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this dissertation deals mostly with current issues of teaching foreign languages correctness and appropriateness
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People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria
Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research
High Training School of Teacher in
Letters and Human Sciences - Constantine -
N° ……….. Department of English
Series……. 5B5
Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the degreeof
«Professeur de l’Enseignement Secondaire »
Presented by: Supervisor:
BEDRA Zohir Miss LABIOD Ahlem
Acknowledgments2008/2009
Correctness and Appropriateness in
EFL Teaching and Learning at the
Secondary School
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This document is only valid for educational
purposes; it is highly forbidden that this product
will be selled and copied for personal business
affairs thank you.
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I leaved this paper empty in purpose
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AcknowledgmentIt is with a deep gratitude that i wish to thank my supervisor Miss Ahlem
Labiod for her support and patience that have made it possible for me to finish my
work.
I gratefully wish to thank all teachers of English department for their
encouraging advice from different perspectives that has broadened my visions. Their
consistent support and encouragement contributed very much to my confidence in the
completion of this study.
I would also like to extend my special thanks to Mr. Boughrara Dr.
Kaauach, Mr. Azoui, Mr. Atamna, Miss. Boulmarka and Miss Haddad for their support
not only in this research but also in my academic life.
I would like to extend my deep appreciation to all the staff members of the
library of ENS–Constantine (High Training School of Teacher). Without their help, this
study would have been impossible.
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List of Abbreviations
FLT Foreign language Teaching
FL Foreign language
L2 Second language
CLT Communicative Language Teaching
BBA Bordj Bou Ariridj
Q Question
NB Number
CLA Communicative Language Ability
CA Communicative Approach
UG
GTM
Universal Grammar
Grammar Translation Method
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List of tablesTable 1: Some Synonyms in English…………..…………...…...…………. 10
Table 2: Some Antonyms in English.…………………..…...….…….……...10
Table3: Components of Linguistic Competence ...…………….…………….10
Table 4: An Example of a Latin Verb……………………...….………….…12
Table 5: The Component of Competence………………….......……………32
Table 6: Characteristics of Communicative Methods………………………..35
Table 7: Pupil Streams………………………………………...……………..47
Table 8: Pupils’ Age…………………………………………...…………... 48
Table 9: Pupils’ Gender………………………………………...……………48
Table 10: Pupils’ Starting Learning English…………………...………….…49
Table11: Pupils’ English Classes…………………………………………….49
Table 12: Pupils’ Level………………………………………...……….……50
Table 13: English, Like it or Not……………………………...…………..…50
Table 14: Pupils’ Grammar Courses…………………………...………….…51
Table 15: Intensifying the English Grammar Lessons………..…..…….…...51
Table 16: Ways of Learning…………………………………...…………….52
Table 17: The Reasons of Studying Grammar ………………...……….……53
Table 18: The importance ofEnglish Grammar……………...……..………53
Table 19: Pupils’ Skill in Grammar…………………………...…….…...…..54
Table 20: The Role of grammar in English Knowledge...……...……………55
Table 21: English Grammar and its Role in Future…..………...……………55
Table 22: Pupils’ Choice to Study English Grammar ………………….……56
Table23: Using English Outside Class………………………...…………….57
Table 24: Using English Grammar Outside Class…………………..…….…57
Table 25: With Whom to use English…………………………..….………..58
Table 26: The Reasons for Using English…………... ..………...………..…58
Table 27: The Importance of Culture……………………………...…………59
Table 28: learning culture………………………………………...…….….. 60
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Table of ContentIntroduction
1. Statement of the problem………………………………………..…..…1
2. Aim of the study……………………………………………….……....1
3. Hypothesis………………………………………………………….….2
4. Means of Research…………………………………………...………...2
5. Structure of the Study……………………………………..….………..2
Chapter I: Correctness and Linguistic Competence in EFL Teaching
and Learning
Introduction………………………………………………...…..………...3
I.2What is Language? ……………………………………….…..………....3
I.2Competence as a Perfect Knowledge……………………….…..…….....4
I.3.1 The Background of Competence……………………….………....…4
I.3.2 Definitionof Competence……………………………………….…5
I.3.3 The Concept of Linguistic Competence…………………….……….6
I.3.4 Components of Linguistic Competence………………………………7
I.4.1.1 Phonetics………………………………………………..….…… …8
I.4.1.2 Phonology ………………………………………………...……….8
I.4.1.3 Morphology………………………………………………..……….8
I.4.1.4 Syntax……………………………………………….………...……9
I.4.1.5 Semantics …………………………………………………….…….9
I.2 CorrectnessEquals Grammar……………..………….….......……..…11
I.5.1 Historyof Grammar………………………………….…….….....…11
I.5.2 Definition of Grammar………………………………………...........12
I.5.3 Features of Grammar ……………………………………..….…….13
I.5.3.1 Generality: All languages Have Grammar……………..……....…13
I.5.3.2 Equality: All Grammars are Equal……………….…………….…14
I.5.3.3 Universality: Grammars are Alike in Basic Ways…………14
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I.5.3.4 Taciteness ……………………………………………..……15
I.5.3.5 Changeability: Grammars Change over Time………....……16
I.5.4 The Place of Grammar in Language Teaching………………..…16
4.1. Why to Teach Grammar?………………...………………….….…17
4.2. Approaches to TeachingGrammar……….…..………………..…..18
4.2.1. Grammar-Translation Approach ……………………………...…18
4.2.2.The Direct Approach ………………………………………….…18
4.2.3. The audio-Lingual Approach ……………………………………18
4.3. Proceduresfor Teaching Grammar…...……………………………19
4.3.1.Explicit Knowledge……………………………………..…..……19
4.3.2.Implicit Knowledge……………………………………….…..….20
I.5.5 Grammar Presentation Methods……………………………...…..20
5.1. Deductive Approach……………………...…………………...……20
5.2.Inductive Approach…………………………………………………21
Conclusion …………………………………………………….....…..…22
Chapter II: Appropriateness and Communicative Competence in
EFL Teaching and Learning
Introduction ……………………………………………………….……25
II.1 The notion of Appropriateness……………………………….……24
II.1 Communicativeness as a Mythical Terminology………….…...……26
II.1 The Nature of Communication…………………………….....……26
II.2 The Concept of Communicative Competence…………………..…..27
4.1. Modalsof Communicative Competence…………...…………......…29
4.1.1.Hymes’ Modalof Communicative Competence………………...…29
4.1.2.Canale and Swain’s Models of Communicative Competence......…30
II.5.2.1The Grammatical Competence………………….…...………..…29
II.5.2.2 The Socio-Linguistic Competence……………………..……...…31
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II.5.2.3 The Discourse Competence…………………………….…...……31
II.5.2.4 The Strategic Competence……………………………..…..……31
4.1.3.Bachman’s model of Communicative Competence……..……....…32
4.2. The interrelation between communicative competence and actual
