Dr. Jan Frodesen

1
Teaching Grammar as a Resource for Writers

• Dr. Jan Frodesen
• Director, English as a Second Language
• Department of Linguistics
• UC-Santa Barbara
• frodesen_at_linguistics.ucsb.edu

2
Outline of presentation

• The role of grammar in teaching composition
• Prevailing attitudes about grammar
• Need for new perspectives
• What does grammar as a resource mean for
  student writers?
  
• Whats a teacher to do? Guidelines for helping
  students develop academic language proficiency
  
• Sample activities for writing classrooms
• Text analysis activities (noticing, explaining)
• Production activities (guided exercises,
  composing and revision tasks)
  

3
To begin, a thought about grammar from a writer

• Grammar is a piano I play by ear.
• All I know about grammar is its
• power.
• Joan Didion

4
The role of grammar in the teaching of
composition

• First we will briefly look at
• Prevailing attitudes about grammar in the field
  (L1, L2 composition)
  
• Then we will consider
• Why new perspectives on grammar are
• are needed

5
Prevailing attitudes about grammar for writing
instruction

• In composition studies, grammar is
  unquestionably unfashionable. It is frequently
  associated with low-skills courses that
  stigmatize and alienate poor writers while
  reproducing their status as disenfranchized. This
  association emerges naturally from teaching
  methods that present grammar as a fix-it approach
  to weak writing, rather than, as Martha Kolln
  describes it, a rhetorical tool that all writers
  should understand and control.
• Laura Micciche, Making a Case for Rhetorical
  Grammar
  
• (CCC 2004)

6
Some supporting evidence

• My students have been so beaten down by emphasis
  on grammar, I dont want to further weaken their
  confidence in themselves as writers.
  
• Spoken by a veteran college writing
• instructor

7
More dissing of grammar

• Remarks reported by Terry Santos (2005)
• Ill never teach grammar in my writing classes
  I dont want to be accused of malpractice.
  
• Im glad I never learned formal grammar now
  Ill never be tempted to teach it.
  
• Teachers only teach grammar in a writing class
  because its easy and makes them feel like
  theyre doing something.

8
Or

• Some may even think of grammar focus in writing
  as being about as helpful as the toad in this
  little poem
  
• A centipede was happy quite,
• until a toad in fun
• Said, Pray, which leg comes after which?
• This raised his doubts to such a pitch
• He fell distracted in the ditch
• Not knowing how to run
• (Author unknown, cited by Richard Feynman in
• The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, Perseus
  Books, 1999)
  

9
In sum

• Grammar instruction, especially at the sentence
  level has often been thought to be
  
• Unnecessary
• Remedial/stigmatizing
• Unrelated to larger concerns of purpose and
  audience
  
• Detrimental to students composing processes

10
However

• As evidenced by discussions in both L1 and L2
  composition literature (including journals for
  K-12 ), teachers, researchers and curriculum
  developers are advocating new (and improved!)
  approaches to grammatical focus other than
  traditional grammar.

11
Why are new perspectives needed?

• Recent reports such as the intersegmental (CCC,
  CSU, UC) document on English Competencies for
  Entering Freshmen stress that students need to
  learn a range of academic registers and that
  language focus should be an important part of the
  curriculum in preparing high school students for
  higher education and beyond.
• Develop in applied linguistics and composition
  offer new directions for teaching grammar as
  central to many components of writing
  

12
New Perspectives Centrality of Grammar

• Meaning Grammar is integral to meaning making
• We draw on our language resources to make
  choices about expressing meaning.
  
• Text cohesion and coherence Writers use a
  variety of grammatical devices to organize,
  focus, emphasize and link ideas.
  
• Stance Writers draw on various linguistic forms
  to engage readers, express attitudes about ideas,
  establish an authoritative voice, etc.
  

13
New perspectives on academic writing

• Academic texts
• Are not decontextualized but differently
  contextualized from those contexts familiar to
  students
  
• Are complex in a way different from the
  complexities of conversational language
  
• Schleppegrell, 2004)

14
Linguistic vs. cognitive demands

• Schleppegrell (2004)
• Descriptions of academic writing as
  decontextualized, explicit, complex often
  interpreted as cognitive issues.
  
