Rod Ellis: Grammar Teaching – Practice or Consciousness-Raising? Grammar teaching has a delayed effect, not instant. Practice vs. consciousness-raising (CR)

Practice: Isolation of a particular feature Production by students Repetition of this production Expectancy that production will be successful Feedback

Consciousness-raising Isolation of a grammatical feature Data and perhaps rule Intellectual effort to understand it Misunderstanding leads to further clarification May be articulation of rule by learners

Explicit vs Metalinguistic knowledge Not the same! Examples?

Differences Repetitive production yes/no Aim is performance / aim is awareness Aim is to bring about knowing-how/ to facilitate knowing-how Behavioristic vs concept-forming

Combination? You can combine practice-based teaching with awareness raising. But you can have awareness raising without practice.

Does practice work? Research Some studies show that practice is followed by better performance but: Some don’t No proof that the relationship is causal A lot of evidence that even after practice learners don’t acquire the structure perfectly Difficulty of transferring from controlled practice to free

2. Theory Developmental sequences (‘Natural Order’) You can’t, in the classroom, provide practice at exactly the level needed for each student.

The case for consciousness-raising The aim of practice is not achievable. Let’s ‘lower our sights’ – aim for something that is achievable. i.e. explicit knowledge

How does explicit knowledge facilitate implicit? Three stages: Noticing Comparing Integrating

CR induces noticing and facilitates comparing CR induces noticing and facilitates comparing. Integrating will take place when the learner is ready. Or Explicit knowledge can be stored, accessed when the learner is ready to start noticing. And Explicit knowledge helps learners to notice subsequent samples of the feature

Conclusion Removes necessity for practice Compatible with current thinking Compatible with ideas about ‘learning through discovering’ But: May not be appropriate for young learners. Can only be used with beginners if L1 is used

But still Even if you don’t use CR with young or beginner classes, you still shouldn’t use practice! Should use lots of communication. CR is a supplement to communicative activities, not an alternative.