communication………………………………………………………....…33
5. Communicative Methods of Language Teaching……….……...........33
II.7.1 The Contextual approach……………………………………..…..34
II.7.2 TheCommunicative Approach………………………………….34
II.7.3 Characteristics of Communicative Methods…………….…..….35
I.5.6 Featuresof Communications……………………….……....….35
II.7.4.1 Communication is meaning-based……………………..……35
II.7.4.2 Communication is Conventional............................................36
II.7.4.3 Communication is Appropriate:………………………..……36
II.7.4.4 Communication is Interactional………………………….….36
II.7.4.5 Communication is Structured………………………………..36
I.5.7 Communicative language teaching……………………………….. 36
7.1. Definition of communicative language teaching……….………...…37
II.8 Pragmatics …………..……………………………………..…..…38
II.9 The Contribution of Context to the Meaning…………………....…39
II.10 History ofCulture Teaching…………………………..………..…39
10.1. Definition of culture …………………………………..…………..40
10.2. The relationship betweenculture and language………...…..……..41
10.3. The Main Goals for Teaching Culture………………….……...…..42
Conclusion…………………………………………………………….…43
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Chapter III: Correctness and Appropriateness in EFL
Teaching and Leaning
Introduction……..……………………………………..………….………45
1. Design and Methodology………………………..…………..………....45
2. Describingpupils’ questionnaire ………..………….……..…...………46
2.1 Section One: Pupils’ Background Information……………..…...…46
2.2 Section Two: studying grammar (correctness)…………....………..46
2.3 Section Three: the use of English (appropriateness)……..….…….47
3.The Administration of Pupils’ Questionnaire………………….…….47
4. Analysis ofPupils’ Questionnaire……………………………….…..…47
III.2.4.1 Section I:Background Information………………...……………47
III.2.4.2 Section II: Studying Grammar (correctness)…………….………50
III.2.4.3 Section III: the use ofEnglish (appropriateness)…………..……56
5.Description of Teachers’ Interview……………………...……..………60
5.1 Administration of the Interview……………………………….……60
5.2Findings of Teachers’ Interview………………….…………………61
6. Conclusions about the Study Findings……………….……………….62
Chapter IV: Pedagogical Implications
Introduction……………………………………………………...…..….64
1. Recommendations for EFL Teachers and learners………………….64
1.1. Communication Task Vs Learning Task…………………………64
1.2.Know what you are Doing…………………………………………..65
1.3.Processes are as Important as the Forms……………………………65
1.3.1.Information Gap …………………………………………..….……65
1.3.2. Choice.....…………………………………………………………..66
1.4.To Learn it, Do it………………………….…………………………66
2. Communicative Methodological Framework………………….…..….67
2.1 Pre-communicative Activities………………………………………67
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2.2 Communicative Activities……………………..……………………67
Conclusion…………………………………………………..…………..68
General Conclusion………………………………..……………………69
Appendices ……………………………………………..….….…..… 70
Appendix I: Pupils’ Questionnaire……………………….………..……70
Appendix II: Teacher’s Interview……………………….………………75
Bibliography……………………………………………….……………76
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IntroductionIn the last two decades, course book designers have proved great interest in the
field of foreign language teaching (FLT). When we speak about FLT, we mean the English
language. The eighty’s and the ninety’s have known the adoption of the communicative
approach in our schools. The latter has been confusingly used in Algeria. In that, it is not
very much based on communicative competence as much it is based on linguistic
competence. What we know about our language and what we do with our language. This
means that, it is not necessary for learners to know just correct English, but also how they
make good use of it in appropriate contexts. “Linguistic competence is what the native
speaker of a language acquires as a spontaneous mastery of the one’sabstract system of the
grammar rules which enables him to comprehend and produce well-formed
sentences.”(Chomsky,1965: 3).
So far, there is no disagreement about correctness in terms of grammar. Grammar
is one of the major components of language and is always the central part of it. It plays the
most important role in both the spoken and the written form of a language to mean that
producing correct grammatical sentences are of knowing the language itself. Besides the
sentence, it almost does not exist in our every day communication; we rather use utterances
in real and authentic contexts.
1. Statement of the Problem
On the basis of what has been said, we state that learners should make good use of
their both competencies. In other words, how English learners have to employ their
linguistic competence or correctness (grammar, syntax, vocabulary…etc) in appropriate
situation which develop communicative competence or appropriateness (real and authentic
life, contexts)? In other words, does owning a linguistic competence insure a successful
learning and teaching of English? Or, is it necessary to melt the linguistic competence
with the communicative one to guarantee a fruitful leaning-teaching process of the foreign
language?
2. Aim of the Study
This study aims at showing that producing and comprehending correct
grammatical sentences is not sufficient for learners to know how to use these forms in their
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appropriate contexts. Therefore, language is best understood and acquired in its appropriate
context, and that any attempt to prove, via teaching or whatever, that correctness is enough
for the knowing of a language is misleading but rather knowing a language is a
combination of both notions of correctness and appropriateness.
3. Hypothesis
It is clear that before providing anything about our topic, we should; as
researchers in the field of language teaching and learning, base our research on a
hypothesis that will guide us to elaborate our work. And thus, we hypothesize that if we
teach learners of English as a foreign language at the secondary school how to compose
and understand correct sentences along with how to use them appropriately to achieve
communicative goals, we will grantee native- like language communicators.
4. Means of Research
The methods used in this essay are survey-based ones. These methods are namely
a pupils’ questionnaire and a teachers’ interview. Both aim at collecting data which will
hopefully serve to confirm our hypothesis.
5. Structure of the Study
The present study is composed of four chapters. While the first chapter is devoted
to speak about grammar which equals correctness in language teaching, chapter two is
more concerned with the communication as the main aspect of appropriateness. The third
chapter which is more practical is devoted for the description and the analysis of pupils’
questionnaire and teachers’ interview as an attempt to confirm our hypothesis.Chapter
four presents some pedagogical implications for both teachers and learners. This extended
essay is ended by a conclusion which states clearly the importance of both correctness and
appropriateness in language teaching and learning.
