A New Perspective on Teaching English Grammar-Role Shift between the Teacher and Students

School of Foreign Languages,Zhaoqing University,Zhaoqing,China Email:guanxinfv@hotmail.com

[Abstract]The course of grammar for English majors has drawn more and more attention owing to the fact that the acquisition of L2 grammar has the significant influence on SLA level,however there are fewer research achievements that can benefit the teaching practice.In this context,in order to improve the level of L2 grammar acquisition a new teaching model has been constructed and put into practice that shifts the roles of the teacher and the students in traditional classroom.The statistics shows that the new model works to improve English majors’grammatical awareness and competence.

[Keywords]English grammar teaching;role shift;grammatical awareness;grammatical competence

Introduction

The survey done in late 1990s by the National Foreign Language Teaching Advisory Board under the Ministry of Education shows that English majors’satisfaction with the English grammar course is only around 30%(Xiang,2008).Liu and Li(2010)’s review displays that researches on teaching English majors English grammar account for only 19%,all of which are speculative,although English grammar teaching has gradually got attention since 1996,and researchers suggest the development and application of new L2 grammar teaching methods that can motivate learners’subjectivity and learning initiative instead of traditional translation teaching method.On one hand,teachers agree that teaching English grammar is tricky and thankless,and on the other hand,most students think that English grammar course is boring and unnecessary,and take the course with resistance(Huang,2002).

In this context,a new perspective on teaching English grammar,role shift between the teacher and students,is suggested,and the teaching has been implemented to test the performance of this teaching method.

Role-Shift L2 Grammar Teaching Method

This role-shift method is a learner-centered teaching method,and designed according to the principles of L2 grammar acquisition,which shift the roles of the teacher and students,aiming to improve learners’grammatical awareness first and then their grammatical competence.

Grammatical awareness is the degree that a learner is aware of the importance of learning grammar(Li&Chen,2007),and is learners’objective attention to grammar,subjective perception of grammar and cognitive analysis of grammar,including learners’intentional attention to grammatical features and their implications and learners’knowledge and thinking of learning process and contents,which helps learners consciously pay attention to and reflect on relevant grammatical forms and meanings and further develop the ability of independent study(He & Gong,2015).Grammatical competence is learners’ability to comprehend grammatical principles and use a language(Xu&Xu,2009).In short,grammatical awareness mirrors the degree that learners recognize the objectives of learning grammar and the importance of the objectives of learning grammar,and grammatical competence mirrors learners’ability to comprehend the knowledge of grammar,use grammar to output the language.Studies on English majors’grammatical awareness and competence in China illustrate that with the improvement of English proficiency grammatical competence will improve,while grammatical awareness will decline(Li&Chen,2007;Xu&Xu,2009).

Researchers agree that the learning process of L2 grammar involves paying attention,drawing inference,making hypotheses,constructing and reconstructing principles,and making auto-response(Dai&Chen,2005).When learners intentionally pay attention to some linguistic item,they usually draw certain inference,form certain hypothesis and then construct and reconstruct certain principles based on the input in the process of learning L2 grammar.Making auto-response indicates good language proficiency that learners can output correct language on the basis of input.Kasper states that the three conditions to acquire grammatical competence are a certain amount of input,noticed input and substantial practice opportunities(Kasper,1996).Both the process and conditions of grammar acquisition suggest that a valid L2 grammar teaching method should clarify first the ways to input grammar knowledge that can attract learners’attention so as to improve grammatical awareness,and then the ways to lead learners to draw inferences,make hypotheses,construct and reconstruct principles,and make auto-response so as to improve grammatical competence.

The role-shift method designs three ways to input grammar knowledge,which include learners’self-study,learners’lecturing and the teacher’s tutoring.Four teaching steps are involved,as displayed in Figure 1,and the teaching contents of each step are delicately designed according to L2 grammar acquisition law.

