Freeman points out that althoughrules don't allow for change, language is chang-ing all the time. A consequence is that most ruleshave "exceptions." Furthermore, many rulesappear arbitrary because they are form based,ignoring the meaning and use dimensions. Forinstance, rather than telling students they mustuse an indefinite noun phrase after the verb in asentence beginning with existential there,

There is a snowstorm coming.

help them understand the reason: there intro-duces new information in the noun followingthe verb, and in English, new information ismarked with indefinite determiners. This reasonis broad based and explains a number of Englishword-order phenomena. While rules providesome security for learners, reasons give them adeeper understanding of the logic of Englishand help them make it their own. Besides, rea-sons are meaning based and use based and arein keeping with the more robust view of gram-mar we have been promoting in this chapter.

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Finally, the form, meaning, and framework canbe used by teachers to assess where there aregaps in their own knowledge of English gram-mar. When they can't fill in all the wedges in thepie chart for a given structure, they can consultreference grammars. Of course, there are manygaps in what is known about the three dimen-sions. In particular, there is much to learn aboutthe pragmatic conditions governing the use ofparticular structures. For this reason, the piechart can also be used to generate items for aresearch agenda. By exploring the three dimen-

sions of grammar and how to teach them, teach-ers will continue to develop their professionalknowledge base, which will, in turn, benefit theirstudents as they strive to enhance their gram-matical proficiency.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS1. Think of all the language teaching ap-

proaches with which you are familiar. Can

you categorize them according to whether

they favor language form or language use?

2. In explaining the pragmatics of phrasalverbs, the principle of dominance wasinvoked. Explain why the principle of domi-nance falls in the pragmatic dimension.

3. The effect of the native language on secondlanguage learning has traditionally beenseen to be one of interference. How doesobservation 3 on the learning process(pp. 255-256) differ in its perception ofL1 influence?

4. Why was it stressed that the repetition in apractice activity for working on form shouldbe meaningful?

5. Why is it important to identify the challenge

in a particular grammar structure for a par-

ticular group of students, even if the aspect

of structure you are planning to teach lies in

a different wedge of the pie from where the

challenge lies?

SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES1. Think of a language teaching approach

which tends to favor language use over lan-guage form. How could the approach incor-porate more language form? Now think ofan approach that favors language formover language use. How could a focus onlanguage use be integrated?

2. Analyze restrictive relative clauses in termsof the three dimensions of the pie chart.What has been the most challenging dimen-sion for the students with whom you haveworked?

3. Design practice activities for dealing with thepragmatics of the following:

TeachingGrammar 265

a. falling versus rising intonation in tagquestions

b. indirect object alternationc. presence or absence of existential there

OQ!^ FURTHER READINGBygate, M., A. Tonkyn, and E. Williams, eds. 1994.

Grammar and the Language Teacher. HemelHempstead. UK: Prentice Hall International.Offers ways that grammar in language teachingcan be reaffirmed and maintained in order toavoid the pendulum swing.

Celce-Murcia, M., and S. Hilles. 1988. Techniques andResources in Teaching Grammar. New York: OxfordUniversity Press.Discusses issues germane to teaching grammarand provides abundant examples of techniquesand materials applied to teaching Englishstructures.

Celce-Murcia, M., and D. Larsen-Freeman. 1999. TheGrammar Book: An ESL/EFL Teacher's Course. 2ded. Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle.Seeks to guide teachers to an understanding ofthe grammar of those structures they will haveto teach (their form, meaning, and use in con-text) and offers relevant teaching suggestionsfor those same structures.

Doughty, C., and J. Williams, eds. 1998. Focus on Formin Classroom Second Language Acquisition.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Provides an overview of second language acqui-sition research that has investigated "focus onform."

Larsen-Freeman, D. 2001. Teaching Language: FromGrammar to Grammaring. Boston, MA: Heinle &Heinle.Argues for a reconceptualization of grammarand the way it is taught, featuring grammar as acomplex, nonlinear, dynamic system.

Rutherford, W. 1987. Second Language Grammar:Learning and Teaching. London: Longman.Treats grammar in an interesting and provoca-tive way that challenges the view that learninggrammar is an "accumulation of entities."

Ur, P. 1988. Grammar Practice Activities: A Practical Guidefor Teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress.Discusses pedagogical issues followed by a num-ber of grammar teaching activities groupedaccording to the grammar structure for whichthey work best.

ENDNOTESI Some time after I had begun view grammar in this

way, the work of Charles Morris (1939) was broughtto my attention. Although he uses the terms in asomewhat different manner, Morris applies the ter-nary scheme of syntactics, semantics, and pragmat-ics in portraying the field of semiotics or the studyof signs. The ternary scheme we are adopting heremay also sound reminiscent of Kenneth Pike's"particle, wave and field" (1959). Although there issome overlap, there is no isomorphism between themodels.For example, the model of language that descrip-tive linguists prefer is one in which various areas oflanguage are depicted as strata in a linguistic hier-archy, beginning with the sounds of language asthe lowest level from which all else is composedand following in turn with morphemes, lexicon,syntax, and discourse.We include lexis here, acknowledging that gram-mar and lexis are just two poles on a continuumand that there are many patterned multiwordphrases that are basic intermediate units betweenlexis and grammar. Following Halliday (1994),then, it is probably more accurate to think in termsof "lexicogrammar."For more exceptions to this rule, consult Celce-Murcia and Larsen-Freeman (1999, pp. 314-316).For this reason, Rutherford has suggested that anoptimal approach to dealing with the nonlinearityof grammatical acquisition might be one whereteachers help students achieve an understandingof general principles of grammar, e.g., how tomodify basic word order, rather than concentrat-ing on teaching structure-specific rules.Such a restriction might seem uncharacteristicallyautocratic in today's climate, where one of the fea-tures of the Communicative Approach is that stu-dents be given a choice of how they wish to expressthemselves. It is our contention, however, that stu-dents have a true choice only if they have a varietyof linguistic forms at their disposal which they canproduce accurately. Without being restricted tousing a particular target form during a form-focused activity, students will often avoid produc-ing the structure and, hence, never have anopportunity to truly learn it.An OS relative clause is one in which the subject ofthe embedded sentence is replaced by a relativepronoun because the subject is identical to an objector objectlike noun in the predicate of the precedingmain clause. (For example: I like the book that hewrote.) 0 s

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