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Chapter I
Correctness and Linguistic Competence in EFL
Teaching and Learning
Introduction
A central issue which was the focus of many linguists and theorists is “language”.
This linguistic phenomenon has always been the theme of countless debates. They have
tried to define language as a creative system or as an object that exists innately. This
chapter deals mainly with the importance of linguistic competence in knowing a language.
Before looking at what is meant by linguistic competence, competence is first to be
defined. The assumption is that once this basis is provided, constituents of linguistic
competence are to be mentioned.
The common core of this chapter is Correctness. The notion of correctness has been
an issue for linguists to define. We will try to trace back these different definitions by
mentioning two main views. The first view through which linguists associate correctness
with vocabulary and the second one through which they link it to grammar.
The history of grammar started with the notion of correctness. This chapter
provides many aspects of grammar as definitions and features that most linguists agreed
on. Besides, it deals with the role of grammar in English language classrooms and with the
different methods and current views used in grammar teaching.
1. What is Language?Language is many things. A system of communication, a medium for
thought a vehicle for literacy expression, a social institution, a matter for
political controversy, a catalyst for nation building.
(O’ Gray. et al.1996: 1)
This implies that all human beings normally speak at least one language. Language
is not restricted to a fixed set of topics but to a variety of ideas. It should enable people to
produce and understand new words, phrases, and sentences. Language also should do
something more than providing a package of ready-made messages to be exchanged among
people.
Ferdinand De Saussure defines language as:
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Language is both a social product of the faculty of speech and a collection of
necessary conventions that have been adopted by a social body to permit
individuals to exercise that faculty. (1957: 7)
Language for De Saussure is a self-contained whole and a principle of
classification. He means that language is something acquired and conventional. In other
words, language should not take first place but should be subordinated to the natural
instinct. That is to say, language as an apparatus was designed for speaking just as our legs
were designed for walking.
2. Competence as a Perfect Knowledge
Competence means, in many fields, the ability or mastery of something. Someone
who is competent in a given language is not the same as somebody who is competent in the
field of politics. Before knowing what is meant by competence we ought to have a look at
the origins of this word.
2.1. Background of Competence
The concept of competence was first introduced by the American linguist Noam
Chomsky in 1965. Before Chomsky, competence goes back to the Swiss linguist Ferdinand
De Saussure’s notions “Langue” and “Parole” to mean the same thing as “competence”
and “performance”. De Saussure makes a clear distinction between language as speech act
and language as a system by which people succeed in understanding or producing
utterances. According to Widdowson, De Saussure defines language “langue” as follows:
Langue is a collective body of knowledge, a kind of common reference,
manual copies of which were acquired by all members of a speech
community. (De Saussure, 1959, cited in Widdowson, 1996: 2)
This means that language (langue) is shared by all the members of a particular
speech community. It is an institutionalized conscious element because everyone shares it
with the rest of his community; it is possible for them to understand one another. Society
conveys the regularities of langue to the child so that he becomes able to function as a
member of his speech community. De Saussure defines langue in his book Cours de
Linguistique Générale as:
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La langue est l’ensemble des habitudes linguistique qui permettent à un
sujet de comprendre et de se faire comprendre.
(De Saussure, 1916, cited in Wilkins, 1972: 33)
The habits are essentially social, although every individual participates in them. In
contrast, there are elements of speech that are not shared by all the speech community and
those speech acts are distinct from “langue” and are termed “parole”. Widdowson
maintains that, “parole” is defined by De Saussure as: “Parole is the contingent executive
side of things, the relative superficial behavioral reflexes of knowledge.”(De Saussure,
1916, cited in Widdowson, 1996: 22). This means that “parole” is the particularities of the
individual’s actual speech acts. These acts are distinguished by some factors such as our
personality, our temperature, or our physical incapacities in our speech which are not part
of the language system.
2.2. Definition of Competence
A distinction between “langue” and “parole” has recently been made by the
American linguist, Noam Chomsky. He introduced two terms which are “competence”
(langue) and “performance” (parole). They are not exact equivalents, since Chomsky
would not accept that competence could be described in terms of collective consciousness.
According to Widdowson, Chomsky defines competence as:
The shared knowledge of the ideal speaker-listener set in completely
homogenous speech community. Such underling knowledge enables a user of a
language to produce and understand an infinite set of sentences and of a finite set
of rules”.(Chomsky, 1979, Cited in Widdowson1979, 43).
That is to say, in Chomsky’s sense and individual’s competence is defined by the
grammar, or set of rules, that is represented mentally and manifested by their
understanding of acceptable usage in a given linguistic situation. Thus, grammatical
competence refers to an innate knowledge of rules rather than knowledge of items or
relations. It is said to be innate because an individual is not supposed to be trained to
acquire it simply because it is an innate thing.
The following sentences are going to illustrate the internal structure of grammar
which enables an individual to distinguish between well formed sentences.
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Example (1):
I speak acceptable Chinese
I speak Chinese acceptably.
This would be regarded as acceptable by any native English speaker.
But:
I speak acceptably Chinese.
This would not probably be acceptable.
Example (2):
I speak quite acceptable Cantonese and some other Chinese dialects as well as
Japanese.
This might be regarded as alright.
2.3. The Concept of Linguistic Competence
For Stern (1986:12), linguistic competence is concerned with both form and
meaning. Form and meaning are one of the main essentials of studying a language. That is
to say, a focus must be put on the clear distinction between statements about the use to
which we put language (its meaning) and the actual shape which units of language have
and the relationship which exists between them (its form). In addition, it is obvious that the
function of linguistic forms is to convey meaning. Stern’s idea is that if the description of a
language makes any claim to be comprehensive, it must account for both the forms and the
meanings of language.
Stern (1986) includes these two aspects “form and meaning” in his
characterization of what it means to know a language; in which the language user knows
the rules of a language, and he can apply those rules without paying attention to them.
There is another linguist who shares the same view with Stern. In his turn, Ibid (1983)
regards that language forms are able to express linguistic, cognitive, and socio-cultural
meaning which can be intuitively grasped by native speakers.
