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Experiential Skills for Future Grammar Teachers: Feedback from the ESL Classroom
New teachers' comments
The following questions were asked of new teachers:
Q: In what ways did your Pedagogical Grammar (PG) class successfully/unsuccessfully train you for the reality of the classroom?
Q: What skills did you find necessary in the classroom that could be taught more successfully in a PG class?
Responses are anonymous and in no particular order.
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The question of what a pedagogical grammar class should offer MA students in a TESOL program is vital to the health of our field. I am a recent graduate of an MA TESOL program...the problem with the pedagogical grammar class that I took was that it didn't provide me with the experience I needed in 'talking about grammar' with others. The course focused on learning a variety of grammatical points which the instructor felt were important for us to know, but I found out very soon that knowing and teaching are completely different monsters. I can memorize all I want, but I need also to be creative in talking about the structure of a language, and this I think we will all admit is not easy.
For all of the reading and discussion we never once had to get up individually before the class and explain a grammatical point to our colleagues, and I believe this was a shortcoming. Yes of course, I am familiar with the finer points of relative clauses, because I sat at my desk reading about them last night and I would probably fare well on a test, but can I get up before a group of people and explain relative clauses, and possibly more importantly, can I think of engaging ways by which I can present these clauses? I learned a variety of techniques in my methodology classes, but perhaps grammar should be allotted a more experiential status in MA TESOL programs because of its slippery nature. My preparation would have been better served in this area if I had been given the chance to explain some grammatical points to my colleagues while they hammered me with pre-prepared questions on the discrete point in question. I know that logistically this might be difficult for some programs, but I think ultimately it would be beneficial and would begin to dispel some of the unnecessary fear that many native speakers have of grammar. I know for certain that many in my program feared and loathed grammar upon entering the program and I am sad to say that I am certain that many of them graduated still fearing and still loathing...mainly, I believe, because their experience with grammar was always distant and never firsthand.
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I feel my grammatical preparation in the MATESL...in the 1980's was quite 'wanting.' The focus was on syntax, with a native speaker target in mind, a direct 'lift' from transformational grammar linguistics classes- wholly unlike the grammar we really teach. I did get to try out L2 target grammar in the practicum and as a TA in the 'grammar' module, but never got those valuable 'tips' about teaching certain tense contrasts, etc. It would have helped a lot! I know a lot, now, from time spent in the trenches, but not because I had a MATESL...(I 'believe' in the MA, yatta yatta, but hope it has since been improved!)...
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...I wish we'd been shown effective ways of presenting grammar and how to increase students' performance (I have found that, although many students have had years of English, they're not clear about what nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs are...I guess a good way of assessing their knowledge would be helpful).
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(My) class wasn't very useful to me as a teacher of ESL. The homework didn't challenge me to find better ways of teaching grammatical points (the class, actually, had little to do with ways of teaching).
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My PG class was basically useless- however, I had not taught a grammar class up to that point- so most of what occurred was irrelevant. I do remember that those few students who were currently teaching grammar seemed to be more involved in the class discussions...I was so disappointed. My expectation was to be taught to teach grammar. This did not happen. It was too theoretical for my needs. I wanted her to take the 'mystique' out of teaching grammar, but it of course didn't happen. I would have benefitted much more from a course that gave me very practical tips such as how to teach verb tenses, how to teach, etc. Giving us practice lessons would have been more helpful- both deductively and inductively. Challenging us to teach at all levels; how to present something to beginners; etc. would have been great. Knowing what resources are available for difficult questions would be nice. Which books to turn to...I think if the PG course is going to be for pedagogical purposes then it needs to be much more practical than the one I took.
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I studied both theoretical issues and practical ones and feel that I had good training for the classroom. Issues come up that I hadn't prepared for, but having the necessary curiosity and theoretical background prepares one for any contingency. However, one issue that I had not studied that is very useful to know about are ergatives. The way English often uses active constructions to what might be considered passive in other languages can be very confusing to students, and as a teacher I need to be able to predict when this situation might arise.
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I graduated from an MA program that was focused on methodology and hands on experience...what concerns me in this regard is that there MAY be TESOL MA programs out there that do not require teaching. Is it really possible to 'learn to teach' without actually teaching? If graduate students are expecting to become qualified teachers and the MA programs are not providing opportunities for them to get hands on experience, who is to blame?
Can these programs truly be called TESOL teacher training programs?
If so, it seems that I could teach MY IEP studetns the significance of reading, what they should expect from reading, how to evaluate good reading, but never actually require them to read.
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My PG class was very useful for raising my own awareness of grammar issues. However, the classroom application of this knowledge was often taught almost as an afterthought. I would have liked to have spent more time on this.
In reality, however, I think the only way to really learn to teach grammar is just to do it. Experience is the best teacher in this case, as it is in so many cases. Until you have had to scramble to find an answer to a student-generated question not covered in the text, you don't really know how to teach grammar. After you become more experienced, you find you have to "scramble" less often when students start asking questions. A "practicum" situation would be the best way to teach a PG course, I believe, in order to build this experience into teacher trainees.
