Seven Ways of Looking at Grammar by Scott Thornbury

Brown's 12 Principles - An Interactive Approach to Learning Pedagogy

#1 – Automaticity

• Efficient 2nd language learning involves a timely movement of the control of a few language forms into the automatic processing of a relatively unlimited number of language forms.
• Automaticity – the road to fluency

#2 – Meaningful Learning

• Meaningful learning will lead toward better long-term retention than rote learning.
• Appeals to student interests
• Connects new info to old info (good schemata building)

Meaningful Learning – Don’ts

• Too much grammar explanation
• Abstract principles and theories
• Too many drills and memories
• Activities with unclear purposes
• Extraneous activities
• Distractions that take the focus off of meaning

Dr. Stephen Krashen at the 5th Annual Extensive Reading Seminar in Nagoya, Japan.

Krashen's Theory of Second Language Acquisition by Vivian Cook

Acquisition	Learning
implicit, subconscious	explicit, conscious
informal situations	formal situations
uses grammatical 'feel'	uses grammatical rules
depends on attitude	depends on aptitude
stable order of acquisition	simple to complex order of learning

Is there a Natural Order of Language Acquisition?

  

        The influence of Stephen Krashen on language education research and practice is undeniable.  First introduced over 20 years ago, his theories are still debated today.  In 1983, he published The Natural Approach with Tracy Terrell, which combined a comprehensive second language acquisition theory with a curriculum for language classrooms.  The influence of Natural Approach can be seen especially in current EFL textbooks and teachers resource books such as The Lexical Approach (Lewis, 1993).  Krashen’s theories on second language acquisition have also had a huge impact on education in the state of California, starting in 1981 with his contribution to Schooling and language minority students: A theoretical framework by the California State Department of Education (Krashen 1981).  Today his influence can be seen most prominently in the debate about bilingual education and perhaps less explicitly in language education policy:  The BCLAD/CLAD teacher assessment tests define the pedagogical factors affecting first and second language development in exactly the same terms used in Krashen’s Monitor Model (California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, 1998). 
        As advertised, The Natural Approach is very appealing – who wouldn’t want to learn a language the natural way, and what language teacher doesn’t think about what kind of input to provide for students.  However, upon closer examination of Krashen’s hypotheses and Terrell’s methods, they fail to provide the goods for a workable system.  In fact, within the covers of “The Natural Approach”, the weaknesses that other authors criticize can be seen playing themselves out into proof of the failure of Krashen’s model.  In addition to reviewing what other authors have written about Krashen’s hypotheses, I will attempt to directly address what I consider to be some of the implications for ES/FL teaching today by drawing on my own experience in the classroom as a teacher and a student of language.  Rather than use Krashen’s own label, which is to call his ideas simply “second language acquisition theory”, I will adopt McLaughlin’s terminology (1987) and refer to them collectively as “the Monitor Model”.  This is distinct from “the Monitor Hypothesis”, which is the fourth of Krashen’s five hypotheses.

What is Language?

    Language is a system of conventional vocal signs by means of which human beings communicate.

I-  Language as System:

A language is not just a collection of sounds and words; it is also the rules or patterns that relate these to each other. Here we have the concept of duality of patterning which corresponds to the fact that every language has two levels.

a. Meaningful Units: such as morphemes which are the smallest meaningful units of language.

E.g.: cats → cat + s

b. Meaningless Units: are units that have no meaning in themselves although they serve as components to the meaningful units such as the phonemes.

E.g.: cats → /k/ + / æ/ + /t/ + /s/

This distinction between a meaningful word “cats” and its meaningless parts /k/ + / æ/ + /t/ + /s/ is important. This duality enables humans to produce a huge number of meaningful words and sentences out of relatively few (meaningless) sounds. In English there are only about thirty-five basic sounds yet with those we can produce infinity of utterances. For instance, small signs produce infinite messages. This is one of the main characteristics that distinguish human language from the more simple communication systems of other animals.

The PPP methodology for Communicative Language Teaching

In recent years, the purely "structural" approach to language teaching has been criticized, as it tends to produce students who, despite having the ability to produce structurally accurate language, are generally deficient in their ability to use the language and understand its use in real communication.

What is the "structural" approach to language teaching?  If your classroom is full of students that memorize vocabulary and grammar rules through repitition and rote learning, and are corrected for even the smallest mistake whilst speaking or writing English, then you are a champion of the structural teaching approach.  No doubt your students are learning a lot of English, but how effective and how enjoyable is this process?

An approach to language teaching has been developed which attempts to overcome the weaknesses of the "structural approach" (which incidentally is the kind of teaching methodology that tends to prevail in Asian public schools).  The new approach is based on viewing language as a combination of:

a)   Linguistic Structures          b) Situational Settings          c) Communicative Acts

This is known as the "communicative approach" to language teaching.  Communication is not simply a matter of what is said (structure/lexis), but where it is said, by whom, when and why it is said.  In short, this is basically the "communicative function" or "purpose" of language.

At the opposite extreme from the structural approach, and with at least as many flaws, is the purely "conversational" approach, where it is assumed that exposure to lots of conversation from a native English speaker will produce a high level of aptitude in the students.  Whereas the structural approach promotes accuracy and tends to inhibit communicative confidence, the conversational approach tends to create communicative confidence in combination with many entrenched errors.  Being keen to communicate and yet not being able to do so properly is almost as risky as knowing what to say but not having the confidence or practice to use it.

Task-based Learning Lesson Design

Cohesion in English