Linguistic competence involves knowledge of spelling, pronunciation, vocabulary,
word formation, grammatical structure, sentence structure and linguistic semantics. We can
observe that a learner who can add prefixes correctly to “perfect”, “legal,” happy”,
”pleasing” and “audible” to make the negative equivalents is developing a competence in
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using word -formation rules correctly. Another case is that of a learner who can describe
recent events by using (have/had) and the past participle of the main verb is developing
grammatical competence in forming the present perfect tense. In these various ways, the
learner is acquiring linguistic competence in the foreign language. This linguistic
competence is of great importance as it is pointed out by Faerch. Et. al. (1984) who claim
that it is an integral part of communicative competence. For them, it is impossible to
conceive a person of being communicatively competent without being linguistically
competent.
The linguist Noam Chomsky (1965) claims that linguistic competence is something
innate and this is illustrated by a child’s acquisition of the language around him/her. It is
not the product of general intelligent or learning ability, but an innate, genetically
determined feature of human species. That is to say, human beings are predisposed to
knowledge. In this view, the new born infant’sbrain already contains a Universal
Grammar (UG) which forms the basis of competence in the particular language the child
goes on to speak. This linguistic competence is seen as modular. That is to say separate
from other mental abilities.
According to O’Gray, ET. al. (1996), speakers of language are able to produce and
understand an unlimited number of utterances, including those which are novel and
familiar. This ability which is often called linguistic competence constitutes the central
subject matter of linguistics. In investigating linguistic competence, linguists focus on the
mental system that allows human beings to form and interpret words and sentences of their
language.
2.4. Components of Linguistic Competence
For O’Gray, Et. al. (1996) phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax and
semantics are the components of linguistic competence.
2.4.1. Phonetics
Roach (2000) summarizes the main concerns of phonetics which is the scientific
study of speech sounds and how these sounds are used. It is concerned with all aspects of
the production, acoustics, and perception of speech in the languages of the world. The
starting point for almost any phonetic investigation is the identification of certain
landmarks of the vocal tract from which both consonants and vowels of the languages can
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be classified. The classificatory system can be used to describe the various types of speech
sounds and their dialects, as well as those aspects of pronunciation that are used
contrastively, that is, to signal differences of meaning. Phoneticians also analyze how
languages make use of pitch, duration, and loudness to communicate meaning. Phonetics is
also concerned with the way in which spoken communication is accomplished between
speakers and hearers. In other words, phonetics intervenes most directly with Phonology,
psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, and dialectology and also with syntax, semantics, and
pragmatics in modeling the prosodic aspects of speech. (Encyclopedia of Linguistics,1991:
833)
2.4.2. Phonology
Phonology comes from the Greek word, phōnē, "voice, sound" and lógos, "word,
speech, subject of discussion. It is the systematic use of sounds to encode meaning in any
spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use. (Wikipedia, March
2000).
There is a large number of speech sounds that human beings can produce and
perceive. According to Dobrovolslky and Katamba (1996), phonology is a component of
linguistic competence made up of the elements and principles that determine how a pattern
in a language sounds. In other words, phonology is the study of how sounds are organized
and used in natural languages
2.4.3. Morphology
One part of linguistic competence involves the ability to contrast and interpret
words. According to O'Gray, “Words can be contrasted and comprehended by the
application of quite general rules to basic words.” (1996:132).This means that, any speaker
of English who knows the meaning of nouns and the verbs derived from them, he/ she can
form other words such as “faxable” to mean things that can be faxed and fax-machine to
mean a tool that sends and receives faxes.
2.4.4. Syntax
Syntax is obviously the most important component of linguistic competence. It is
the study of how words are combined to form sentences. Therefore, it is the system of rules
and categories that underlies sentence formation in human language. O’Gray defines
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syntax as, “Syntax is the architecture of grammatical sentences that focuses on the manner
in which words are combined to form various types of sentences” (1996: 181). O’Gray
means that words are of various categories by which English speakers can form many
types of sentences. The most common categories of words are found in language as well as
simple rules to govern the organization of these categories into larger structural units. He
called them “syntactic categories” which are nouns (N), verb (V), adjective (A), and
preposition (P). For O'Gray, these categories play a very important role in sentence
formation.
2.4.5. Semantics
Semantics is also considered as a part of linguistic competence. It is the study of
meaning in human language. Dobrovolsky’s idea(1996), by virtue of their meaning, words
and phrases are able to enter into a variety of semantic relations with other words and
phrases in the language. Synonyms and antonyms are the best example to illustrate the
semantic relations in a language. On one hand, synonyms are words or expressions that
have the same meanings in some or all contexts. The following table gives some synonyms
in English:
The words Synonyms
Youth
Begin
Remember
Purchase
Vacation
Big
adolescent
start
recall
buy
holiday
large
Table 1: Some Synonyms in English
On the other hand, antonyms are words or phrases that are opposites in meaning.
The following table provides some antonyms in English
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Words Antonyms
Dark
Boy
Hot
Up
In
Come
Light
Girl
Cold
Down
Out
Go
Table 2: Some Antonyms in English
The following table sums up the components of linguistic competence with its
meaning.
Component Meaning
Phonetics
Phonology
Morphology
Syntax
Semantics
The articulation and perception of speech sounds.
The patterning of speech sound.
Word formation.
Sentence formation.
The interpretation of words and sentences.
Table3: Components of Linguistic Competence
3. Correctness Equals Grammar
Correctness in language teaching and learning means focusing on grammar.
Therefore, grammar needs to be looked at as the only way to cover the notion of
correctness. The term grammar is used to refer to the subconscious linguistic system of a
particular type. Grammar makes possible the production and comprehension of a
potentionally unlimited number of utterances. No language can exist without grammar and
no one can use a language without having knowledge of its grammar. Grammar therefore
is the common core of any language.
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3.1. History of Grammar
The English grammar suffered badly at the hands of the grammarians over the
centuries. Many people have left school with the impression that English grammar is a
dull, boring, pointless subject, simply, because it was presented to them in a dull, boring,
and pointless way. They might even say that they didn’t know any grammar, or as already
noted that they didn’t know the correct grammar.
The study of “Grammar” began in the late 16th century B.C. The Greeks and later
the Romans approached the study of grammar through philosophy. The first grammar book
was written in the Greeks time around 100 BC by Dionysius Thorax. Grammar also had a
central place in Roman Education (Williams, 2005). The Romans and the Greeks believed
that knowledge of grammar was necessary to correct language use. People were
contemptuous of English grammar just because there was the influence of Latin. For years
later, the Latin language ruled the grammar- teaching world.
