Eva Duran Eppler [e-mail]

1
Eva Duran Epplere.eppler_at_roehampton.ac.uk

• Grammar teaching
• across
• the curriculum
• (English MFL)

2
Aims

• The aim of the workshop is to explore effective
  and cumulative ways of cross-
• linguistic and cross-subject grammar teaching,
  i.e.
• explore ways of building on pupils first and
  additional languages to raise their
  metalinguistic awareness of how languages work,
  and how this can be utilised in the learning and
  teaching of the structures of English and foreign
  languages.

3
Historical background

• The idea is not new
• 1970s initiative by George Perren, former
  Director of CILT, to bridge the space between
  modern language and English teachers.
• 1999 QCA joint conference on Grammar for foreign
  language and English
• 1999-2001 CILT/QCA Modern Foreign Languages and
  Literacy at KS 2 and 3

4
Background Research

• Research findings indicate that (early)
  bilingualism can have clear cognitive and
  academic advantages
• attentional and executive control,
• problem-solving skills,
• metalinguistic awareness and working memory,
• cognitive flexibility and linguistic creativity,
• (Bialystok 2001-2011, Cummins 1979, Lauchlan et
  al. 2012, Meisel 2006, Paradis 2004). For a nice
  summary see http//www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/opin
  ion/sunday/the-benefits-of-bilingualism.html?_r0

5
Background NC English

• changes to the NC for England in terms of grammar
  teaching (Key Stages 3-5)
• From September 2014 all pupils attending a UK
  school (gt Key Stages 3-5) are required to acquire
  an understanding of grammar and knowledge of
  linguistic conventions for reading, writing and
  spoken language
• This proposal will be extended to Key Stages 1-2
  in the following years.
• the introduction of compulsory foreign language
  teaching in primary schools from Key Stage 2
  onwards pose a considerable challenge for both
  teachers and pupils.
• Is this true?

6
Background NC MFL

• the introduction of compulsory foreign language
  teaching from Key Stage 2 onwards at Key Stage 2
  from the same date.
• In foreign languages pupils should be taught to
  understand basic ? grammar appropriate to the
  language being studied, such as (where relevant)
  feminine, masculine and neuter forms and the
  conjugation of high-frequency verbs key features
  and patterns of the language how to apply these,
  for instance, to build sentences and how these
  differ from or are similar to English.

7
Background

• There is wide-spread concern among
  practitioners1, advisors/consultants2,
  politicians3, journalists4 and educators5 that
  school teachers (newly qualified or already in
  post) possess, or acquire, the requisite
  competence in vocabulary/lexicology, semantics,
  and grammar to teach the English language and
  other languages as the subjects are prescribed in
  the national curriculum
• (Lord Quirk, Citation HL Deb, 24 April 2013,
  c427W).

8
Teachers Learners

• Many teachers have received limited linguistic
  training (Hudson and Walmsley 2005 616), or have
  little confidence in their knowledge (possibly
  because they have acquired it in an unsystematic
  way (Cajkler Hislam 2002).
• Pupils also have difficulties with learning
  complex grammatical concepts (ibid.)
• Do they?

9
Activity 1

• Paul Flynn (MP Newprot West) (Lab)
• Does the minister E.Truss, Education agree that
  the most futile and ineffective way to teach a
  language is through grammar?
• It is like suggesting that someone should not
  learn to drive a car until they first learn to
  dismantle the engine.

10
Activity 1

• Paul Flynn (MP Newprot West) (Lab) cont
• The UK has an atrocious record on teaching
  languages to fluency,
• No one who is interested in or knowledgeable
  about teaching language would dare to try to do
  it through grammar, which is a major obstacle to
  fluency, not a pathway.

11
Activity 1

• Elizabeth Truss (Parliamentary under-Secretary of
  State for Education)
• Learning the grammar of a language is part and
  parcel of learning that language.
• One of the things that this government are trying
  to do is introducing a spelling, grammar and
  punctuation test , so that students learn the
  language of English grammar before they learn the
  grammar of another language.

