What do we mean by 'grammar'? - Dave Willis
Should we teach grammar? How should we teach it? What sort of grammar? Teachers are constantly worrying over questions like this. The answers depend to a large extent on what we mean by ‘grammar’. We will look at this from both a theoretical and a practical point of view and try to tease out some answers?
18 April 2009
2 years 5 weeks
Thank you very much for this extremely clear powerpoint with commentary. I've already added a quotation from your paper to my own presentation - and even before IATEFL has begun - many thanks due to Harrogate Online.
15 March 2010
1 year 52 weeks
The question whether grammar is teachable and learnable has been a hot discussion everywhere. I believe explicit grammar teaching is needed only where it hinders spoken or written communication
Widdowson (1990)and Krashen (1983) give priority to lexicon teaching and that grammar is only taught to structure lexis. Widdowson states that "a more natural and more effective approach would be to reverse this pedagogical dependency, begin with lexical items …… and show how they need to be grammatically modified to be communicatively effective" (95).
As I said before, I think that grammar is needed to make sure both accuracy and fluency are harmoniously dancing together with no one stepping on the other’s foot. (Hope I got my analogy right here!) :-)
18 March 2009
2 years 5 weeks
Hehe! I adore your analogy of accuracy and fluency, but I'm not sure which dance style has the partners doing such different things! I have an image of something very modern but with jazz improv to it.
When I started learning Spanish, "grammar" meant memorizing 28 different verb endings. At the time I thought that was difficult.
Now I'm fighting with Japanese. "Grammar" now means that I've started my sentence in the wrong place and should start again.
Ouch.
21 March 2010
2 years 6 weeks
So sad the techies didnt bother to get the audio right. It's frustating it happened to such a gem of a session.
10 April 2010
2 years 6 weeks
I agree about the sound quality- barely audible on my system... sad sad sad....
Maybe there is a retrofix or a transcript of the talk?
12 March 2009
2 years 3 weeks
We have two quotes on the wall of our staffroom. One is by you, in the academic style acceptable to my French collegues, and although I can't find it ('not in the staffroom right now !) it says the same thing as this one from SP Corder's The Significance of Learner's Errors IRAL Vol V/4: 1967
We have been reminded recently of Von Humbolt's statement that we cannot really teach language, we can only create conditions in which it will develop spontaneously in the mind in its own way
I just love the continutity! Thanks for a beautifully clear talk, and the docs to be able to spread the word :-)
13 April 2010
2 years 5 weeks
Thanks Dave Willis for this very informative lecture on one of the most important aspects of language: grammar.
There are some points that I would like to add to this interesting discussion.
1. Grammar is not 100% bullet proof and maybe students should approach grammar as a helpful tool that may help them be correct 70-80 percent of the time.
2. Does learning grammar speed up the process of using language or it is just a waste of time?
From what I gather from Dave Willis is that grammar certainly does have a role to play but should not occupy a big chunk of the class time.