• Instead, we need to consider the linguistic
  issues Different language for different
  genres/purposes, many of them unfamilar to our
  students

15
Need for explicit language instruction

• Students often given assignments with expectation
  that they understand directives such as Use a
  formal academic style, Be clear, Put it in
  your own words, Use appropriate vocabulary
• Need to show student writers how texts are
  structured and organized and how language is used
  for different purposes and audiences

16
Issues related to advanced level multilingual
writers

• Their language problems not always easy to
  diagnose compared to those of less proficient
  writers who have many obvious grammar/syntax/lexic
  al errors
• Though some problems similar to L1 developing
  writers, others are not Educational backgrounds
  and literacy experiences may be very different
  
• In the case of entering freshmen, often their
  academic vocabulary has been acquired receptively
  (e.g., for SAT preparation), and they have had
  few opportunities to use this language
  productively

17
So what does grammar as a resource mean for
student writers?

• Students develop awareness of different kinds of
  grammatical forms and structures used in
  different types of texts.
  

18
Different types of grammar for different text
types

• The environmental impacts of the wine industry
  have been assessed in recent years. The different
  stages of the wine grapes cultivation and
  production all contribute to the global impact of
  the industry.
• From a case study for Environmental
• Science and Management

19
Different types of grammar

• 'SO YOU'RE THE Mexican who doesn't speak good
  Spanish," the Univision Radio producer sneered as
  we discussed whether I should appear on his show.
  Wow. My "Ask a Mexican!" celebrity star is no
  brighter than gaffer level, yet rumors and
  whispers about my personal life already buzz
  around town.From My Sinful Spanish Syntax By
  Gustavo ArellanoAugust 28, 2006

20
Grammar as a resource for students

• Students also develop a rich repertoire of
  language options Different ways to introduce,
  develop, focus and link ideas in writing and to
  reference the ideas of others.

21
Drawing on language options

• Replacing overuse of logical connectors with
  lexical links to
  
• create cohesion.
• Using relational verbs instead of logical
  connectors
  
• X results in Y instead of Therefore
• Example
• Therefore, Henry lacked a respect for his
  father.
  
• Revised Henrys belief that his father
  was weak
  
• resulted in a lack of respect for him.

22
Grammar as a resource for students

• In addition, students learn that there are
  different systems of grammar from which writers
  consider their choices.

23
What are systems of grammar?

• Reference system in English
• Personal pronouns it, they
• Demonstrative pronouns and adjectives NP
• this, this belief
• Definite article the NP
• the beliefs of many writing teachers regarding
  the role of grammar in writing
  
• Comparative forms such, such a NP
• such beliefs such a response

24
Systems of grammar

• Modality for expressing probability/possibility
• Modal verbs can, could, might, may
• Probability verbs indicate, attest to
• Frequency adverbs frequently, scarcely
• Probability adverbs perhaps, maybe
• Determiners many, most

25
Grammar as a resource for students

• Students learn, too, how writers make different
  choices among grammatical forms based on
  communicative purposes and assumptions about
  readers.

26
Different choices for different purposes

• From student essays
• Wendell Berry thinks that escaping nature is what
  we seek for satisfaction, but how can that be
  so? He also mentions, Life will become a
  permanent holiday. That is impossible!
• Let us not part from nature nor from technology
  instead let us carry them both with us into the
  future!
  

27
Student essay examples, cont.

• Although technology has caused many people to
  lose sight of their own capabilities, we cannot
  overlook the medical advances and research
  possibilities that it has allowed us and still
  allows us.
• (Schleppegrell, 2004, p. 59)

28
Grammar as a resource for students

• Students learn as well the ways in which grammar
  and vocabulary interact
  
• New approaches to grammar recognize that grammar
  and the lexicon are overlapping, not separate
  domains and have complex interactions.
  
• Lexical-based grammar assumes that vocabulary
  choices affect grammatical choices.
  
• Corpus-based resources offer much insight in this
  area (corpus grammars, collocation dictionaries,
  concordancers).
  

