This paper highlights some current issues and challenges concerning the changing role of grammar in second language (L2) teaching and learning. In order to investigate the role of grammar in foreign language teaching, it is necessary to underline the complexity of the relationships between language, linguistics, applied linguistics, foreign language teaching and learning in a broader theoretical context. Given that grammar is a central term in linguistics that covers a wide range of phenomena, the question arises whether it is all that useful in the teaching-learning process, both as an abstraction and a hypothesis about the way language works.

In the following, an attempt will be made to sketch the historical background to the ongoing controversy in L2 pedagogy regarding the place of grammar in formal instruction. Since meaningfulness is a priority in applied linguistic research, a new look at grammar cannot be viewed separately from meaning and social function. The paper investigates to what extent the recent trend of focus on form  can be successful in integrating the teaching of grammar with meaningful communication. In conclusion, it will be suggested that focus on form will become a very important element in task-based teaching. As a result, grammatical tasks will have to resemble interactive problem-solving tasks.

Recent developments

From the point of view of language teaching in general, and that of teaching English as a foreign language in particular, theoreticians and practitioners alike have been influenced by the advances that have emerged since the mid 1980s. Both language teaching and learning have proved to be fruitful fields for innovation, which will be outlined below.

In teaching one can witness a strong pedagogic concern for learner-centredness  and an emphasis on tasks. With the idea of learner-centredness, the teacher’s traditional role (at least according to the followers of the Prussian method) as ‘God’s representative on Earth’ has hopefully come to an end. Within the domain of learning, some innovative elements include the growing emphasis on language awareness and consciousness-raising. The former notion in van Lier’s (1995) definition is “an understanding of the human faculty of language and its role in thinking, learning and social life” (p. xi). In this sense we face a new look at language, a meaning-oriented one, which stresses the role of language in sociocultural and political contexts. This new approach to language requires that teachers sharpen students’ abilities to notice things they were not aware of before, and feel free to talk about them. The concept of consciousness-raising (Rutherford, 1988a, 1988b; Rutherford & Sharwood Smith, 1988; Sharwood Smith, 1988; Schmidt, 1990, 1994; Yip, 1994) concords with the principles of communicative language teaching. As Rutherford and Sharwood Smith (1988) claim, consciousness-raising is “the deliberate attempt to draw the learner’s attention specifically to the formal properties of the target language” (p. 107).

What seems to be common in these innovations is that it is no longer forms that determine our thought but rather our interest in finding out how context affects the choice of linguistic forms and grammar. Current trends in English language teaching with their emphasised focus on form cannot be compared to traditional grammar teaching. Hopefully, it will be realised that:

1. the ‘grammar-baby’ has not been thrown out with the bathwater with the general ascendancy of the communicative approach,
2. the new trend is not a case of putting old wine in new bottles.

“There was a time, from the ancient Greeks to the late Middle Ages, when language was central in educational practices, in the form of the three branches of the trivium: grammar, logic, and rhetoric” (van Lier, 1995, p. 7). Later, having become separated from science, language became but one other subject. After this, increasingly, prescriptive grammar was taught, “which lays down laws as to how we ought to speak, spell, compose and so on” (van Lier, 1995, p. 8). Indeed, as Rutherford (1988a) points out, “in language pedagogy before the nineteenth century, grammar teaching was considered not only necessary but also sufficient. Until that time, in other words, language teaching and the study of grammar were virtually synonymous” (p. 9). Between 1925 and 1965 linguistics did pay attention to grammar, which proved to be a most productive but at the same time a most controversial area for linguistic analysis (Stern, 1983). Because of its controversial nature, a fresh look at grammar was needed, so linguists have attempted to rethink its position.

