Dave Willis: What do we mean by ‘grammar’?

Dave began his talk by offering some definitions of ‘grammar’. Does ‘knowing grammar’ mean: knowing the rules or knowing how to implement the implicit rules? The misuse of the term ‘grammar’, he believes, can lead to doubtful teaching practice.

Discussing the following example sentence:

At 8 o’clock I’m usually having breakfast.

he noted that it may sound ungrammatical, but statements like this happen all the time in the native speaker environment. It turns out that teachers teach their students to use the Present Continuous in a very limited way, which by no means reflects its authentic use in the native speaker environment. The students are therefore given rules of doubtful value and are expected to unlearn them as they go.

Another problematic grammar area for learners to get a full grasp of is phrasal verbs:

Eg. He took out his wallet – OK vs. He took out it – X

Dave maintained that problems of this kind are virtually impossible to be explained in the classroom. Indeed, transitivity for example, very rarely features in teachers’ lesson plans. Students, it seems, are expected to find their way round extremely difficult concepts, some of which can be said to be unteachable.

If we teach only simple grammar (wrongly?) and leave the learners to work out the difficult things themselves, the question emerges of what the role of formal grammar instruction really is. Dave claimed that formal grammar teaching helps the students acquire the more straightforward aspects of grammar. It also gets students used to the idea of noticing. This encourages the use of discovery techniques, such as analysing texts, concordance lines, etc.

The key to all learning, he concluded, is exposure to the target linguistic code, which never entails systematicity, but thrives on randomness and creativity. The teacher’s role in teaching grammar, therefore, seems to be that of a midwife – a facilitator of the student’s on-going linguistic research into the grammar patterns of language.