People had to know Latin to be accepted in an educated society, and their
knowledge of grammar was based on how that language works. Here is an example of a
verb that millions of children acquire on their learning of Latin:
Latin verb English verb
Amo
Amas
Amat
Ammmus
Amatis
Amant
I love
You love
He/she loves
We love
You love
They love
Table 4: An Example of a Latin Verb
In the eighteenth century, the most influential book on the teaching of English
grammar more thanany other was Bishop Robert Lowth’s A Short Introduction to English
Grammar (1760). In the 1760’s, grammarians such as Robert Lowth and Lindy Murray
laid down rules which they thought should govern correct grammatical usage. Rules were
first formulated about matters as saying (I shall) rather than (I will). Preferring (it is I) than
(it is me), avoiding “double negation” (I do not have no interest in the matter), never
23
ending sentence with a preposition (that is the man I am talking to) and never splitting an
infinitive (I want to really try).
The early grammars were followed by others, and the tradition of correct usage
came to be built up, which was then thought in public schools during the nineteenth
century and later in all schools. Many of the schools’children learned how to label the
different parts of speech (nouns, verbs, prepositions, conjunctions ...). Besides, they
learned about correct usage, as viewed by educated society and tried to follow it in their
own speech and writing.
3.2. Definitions of Grammar
The term “Grammar” has been used differently by various scholars to refer to
different fields of language study. Its origin is a Greek word “Grammatiké” or
“Grammatiké-techré” which means “The art of writing” (Palmer, 1990: 27). The Oxford
Advances Learners’ Dictionary defines “Grammar” as: “Grammar is the rules in a
language for changing the form of words and joining them into sentences.” (2000: 586)
The linguists Southerland and Katamba (1996: 9) use the term Grammar to refer to
a subconscious linguistic system of a particular type. “Grammar consists of several
components (phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics) and grammar
makes possible the production and comprehension of a potentially unlimited number of
utterances”. They claim that grammar has become the focus of linguistic analysis and the
grammatical knowledge needed to use and understand language.
According to Thornburg, “Grammar is conventionally the study of syntax and
morphology.” (1992:2). On the one hand, he refers to syntax as the grammar of sentences
which studies the way sentence are formed. That is to say, it deals with the relationships of
words in sentences and the way these words are put together to form sentences. On the
other hand, morphology is the grammar of words that is concerned with their form. It
shows the changes in words forms resulting either from inflections (such as plurality, verb,
tense …etc.), or from derivations such as prefixes or suffixes.
3.3. Features of Grammar
The fact is that all languages have grammar. In spite of all differences that exist
between all languages in the world, they have characteristics and features that unite them.
That is to say, they are in way or another similar in some features.
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3.3.1. Generality: All languages Have Grammar
One of the most fundamental claims of modern linguists is that all languages
have grammar. They stated that:
Since all languages are spoken, they have phonetics and phonological system; since they all
have words and sentences, they also must have morphology and syntax, and since these
words and sentences have systematic meanings, there must be semantic principles as well;
this is how grammar is made up.(O’Gary and Dobrovosky, 1996: 5)
The above idea means that the main constituents of any language are phonetics,
phonological systems, morphology, syntax and semantic principles. These simply
formulate the grammar systems. A given example which illustrates their idea is that of
unfamiliar languages. Sometimes, it appears to people that these languages have no
grammar simply because their grammatical systems are different from those of better-
known languages. For instance, in Walbiri language (an aboriginal language of Australia)
ordering of words is so free compared to the English language. The English sentence “The
two dogs now see several kangaroos” can be translated in five possibilities in the Walbiri
language:
a) Dogs two now see kangaroos several.
b) See now two kangaroos several.
c) Kangaroo several now dogs two see.
d) Kangaroos several now see dogs two.
Therefore, Walbiri language has a grammar just like the English language but they
are unlike in certain respects. This important point is applicable to all differences among
languages, although no two languages have exactly the same grammar. Thus, there is no
language without a grammar.
3.3.2 Equality: All Grammars are Equal
Whenever there is more than one variety of a particular language, questions are to
be asked as to whether one is somehow better or correct than another or even it makes no
sense to say that one variety of English is better than another or to say that grammar of this
language is better (or worse) than the grammar of that language.
25
Katamba (1996) argues that all languages and all varieties of a particular language
have a grammar that enables their speakers to express any idea and proposition that the
human mind can produce considering the criterion that all varieties of language are equal,
and they have a specific goal which is communication. In his mind, the aim here is not to
rank language into scales of superiority or inferiority but to seek to understand the nature
of the grammatical systems that allow people to speak, and understand an unlimited range
of thoughts and expressed ideas.
3.3.3. Universality: Grammars are Alike in Basic Ways
There are many differences among languages in terms of their sound patterns,
vocabularies, and word orders, but this does not mean that there are no limits on the type of
grammars that human beings can use. Southerland (1996) suggests that there are important
grammatical principles and tendencies shared by all human languages. One of those
grammatical principles involves the manner in which sentences are negated. One can
expect the equivalent of English ‘not’ to occur in different positions within the sentences in
different languages. For instance, ‘not’ occurs in four different positions within the
sentence.
a) Not Pat is here.
b) Pat not is here.
c) Pat is not here.
d) Pat is here not.
Obviously, the first and fourth positions are very rare. Thus, they are impossible
in certain ways following the rule which is the ability to form negative elements such as
‘not’; it either immediately precedes or immediately follows the verb.
Another grammatical principle which Southerland (1996) has stated is the
ordering of elements in a sentence. These three elements “like-Australians–cricket” have
six possibilities for their order:
a) Australians like cricket.
b) Australians cricket like
c) Like Australians cricket.
d) Like cricket Australians.
e) Cricket like Australians.
f) Cricket Australians like.
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It seems that the majority of the world’s languages adopt one of the first three
orders to be basic statements. The last three orders are seldom to be adopted as basic
statements. This is due to some preferences that limit variation among languages. These
two examples are to show that some grammatical categories and principles are universal.
Thus, a set of grammars learned and used by human beings is limited in significant ways.