12
Activity 1

• Elizabeth Truss (Parliamentary under-Secretary of
  State for Education)
• I remember when I was at school, I learnt the
  grammar of foreign languages before I learned the
  grammar of my own language, and I think this was
  a problem.
• (Seventh Delegate Legislation Committee, Draft
  Education, Amendment of the Curriculum
  Requirements for Second Key Stage, England,
  19/06/13)

13
Activity 1

• Do you agree with Paul Flynn that the most futile
  and ineffective way to teach a language is
  through grammar?
• 2. Do you agree with Elizabeth Truss that
  L1/English ? grammar should be covered before
  the grammar of foreign languages?

14
CILT/QCA MFL Literacy Project
(1999-2001)Wootton Bassett School, Swindon, K.
Eames

• RQ 1. How can I improve my Y9 pupils'
  metacognitive understanding of sentence-level
  grammar by making use of the knowledge they have
  developed in MFL?
• My original question was revealed by the
  questionnaire to be wildly over-optimistic, so I
  settled in reality for trying to develop pupils
  awareness of linguistic terminology

15
Some findings from the CILT/QCA MFL Literacy
Project (1999-2001)Wootton Bassett School,
Swindon, K. Eames

• Regarding my intention to make use of the
  grammatical knowledge pupils had gained
• through MFL lessons, I was originally surprised
  by the lack of recognition they claimed for terms
  which might be used in their French or German
  lessons, but discussion with MFL teachers pointed
  out to me that the concepts were used, but were
  not necessarily described using grammatical
  terms.

16
Results after one year of frequent low-level
references to linguistic features in lessons

• There (Y9) was an increase in the
• recognition of grammatical terms Noun,
  Adjective, Verb, Adverb, Preposition, Article,
  Pronoun, Conjunction Tenses, Phrase, Clause
  types Subject, Object, Adverbial
• acknowledgement of clause features main/
  subordinate clause, conjunction
• confidence in pupils capacity to identify terms
  in context
• BUT pupils are slightly more likely to make
  inaccurate identifications of features.

17
(No Transcript)
18
Where to go from here

• Hudson's (2000) survey of the research evidence
  for the claim that teaching grammar can improve
  writing suggests that pupils who have 'mastered
  parts of speech word classes1 and are able to
  distinguish between subordinate and principal
  dependent and main clauses' attained better
  results in writing than those who 'had not
  learned to analyse sentences'
• need for continuous reference to grammatical
  features, spread over many years, develops
  familiarity with those features
• 1) http//lagb-education.org/grammatical-terminolo
  gy-for-schools

19
CILT/QCA MFL Literacy Project
(1999-2001)Wootton Bassett School, Swindon, K.
Eames

• RQ 2. How can I help develop understanding
  between English and MFL in order to make use of
  the ways in which we both use grammatical
  terminology at sentence level?
• What specific grammatical terms get taught, and
  when do they get taught, in both subject areas
  Englsih MFL?

20
Findings

• It is not easy to map what grammatical features
  are taught when in MFL
• ? English teachers should be providing the MFL
  department with accounts of what we are doing, so
  that they can make use of it in discussions with
  pupils, and in mapping what gets covered when.

21
Findings

• Are there any common examples we could refer to
  in both MFL and English, to illustrate points of
  grammar or terminology for pupils?
• Verbs MFL teachers teach tenses very
  effectively, pupils seem to have retained this
  learning confidently in their English lessons.

22
Findings

• Nouns - ways of modifying nouns is one of the
  characteristics of highly valued writing at KS 3
  and GCSE.
• Adjectives - developing an understanding of what
  an adjective is, where it appears, and how its
  morphology differs between MFL and English
• sentence level focus - sentence combining seems
  to produce an overwhelmingly positive (gain) in
  syntactic maturity' (Hudson 2000)
• What else?

23
Activity 2

• A. Which of the following sentences would your
  English teacher mark in red? And how?
• How would you correct the mistake?
• 1.       The lemon ice cream taste awful.
• 2.       I like strawberry ice cream.
• 3.       He like mango ice cream.
• B. How would a French/Spanish/German person say
  sentence 3 (correctly) in his/her language?
• C. Now try to make the same mistake the speaker
  of English makes in sentences 1 and 3 in
  French/Spanish/German

24
What a French teacher friend of mine AB Estevez
thinks

• Re A. Sentence 1 and 3 would be corrected with
  verb agreement. It is KS3.  The verb ending would
  be underline in red with word verb.
• The student then has to correct the missing 3rd
  person sg. Agreement marker s on the verb in
  green pen. 