29
Collocations

• Definitions of collocation
• the company words keep (J.R. Firth)
• the ways words combine in predictable ways
• (Holten Mikesell, forthcoming)

30
Collocations

• Here are some examples of collocation (from Moon,
  1997, cited in Holten Mikesell, forthcoming)
  
• Idioms Dont count your chickens
• Compounds collective bargaining
• Phrasal verbs give up
• Fixed phrases how do you do
• Prefabricated routines the fact/point is

31
Interaction of grammar and vocabulary

• Lexical choices have grammatical consequences
• Television does not find happiness,
• but serves more as a time out.
• He criticizes that cars would create more
• accidents and deaths in the nation.
• Invention and necessities help develop
  each other through history.
  
• Student written examples
• from Holten Mikesell
  (forthcoming)

32
Grammar as a resource for students

• In addition to all of the previous gains,
  students learn that grammar functions at the
  larger discourse level, not just the sentence
  level, to create focus, clarity and information
  flow

33
Discourse grammar and information flow

• In writing, flow may mean to student writers a
  nice sound to writing as its read, but that flow
  is achieved grammatically as well as lexically by
  the structuring of information in sentences, with
  given (old, known) information presented
  first the theme followed by new information -
  a comment or claim about the theme. Linguists
  often call this topic-comment structure.

34
Information flow Given and new information

• From The Hurried Child (para. 3 in handout)
• This idea of childhood as a distinct phrase
  preceding adult life became inextricably
  interwoven with the modern concepts of universal
  education and the small nuclear family (mother,
  father, children not the extended family of the
  earlier eras) in the late eighteenth and early
  nineteenth centuries, the heyday of the original
  Industrial Revolution.
• Given information or theme summarizes the
  ideas in the previous paragraph, so this
  information is known to the reader. Note the use
  of reference word this.

35
Information flow Student sample

• Consider the information flow of this passage
  from a research paper
  
• A sweat lodge is made of long saplings, which
  are stuck into the ground and bent inward to form
  an igloo-shape. These supports are covered with
  blankets. The diameter is about six-feet. In
  the center is a hole in the ground. Rocks are
  heated until they are hot outside the hut.

36
Thematic positioning and coherence

• Looking at the themes (sentence subjects of
  introductory elements) of a piece of writing can
  reveal the extent to which the text is structured
  coherently or whether it seems to shift topics.

37
Grammar as a resource for students

• Yet another very important area of grammar in
  writing is that students develop effective ways
  to express interpersonal relationships their
  stance on ideas and their relationships
  (engagement) with their readers.

38
Expressing stance and engagement

• Over the past decade or so, academic writing has
  gradually lost its traditional tag as an
  objective, faceless and impersonal form of
  discourse and come to be seen as a persuasive
  endeavor involving interaction between writers
  and readers.
• This view sees academics as not simply producing
  texts that plausibly represent an external
  reality but also as using language to
  acknowledge, construct and negotiate social
  relations.
• (Hyland, 2005)

39
Expressing stance in academic writing

• Stance This refers to the interpersonal
  relationships that writers have with readers and
  their texts.
  
• We take positions in relation to what we are
  writing about, and we position ourselves in
  relation to others who hold points of view on the
  topic. To persuade others, we need to show
  competence and to express our views in a way that
  is convincing. We do this with language among
  other things.

40
What does grammar have to do with stance and
engagement?

• There are many different ways to express our
  evaluations and attitudes in our writing
  
• We hedge our claims with words like
• perhaps, possibly, suggest
• We boost claims with words like of course,
  obviously, X shows
  
• We express attitudes about what we say with words
  such as unfortunately, hopefully, remarkable,
  agree
  

41
Problems multilingual writers have with
expressing stance

• L2 writers rely on a more limited range of
  markers of doubt and certainty (e.g., I think,
  probably, definitely, it is clear that) than L1
  writers
• They make strong commitments that are not
  appropriate for the claims (e.g., using always or
  never when a claim needs to be qualified.)
  
• They use stance markers inappropriately or in
  ways not common to academic writing
  
• It is clearly showing that these buyers usually
  lack confidence.
  
• Probably, they can learn the importance of
  confidence.
  