3.3.4. Taciteness
The use of language to communicate needs grammar. It requires that all speakers of
a language must have knowledge of its grammar. O’Gray views that, “The grammatical
knowledge differs from knowledge of arithmetic, road safety, and other subjects that are
taught at home or in school.” (1996: 7).This means that grammatical knowledge is
acquired without the help of instruction. Thus, it is subconsciously acquired when one is
still a child. O'Gray (1996: 7) illustrates the above expressed idea by referring to
pronunciation as a part of grammar. For example, pronunciation of the past tense ending as
‘ed’ in the following words “hunted, stippled, and buzzed” is a matter of childhood’s
acquisition of the language. They are pronounced successively /id/ in hunted, /t/ in
stippled, and /d/ in buzzed. This correct pronunciation is due to the acquired grammatical
subsystem that regulates this aspect of speech when a native speaker of English was a
child. He makes distinctions between the pronunciations of these three words automatically
because it exists subconsciously in his mind.
3.3.5. Changeability: Grammars Change Over Time
Linguists agreed that it is a common fact that the grammars of all languages change
over time. The linguist Dobrovolsley (1996) claims that grammars of all languages are
constantly changing. Some of these changes are to be minor and their occurrences happen
very quickly. He gives the example of English vocabulary arguing that there are new
vocabulary items which have been added to English language that did not exist in Old
English. For instance, spin doctor, yobbocracy, able-bodism, and channel, internet, acid,
house, and anticrime….etc. Dobrovolsley views that other changes have a dramatic effect
on the form of the language. For example, the formation of negative structures in English
has undergone this type of change. Prior to 1200, the negative constructions of English
were formed by placing ‘ne’ before the verb and ‘not’ after it. The following examples
illustrate the fact that grammar changes over time:
27
a) Ic ne seye not (I don’t say).
b) He ne spekets (I do not speak).
4. The Place of Grammar in Language Teaching
Traditionally the language teacher of English has taken the grammarian’s
representation of language as his principal reference and it has been generally assumed that
the content of language teaching is to be drawn from the grammatical description of the
language to be taught. The assumption has been that teaching a language means essentially
the teaching of its underlying system, and since it is precisely this that the grammarians set
out to describe. It would seem obvious that it is a grammatical description which should
serve as the source of what might be called the “subject matter” of a language course. This
does not mean that the grammar is to be taught directly, or that the way it is presented
should conform to any particular model of description. Subject matter in this, as in any
other subject, has to be modified in accordance with pedagogic requirements. But this does
not alter the fact that the subject matter of language teaching can generally speaking be
ultimately traced back to a grammatical source; the language teacher deals with items
provided by a grammar. It is for this reason that Saporta, for example, is able to refer to
language teaching materials as a whole as “pedagogic grammar.” (Saport1967, cited in
Widdowson, 1973: 9). This being the case, it is clearly of importance to establish the
principles upon which a grammatical description is based. What we want to know here is
why to teach grammar of a language and what are the methods of teaching grammar.
4.1. Why to Teach Grammar?
Grammar gains its prominence in the field of language teaching mainly in teaching
English as a foreign language (EFL) and as a second language (ESL). Thus, without a good
knowledge of grammar, the development of learners’ language will be constrained or
limited. In grammar teaching, Widodo (2006) argues that learners are taught rules of
language that are known as sentence patterns. The teaching of grammar should encompass
language structure, meaning and use. Ur (1999) agrees with Widodo when he claims that
the rules of a language enable the learners’ to be communicatively competent or good users
of the language. In the case of the learners, grammatical rules enable them to know and
apply how such sentence patterns should be put together. Teaching of grammar should also
ultimately center attention on the way grammatical items and sentence patterns are
28
correctly used. In Ur’s words:“Teaching correctness through language structure and
sentence patterns leads the learners to develop the ability to use language.” (cited in
Widodo,2006: 122)
Another reason has been stated for the teaching of grammar. Corder (1988) argues
that grammar is thought to provide the basis for language skills: listening, speaking,
reading, and writing. For the case of listening and speaking, grammar plays a crucial role
in grasping and expressing spoken language since learning grammar is necessary to acquire
the ability to produce grammatically acceptable utterances in the language. In the context
of writing, grammar permits the learners to put their ideas into intelligible sentences so that
they communicate in a written form. In reading, grammar enables learners to comprehend
sentence interrelationships in a passage (cited in Widodo, 2006:122). At last in the case of
vocabulary, grammar enables learners to see how some lexical items should be combined
into good sentences so that meaningful sentences can be formed. Corder’s idea is met
again in what Long and Richards (1987, cited in Widodo, 2006:122)conclude, “It can not
be ignored that grammar plays a central role in the four language skills and vocabulary to
establish communicative tasks”. Harmer (2001) insists on the same fact when he said that
“if grammar rules are broken or misused, the communicative objectives of using the
language will not be reached”. (Cited in widodo, 2006: 123)
In spite of the above mentioned reasons, the history of language teaching has
witnessed claims for and against the teaching of grammar. Grammar has been viewed as
important for some methods and approaches and of less importance for some others.
4.2. Approaches to Teaching Grammar
In the last century, teaching grammar has been regarded as crucial to the ability to
use a language. The designers of language teaching methods have been preoccupied with
two basic design decisions concerning grammar:
Should the rules of grammar be made explicit? Or should the grammar rules be taught
to learners?
Should the method adhere to a grammar syllabus?
The various ways to answer these questions is through distinguishing the different
methods procedures for teaching grammar. What follows highlights some approaches and
procedures to teaching grammar in an EFL / ESL context.
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4.2.1. Grammar-Translation Approach
Grammar-Translation Approach grew up in the early to mid-nineteenth
century. It is also called “The Prussian Methods” as it was associated with the Prussian
school in the US (Johnson, 2001). It was first used to teach classical languages, Greek and
Latin, then generalized to teaching modern languages (Al Mutawa and Kailani, 1989). As
its name suggests, it took grammar as the starting point for instruction. Courses followed a
grammar syllabus and lessons began with an out of the mother tongue (Thornbury, 1999).
4.2.2. Direct Approach
It emerged in the mid–to-late nineteenth century as a reaction against the way that
grammar –translation focused exclusively on the written language. Claiming to be a
natural method, the direct approach gives priority to oral skills while following a syllabus
of grammar structures as it rejected explicit grammar teaching. Learners picked up
grammar in much the same way as children picked up the grammar of their mother tongue
(Thornbury, 1999). This idea is also expressed by Framke when he stated, “A language can
be best taught by using it actively in the classroom rather than using analytical procedures
that focus onexplanation of grammar rules.”(1884,cited in Richards and Rodgers,1986: 9)
4.2.3. Audio-Lingual Approach
It is a North American invention which stayed faithful to the direct method belief in
the primary of the speech but more strictly rejected grammar. Teaching audio-lingualism is
derived from behaviorist psychology which considered language as a form of behavior
through correct formation. Habit information is a process in which rules application plays
no part. The audio-lingual syllabus consisted of a graded list of sentence patterns which
were grammatical in origin. These patterns formed the basis of pattern-practice drills.