25
What a French teacher friend of mine (AB Estevez)
said

• Re B. Sentence 3 would be
• Il aime la glace a la mangue. An English speaker
  might make mistake with word order i.e. mangue
  glace.
• As for the verb, English students might use the
  infinitive form for verb such as
• Il aimer mangue glace. In Spanish mistakes would
  be similar

26
Activity 2

• With a colleague who teaches English, if you are
  an MFL teacher
• With a colleague who teaches a MFL, if you are an
  English teacher
• Select a grammatical feature English and the MFL
  you teach share
• Construct an cross-linguistic and cross-subject
  activity illustrating this point
• Indicate the KS you think the activity would be
  suitable for

27
What else is going on in this direction at home
and broad

• Language Awareness
• https//www.llas.ac.uk/700reasons/reasonsbykeyword
  /917
• BSL Language Awareness Tasks
• https//www.llas.ac.uk/resources/mb/6232
• https//www.llas.ac.uk/video/6237
• Linguistics Association of Great Britain
  Education Committee (LAGB EC)
• Learning and teaching grammar across the
  curriculum (English and Foreign Languages) (4
  Sept 2014, Oxford) http//lagb-education.org/lagb-
  education-sessions

28
European Center for Modern LanguagesGraz,
Austria http//www.ecml.at/

• Cultural awareness and language awareness based
  on dialogic interaction with texts in foreign
  language learning (2001)
• http//archive.ecml.at/documents/pub126fennerE.pdf
  
• The introduction of language awareness into the
  curriculum (2000-2003)
• http//jaling.ecml.at/

29
Denmark

• Fra Johannes Wagner mailtojwa_at_sdu.dk
• Sendt 26. maj 2014 1507
• Emne Re L1 MFL grammar teaching overseas
• I remember something called ¹tværfaglig
  grammatik¹ (interdisciplinary grammar) from the
  90ies? where people attempted to integrate the
  teaching of grammar across several modern
  languages.  Mainly in primary school (1-10) and
  the gymnasium (11-gt).  I think that faded quite
  soon.
•  Nowadays students in the first grade of the
  gymnasium follow a course for half a year which
  is called Œsproglig bevidsthed¹(linguistic
  awareness) which was intended to allow
  crosslinguistic grammar ...
• --------------------------------------------------
  --------------------------------------------------
  -----
• From Karen Sonne Jakobsen karens_at_ruc.dk
• Sent 26 May 2014 1447
• Subject SV L1 MFL grammar teaching overseas
•  
• After the reform of the Danish gymnasium in 2005,
   "Almen sprogforståelse" ("general language
  knowledge" according to van Liers
  conceptualization) is part of the curriculum for
  all first year students prior to their choice of
  foreign languages (two FLs are compulsory, the
  first one being English).  The programme includes
  general grammar and also some Latin on-line
  morphology  besides other linguistic topics
  grammar encyclopaedia, Danish morphology
  syntax, an introduction to language studies,
  methods for language studies genres, style and
  rhetoric comma rules exercises English grammar
  
•  

30
Denmark

• Almen Sprogforståelse aims to give students a
  general knowledge of  grammar, i.e. the members
  of a sentence (function) and the word classes
  (material) and elementary syntax. Among other
  things the students learn to use the same Latin
  terms in the teaching of Danish and the foreign
  languages. (A. Heltoft)
• http//www.almensprogforstaaelse.dk/

31
References

• Hudson, R. (2000) 'Grammar Teaching and Writing
  Skills The Research Evidence http//www.phon.ucl
  .ac.uk/home/dick/papers/writing.htm
• Cross Linguistic Approaches to Language Learning
• http//archive.ecml.at/mtp2/alc/pdf/carl_james.pdf
  

32
Any