Juliemiracle: blog

[Juliemiracle]

I'm going to somehow follow into [mention]Mary May[/mention]'s footsteps and try to limit my writing to the confines of this blog.
I'm also going to make some comments about other forum posts that I find interesting, adding the links to the source posts, of course.

[Belka_Teacher]

OK, I've bought it)))

[Juliemiracle]

Chapter 6. The Grammar of Choice

• On saying that you don't know sth: "…in many cultures you lose face if you don’t answer the question.” I say, “In our culture it’s better to admit that you don’t know the answer. You’ll lose more face if you give the wrong answer, than if you say I’ll find out for you.'(Pam)
• Grammar isn't a linguistic straitjacket. We often base our choices on social-interactional factors. Example: want vs would like + please.
• "Students do have to get power/control and express negative feelings, but in appropriate ways.” (Beebe, 1995: 167)
• It is the students who must (and will) decide how they wish to position themselves as speakers of a given language, but their choices will have consequences, so they must learn how to understand/express intentions.
• We shouldn't forget about paralinguistic and extralinguistic means - they can override linguistic ones or supply them.
• If speakers of different languages use English for communication, the pragmatics of the native speakers may not be applicable here.
• The pragmatic factors that signal a change of form are attitude, power, and identity.
• We signal our attitude both through grammar & lexis. Example: using present vs past, argue vs demonstrate.
• On non-native teachers: "We can only teach what we know, although we can make it our professional responsibility to expand our knowledge."
• Power: there's a political dimension to language proficiency. You always have to remember that appropriateness is relative to a particular time, place, the social status and relationship of the interlocutors.
• Quod licet Jovi… :) :"The point is that as language teachers, we should never forget that issues of power and language are intimately connected. For example, it is unfair, but nevertheless true, that native speakers of a language are permitted to create neologisms, as I have done with grammaring. Such a coinage, however, might have beencorrected if a nonnative speaker of English had been its author. Of course, the very issue of who a native speaker is is socially constructed. And when it comes to English, native-speaker status becomes more nuanced, given the evolving World Englishes."
• Language use is personality-driven, age-graded. Examples: I'm going to vs I should, 'like' for reporting.
• We need to choose which dialect we're going to teach. And it's important to distinguish an error from a dialect feature.
• What isn't said is as clear a mark of attitude as what is said. Silence is ambiguous: maybe a person doesn't have anything to say, and maybe they withhold the info or willfully refuse to participate.
• Not all distinctions should be taught.

[Juliemiracle]

It is the students who must (and will) decide how they wish to position themselves as speakers of a given language, but their choices will have consequences, so they must learn how to understand/express intentions.

That's a very interesting idea. So, if you've told your student that the way they say sth is inappropriate (e.g. using full forms of auxiliaries all the time while speaking), but they persist in doing so, let them do it. They know the consequences now, and it's their conscious choice, their identity. The problem is still grading because if a person violates, say, the essay conventions in such a way, I'll have to downgrade them for style/tone inappropriacy. However, on the whole, we shouldn't push the ppl through the door of pragmatics; we can only lead them to it and open it up.

[Juliemiracle]

Quod licet Jovi… :) :"The point is that as language teachers, we should never forget that issues of power and language are intimately connected. For example, it is unfair, but nevertheless true, that native speakers of a language are permitted to create neologisms, as I have done with grammaring. Such a coinage, however, might have been corrected if a nonnative speaker of English had been its author.

And this drives my Ss up the wall every time I say it. Yes, it's hard to admit there's no equality in the world of language learning and you'll never compare to a native speaker :)
BGUTI

[Juliemiracle]

Chapter 7. The Grammar of Discourse

• If we look at grammar structures from the level of discourse (the whole txt rather than a sentence), we'll see five roles of them:
○ Make a txt cohesive, organise it;
○ Improve the coherence of the txt, connect ideas;
○ Contribute texture, make a txt whole;
○ Create discourse patterns working together;
○ Fulfill discourse functions.
• Cohesion linguistic mechanisms (Halliday & Hasan, 1976, 1989):
○ Reference;
○ Conjunctions;
○ Substitution (verbs too!);
○ Lexical cohesion;
○ Ellipsis;
○ Continuatives (a word or phrase that has the function of moving a discourse or conversation forward, e.g. yes, well, as I was saying) - I call them discourse markers;
○ Adjacency pairs (e.g. Q&A);
○ Parallelism;
○ + theme - rheme development & given - new info.
• End focus - the tendency to place new information toward the end of a clause. In spoken language sentences may be even made ungrammatical to preserve it (see examples).
• We can create texture by adopting a particular perspective through the use of verb tenses. Examples: a good example of a disjointed txt!, used to vs would.
• Tenses also help to distinguish the main storyline from the background info. Examples: present vs past, present perfect to bridge the gap between the past and the present + past perfect for backgrounding and explanation.
• There are adverbs with discourse functions. Example: actually.
• Spoken and written grammar share the same grammatical repertoire, but with different frequencies.
• Corpus linguistics helps overcome the contrastive rhetoric probs in writing. Example: underuse of anticipatory 'it' by Chinese Ss.
• Intersubjectivity (when a teacher understands what a student is trying to express or why) is important in teaching.