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I hadn't taken a class, but I got Marcela Frank's companion book to Modern English and got up at 5:30 AM to read it and create lectures. Of course, Marcela Frank was less than accessible, so then I had to get up at 4, read, and then figure out how to translate all the boring advanced grammar (50 pages on noun clauses...)into something I could SHOW in class and then I had to think of a way to get folks to practice beyond Marcela's ever so traditional, decontextualized activities. I can only imagine the same thing happens to new teachers fresh out of a grammar instead of practicum grammar class...in fact, I learned a lot on the job and it would have been nice to have been given some ideas in a class to help with that translation process.
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One of the hardest things to learn, whether through a PG class/class sequence or through experience, is how to make grammar meaningful and how to help students transfer "head knowledge" to productive skills.
Even giving grammar explanations is a difficult skill/art to acquire: knowing what happens in terms of syntactic rules and patterns is only PART of the gestalt of "Englishing (or "Urduing" or "Russianing," etc.). Besides, students often "know" the rules, but don't/can't apply them.
My PG training was almost entirely conceptual and theoretical. This was very valuable in terms of helping me expand my critical thinking and conceptual grasp of grammar as ordered linguistic "behavior," but what was missing was a practicum in learning/practicing how to transform this often esoteric knowledge into techniques, strategies, examples, etc. that I could apply with students. I've learned a lot, in this respect, on my own--but it has been a slow-building, additive process.
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Despite undergoing what I feel is comprehensive training in syntax,
I've always had a lot of trouble with teaching the notional grammar
explanations that I and other competent speakers/teachers come up with.
Even as I speak in class, I can think up numerous counter-examples or
anomalous situations that don't quite fit that pat formula I just
delivered. If I replay what I said and listen as a learner, the
explanation often is contradictory or incomprehensible...
Isn't passing on inaccurate notions as rules going to cause more harm to
our students than good, and make the next teacher's work all that much
harder, to clear up the confusion? This has made me favor non-explicit
teaching of structure, which can be controversial or unpopular. How can
ESL go Back-to (unspecifiable, unattainable) -Basics?
It looks like a daunting load of work, but don't many ESL/EFL
pedagogical grammar explanations need to be overhauled? Perhaps we can
avoid attempts to rationalize usages that are not logical? Does anyone
know of any effort (text?) to re-cast essential grammar into terms that
make sense to non-native learners?
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Employers' comments
Employers were asked the following:
Q: In what ways are recent graduates of MA programs unprepared to teach grammar in your program as it is?
Q: In what ways do you wish new teachers could be better prepared?
Responses are anonymous, and in no particular order.
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These are great questions and I'm glad someone is finally asking them. Recent MA grads know English grammar, but they are not taught how to explain how to use it to ESL students. This is the biggest deficiency I see in MA programs nationwide. In our program, 99% of our students have studied English in their countries for years--even those students who place in our beginner levels. But they don't know how to use the language. They know "I have gone, you have gone, he has gone..." ad nauseum, but they don't know the difference between "I have gone" and "I went." If MA grads are studying TESL to become teachers, then their MA program has to do a better job of preparing them to actually teach. Students need to know what is formal and informal, what they are going to hear on the streets as well as read in their books, what to use when they speak vs. what to use when they write; in other words, there needs to be a more practical approach....as you can see, this is one of my pet peeves. When I was at TESOL last year ('97), I went to the IEP accreditation committee meeting, wherein they discussed making MAs the minimum requirement for teaching. I said that that would be fine if MAs were good preparation for the classroom, but they're not. I'll take an ESL teacher with a year's classroom experience over a new MA any day of the week...
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(New teachers) should know the kinds of problems our students have. They should realize that they may often misunderstand a student's question, simply because they don't share the student's world view. They should ask for clarification and feedback when answering a student's question in class, and then they should ask at the end, was that what you wanted to know?...also, they have to know how to ask questions. I guess this goes for any class. Know how to break questions down into the smallest steps when there is no response.
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I (have a) problem with tutors in the writing center--how can I train them to employ strategies so that they are not merely proofreading papers but helping students to understand how to EMPLOY rules of grammar (my students know a lot of them), to understand nuances of grammar points, and to create their OWN editing strategies to end the ESL student's co-dependence on the writing center.
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I think the missing link is skill in explaining grammar to students and the awareness of grammars of other languages.
If you study formal linguistic theories, etc., can you explain why I use the present tense in this sentence?
Our low level students...are more worried about singular and plural and word order and word forms. From my own experience in a very good MA TESL program, I loved my linguistics classes but drawing trees didn't help me learn how to explain grammar in the IEP at any level. TRY learning how a typical grammar textbook is put together. Or TRY looking at a TOEFL to see what students need.
Can you explain why a particular answer to any question on Part Two (Structure and Written Expression) of the TOEFL is correct, and more importantly, why the other three distractor answers are incorrect???
IF you knew how to explain those types of grammar points, you would be an asset to an IEP grammar class.
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One of the problems with our profession is the persistent myth that 'anyone who speaks English can teach it'...it is the very rare teacher who can be a truly excellent ESL teacher and not be well-trained academically and pedagogically...I think that MA programs are often obsessively focused on making their students scholars and linguists to combat this problem, and make sure that their students understand the total breadth of the language learning experience. Isn't this what we want in a language teacher?
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River Li, by Jim Leverett
Send comments, suggestions, and especially contributions to me at:
leverett@siu.edu.
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