The centrality of grammar was generally not challenged prior to 1967. According to Celce-Murcia (1991) such a challenge emerged in the 1970s, which influenced both the content and the curriculum in language teaching and the implications for teaching grammar. The nature, the extent and type of grammar instruction has been the topic of many debates in language teaching circles since the initial redefinition thirty years ago. The advent of communicative language teaching shook the solid grounds on which the supremacy of grammar was based. Even if grammar was not ousted from the communicative classroom, it was certainly neglected. Grammar is only one of the components in Bachman’s (1990) definition of language competence but also in Canale and Swain’s (1980) model of communicative competence. Given that acquiring the grammar of a foreign language is one of the goals language teaching and learning are to achieve, grammar instruction cannot be dismissed. Table 1 on the following page illustrates the major methodological approaches to language teaching, indicating differences of language and the views concerning errors.

In Celce-Murcia’s analysis the date for the last approach is given as with its leading proponents and characteristic features but the term, principled communicative appeared later. The approach is said to have “the potential to synthesise direct, knowledge-oriented and indirect, skill-oriented teaching approaches” (Celce-Murcia, Dörnyei & Thurrell, 1997, p. 148). It can therefore be regarded as an extension and further development of communicative language teaching.

As can be seen from Table 1, the past few decades have witnessed an acceleration in changes of method and methodological approach. At the same time a dissatisfaction with various methods has also become apparent. We need only to keep in mind Long’s (1991) argument that “language teaching methods do not exist - at least, not where they would matter, if they did, in the classroom” (p. 39). Although this may appear an exaggeration, he puts forward a number of reasons that support his observation:

1.  methods overlap to a great extent;
2. what teachers and students do in the classroom is not exactly what methodologists advise them to do;
3. very little or no advantage is found for one method over another when their effectiveness is compared;
4. there is probably no clear distinction between different methods either in teachers’ minds or in their classroom practices (Long, 1991).

The continuing developments in linguistic theory, which are partly the consequences of constant changes in language itself, and partly of the widening horizon of theoretical thinking, inevitably influence what is taken to be of central importance in language pedagogy. Long and Robinson (1998) make a distinction between the focus on forms and focus on meaning approach as possible options in language teaching. Obvious differences can be identified in the approach to linguistic items the analyst adopts, what kind of syllabuses reflect the given approach, what methods are regarded to be useful in achieving the desired goals, what actually happens in the classroom, and what is expected from learners (see Table 2 on the  following page).

Weaknesses of the focus on forms approach

The presentation of discrete points of grammar as dictated by the focus on forms  approach does not bear any resemblance to either the order or the manner in which acquirers learn those items. Although applied linguists and pedagogues have access to procedural and process alternatives, the majority of syllabuses are still either of the structural or notional-functional type. In White’s review (1988) language syllabuses can be distinguished on the basis of their content and methodology. Among the methods-based syllabuses the procedural type, originated by Prabhu (1987), has a cognitive focus and is task-based in nature. The process syllabus, advocated by Breen and Candlin (1980) has a learning focus and is learner-led. What is common to the traditional approaches to language, and concomitantly to teaching, is the treatment of language as object, the teaching and learning of which is thought to be achieved in building-block fashion, that is, one linguistic item is taught and later tested in isolation. Instead, it would appear more sensible to adopt an attitude towards teaching which tries to simulate the developmental sequences learners go through. In order to achieve this, a lot more information is needed about the nature of those sequences, which will only be available by carrying out far more empirical investigations.

Problems with the focus on meaning approach

In the case of adolescent and adult learners there seem to be maturational constraints on language learning, which may account for the failure of older learners “to attain native norms in a new language simply from exposure to its use” (Long & Robinson, 1998, p. 20). Long and Robinson underline the fact that although it is possible to learn much of a foreign language through experiencing its use, it is not sufficient because some grammatical contrasts in L1 and L2 are not necessarily learnt from positive evidence. The examples they provide are based on the findings of French immersion programs in Canada.