[Juliemiracle]

We can create texture by adopting a particular perspective through the use of verb tenses. Examples: a good example of a disjointed txt!, used to vs would.

Although the book isn't generally about practical solutions, I'm definitely going to use some examples from it such as the ones above or the ones to explain gerund vs infinitive patterns, phrasal verbs + prons (from the previous chapters) during my classes.

[Juliemiracle]

Uni news
We're going to teach & sudy onsite but in 2 shifts: 2 acadmic years - morning till afternoon + 2 academic years - afternoon till evening + masters - late evening (as usual). To make it possible, our breaks got shortened. 65+ ppl are to be teaching from home.

[Juliemiracle]

* The next chapters are bigger, so I'll be dividing them into several parts.

Chapter 8. Learning Grammar: Insights from SLA Research and Consciousness-Raising
Part 1

• There will never be enough time to do all that could be/should be done to help guide students’ learning.
• SLA + grammar acquisition in general
○ 2 perspectives: innatist universal grammar (N. Chomsky) and environmentalist/empiricist;
○ Deductive (from L1) vs inductive (from L2) inferencing and generalisations.
• The SLA of grammar = figuring out the rules?
○ Connectionism - neural network model;
○ Networks are self-organising;
○ U-shaped learning curve (past tense formation);
○ the camel's back phenomenon/the last straw in the chaos/complexity theory - bifurcation point - instability - perturbation - new order;
○ Crosslinguistic transfer;
○ Connectionist models don't take attention into account = slow to learn;
○ Merely providing learners with comprehensible input isn't enough.
• Lexicogrammatical units/patterned sequences
○ Universal grammar operates on the stock of chunks;
○ Language learning stages: 1) lexicalisation; 2) syntacitisation; 3) relexicalisation, but different learners may stop at different stages + move faster/slower to the next stage; maybe it's a dual system?
• Reconfiguring patterned sequences to produce new forms
○ Abduction - after-the-fact reasoning in order to determine why something happened as it did;
○ Abduction creates, deduction explicates, induction verifies (Yu, 1994).
• Ss' lge is constantly fluctuating
○ Learners' interlanguage changes rapidly;
○ it's nonlinear/wavelike and there may be backsliding, especially when new forms are introduced;
○ it has trialing and scouting patterns;
○ however, there are common developmental sequences for specific aspects of grammar;
○ instruction can accelerate acquisition, but developmental sequences seem to be impervious to it;
○ acquisition is a gradual process & a learner's interlanguage is a basic variety, not a deficient form of the target lge.

[Juliemiracle]

My thoughts on chapter 8

• There will never be enough time to do all that could be/should be done to help guide students’ learning.

It's comforting to know I'm not alone in this 'never enough' camp :)

2 perspectives: innatist universal grammar (N. Chomsky) and environmentalist/empiricist

I think it's this and that, actually. Lge is too complex to be so straightforward.

U-shaped learning curve (past tense formation)

it's nonlinear/wavelike and there may be backsliding, especially when new forms are introduced;

So, the fact that our Ss are learning by stops and starts, by going back and forth is very much fine. Don't get stuck, keep moving.

○ Merely providing learners with comprehensible input isn't enough.

The language isn't gonna learn itself :) If we can help, we should.

[Juliemiracle]

Chapter 8. Learning Grammar: Insights from SLA Research and Consciousness-Raising
Part 2

• Ss learning from eo
○ Vertical collaboration to horizontal autonomous production;
○ Vygotsky's sociocultural theory & the ZPD (zone of proximal development);
○ The metaphor of scaffolding -> supportive conditions: 1) recruiting interest, 2) simplifying the task, 3) maintaining pursuit of the goal, 4) marking discrepancies between production and ideal, 5) controlling frustration, 6) an idealized version.
• Teaching grammar complementing the natural process
○ Krashen's non-interface position, but many researchers disagree -> can cause fossilisation.
• Grammar teaching & pedagogical practices substantiated by research findings
○ Promoting noticing;
○ K. Stanley's stages: 1) unaware, 2) aware, 3) self-correct a non-use right after production, 4) self-correct in the middle of production, 5) self-correct right before production, 6) correct production without thinking + stages aren't clearly separate, they can overlap & regress;
○ Other terms for noticing - awareness, consciousness, detection, attention;
○ Priming Ss = trace;
○ Input flood;
○ Consciousness-raising tasks;
○ Input processing - focuses on 1 thing & limits Ss' difficulties;
○ Collaborative dialogues - promote Ss' attention to form;
○ Prolepsis (= instructional conversations) = scaffolding-teaching;
○ Community language learning dialogues - pluses: Ss generated the L1 dialogue, so they know the meaning and are invested in it;
○ LEA (language experience approach).
• Explicit rule?
○ Yes, if it's straightforward; if complex - examples or rule + examples -> after Ss commit errors the rule might have averted
○ Yes, if a particular L2 feature is more marked than in L1;
○ Yes, with pragmatic differences;
○ Yes, with lexicogrammatical units and collocations;
○ Guided participatory approach - learners and a teacher collaborate & co-construct the grammar explanation - the best procedure;
○ We can use verbal rules, formulas, iconic devices, scales, charts, pics.
• Linguistic terminology/metalanguage with Ss?
○ It depends on Ss, on their level of language, on their metalanguage sophistication.