Figure 1.The Diagram of Role-Shift Teaching Method

In the phase of learners’self-study,all learners need to collect complementary materials based on text-book to first determine emphases and difficulties of some grammar knowledge,next plan teaching contents,and last make a PowerPoint and practice a lot for the class presentation.To do a teacher’s work,they have to be more initiative to input themselves by studying from a totally different angle,which enable them to pay intentional attention to some knowledge that may not catch their attention in the role of being students.The practices of learners’teaching in the class and other learners’listening as commenters instead of students in the class can make them intentionally pay special attention to certain grammar principles first,and then draw inferences,make hypotheses,construct and reconstruct certain grammar principles in the process of commenting or even questioning.On this basis,the teacher’s focus explanation and targeted question-answering can more effectively assist learners test their inferences and hypotheses and reconstruct Correct grammar principles in the end.With all the inputs,the customized assignments drive learners to transform input into output,implementing the acquisition of certain grammar knowledge and principles.

The three input phases complement each other and play their roles in turn to get students initiatively be aware of L2 grammar knowledge and gradually acquire L2 grammar competence.To begin with,learners implement self-input through reading text-books and collecting relevant materials and then output delicately screened contents to other learners.This type of inputs not only more easily catches learners’attention,but also motivates more initiative attention to the inputs in accord with their own development stages of knowledge.The process of learners’lecture preparation,presentation,listening and commenting enables learners to shift attention to micro knowledge points to macro knowledge system,which benefits correct inferences,hypotheses,construction and reconstruction of grammar principles.Next,the teacher’s focus explanation and targeted question-answering take care of different levels of students,which can reduce learners’resistance to the course.

Evaluation of Role-Shift Teaching Effects

An experiment is designed to compare and contrast the teaching effects of the role-shift method with those of traditional translation method in terms of grammatical awareness and grammatical competence.

Bardovi-Harling & Dörnyei’s questionnaire(Bardovi-Harlig & Dornyei,1998)is employed to test learners’grammatical awareness and competence after they have finished the course of English grammar.The questionnaire contains 8 grammatically incorrect items and 4 grammatically correct disturbances and such basic knowledge of English grammar as noun countability,verbal collocation,and tense etc.are tested.Each test item is composed of two parts.As the following example shows,first,subjects decide whether there is a grammatical mistake or not in the sentence marked with“!”by ticking Yes or No,and get one point for each correct answer,whose choices reflect their levels of grammatical competence.Next,subjects who have ticked Yes in the first part evaluate how big the grammatical mistake in the sentence is by assigning 1 to 6 indicating the level of a mistake,and get the corresponding point for this part,whose evaluations reflect their grammatical awareness.If the No is ticked in the first part,0 will be automatically assigned as the point for the second part.

Peter and George are classmates.George invites Peter to his house,but Peter cannot come.

G:Peter,would you like to come over to my house tonight?

!P:I’m sorry,I just can’t.I’m very tired.I couldn’t sleep on last night.

Was the last part correct? Yes□No□

If there was a problem,how bad do you think it was?

Not bad at all_____:_____:_____:_____:_____:_____Very bad

According to Li and Chen’s research(Li&Chen,2007),high-level and low-level English-proficiency learners are selected as the subjects in this study and finish the questionnaire in the class,who are English majors in their second term and fourth term in a university in Guangdong China and have taken the course of English grammar in their first term.The role-shift method has been applied to the grammar teaching of the low-level-English-proficiency group,and the translation method has been applied to the grammar teaching of the high-level-English-proficiency group.The basic information of the two groups is listed in Table 1.

Table 1.The Basic Information of Subjects

T-tests are conducted in SPSS21 to evaluate the performance of this role-shift method macroscopically and microscopically.Macroscopically,both low-level and high-level English-proficiency subjects’grammar awareness and competence are assessed with the general grammar acquisition level of Chinese English majors tested and given by Li and Chen(2007),and microscopically the low-level-English-proficiency subjects’grammar awareness and competence are assessed with the high-level-English-proficiency subjects’grammar acquisition level.

Table 2 records the results of the T-test assessing the grammar acquisition level of the subjects of this study with the general grammar acquisition level of Chinese English majors.