• Hyland and Milton (1997)
• Hyland and Milton note that little attention is
  paid to these important linguistic devices in
  writers handbooks, style guides and most ESL
  textbooks.

42
Grammar as a resource for students

• And finally
• Focus on grammar as a resource means that
  students will gain better understanding of the
  interrelationships of the aforementioned areas.
  Writers need to draw on a variety of features
  that characterize different registers.

43
Interrelationships Stance in different academic
disciplines

• Hyland (2005) found striking differences in how
  markers of stance and engagement were used across
  disciplines.
  
• Example Appeals to shared knowledge such as
  Of course, we all know used frequently by
  philosophy, marketing, sociology but not sciences
  such as physics or biology.
• Many multilingual students, including
  international graduate students, need to become
  more familiar with the ways in which writers
  express stance in their fields in English.

44
Whats a teacher to do?Helping students develop
proficiency

• Teach grammar not only reactively but
  proactively
  
• Reactive Responding to diagnosed errors,
  responding to
  
• students questions and requests for
  information
  
• Proactive Anticipating needs, providing
  instruction and
  
• practice that addresses specific task
  demands, develops
  
• fluency, provides a range of structures
  for expressing
  
• stance, making connections, etc.

45
Helping students develop proficiency

• Use content-based and genre-based approaches to
  grammar teaching
  
• Anticipate and incorporate grammar at points
  where students need knowledge/ practice for
  particular functions or tasks
  
• Mine assigned readings for examples of
  grammatical structures, lexico-grammatical
  relationships that may be helpful
  

46
Mining texts

• Some examples
• Frequently used clause patterns that serve
  particular functions e.g., relative clauses used
  for definitions
  
• Varied use of verb tenses for different purposes
  Establishing time frames, introducing topics,
  topic shifts, providing background information,
  expressing writer stance (e.g., conditional
  tenses for the latter)

47
Mining texts

• Set or routine phrases (multi-word units) often
  used in academic writing for introducing sources,
  agreeing, disagreeing, comparing viewpoints,
  etc.
• Different word forms for key vocabulary e.g.,
  civil, uncivil, civility and the grammatical
  forms needed with them (articles, nouns, etc.)
  

48
Helping students develop proficiency

• Encourage students to Read like a writer
• Explain how this is different from reading for
  content.
  
• Discuss how you yourself developed as a writer
  this way.
  
• Model the process as it related to language focus
  take a short text and discuss what you find and
  how it can help you in your own writing.
  

49
Helping students develop proficiency

• Have students read, discuss and write about the
  features of different text types
  
• Look at textbook pages, newspapers, blogs,
  e-mail, texts from different disciplines, etc.
  
• Ask students to bring in examples of texts to
  discuss in groups.
  
• Have students look at different examples of
  student writing.
  
• Provide brief guides or charts for them to
  complete to direct the activities they can be
  very simple!
  

50
Helping students develop proficiency

• Show students how to use a variety of resources
  (paper and online) for composing and revising
  
• Dictionaries
• Thesauruses (online and paper)
• Corpus-based references Collocation
  dictionaries, concordancers
  
• Writing handbooks with useful templates
• (e.g., Graf Berkesteins I Say, They Say)

51
Corpus-based resources

• For more information about/examples of
  corpus-based resources, please see my PowerPoint
  presentation
  
• Using Corpus-Based References to Guide Editing
  and Revision in L2 Writing
  
• http//www.esl.ucsb.edu/people/
• frodesen.html

52
Helping students develop proficiency

• Assign both analysis and production tasks and
  show students how to approach them
  
• Analysis tasks should provide grammatical
• explanation where needed (e.g. what
• a noun phrase is if students dont know).
• Students need productive practice and lots of
  it to acquire academic language proficiency.
  

53
Need for productive practice

• For learners the language is not real or
  authentic until they have learned to realize or
  authenticate it.
  
• Widdowson, 1991
• Cited in Seidelhofer,
• Controversies in Applied Linguistics,
• Oxford, p. 80

54
More Sample Text Analysis Activities

• The following offer more suggestions for types of
  text analysis noticing and explaining
  grammatical and lexical features in assigned
  readings.