[Juliemiracle]

On mind maps
Belka_Teacher ("Первое пробное занятие - бесплатно")
I remember that arborea draws a mind map with pictograms representing her life, and her Ss try to guess what those pics mean. She adds info where necessary. Then Ss do the same thing themselves. And she works with adults.

[Juliemiracle]

It's been a while since I posted any notes on the grammaring book, but I've been up to my eyes in work:
• Migrating my site to a new hosting,
• Getting ready for my onsite classes,
• Writing an article for a conference.
But I really want to finish it up, so…

[Juliemiracle]

Chapter 9. Output Practice and Production
Part 1

• There are PPP & TBL approaches that value practice, but not all teachers agree, especially with the drills (have soporific effects).
• Comprehension doesn't guarantee production.
• Strong interface position (implicit in traditional grammar teaching) - learners will acquire what they are taught and, with practice, they will be able to use the structure in communicative situations -> there is a direct, proximate connection or interface between practice and use. - The author thinks it's not true.
• Weak interface position - instruction draws learners’ attention to language features and permits
them to develop knowledge of those features, but learners will not incorporate such features into their interlanguage until they reach the requisite developmental stage.
• “If the production practice is directed at a structure the learners are not yet ready to acquire, it is likely to fail (Pienemann, 1984) or [worse] to result in some misrepresentation of the rule (Eubank, 1987)” (R. Ellis, 1998: 51).
• Non-interface position + comprehensible input (S. Krashen).
• Comprehensible output (Swain & Lapkin) makes learners move from semantic processing to syntactic processing, lets them test their hypotheses (Schachter), they negotiate meaning through interaction; CO promotes noticing.
• Negotiation provides positive evidence (what is grammatical in the target language) and negative evidence (indirect or direct evidence to the learner that something is ungrammatical).
• Support from psychology - an information-processing perspective
○ Automaticity
• J. Anderson's 3-stage model of skill learning: 1) acquiring declarative knowledge (knowledge about); developing procedural knowledge (k. how to); 3) automating procedural knowledge.
• Not all grammatical knowledge is rule-governed, and productive practice should be directed at formulaic patterns, not grammatical rules.
○ Restructuring
• Not only does practice automatise procedures, it also develops organisational schemata and restructures higher-order abstract cognitive representations, but it should be meaningful and engaging (examples from construction grammar).
• Prototypes (see prototype theory by E. Rosch). Example: prototypical meaning of 'on'.
• Instance-based theories (Truscott): instances are analysed into basic features, categorised based on similarities of the features. The more instances, the quicker and more efficient is memory retrieval.
• All these processes are cyclical -> bottom-up + top-down processes in continual interaction.
• Practice can sometimes lead to decrement in performance as the system is reorganised.
○ Support for practice in connectionism
• Neural network models -> nothing is static in the lge. Learning is a consequence of repeated neural network activation that results in stronger, and therefore more easily activated, connections.
• Connectionism pluses: 1) incremental + decremental learning as a single process; 2) combine a way to represent lge + a way to model its development; 3) neurologically plausible account of brain processing.
• Connectionism limitations: 1) relies on FLA rather than SLA; 2) PC models are disembodied from the world and asocial.

[Juliemiracle]

My PhD thesis was connected with cognitive linguistics, and although science stuff isn't my kind of thing, reading all those terms and names was like meeting an old flame in the street - such a walk down the memory lane :)
***
Important ideas:
- a learner should be ready for a certain grammar structure. Like to build a house you need to have a foundation or it will collapse.
- it's OK for learners to backslide in production because at that moment their knowledge could be getting reorganised into a more elaborate and well-structured system.

[Харбин Хэйлунцзян]

• Migrating my site to a new hosting,

Какой хостинг? И какой сайт, если конечно не секрет?

-

[Juliemiracle]

Какой хостинг?

I chose eternalhost.net. I used to have a free hosting on x10hosting.com, but it wasn't enough for me anymore.