The historical context for focus on form

A synthesis of the two contrasting approaches introduced above has led to a third option in language teaching termed as focus on form. The initial rationale for a focus on form was partly theoretical and partly based on inferences from the findings of early comparisons of naturalistic and instructed interlanguage development. At the moment there is no consensus among researchers in regard to teaching grammar. Concerning the role of explicit grammar instruction, and whether instruction makes a difference or not, the two extreme viewpoints are represented by those adopting a zero position (Krashen, 1982; Pienemann, 1988) and by those who argue for explicit grammar teaching because it has been found beneficial to language proficiency in small-scale studies (de Graaff, 1997; DeKeyser, 1997; Lyster & Ranta, 1997; VanPatten & Cadierno, 1993). As Krashen (1982) puts it, it is sufficient if learners develop their interlanguage by engaging in natural communication, whereas grammar teaching is for those who are “interested in the study of language per se” (p. 119). Pienemann (1988) goes as far as to wonder “whether the process of natural L2 acquisition can be influenced by formal instruction” (p. 85). Obviously, the language teaching profession would never have been created if the answer to this question were ‘NO’. However, there are several aspects of the problem that need to be taken into consideration. Once we are acquainted with some common principles for natural acquisition, L2 curricula must be based on those principles. A novel feature of Pienemann’s (1988) research is the goal of examining whether the psycholinguistic constraints imposed on natural acquisition can be eliminated by means of formal instruction. His findings suggest that formal instruction can improve acquisition if the interlanguage development is ready for such an influence. Pienemann’s results also indicate that the acquisition of grammatical features can take place provided certain processing operations have already been developed. This means that formal instruction can improve acquisition if learners have reached a stage in their interlanguage development that enables them to process the linguistic structures in question.

VanPatten & Cadierno’s (1993) experiment compares form-focused and processing instruction, the latter being similar to approaches that emphasize input processing rather than production. Form-focussed instruction results in gains in production, but processing instruction leads to improvement both in comprehension and production. In the results of their studies, both de Graaff (1997) and DeKeyser (1997) found evidence for the positive effects of explicit instruction. De Graaff (1997) claims that “explicit instruction facilitates the acquisition of L2 grammar” (p. 249), which is good news for professionals.

The problem is that a psycholinguistic model of L2 instruction is missing, which would give an answer to unresolved questions. As has been mentioned above, for Long (1991) method is not a relevant construct when attempting to improve classroom foreign language instruction. He is aware of  “the tension between the desirability of communicative use of the foreign language in the classroom, on the one hand, and the felt need for a linguistic focus in language learning, on the other” (p. 41). Since the 1960s, this kind of tension has been reflected in the developments in foreign language syllabus design, materials writing, as well as in methodology and testing.

The effects of focus on form during L2 task performance have been investigated by Bygate (1996), Foster & Skehan (1996), Lightbown & Spada (1990), Long (1991), Long and Crookes (1992), Skehan (1996), among others. Long (1991) finds clear evidence of some beneficial effects of a focus on form in that it speeds up the rate of learning, affects acquisition processes, and seems to raise the level of proficiency.

Further experiments are needed which compare rates of learning and ultimate levels of achievement between the three programs: focus on forms, focus on meaning, and focus on form. Focus on forms in Long’s understanding (1991) is “making isolated linguistic structures the content of a FL course” (p. 44). It might be added that the main problem with structural syllabuses (where focus is on forms) has been that they ignore the fact that linguistic development is not unidirectional. Focus on form, on the other hand, “overtly draws students’ attention to linguistic elements as they arise incidentally in lessons whose overriding focus is on meaning and communication” (Long, 1991, p. 46).