55
Techniques for noticing

• Noticing means paying attention to forms and
  why they are used and to patterns of language.
  Noticing techniques can include asking students
  to do the following
• Highlight words and phrases (e.g., highlight
  present perfect verbs to see how they are being
  used to frame topics).
  
• Put brackets around structures such as clauses
  and phrases to see how complex sentences are
  created.
  
• Create lists of structures identified (e.g., make
  list of words that express a writers stance
  about claims)

56
Text Analysis Feature Clusters

• Ask students to identify language features that
  characterize different text types see Biber et
  al. (2000), Byrd and Reid (1998), Holten and
  Marasco (1998) for more information and
  examples.
• Example Engagement features in A Law for
  Bad Humans
  
• Students identify imperatives, rhetorical
  questions, 1st person for author, 2nd person you
  to address readers

57
Text Analysis Sentence Variety

• Ask students to speculate on reasons for a
  writers use of sentences in a text and to react
  to them.
  
• Why short sentences? Why long ones?
• Why do some sentences start as they do?
• Which kinds of sentences (simple, complex) seem
  to be dominant? Why?
  
• Pick a particularly long sentence with multiple
  clauses. Why did the write use the sentence this
  way instead of several shorter ones.
  
• Which sentences do you like? Why?
• What kinds of sentences do you use most?

58
Text Analysis Lexical Chains

• The following task created by Margi Wald uses
  sample student writing on Mike Roses Lives on
  the Boundary and the ICAS Academic Literacy
  competencies report.
• One of the ways that writers link key ideas in a
  text is through lexical chains, repeating
  words/phrases and using words/phrases that have
  similar meanings. Look at the sample student
  essay. Focus on the opening sentences of each
  paragraph. Scan the previous paragraph to find
  words the student echoes in the opening sentences
  to the next paragraph by changing the word form.
  Highlight the words in both paragraphs. Notice
  also the strong verbs and abstract nouns the
  writer uses and how these verbs and nouns help
  the writer create cohesion. The first two are
  done for you.

59
Analysis Lexical chains

• Sentence from par 2
• The assumptions professors make include a
  student's ability to think critically, "exhibit
  curiosity, and ask provocative questions when
  they read (13).
• Opening to par 3
• The mistake is professors assume that all
  students, even students who have attended
  low-achieving high schools and high schools in
  other countries, will automatically be able to
  actively engage with readings and assignments.

60
Text Analysis Identifying complex noun phrases
used for cohesion

• Many types of academic writing employ complex
  noun phrases as subjects for cohesion
  
• Information in previous clauses are reduced to
  phrases and nominalizations
  
• The pressure to engage in competitive
  sports
  
• is one of the most obvious pressures on
  contemporary
  
• children to grow fast. (From The Hurried
  Child)
  
• Resulting phrases and nominalizations have high
  lexical density (LD number of lexicalized
  elements in a clause Columbi Schleppegrell,
  2002)

61
Complex noun phrases for cohesion

• This is a noticing task based on The Hurried
  Child excerpt.
  
• Some sentences that begin paragraphs have
  long noun phrases that summarize previous
  information. To see how these structures function
  as sentence subjects, for each of the following
  sentences 1) Find the verb underline it. 2)
  Find the head noun of the subject draw a box
  around it. 3) Put brackets around the entire noun
  phrase that is the subject include all the
  prepositional phrases and other modifiers. You
  should be able to replace the entire phrase with
  it or they. The first two have been done examples.

62
Complex noun phrases for cohesion

• 1. Todays pressures on middle-class children
  to grow up fast begin in early childhood.
  
• (They begin in early childhood.)
• 2. The trend toward early academic pressure
  was further supported by the civil rights
  movement.
  
• (It was supported)
• 3. One consequence of all this concern for the
  early years was the demise of the readiness
  concept.
  
• 4. But the emphasis on early intervention and
  early stimulation (even of infants) made the
  concept of readiness appear dated and
  old-fashioned.

63
More Sample Production Activities

• The following tasks offer examples of guided
  production activities focusing on academic
  language development.
  