(Thornbury, 1999)
4.3. Procedures for Teaching Grammar
Teaching grammar to EFL learners is very challenging. Students may become good
at grammar; however, when told to write and speak, they often make grammatical
mistakes. When facing this problem, particularly with adult learners, it is useful to be
aware that there are two kinds of knowledge necessary to gain proficiency in a second
30
language. These are known as explicit (conscious learning) and implicit (subconscious
acquisition) knowledge (Klein, 1986 cited in Widodo, 2006: 125).
4.3.1. Explicit Knowledge
According to Ellis (2004, in Widodo 2006), explicit knowledge deals with language
and the uses to which language can be put. This knowledge facilitates the input and
development of implicit language, and it is useful to monitor language output. In short, it is
the conscious knowledge of grammatical rules learned through formal classroom
instruction. In this respect, (Brown, 2000, in Widodo 2006) sees that a person with explicit
knowledge knows about language and the ability to articulate those facts in someway. For
example, John knows every rule about the present tense, but he frequently makes mistakes
in speaking and writing. However, such knowledge is easy for him while having time to
think of the rule and apply it (that is, in the context of a grammar exercise or a writing
assignment). Thus, on the basis of John’s case, explicit knowledge is learnable; for
example, when grammatical items are given to learners, they learn the items first in a
controlled learning process. That is, the speaker is concerned with the correctness of
her/his speech/written production; and s/he knows the correct rules (Krashen, 1987, in
Widodo, 2006).
4.3.2. Implicit Knowledge
Implicit knowledge is unconscious, internalized knowledge of language that is
easily accessed during spontaneous language tasks, written or spoken (Brown, 2000). It
means that a person applies a certain grammatical rule in the same way as a child who
acquires her/his first language (for example, mother tongue). According to Brown (2000),
the child implicitly learns aspects of language (for example, phonological, syntactical,
semantic, pragmatic rules for language), but does not have access to an explanation of
those rules explicitly. As an example, Jim speaks and writes English with good use of
present tense, although he has no idea about the grammatical rule behind it. To sum up,
implicit knowledge is acquired through a sub-conscious learning process. This is the case
of native speakers of a certain language who always know (consciously) the rules of their
language (Krashen, 1987).
May explicit grammar knowledge become implicit knowledge in the context of
EFL learners?” In response to this question, we can say that explicit knowledge can have
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some impact on implicit knowledge. This impact becomes internalized through practice or
frequent exposure to the target language similar to the acquisition of language skills.
5. Grammar Presentation Methods
Broadly speaking, in teaching grammar in foreign language classes there are two
approaches that can be applied: deductive and inductive.
5.1. Deductive Method
A deductive approach is derived from the notion that deductive reasoning works
from the general to the specific. In this case, rules, principles, concepts, or theories are
presented first, and then their applications are treated. Therefore, when we use deduction,
we think from general to specific principles. In such approach, grammar rules are explicitly
presented to students and followed by practice applying the rule. This approach has been
the bread and butter of language teaching around the world and still enjoys a monopoly in
many course books and self-study grammar books (Fortune, 1992). The deductive
approach maintains that a teacher teaches grammar by presenting grammatical rules, and
then examples of sentences are presented. Once learners understand rules, they are told to
apply the rules given to various examples of sentences.
In the case of the application of the deductive approach, Michael Swan (2007: 1)
outlines some guidelines for when the rule is presented. Among them we find:
1. The rules should be true;
2. The rules should show clearly what limits are on the use of a given form;
3. The rules need to be clear;
4. The rules ought to be simple;
5. The rules need to make use of concepts already familiar to the learners; and
6. The rules ought to be relevant.
To explain these guidelines, we can say that when the rules are presented in the
deductive approach, the presentation should be illustrated with examples, short, real, clear
and involves students’ comprehension and allows learners to have a chance to personalize
the rule.
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5.2. Inductive Method
An inductive approach comes from inductive reasoning stating that a reasoning
progression proceeds from particulars (that is, observations, measurements, or data) to
generalities (for example, rules, laws, concepts or theories) (Felder & Henriques,1995, in
Widodo , 2006). In short, when we use induction, we observe a number of specific
instances and from them we infer a general principle or concept. The inductive approach
can also be called rule-discovery learning. It suggests that a teacher teaches grammar
starting with presenting some examples of sentences. In this sense, learners understand
grammatical rules from the examples. Eisenstein (1987) maintains that the inductive
approach tries to utilize the very strong reward value of bringing order, clarity and
meaning to experiences. In other words, this approach attempts to highlight grammatical
rules implicitly which the learners are encouraged to conclude through the examples given
by the teacher.
Deductive and inductive approaches relate to language learning and acquisition in
FL theory. Firstly, the deductive approach is related to the conscious learning process in
which this approach tries to place a great emphasis on presentation of explicit rules
(Krashen, 2002). Such an approach is applied for the reason that it is an efficient and
elegant way to organize and present the rule that is already understood. Through the
deductive approach, a teacher tries to teach the rule explicitly to the learners so that they
are ready to cope with exercises given.
Secondly, the inductive approach relates to subconscious learning processes similar
to the concept of language acquisition. According to this approach, learners learn the
system of language (for example, grammar or sentence rules) in the same way as children
acquire their first or second language. In this regard, meaningful interaction in the target
language (that is, natural communication) is more important than the form of the language.
Most importantly, utterances are easily understood. In other words, when the inductive
approach is applied, the learners learn the rule unconsciously.
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ConclusionTo sum up, Grammar teaching has dominated in English language teaching for
the entire forty-some years. As we have seen previously, it has been developed
considerably in its methods and materials.
Further, grammar is thought to furnish the basis for a set of language skills: listening,
speaking, reading and writing. In listening and speaking, grammar plays a crucial part in
grasping and expressing spoken language (e.g. expressions) since learning the grammar of
a language is considered necessary to acquire the capability of producing grammatically
acceptable utterances in the language (Corder, 1988; Widodo, 2006).That is to say,
grammar helps an individual to form linguistic competence which enables him to produce
unlimited sentences. In other words, by learning grammar students can express meanings
in the form of phrases, clauses and sentences.
