Teaching Grammar at Advanced Levels
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This article is based on work from our Delta Module one course, and looks at teaching grammar to advanced level learners (CEFR C1/2) and why it needs to be remedial as well as focusing on new areas It's in three sections:
a) why remedial teaching is necessary;
b) what new items
you would expect to introduce at these levels;
c) how your approach to
a remedial lesson would differ from or be similar to the
initial presentation of this area.
a) Why is remedial teaching necessary?
1. By C1 level and certainly by C2 level, learners will
have met most of the grammatical items that they need to communicate. However
some of those encountered at B2 level may still have been assimilated
receptively only – ie they will understand them when reading/listening but will
not use them spontaneously when speaking in a “real time” communicative
situation and possibly not even in writing. They therefore need to be
recycled/reactivated to transfer them to productive use. This may be true for instance of more
complex verb forms such as modal verbs with complex infinitives (perfect,
continuous, passive) or of eg cleft sentences.
Learners may, on the other hand be using
specific structures but doing so erroneously. This may be...
2. ...due to misunderstanding or inadequate understanding
of the rules of form or use. As an
example of this, I have frequently found that advanced learners use an
infinitive after “to” in expressions like “I’m looking forward to…” not
realising that it is a preposition rather than the infinitive particle, and the
gerund is therefore necessary.
3. ...because they are mistakes which have fossilised – when
they are pointed out the L may be able to self-correct, but continues to make
them when speaking spontaneously. Many of my advanced students still have
problems with prepositions for example – in a recent lesson at C1 level a
learner said “I’m not participating to the meeting” despite having met the
correct form before.
b) What new items would you expect to introduce at
these levels?
4. There will still be some structural items that learner
may not have met and which need an initial presentation. Eg Structures using
inversion of the subject and verb, such as subject/operator inversion after
negative or limiting adverbs in initial clause position (“Never have I felt so
embarrassed”) or subject/main verb inversion after fronted adverbials of
position with a simple verb (“Round the corner came the procession”).
5. Some grammatical rules may have been implicit in the
language that Ls have met previously, but never explicitly focused on. this may
lead to errors, particularly in written language, similar to those that native
speakers often make – eg comma splices and dangling participles. If the L is working towards an exam which
involves a written component, or needs to write for other purposes (eg
business), these will need to be focused on.
6. If the learner is studying outside an
English speaking environment, they may never have encountered colloquial
grammatical items or other structures common to spoken English such as elliptical utterances,
but may now come across them in authentic materials – for example, if watching
soap operas or listening to songs. Eg One item common in songs is the use of
“ain’t” rather than “isn’t/aren’t” or “hasn’t/haven’t”.
7. It may not be the item itself which is new to the
learner but a specific use of an already known item. For example, learners will certainly have met
the items “suggest” and “may” but may not have come across their use to “hedge”
opinions : “This suggests that we may
need to…” This will be
particularly important for learners studying for academic purposes, who will be
expected to used such “hedges” when citing research or theory.
c) How would your approach to a remedial lesson differ
from or be similar to the initial presentation of the area?
8. Both recycled and new items could be presented through
a text-based approach, where there are several examples of the target item in
the text. After comprehension work on the text, Ls could be given a guided
discovery task to allow them to work out, clarify or consolidate their
understanding of the form and/or use of the item.
9. For new items this could be continued with controlled
practice activities. However, in the case of point 1 above, the Ls could be asked
to move straight to free practice, to encourage them to transfer the already
known language to productive use.
10. Alternatively the follow up stage to a speaking or
writing activity could be used to focus on the item. If it was a fossilised
error (point 3), this can be put on the board and the L asked to self-correct
11. If the item is known but had simply been “avoided” in the productive
activity (point 1), the learners could be asked to upgrade what they had said using
a key word or words provided by the T as a prompt. Eg if the L had said “It
will be nice to see my son again” the T can ask the L to “upgrade” this using
“look forward”. This can be practised "on the spot" by providing more sentences starting “It
will be nice to…” and asking learners to transform them to the new structure.
12. The T. can also use this “avoidance” as an affordance
– an opportunity to present the new item. This can be done by reformulating the
L’s utterance, providing other examples and asking concept check questions as
necessary – much as in a traditional
presentation in a PPP approach. As this occurred as “emergent language”
(Meddings and Thornbury ), the T. will not have any practice activities ready
but could use the types of technique
suggested in Demand High ELT (Underhill and Scrivener) – eg saying it faster,
substituting items, repeating an example offered by another L, transforming examples which are easy to invent (as in point 11) etc.
Alternatively or additionally, practice can be given in a subsequent lesson
when the T. has had time to prepare materials.
References
Meddings, L. and Thornbury, S. (2009) Teaching Unplugged Delta Publishing
Scrivener. J. and Underhill, A. Demand High ELT
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