Rod Ellis is currently a professor at the Institute of English Language Teaching and Learning, University of Auckland, New Zealand. He is also the director of the Institute. Previously, he taught at Temple University in Japan and Philadelphia. He has also worked in Spain, England and Zambia. He has written several books about second language acquisition and has also published a number of ESL and EFL textbooks that are used widely throughout the world, including the Impact series.

All teachers experience epiphanies-moments during their teaching when they have sudden flashes of insight. I recall quite vividly an epiphany experienced many years ago while teaching in a secondary school in Zambia. I was trying to eliminate a common grammatical error - the uses of the present progressive tense with verbs such as “have” (e.g. “I am having a headache”). I carefully and thoroughly drilled the students in the correct use of “have”. The lesson went well, so I thought, and the students successfully used “have” correctly. Then I set the class a written exercise and noticed one student at the back doing nothing. When I asked why he was not writing, he promptly replied, “I am not having my exercise book.” So much for my grammar lesson! At that moment I became aware of the gap that exists between teaching and learning grammar.

What then should a teacher do? There are two possible courses of action. One is to abandon grammar teaching. This is what Krashen (1982) recommends. He suggests that teaching grammar results in “learned” knowledge, which is only available for monitoring utterances that learners produce using their “acquired” knowledge, and as such, is of very limited value. Krashen recommends instead that teachers concentrate on providing lots of comprehensible input so that learners can acquire a second language naturally like children acquiring their mother language.

This is an attractive proposal - particularly for teachers who don’t like grammar. But it has several problems. One is that students are often convinced that “learning” grammar is of value to them and, therefore, expect the teachers to teach grammar. Another more serious problem is that learners do not seem to master the grammar of a second language even when they get plenty of comprehensible input. Studies of learners in immersion classroom (e.g. Swain 1985) have shown even after ample exposure to the target language learners continue to make a lot of grammatical errors. In other words, Krashen’s claim that learners “acquire” grammar naturally is not entirely correct.

This suggests, therefore, that the second course of action might be better——trying to find a way of teaching grammar that is compatible with how learners learn grammar. Teachers may not be able to make learners speak and write grammatically, as I found to my cost in that classroom in Zambia many years ago, but they may be able to help learners become grammatical. It is this idea that has motivated much of my own research over the past 10 years (see, for example, Ellis 1993 and 1995).

To my mind, then, the key question is “How can we teach grammar in a way that is compatible with how learners acquire grammar?”Second language acquisition research suggests that grammar teaching should take into account three key principles:

Learners need to attend to both meaning and form when learning a second language.

New grammatical features are more likely to be acquired when learners notice and comprehend them in input than when they engage in extensive production practice.

Learners’ awareness of grammatical forms helps them to acquire grammatical features slowly and gradually.

These three principles have guided my own approach to teaching grammar.

Attention to form and meaning

Current second language acquisition theories view grammar learning as best accomplished when learners are primarily focused on meaning rather than form, as Krashen has argued. However, contrary to Krashen’s position, these theories also claim that some attention to form is necessary for learning to take place. The problem is that learners are limited language processors who find it difficult to attend both form and meaning at the same time. Thus, when they are focused on meaning they are unable to attend simultaneously to form and, conversely, when they are focused on form, their ability to understand or make themselves understood suffers.

For this reason, they need meaning-based tasks that also allow them the opportunity to process language as form. In the materials I have been developing, students are first required to process a text for meaning and then, afterwards, to attend to how a particular grammatical form is used in the text.

Learning grammar through input

Grammar has traditionally been taught via production practice. That is, students have been required to try to use a grammatical structure in controlled and free exercises. However, current theories of second language acquisition see production as the result of acquisition rather than the cause. It follows that grammar can be taught more effectively through input rather than through manipulating output.

An interesting study by Tanaka (1996) provides evidence to support such a claim. Tanaka compared two ways of teaching Japanese high school students relative clause. One way involved the use of input practice, and the other traditional production practice. Tanaka found that input practice led to better comprehension of the target structure and, in the long term, to production that was just accurate. In other words, the input practice helped learners to process relative clauses in both input and output, but the production practice only helped output.

What does input practice involve? It involves “structured input tasks”. These are tasks that require students to (1) read or listen to input that has been specially designed to include plentiful examples of the target structure and (2) consciously attend to the target structure and understand its meaning. In one kind of structured input task, a text is gapped by removing words containing the target structure and asking students to fill in the missing words.

In the grammar teaching materials I have been working on, the structured input tasks are all oral rather than written - learners have to listen to the texts rather than read them. This is because oral texts require students to process grammatical structures in real time, which is exactly what is needed to help students acquire them. Furthermore, oral texts also serve to practice the important skill of listening.

The role of awareness

Learners can acquire a new grammatical structure only very gradually and slowly. It can, in fact, take several months for them to master a single grammatical structure. For this reason, grammar instruction, no matter how well designed, is unlikely to achieve immediate success. This suggests that grammar teaching needs to emphasize awareness of how grammatical features work rather than mastery. Learners who are aware of grammatical structure are more likely to notice it when they subsequently encounter it. Thus, awareness can facilitate and trigger learning; it is a crutch that helps learners walk until they can do so by themselves.

