Teaching Grammar as Product

1. Teaching Grammar as Product From Batstone, R. (1994). Grammar. Oxford, OUP

2. Teaching Grammar as Product, Process, and Skill (Batstone) • Teaching Grammar as Product: • Emphasis is on the component parts of the language system • Teaching Grammar as Process: • Intricacies of real-time communication; emphasises the use of the language by the learner • Teaching Grammar as Skill • Teaching grammar as skill – striking a balance between product and process.

3. Teaching Grammar as Product • Noticing • Noticing for the learner • Noticing by the learner • Structuring • Structuring for the learner • Structuring by the learner • Benefits of Product teaching • Limitations of Product teaching

4. Noticing • Before anything else, students need to notice the language structures/forms • If our aim is to help them notice, then should consider just that • Should not overwhelm the students at this stage • Noticing activities encourage a more ‘introspective’ engagement and calls for quiet observation • Purpose of noticing activities is to make a certain form salient and no more than that

7. Helping students notice can be done explicitly or implicitly. • Done explicitly, it is more noticing for the learner; whereas if implicitly, it is more noticing by the learner • Both are not absolutes and there are degrees of explicitness/implicitness • Teachers have considerable choice in how far we ask students to work things out for themselves, through leading questions and other forms of guidance

10. “… the discovery of regularities in the target language, whether blindly intuitive or conscious, or coming in-between these two extremes, will always be self-discovery. The question is to what extent that discovery is guided by the teacher. The guidance, where consciousness-raising is involved…can be more or less direct or explicit.” Sharwood-Smith 1988:53

11. Cannot force the learners to notice • Will occur when they are ready • Activities can guide students to make own discoveries about grammar • Consciousness-raising • Students need opportunities for noticing and re-noticing • These activities are in advance of activities which call for more active manipulation of grammar forms

12. Structuring • Noticing the grammar is not enough • Necessary condition for learning but not sufficient • If only noticing activities, even noticed structures may not be remembered or acquired • Students need to do something with the grammar – they have to act on it

14. Sometimes we need an activity where we can work with a framework of language which is largely fixed in advanced • However, this kind of activity is also not enough • Need to deploy grammar flexibly, combining elements from grammar and lexis in productive ways • We need activities that involve the active manipulation of language

16. Yes, need to be active in dealing with activity • But, all the activity may be conducted with little understanding of target grammar • Grammar is prominent in the text but not necessarily prominent in the student’s response to the text • This is a structuring for the learner activity as learners work around the target grammar

17. Structuring by activities requires students to not only be active but also be actively involved with the target grammar. • Although they may sometimes seems brief, they cannot be successfully completed without real thought • However, teachers cannot easily proclaim an activity as structuring for or by the learner as it is the learner who will determine.

20. Noticing by the learner Noticing for the learner Structuring by the learner Structuring for the learner Continua for Noticing and Structuring Type Activities

21. Strengths of Product Teaching • Provides a clear framework or language points to be covered which can give a strong sense of direction • There is flexibility as once the target form has been specified, the teacher can decide on his/her own how to teach it – e.g. vary the amount of time given to noticing and structuring

22. Limitations of Product Teaching • Cannot guarantee that students will be able to use the grammar learned in real-life communication as the unpredictable nature of real life communication is absent (e.g. time pressure, topics, roles) • Offers no explicit opportunity for proceduralization where knowledge becomes internalized and automatically deployable.

23. The End