Table 2.Subjects’Grammar Acquisition Level against Chinese English Majors’Grammar Acquisition Level

The column of M1 records the means of the subjects’grammar awareness and competence,the column of M2 records the means of Chinese English majors’general grammar awareness and competence.The data show that there is no significant difference between the subjects’general grammar awareness and Chinese English majors’general grammar awareness as well as between different levels of English-proficiency subjects’grammar awareness.However,the subjects’general grammar competence is significantly different from Chinese English majors’general grammar competence(p = 0.016),which is reflected in the significant difference between the low-level-English-proficiency subjects’grammar competence and Chinese English majors’general grammar competence—the former is significantly higher than the latter(0.6319>0.4718，p=0.002).

Table 3 records the results of the T-test assessing the grammar acquisition level of the low-level-English-proficiency subjects with that of high-level-English-proficiency subjects.The columns of M1 and SD1 record the mean and standard deviation of the subjects’grammar awareness and competence,and the columns of F1 and P1 records the results of the T-test comparing the grammar acquisition effects between the high and low-level-English-proficiency subjects.The columns of M2 and SD2 record the mean and standard deviation of Chinese English majors’general grammar awareness and competence,and the columns of F2 and P2 records the results of the T-test comparing the grammar acquisition effects between the high and low-level-English-proficiency Chinese English majors.

Table 3.The Effects of English Proficiency on Grammar Acquisition

Li and Chen’s survey shows that Chinese English majors’grammar competence improves while their grammar awareness declines with the improvement of English proficiency,but there are no significant differences in both grammar awareness and competence between high and low level English proficiency learners(Li & Chen,2007).Table 3 displays that the high-level-English-proficiency subjects are more tolerant of grammatical mistakes and their grammar awareness declines(2.0104 > 1.3008),which is consistent with Li and Chen’s survey.What is not consistent with Li and Chen’s survey is that the grammar awareness of high-level-English-proficiency subjects is significantly lower than that of low-level-English-proficiency subjects.What’s more,as far as the effects of English proficiency on grammar acquisition is concerned,the data disagree with Li and Chen’s survey(0.4718 < 0.500,F = 0.874,p =0.354)—the grammar competence of low-level-English proficiency subjects in this study is higher than that of highlevel-English proficiency subjects in this study(0.6319 > 0.5114,F = 0.118,p = 0.095)and the difference between different levels English-proficiency subjects is bigger than that tested in 2007.

To sum up,the above statistical analysis shows that macroscopically the low-level-English-proficiency subjects in this study have significantly higher grammar competence and a little better grammar awareness than general Chinese English majors,which illustrates that the role-shift teaching method works to significantly improve the subjects’grammar competence,and improve the subjects’grammar awareness although not significantly.The above statistical analysis also shows that microscopically both grammar awareness and competence of low-level-English-proficiency subjects in this study are higher than those of high-level-English-proficiency subjects in this study,which illustrates that the role-shift teaching method works better than translation method to improve grammar acquisition level.In addition,for the low-level-English-proficiency subjects in this study,their grammar awareness is significantly correlated to their grammar competence(r=.514,p=0.000),which illustrates that the role-shift method benefits the coordinate development of the subjects’grammar awareness and competence.

Conclusion

Although the teaching and learning of L2 grammar are catching more attention due to the fact that L2 acquisition grammar has a significant influence on L2 acquisition,there are few relevant empirical studies.In this context,the role-shift teaching method is constructed to help L2 learners acquire grammar,which is applied in the class to the English grammar teaching of the first-year university English majors in Guangdong China.The statistical analysis illustrates that the role-shift method works to improve grammar awareness and competence relatively effectively and balance the development of learners’grammar awareness and competence.

After the author's reflecting on the role-shift teaching experience,the following teaching steps need to be refined.In the process of teaching the low-level-English-proficiency subjects,the task of class preparation and presentation was assigned to a certain team in advance.Its disadvantage is that other teams may not implement this key step as the assigned team.To get every team as involved as the assigned team,a teaching platform is suggested on which all teams upload their PowerPoints,raise questions and discuss before the presentation task is assigned.Also,limited class hours and first-time application of the new method didn’t allow enough time for the teacher to assess students assignments,which is one important step in this role-shift method to guide students to pay attention to mistakable grammar knowledge points.Peer revision is suggested in this step to improve grammar awareness,which creates another opportunity for students to check and make use of what they have studied.