The Best ESL Teachers include Grammar

The arguments against grammar teaching are almost always set up straw men to knock down. Most of us, at least those of us in ESL (which I'm most familiar with) don't teach grammar the way those in the zero-grammar corner want to believe we teach it.

When I talk about teaching grammar, let me make it clear that I am NOT talking about Grammar Translation. I am NOT talking about meaningless drill. I am NOT talking about memorizing rules. I am NOT talking about an insistence on accuracy above all else. I am NOT talking about asking students to do grammatical analysis and insisting that they use meta-language.

All I'm talking about is helping our students understand how English works, raising their awareness, and giving them opportunities to gain experience with structures useful to their interlanguage development in all skill areas -- with grammar teaching just one aspect, one component, of a balanced program of instruction.

Here is a well-known study:

Norris, J. & Ortega, L. Effectiveness of L2 Instruction: A Research Synthesis and Quantitative Meta-analysis. Language Learning 50:3, September 2000, pp. 417-528.

In the abstract, they say their article is a summary of "investigations into the effectiveness of L2 instruction published between 1980 and 1998. . . . "The data indicated that focused L2 instruction results in large target-oriented gains, that explicit types of instruction are more effective than implicit types, and that Focus on Form and Focus on Forms interventions result in equivalent and large effects."

In other words, in this meta-analysis of research, the conclusion is that the explicit teaching of grammar (which includes both inductive and deductive strategies) is more effective than implicit approaches (i.e., with only communicative exposure to target structures).

And further, this excerpt discusses the two major approaches to including a grammar component in an instructional program. Focus on Form essentially means slotting in grammar to content-based, task-based, skill-based communicative teaching, with the grammar designed to help students perform the activity at hand -- and there is a wide variety of ways to do that, including either reactively or proactively, or both.

Focus on FormS (which I call Grammar-Based Teaching) essentially refers to working from a structural syllabus and weaving in content-based, task-based, skill-based communicative activities designed to give a lot of exposure to and opportunities for practice with the target structures. These two basic approaches to including grammar are, as Norris and Ortega say, equally effective, so the choice of one over the other would depend on the teaching situation. But to choose not to include any grammar instruction at all is to ignore what a preponderance of research in the last 25 or 30 years has shown about the effectiveness of a grammar component.

Just one last note: grammar-based teaching is chock full of comprehensible input and meaningful communication. Grammar teaching today is, as a teacher once said, "a hybrid that works." Let's stop talking about straw men.

Betty Azar

You can reach Betty Azar at:
Azar Grammar

Teach English Blog URL
http://teachenglishblog.blogspot.com/