This section of the anthology encompassing the three above chapters dealt with grammar. The teaching of grammar is obviously a very important topic to be considered and constantly though about when in charge of ESL students. I liked that the first chapter brought up a very basic but extremely important discussion on grammar: why should we teach it, and what are good and bad reasons to teach it? I am in a spelling and writing class right now and we constantly discuss the problem with how spelling is taught in schools, leading to many people have such a misunderstanding of English spelling and its rules, why things are the way they are, why there are so many "exceptions" (upon closer analysis you find that these are either not exceptions at all but elements of the language etymologically preserved from the past or carelessly deemed as exceptions by the lack of motivation to investigate further). I think it is so important for every student, especially ESL students in our context, to understand the RIGHT reasons why it is necessary to learn grammar and learn it well.
Chapter 14 dove deeper and addressed a concept that I thought was interesting: in moving from a grammar-based approach to a task-based, we tend to deemphasize the explicit teaching/spoon-feeding of grammar because we feel that skills learned should be done so more naturally or in a multi-modal way, similar to how they would be acquired in a communicative or task-based approach. Richards mentions that grammar-focused activities tend to "elicit a careful (monitored) speech style," and task-based activities "reflect natural language use" (Richards 155). Where is there room left from grammar incorporation in task-based teaching. It definitely requires thinking outside the box a little bit to create tasks that involve grammar that aren't simply gap filling exercises and drills. Richards states that "form will largely look after itself with incidental support from the teacher" and that "grammar has a mediating role" (Richards 156). I took this to mean that as students engage in these tasks that require more natural use of the language, their grammar will naturally improve along the way. Even if they are not focused on speaking with 100% accuracy during the tasks, when they are engaged and focusing on meaning-making, they will be less worried about committing errors. Richards states as they continuously carry out these tasks, "they engage in the process of negotiation of meaning" which may include comprehension checks and clarifications which gradually modifies their language output and allows the features to become more correct.
The third chapter of the section brought up some very thought-provoking ideas to consider when thinking about grammar: "According to Pienemann's teachability hypothesis, a structure cannot be successfully taught unless the learner is developmentally ready to acquire it" (Richards 170). This concept is, I believe, related to the idea of the acquisition of implicit knowledge, which involves three processes: noticing, comparing, and integrating. The third step, integration, takes place at a deeper level in the mind of which the learner is not generally or often aware.
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