How can teachers develop awareness of a grammatical structure? One way, of course, is simply to tell the students how it works. This is the traditional way…. An alternative way, which I think is more promising, is to use consciousness-raising tasks. These are tasks that provides students with “data” about how a particular grammatical structure works and help them to work out the rule for themselves. In this approach, students discover how grammar works on their own. Such tasks make the students much less dependent on the teacher.

Fotos (1984) carried out a study to see how well consciousness-raising grammar tasks worked with Japanese college students. She found that the students’ awareness of the grammatical structures she targeted was just as accurate when they worked out the rules for themselves as when they were told them. Moreover, in Foto’s study, the students had to work in groups to discover the rules and talked in English together as they did so. Thus, the consciousness-raising tasks doubled up as communicative tasks!

In an attempt to incorporate these principles into materials for teaching grammar, I have developed the following sequences of tasks:

Listening task (i.e. students listen to a text that they process for meaning)

“Noticing” task (i.e. students listen to the same text, which is now gapped, and fill in the missing word)

Consciousness-raising tasks (i.e. students are helped to discover how the target grammar structure works by analyzing the “data” provided by the listening text).

Checking task (i.e. students complete an activity to check if they have understood how the target structure works).

Production task (i.e. students are given the opportunity to try out the target structure in their own sentences). The aim of the production task is to encourage students to experiment with the target structure, not its mastery.

The aim of such materials is not so much to teach grammar, as this is often not possible, but rather to help students to “become grammatical.” This is a lesser goal but it is a worthwhile one. Furthermore, it is a goal that is more compatible with the current emphases on communication and student autonomy.

导 读

著名二语习得理论专家Rod Ellis这篇文章主要论述语法教学的正确方法。

文章开头先讲了自己多年前讲授语法的一段经历：花了一节课的时间讲来练去，结果没用！由此引发这样的思考：教师教语法和学生学语法不是一回事（I became aware of the gap that exists between teaching and learning grammar）。

第二段概述了Krashen的语法教学观：抛弃语法教学，只承认语法知识对表达的监控作用，主张由教师提供大量可理解性输入，让学生像学母语那样自然习得二语。

第三段讲Krashen的这种理论和教法存在的问题。一是学生依赖教师。更为严重的是：大量的可理解性输入对于掌握二语语法帮助不大。由此得出结论：Krashen’s claim that learners “acquire” grammar naturally is not entirely correct。

第四段点明本文的主题：help learners become grammatical。

第五段提出语法教学的三条基本原则（key principles）:

1. 既重意义，又重形式。

2. 通过输入，留意、理解新语法特征，并通过足够的输出练习来掌握，这样效果更佳。

3. 语法意识（learners' awareness of grammatical forms）有助于学习者逐步掌握语法。

第六段重点讲重视形式和意义。

第七段提出这样一条语法教学的路子：首先领会语篇意义，随后研究某语法形式在语篇中的应用。

第八段讲通过输入来学习语法。指出：根据当前二语习得理论，输出是习得之“果”，而非其“因”。因此，通过输入教授语法比利用输出更为有效。

第九段用日本学生学习定语从句这一实例证明上述论点。

十、十一两段具体介绍了“structured input task”这种教法。

第十二段讲语法意识的作用。

这一段首先讲：语法教学不能急于求成（…grammar instruction… is unlikely to achieve immediate success）。语法教学应重视培养学习者把握语法特征的意识，通过观察、留意，熟悉其特征，加上必要的讲解、练习来逐步掌握。

第十三段提出培养语法意识的一个重要方法：先观察语法项目在语篇中的运用，然后自己总结语法规则。

第十四段用实例论证这样做的好处。

第十五自然段介绍了“structured input task”的基本步骤：

1. 听力理解

2. 填词练习，培养观察能力

3. 分析结构，提高语言意识

4. 核对答案，考查对该项目的理解

5. 运用。鼓励学生使用所学语法结构。

最后一段重申becoming grammatical的意义。

这篇文章给我们的启示是：语法不能靠自然习得，必须认真教。

但语法教学必须改革。

当前在语法教学中存在两种不良倾向：一是脱离语境，空谈语法。二是超前输出，忽视语法。

要改变传统的脱离上下文，空讲语法规则，死记硬背的教法。要练也只是在单句层面上，忽视语法在语境中的实际应用。应该承认：这种教法在相当一部分教师头脑中仍根深蒂固。必须认真纠正，彻底根除。

另一种不良倾向颇为时髦，甚至在各级公开课、观摩课上被当成“样板”。这种“时髦”教法只看重培养所谓“交际能力”，把学习语法和培养运用语言能力分割开来，对立起来。在学生所接受的可理解性输入严重不足的情况下，要求他们输出、运用。这正是本文作者所批判的那种教法。用这种教法教二语尚且不行，盲目搬到我国的中小学课堂上，其效果可想而知。

Rod Ellis在本文中提出的一条语法教学的路子值得我们深思：为学生提供足够的可理解性输入，指导学生观察、留意语篇中包含的要学的语法项目的特征，并做归纳、总结，然后练习、使用。这应该是一条切实可行的路子。在英语外语教学这一与二语习得很不相同的教学类型中，需要进一步解决的是：正确处理隐性知识（implicit knowledge）和显性知识(explicit knowledge)之间的关系，把观察、留意语法现象和教师的精当的讲解、归纳结合起来。这是我们在教学中需要认真研究、探索的一个重要问题。