Grammar in new light

It would seem that the re-examination of the role of grammar is a burning question. Making use of the best traditions of former approaches to language teaching, advocates of focus on form (Celce-Murcia, 1991; Celce-Murcia, Dörnyei & Thurrell, 1997; Long, 1991; Williams, 1995; Yip, 1994) see a possibility for combining grammar instruction with communicative techniques for communicative purposes. Seminal theoretical works that treat the grammatical theory as a tool for understanding language - as opposed to views that regard it as an end - include Bloor & Bloor (1995), Givón (1995), Halliday (1985), Hasan & Perret (1994). The realisation that grammar cannot be separated from meaning, social function and discourse sheds new light on the treatment of grammar. Celce-Murcia’s statement that “grammar is a tool or resource to be used in the comprehension and creation of oral and written discourse rather than something to be learned as an end in itself” (1991, p. 466) is a perfect summary of current endeavours. A similar viewpoint is expressed by Larsen-Freeman (1989) who discusses several methodological and practical issues in the teaching of grammar, underlining the responsibility and creativity of the individual teacher and the particular needs of the students together with the specificity of the teaching situation.

Conscious versus unconscious knowledge

The concept of consciousness is very slippery in both psycholinguistic and SLA research. The term explicit knowledge as used by Bialystok (1994), refers to conscious, abstract and analysed knowledge, which is reportable, as opposed to implicit knowledge, which is intuitive and exists in unanalysed form. Explicit knowledge is activated in problem-solving activities according to Ellis (1995), and the example he provides to illustrate this type of knowledge is sentence-transformation tasks. Implicit knowledge, on the other hand, is present in a conversation and other naturally occurring language behaviours. Bialystok’s (1994) remark that “knowledge that is known differently has been learned differently and can be used differently in thought and action” (p. 549) would be approved by most teachers. Yet there is no broad agreement among researchers concerning the relationship between the two kinds of knowledge.

 McLaughlin (1990) discusses the implications of the debate between those researchers who insist on assigning a greater role to unconscious processes in language learning and those who see little or no role for those processes. He agrees with Schmidt (1990) that the relative contribution of conscious and unconscious processes would be a worthwhile field for research, since both are highly relevant to L2 learning.

Pienemann (1988) claims that the “transmission of knowledge is in fact implicitly one of the main issues of theories of language teaching” (p. 99). Even if our understanding is not adequate, language is teachable and linguistic structures can be taught in many different ways and orders. In the future, it will be necessary to investigate how rational knowledge is transmitted to the unconscious mechanisms of language processing.

A current vogue in communicative language teaching?

Task-based approaches to instruction have become fashionable recently, and task-based learning has become important. Skehan (1996) sees it as a logical outcome of relevant theory and research in cognitive psychology. Both accuracy and fluency are relevant for task-based instruction although focus probably shifts from form towards lexis. A task is defined by Skehan (1996) as an activity in which “meaning is primary; there is some sort of relationship to the real world; task completion has some priority; and the assessment of task performance is in terms of task outcome” (p. 38).

The effects of focus on form during L2 task performance have been investigated by Bygate (1996), Foster & Skehan (1996), Fotos & Ellis (1991), Lightbown & Spada (1990), Long & Crookes (1992), among others. Fotos & Ellis (1991) report the results of a study in which a communicative, grammar-based task in the college EFL classroom was used. Their investigation is another attempt to prove that once learners are provided with grammar problems which they must solve interactively, there will be opportunity for meaningful communication. They argue that it is essential for learners to negotiate meaning when problems in communication arise, partly because in doing so they receive sufficient input for the acquisition of linguistic competence, and partly because their strategic competence needed for fluency will also develop. The purpose of their study is to demonstrate that it is not only possible but also advisable to integrate the teaching of grammar with meaningful communication which presupposes and involves an exchange of information. They present Ellis’s (1990) model of instructed second language acquisition as a schematic representation of their stance.

 The model suggests four things: (1) Formal instruction is to be directed at explicit knowledge. (2) Formal instruction should be directed at ensuring that learners know about the target structure and can use this knowledge to monitor their language output with it. Monitoring in this sense will result in the learners’ ability to self-correct without necessarily enabling them to use the structures correctly in spontaneous communication. Therefore grammar teaching should aim at consciousness-raising instead of practice. (3) The role of cognitive understanding is superior to that of production, thus the use of problem-solving tasks is encouraged. (4) Instruction should provide learners with opportunities for authentic communication.