• In almost all cases, such tasks will involve a
  focus on both grammar and lexicon.

64
Production activity Lexico-grammatical
relationships

• Building Knowledge of Word Collocations
• These phrases are taken from The Hurried Child.
  What prepositions occur with the phrases? Skim
  the passage if necessary. Write the prepositions
  in the blanks.
• 1. a consequence ______ something (or doing
  something)
  
• 2. an emphasis _______ something
• 3. a direct result ______ something
• 4. a golden opportunity ______ something/someone
• 5. pressure ________ something (e.g.
  achievement)
  
• 6. pressure ________ someone
• 7. stimulation ______ someone
• 8. a trend ___________ something

65
Production Activity Lexico-grammatical
relationships

• Ask students to substitute verbs in sentences
  they have written and to make needed syntactic
  and lexical changes using a learners dictionary
  or a collocation dictionary.
• Examples
• Pelleg countered Perlsteins perspective on
  college life today. (substitute disagree)
  
• Rodriguez states that the new technology is the
  cause for the lack of literacy today.
  
• (blame)

66
Production Activity Highlighting themes

• Focus on sentence themes As mentioned
  earlier, the beginning of a sentence, and often
  the subject, expresses the theme of the sentence.
  Student writers sometimes bury their themes in
  other places, such as embedded that-clauses or
  prepositional phrases. Revision tasks can help
  them highlight themes.

67
Highlighting themes

• Help writers revise sentences beginning with
  phrases such as I think that or He says
  that by deleting the introductory phrase,
  substituting a noun phrase that expresses a key
  idea and using an appropriate verb.

68
Highlighting themes

• Examples
• Original I think, without distractions, when a
  person is limited to what they have, then thats
  when their true abilities shows.
  
• Revised Getting rid of distractions can
  allow a person to draw on his or her true
  abilities.
  
• Original Rodriguez mentions the idea that
  teenagers that sit behind the bar are able to
  comprehend the importance of literacy.
  
• Revised The importance of literacy is
  understood by people in prison.
  

69
Focus on themes

• Another way to focus on thematic information is
  through sentence combining practice in revision.
  
• Example This article is written by Richard
  Rodriguez. He wrote about our current literacy
  status.
  
• Revised This article by Richard Rodriguez
  discussed our current literacy status.

70
Production Activity Creating cohesion through
reference and summary words

• (Another task courtesy of Margi Wald)
• The following are some sentences from Sydney
  Harris What True Education Should Do. For
  each one, write a second sentence with a
  reference form summary word. Remember for
  each, write a sentence that makes sense with
  what Harris is saying in her article. The first
  one is done for you.

71
Creating cohesion through reference forms

• 1a. Original Sydney Harris writes, So many of
  the discussions and controversies about the
  content of education are futile and inconclusive
  because they are concerned with what should "go
  into" the student (1).
• 1.b. Your sentence She feels such concerns
  do not focus on whats important how to get the
  student to generate more information on his or
  her own.
• 2a. Original When most people think of the word
  education, they think of a pupil as a sort of
  animate sausage casing.
  
• 2b. Your Sentence

72
Revision activities related to stance

• Following noticing or other instructional
  activities, students could be asked to do the
  following
  
• Check claims that need to be less certain. Add
  hedges to qualify them (e.g., modals such as may
  or could verbs like suggest determiners like
  most frequency adverbs like often)

73
Revising for stance

• Consider places in a draft where attitude markers
  (e.g., unfortunately, important) could be added
  to strengthen positioning about ones topic
  
• Revise to vary stance markers (e.g., avoid
  repeated use of I think substitute verbs such as
  seems or appears that are often more frequently
  used in some kinds of academic writing.

74
A few final words

• Dont be a toad (?), but do try to provide
  students with the language support they need to
  meet challenging academic tasks.

75
Final words

• As a mantra, try
• Grammar as a weapon Bad, Grammar as a resource
  Good!
  

76
Final words

• Think like Joan Didion
• Grammar is power!
• Help students develop their
• knowledge of it as an instrument
• they can play by ear

77
And lastly

• Help students have fun with language (even
  academic language). And have fun yourself!