Abstract:

This study takes place in the context of English as a Foreign Language at University level where the teaching of English is subdivided into the major components of a language: writing, speaking, grammar, literature and cultural studies. This division obeys an underlying objective: the development of all the language aspects necessary to master a language in order to use it for communication purposes or as a medium of instruction. Our focus is the teaching of grammar.
The place of grammar in second/foreign language learning has long been a hotly debated issue in Applied Linguistics, and grammar teaching has always been one of the most controversial aspects of language teaching. The findings of Second/Foreign Language Acquisition research have raised questions about psycholinguistic constraints on the learnability of any grammar and the relationship among implicit and explicit learning. However, in practice, grammar is an important aspect in most textbooks focusing on writing or language learning in general.
We will report on the results of a comparative analysis of the theoretical background, the approach which constitutes the foundation of each textbook and how the approach has an impact on the type of sequence (grammatical, functional, situational or contextual) and on the nature of the activities (exercises, tasks) suggested to enhance the learning/acquisition of a second/foreign language. We will identify the Grammar textbooks with a purely grammatical sequence following a Structural Approach or a Communicative Approach, those which combine grammar and content, focusing on grammar and/or writing, and those which consider grammar in context, focusing on form, meaning and use. The last category is the one we are mainly concerned in, our future project being the writing of a Grammar textbook along this principle, with the focus on the development of grammar consciousness-raising activities. This is based on the belief that students’ mastery of grammar (the language) improves when they interpret and produce grammar (the language) in meaningful contexts at the discourse level. This is also based on the idea that in consciousness-raising, noticing is an important step in acquiring the grammatical structure when explicit formulation can lead to implicit acquisition with practice. The latter will take the form of collaborative activities where grammar is dealt with in terms of communicative activities involving the students to identify and understand the grammar point in context, developing awareness of grammatical categories. The end result is believed to be students developing language awareness in order to communicate more accurately, meaningfully and appropriately.
We will present a model teaching unit where grammar is dealt with in terms of grammar consciousness-raising activities involving the learners to identify and understand the grammatical point in context. These activities draw the learners’ attention to specific structures, which facilitates input and helps the learners discover the rules by themselves. We require the learners to solve the activities interactively in order to formulate both the implicit knowledge (the knowledge that is intuitive and procedural) and the explicit knowledge (the knowledge we learn). These two aspects of knowledge are believed to interact during the process of grammar consciousness-raising, leading to the end result of any learning, language awareness.

Keywords:

Language awareness, grammar consciousness-raising.