What Ellis (1990) claims, however, is that explicit knowledge helps learners obtain intake. He is positive that bottom-up processing is a necessary condition of SLA, since learners who wish to comprehend input pay attention to linguistic features and their meaning. The intended outcome of focus on form is noticing. Long and Robinson (1998) draw our attention to the significance of noticing as a positive outcome for instructed learners. Noticing can be identified with the process of detection, which alone is probably not sufficient for registration in the short and long term memory. The next step becomes cognitive comparison, and finally input becomes intake. Ellis (1995) has advocated an alternative approach to grammar teaching, which replaces traditional production tasks by interpretation tasks. By this term, he means activities that “focus the learners’ attention on a targeted structure in the input and that enable them to identify and comprehend the meaning(s) of this structure” (p. 88). Learners are helped to notice the grammatical features in the input and, last but not least, they can carry out a cognitive comparison, a kind of monitoring activity, before virtual output takes place. Such tasks, by focusing learners’ attention on message conveyance, also require a focus on form (Ellis, 1995). The main problem with traditional grammar teaching is that it emphasises the production of sentences with the new structure when learners are not yet ready to do so.

The pedagogical rationale for the use of tasks in group work

Several researchers point out the suitability of groupwork for task-based learning and teaching (e.g. Fotos & Ellis, 1991; Long & Porter, 1985). The evidence Fotos and Ellis (1991) claim to have emerged from work on the role of comprehensible input in second language acquisition and on the nature of non-native/non-native conversation is tangible in native speakers’ employing more devices such as clarification requests, confirmation checks, comprehension checks and repetitions of both their own and non-native speakers’ utterances. Their research findings support claims that:

1.  the quantity of practice opportunities increases in group work;
2. the variety of practice is more characteristic of group work than of teacher-fronted setting;
3. accuracy of student performance is neither better nor worse than  under teacher’s supervision;
4. more correction of others takes place in group work than in lockstep  teaching;
5. in groups, learners obviously negotiate more than in lockstep teaching;
6. two-way tasks significantly increase the amount of talk.

The use of problem-solving grammar tests is convincingly advocated by Rea-Dickens (1991). Not only does she introduce the concept of communicative grammar, which she sees as “decisions about the ways in which grammar functions to signal meanings in a text” (p. 130), but she is concerned with the communicative testing of grammar, too. This requires a task-based approach. She notes that the communicative nature of a grammar test or task is ensured by providing a context, preferably in the form of a realistic situation, a communicative purpose, an audience, and instructions that focus on an exchange of information during task completion. Under such conditions the learner can produce grammatical responses that will be appropriate to a given situation. Below is an illustration of the communicative testing of grammar:
 
  Situation: You have invited your colleague Maria to dinner. She hasn’t been to your house before so you go to her office to tell her where you live. She isn’t there so you decide to leave her a message.
Instruction/Task: Write a short note to Maria giving her a clear set of instructions so that she can get from work to your house for dinner (Rea-Dickens, 1991, p. 124).

The main feature of such tasks, whether they are referred to as communicative or problem-solving grammar tasks, is that they are meaning-focussed and they do not contain explicit grammatical information.

Directions for future research

Williams (1995) gives a synthesis of current research carried out to redefine the role of grammar in communicative language teaching. While it is generally true that problems emerge because of a discrepancy between research and practice, she thinks that integrating focus on form with communicative language teaching is impossible without cooperation between those who pursue research and practitioners. Focus on form is by no means a “return to syllabi or methods that use isolated linguistic forms as an organizing principle” (p. 13). Drawing learners’ attention to form takes place in content-based and task-based curricula where the primary focus is on communication. An increasing amount of research suggests the following uses of form-based knowledge: noticing features in the input, planning and monitoring output, noticing the gap between learners’ production and target language use; speeding passage through developmental sequences and destabilising fossilised forms.