И какой сайт, если конечно не секрет?

It's a small moodle site for my Ss - with homework, progress tests, links to different exercises - nothing particularly special.

[Харбин Хэйлунцзян]

I chose eternalhost.net.

Что-то вспомнилась мне Марина Сергеевна:

Платишь 1 раз — пользуешься всегда!

-

[Eager Beaver]

By the way, the person who inspired me to read this book is Блондинка from the old efl forum, and I'm truly grateful to her.
Yes, it's been on my list for many years, but better late than never, I guess.

Нашел у себя сохраненный в заметках пост с книгами по грамматике. Источник указан - efl.ru, но кто именно автор рекомендаций - я не записал. В этом списке есть From Grammar to Grammaring.

Учебники для Advanced:
Understanding and Using English Grammar by Betty Azar в числе лучших ( там вся серия отличная)
Macmillan English Grammar in Context - тоже неплохой (хотя помню ветки с претензиями лично ко мне по поводу этого учебника)

Справочники:
“Practical Engllish Usage”, M.Swan, Oxford
“Grammar Scan”, M.Swan, D.Baker, Oxford
Oxford Guide to English Grammar, J. Eastwood
“The Grammar Book”, M.Celce-Murcia, D.Larsen-Freeman, Heinle&Heinle
“From Grammar to Grammaring”, D.Larsen-Freeman, Thomson&Heinle
Collins Cobuild English Grammar, HarperCollins -- функциональная грамматика
“A Teacher's Grammar”, R.A.Close, Thomson
“Explaining English Grammar”, G.Yule, Oxford
“English Observed. The Same hock of Real English”, R.MacAndrew, Thomson&Heinle
“Cambridge Grammar of English”, R.Carter, M.Mccarthy, Cambridge, 2006
English Grammar Today. R.Carter, M.Mccarthy
“Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English”, D.Biber et al, Longman
From Corpus to Classroom by Anne O'Keefe, Michael McCarthy, Ronald Carter

И еще там же нашел список неизбитых книг для развития словарного запаса.

Delta Natural English:
Using Collocations for Natural English
Using Phrasal Verbs for Natural English

Idioms Organiser by Jon Wright
Collins Work on your Idioms
Collins Work on your Vocabulary, но по настоящему её можно оценить, начав работу с более низких уровней
Wordbuilder by Guy Wellman
Practice with Idioms by Ronald E. Feare
Cambridge Vocabulary for (Advanced + IELTS Advanced)
Listening and Speaking for Advanced

Key Words for Fluency
Vocabulary Matrix by M.McCarthy

[Juliemiracle]

Что-то вспомнилась мне Марина Сергеевна

Who is Marina Sergeevna?
And no, I'm going to pay monthly at least for some time. But it's still cheaper than, say, beget. Let's see how it goes.

[Juliemiracle]

Eager Beaver,
that list sounds like her :)
Thank you for posting it here - nice to have it.

[Харбин Хэйлунцзян]

Who is Marina Sergeevna?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDqxR7NUXbs

And no, I'm going to pay monthly at least for some time.

Ваши планы у меня сомнений не вызывают.

But it's still cheaper than, say, beget.

Можно ведь взять на двоих.

-

[Juliemiracle]

Uni news
I've already had my first classes today.
So, health regulations are quite stict. Everyone (Ss & teachers) have to wear masks all the time. The uni provided all of us with 2 reusable cotton masks that are to be replaced every 2 months. We have to air the rooms after each class, and we have 2 portable air recirculation units per floor. We also don't have to get our temperature taken now because there's a flat-screen hooked up to a thermal cam, and when you enter, it captures your face and shows a green frame around it if your body temperature is OK - no queues :)

[Eager Beaver]

Delta Natural English:
Using Collocations for Natural English
Using Phrasal Verbs for Natural English

Пока искал эти книги, увидел A Handbook of Spoken Grammar того же издательства - очень интересные юниты внутри, точно буду смотреть. А вот две рекомендованные книги мне показались обычными. Таких много.

[Juliemiracle]

Want to thank [mention]Mountbatten[/mention] for her Roses & Thorns back-to-class activity. I tried it with my Ss, and found it really suitable. It has a nice twist on this 'tell-me-about-your-summer' question - ppl were intrigued with the pics, and it wasn't too long. Also, I like that each person can decide how much personal they want to get while choosing a couple of things to share. But most of all, I approve of the fact that Ss may share their 'thorns' together with the 'roses'. These days there's a certain cult of staying positive in our society, and I don't think it's healthy to bottle up your negative feelings, pretending your life is all rainbows and unicorns.

[Juliemiracle]

[mention]gavenkoa[/mention]
gavenkoa (New words you find interesting, useful, etc. ))
These are called wellies informally, and it's an eponym, which is a very popular word-building category: sandwich, frisbee, hoover, biro...