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Making an Impact
Teaching Grammar Through Awareness-Raising
Rod Ellis
Department of Applied Language Studies and Linguistics
University of Auckland
New Zealand
How can we teach grammar in ways that enable second language learners to learn grammar?
This has been one of the key questions that researchers have grappled with over the last thirty
or so years.
This question arose as a result of research that showed that language learners have their own
built-in ‘syllabus’ which governs both when they learn particular grammatical features and
also how they learn them. The research demonstrated what many teachers have long known
– namely, that students often don’t learn the grammar they are taught. It indicates why this
is so; learners only internalize those grammar features that they are ready to learn and they
learn each feature very gradually, passing through a series of transitional stages.
There are perhaps two ways in which teachers can try to address this problem. The first is to
make sure that the teaching syllabus matches the learner’s own syllabus. That is, teachers
need to teach specific grammatical features when they know that the learners are ready to
learn them. The difficulty with this solution is that it is not easy to find out if learners are at a
stage of development that will enable them to learn a particular structure. This calls for quite
sophisticated diagnosis. Another difficulty is that we still do not have anything like a
complete picture of what the learner’s syllabus looks like. In short, this solution is probably
not very practical.
The second solution is to circumvent the problem. We can do this if we direct the teaching of
grammar at explicit knowledge rather than implicit knowledge. Explicit knowledge is
knowledge about grammar – understanding the rules. Implicit knowledge is knowledge of
grammar – knowing the rules in an intuitive way that enables them to be accessed quickly
and easily for purposes of communication. It is this kind of knowledge that underlies the
learner’s built-in syllabus and which is acquired gradually. We can avoid the difficulties of
trying to match the teaching syllabus to the learner’s syllabus if we make explicit rather than
implicit knowledge the target of instruction.
Of course, such a solution only makes sense if it can be shown that learning explicit
knowledge is useful. Current theories of second language learning suggest that explicit
knowledge is important in a number of respects. First, it helps learners to be more
grammatically accurate by monitoring what they say or write – they can ‘edit’ out some of
the errors they make because they have not yet acquired the necessary implicit knowledge.
Second, explicit knowledge can help learners to acquire implicit knowledge. If learners
understand how a grammatical feature works they will be more likely to notice it when they
are listening or reading. Current theories claim that noticing is essential for the development
of implicit knowledge.
How, then, should we teach explicit knowledge of grammar? The traditional way is through
direct instruction – the teacher tells the learners what the rules are. An alternative way is to
use a grammar-discovery approach. This involves providing learners with data (in the form
of a listening or reading text) to illustrate a particular grammatical feature and getting them to
analyze it so as to arrive at an understanding of how the feature works. In effect, this requires
learners to become active-thinkers in order to discover for themselves how the grammar of
the language they are studying works.
The grammar-discovery approach has a number of advantages. It is likely to be more
motivating than the direct approach – in general, learners find it more interesting to discover
something for themselves than to be told it. It turns grammar into a ‘content’ that the learners
can communicate about. In other words, learners can use the target language as the medium
for discovering grammar. In this way, a grammar discovery task doubles up as a
communicative task. After all, learners can just as well talk about grammar as the countless
other things language teachers get them to discuss. Perhaps the biggest advantage, however,
is that grammar-discovery tasks help learners to develop the analytical skills they need to
dissect language for themselves. In this way, they can continue to discover how the grammar
of the language works on their own when they are outside the classroom. The grammardiscovery approach helps to foster the curiosity and the analytical skills needed to work on
language autonomously - one of the hallmarks of successful language learners.
Together with Steven Gaies, I have recently put together some materials designed to teach
grammar through awareness-raising (see Ellis and Gaies 1998). Each unit is based on a
grammatical problem that we know learners of English as a second language commonly
experience (e.g. the use of the present progressive tense with stative verbs as in * I am
weighing 60 kilos). The learners begin by listening to a text that contains examples of correct
usage. They first process this for meaning. Then they listen again, this time focussing their
attention on the target grammatical feature (i.e. they are helped to notice it). Next, they use
the data to try to arrive at an explicit understanding of the rule (e.g. the kinds of verbs that are
not used in the present progressive tense). This provides a basis for an error-identification
task, where they can check if they have understood the rule clearly. Finally, there is an
opportunity for the learners to try to use the correct grammatical structure in their own
sentences.
Let us look at an example of a unit from Ellis and Gaies’ book. Unit 18 (see below) tackles a
common problem many learners have – subject-verb agreement. The topic of this unit is
‘Movie Listings’.
1. Error Box
This shows the students the kinds of errors that they are likely to make with subject-verb
agreement.
2. Listening to Comprehend
Here the students are asked to do a simple listening comprehension. This requires them to
attend to the message content of the texts (which consist of simple descriptions of four
movies). They demonstrate their understanding of the text by completing a table.
3. Listening to Notice
The students listen to the same texts again. But this time they have to attend closely to the
form of the verbs in order to choose the correct verb for each blank. This might look like a
traditional fill-in-the-blank exercise but it is not. In a traditional exercise, students have to
decide which verb form to choose on the basis of their own knowledge but in this activity
they do so by listening carefully to the text – in other words, they have to engage in inputprocessing.
4. Understanding the Grammar Point
This is an example of ‘grammar-discovery task’. As a result of completing ‘Listen to Notice’
the students have a complete text. They now use this as data to help him discover how
subject-agreement works in English. First, they carry out an analysis of the verb forms in the
texts by completing a table. This requires them to find the subject and the verb of each
sentence in the texts. Next they answer two questions designed to help them see when to use
the simple form of the verb and when to use the s-form. As a result of this activity they
develop their awareness of how subject-verb agreement works in English.
5. Checking
This exercise provides an opportunity for students to use the explicit knowledge they now
have to edit similar texts to the ones they have been working on. They are asked to identify
errors and correct them.
6. Trying It
The final section of the unit gives students the opportunity to try using the structure in their
own production. The task is an open one. That is, students have to produce their own text, not
just manipulate a given text.
These materials incorporate a number of novel features. First, they aim to teach grammar
through input-processing by helping learners to attend to particular grammatical features;
they train the skills of noticing. This contrasts with traditional approaches which aim to teach
grammar through production practice of one kind or another. Second, the materials make use
of oral texts on the grounds that learners need training in being able to notice grammatical
features when they are listening. This is normally very difficult for learners, particularly if
the features are redundant (i.e. are not essential for understanding the meaning). Third, the
materials employ a consciousness-raising approach. Learners are shown how to analyze the
data in order to arrive at an understanding of how a grammatical feature works. Fourthly, the
materials provide practise in monitoring – the learners are asked to use their explicit
knowledge to identify and correct errors of the kind that they typically make.
Grammar teaching has undergone a lot of rethinking in recent years. There are some
theorists, such as Stephen Krashen, who believe that it should be abandoned, or at least
relegated to a very minor role in a language programme. There are other theorists, such as
myself, who recognize the problems inherent in the teaching of grammar, but who believe
that ways round them can be found. Irrespective of these differences of opinion, many
teachers will continue to feel the need to teach grammar. Perhaps what is important is that
they do so with an understanding of the difficulties involved in learning grammar and
experiment with possible solutions. Teaching grammar through awareness-raising is one
possible solution.
Ellis, R. and Gaies, S. 1998. Impact Grammar. Hong Kong: Longman.