However, several additional issues need to be addressed before we have an exact picture about elusive matters such as the relationship between input and intake, the correspondence between explicit and implicit knowledge or the role of metalinguistic knowledge in task performance (cf. Schmidt, 1992). Only further research will establish when, in what order, or for how long a focus on form is beneficial. Another challenge is the development of grammatical tasks that entail the need to use specific forms for the purposes of meaningful communication.

Focus on form is definitely a crucial element in task-based teaching, since it uses grammar as content and not only as a system of linguistic forms, therefore allowing authentic texts to be brought into the classroom. The fact that this kind of approach to grammar teaching is not alien to how learners learn grammar would seem to guarantee its future success. Lightbown & Spada (1990) present research results that provide support for the hypothesis that “form-based instruction within a communicative context contributes to higher levels of linguistic knowledge and performance” (p. 443). True, it is not a panacea in interlanguage development but rather one form of grammar teaching with a clearly identifiable psycholinguistic rationale and empirical support from studies of comprehension-based approaches.

A similar opinion is formulated by Celce-Murcia & Hilles (1988), who are in favour of an eclectic approach to grammar teaching because of the complexity of learner and instructional variables. They maintain that it is the teacher’s task “to integrate grammar principles into a communicative framework, since the fundamental purpose of language is communication” (p. 8). At the same time, they admit that the communicative phase of a grammar lesson is most difficult to design. Almost a decade later, Pica (1997) states that L2 teaching and research are compatible since it is teachers’ as well as researchers’ goal to develop tasks that direct learners’ attention to grammatical items for the sake of communication.

Conclusion

Language acquisition theories and approaches continue to battle with each other. Consequently, a state of unrest caused by the coming and going of new concepts, models and changes in emphasis create problems for language pedagogy which has to take the contemporary theories into account. However, in our age of communication, of networking and electronic mail, the knowledge of foreign languages and the ability to communicate effectively in foreign languages is a must.

In the light of the historical background and a brief survey of major methodological approaches to language teaching between 1945-1995, one cannot help noticing that grammar is gaining strength after a period of neglect. In the early 1990s dissatisfaction grew among language teachers who could not accept the idea that linguistic forms emerge on their own, which led to a neglect of linguistic competence. If focus is exclusively on meaning, the issue of accuracy is likely to be overlooked. The essence of any instruction is to maximize learning opportunities. In language teaching, it is generally believed that enabling learners to notice things in the input is a useful method. Luckily, the ‘grammar-baby’ has not been thrown out with the bathwater and that is why a return is possible. This new look at grammar, however, is fundamentally different from the one in the previous tradition of grammar-translation.

What are the basic differences? Meaningfulness plays the most important role in both theoretical and practical investigations, which inevitably influences the treatment of grammar itself. Grammar ceases to be learned as an end in itself, at a decontextualized sentence-level system. Novel elements are found in the current approach of focus on form, in that grammar serves some higher-order objective in the interacting dimensions of language, together with meaning and function. Obviously, it is not only labels that have changed, so this is not a case of old wine in new bottles. Grammar is a resource for “creating meaning through text and for negotiating socially motivated communication” (Celce-Murcia, 1991, p. 477).

What challenges does all this present for theoreticians and practitioners? First of all, further research is needed to address a number of issues in SLA and the psychology of language processing. A more thorough understanding is required in the case of some psychological constructs such as awareness and noticing or the exact nature and effect of developmental sequences. Adequate definitions of grammatical competence or language proficiency are not available, either. For teachers, the most challenging task is to integrate the teaching of grammar with meaningful communication keeping in mind the particular needs of their learners and their own linguistic, pedagogical and methodological repertoire. Formal and functional views of language need to be reconciled with communicative language teaching. Once the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration is recognized, it is expected that second language acquisition research will add to our existing knowledge about the reliability and validity of focus on form.

Notes

1. This article is a revised version of a paper presented at the Seventh National Applied Linguistics Conference at the College of Foreign Trade, Budapest, in 1997.(back)

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