The old common notion of teaching grammar as a matter of teaching "rules" has
given way to a recognition that grammar is, as Pennington says, "nothing more or less than
the organizing principles of a linguistic or (broader) communicational system, without
which, there is no system" (2002: 78). The teaching of grammar means teaching how
English works through helping students to understand grammar concepts. In other words, it
is the organizing principles of a linguistic communicational system. However, we would
maintain that for EFL and ESL teachers and students, grammar is never considered as the
margin of the language.
Fotos says, "It is time to take the position that a combination of grammar
instruction and the use of communicative activities provide an optimum situation for
effective L2 learning" (2005: 668). That is to say, grammar instruction is much more
effective when it is situated in a meaningful context, embedded in authentic discourse, and
motivated by getting learners to achieve a goal or complete an interesting task. In the
second chapter, we will see more of how language in general and grammar in particular is
developed within communication.
34
Chapter II : Appropriateness and Communicative Competence
In EFL Teaching and Learning
IntroductionIt can be argued that the abstract structures of knowledge–this purely linguistic
competence–would remain internalized in the mind and never see in the light of
day. We would spend our lives buried in thought in paralysis of cognition. Since
this ability is only activated by some communicative purpose or other, we can
reasonably call this more comprehensibly concept communicative competence.
(Widdowson, 1783: 28)
Starting from Widdowson’s saying, this chapter presents in brief the
appropriateness in communicative language teaching which is started in the late 1960s.
This high demand to take into consideration that language equals communication led by
many linguists such as dell Hymes (1973), Widdowson, Canale and Swain (1981),
Batchman (1990), and Savignon (1991)and many others who emphasis that communicative
appropriateness is principally the basis of appropriateness in language.
Several important models of communicative competence are to be given. Recent
theoretical and empirical research on communicative competence is largely based on three
models of communicative competence: the model of Hymes, the model of Canale and
Swain, and the model of Bachman.
The focal point concerns the approach of teaching language as communication
without neglecting the importance of culture in foreign language teaching. These methods
are mainly the contextual approach, the situational approach the communicative approach
and communicative language teaching approach. These approaches are mainly based on
the communication how to achieve communicative goals.
The idea that foreign language teaching has a cultural dimension is not a new one.
Throughout the history of language teaching it has been possible to distinguish the
different goals that culture may play in teaching language. Language and culture are
inseparable. The way how the two have been linked has depended on the general goals of
foreign language education which is principally based on achieving appropriateness
(communicative competence).
35
1. Notion of Appropriateness
The concept of appropriateness was first introduced by the sociolinguist Dell
Hymes in the late 1960’s; Hymes introduced this notion in his description of
communicative competence. Appropriateness is concerned with the relationship of
language and behaviour to context. Its importance is clear if we consider its opposite,
inappropriateness something might be inappropriate to a particular relationship such as
calling a police officer “darkling”,or to a particular type of text such as using slang or
taboo words in a formal letter; or to a particular situation such as answering a mobile
phone call during a funeral, or generally inappropriate to a particular culture such as not
showing deference to the elderly.
Appropriateness concerns conformity to social conventions. Perhaps this is easy to
be seen in non-verbal communication. An example to illustrate this is to take the issue of
appropriate dress for women moving between western and Islamic cultures. One point of
view is that maintaining the norms of one society is inappropriate in the other thus;
European women visiting the Gulf States are advised to wear long sleeves and long shirts
to avoid giving offence. Muslim women, visiting or living in the west, may feel under
pressure to stop wearing their heads. Very often this may be a matter for individual
decision making, but there are occasions when it spills over into the public domain and a
society seeks to impose its norms. People feel very strongly about such issues and there are
arguments from both sides. Important factors are the degree to which some values are
perceived to be absolute rather than specific culture, for instance, religious freedom,
female modesty and women’s rights, the degree to which a society should respect the
ethnic difference among its members; and the degree to which visitors should conform to
the etiquettes of their hosts.
Such issues are easier to be seen in non-verbal behaviour and in language use.
Should learners of a language necessarily adopt the way in which it is used? Can Japanese
speakers, for example, maintain the differential politeness of their own culture, even when
speaking English? Should Arabic speakers drop all reference to god in their English,
making it inappropriate for example to say “if God willing” in an answer to an enquiry
about weather or not something is likely to happen. Such culture clashes can occur, even
between speakers of the same language. Many speakers of British English find phrases
used in US service encounters false, for example“have a nice day” and“your call matters
36
to us”, whereas many speakers of American English find the language if it is used in such
encounters in Britain rude and unfriendly.
For applied linguists there is no avoiding for such issues. Cook states:
The study of language must be concerned with who imposes upon whom,
and with the limits of social coercion and dissent. Many activities, foe
example, schooling, workplace communication, language therapy, language
testing, and language planning, are essentially concerned with negotiating
the parameters of difference and conformity. (2003: 45)
Cook means that language creates our activities and allows us to communicate with
others. In the modern world, where people from different cultures come into contact have
to share the same space.
2. Communicativeness as a Mythical Terminology
“Communicativeness” is a widely used word, it is considered as a very vague
notion since it is not clearly understood. Ellis (1982) and Johnson (1996) claim that this
concept is not really well clarified and it should be explained. In their minds, they linked it
to communicative competence in language teaching. Allwright (1979) has clearly and
briefly expressed the need for finding clarifications for communicativeness, “Are we
teaching a language for communication? Or, are we teaching communication via
language?”(167)
3. The Nature of Communication
Any social human has more or less communicative needs and from time to
time wants to satisfy these needs, thus, there is a process of exchanging information by
using verbal and non- verbal symbols. Undoubtedly, the purposes of teaching from one to
another might be so different, but they attempt to achieve a specific result and to meet their
needs at last. Harmer (1991: 46- 47) lists some good reasons that either speakers and
writers, or listeners and readers want to engage in communication:
For speakers and writers, they want to:
a) Say something instead of keeping silent.
b) Have some communicative purposes to gain some effects.
37
c) Select appropriate language from their infinite language state.
For listeners and readers, they want to:
a) Have desire to listen to something.
b) Are interested in ideas that speakers/writers are conveying, which might attain some
effect that speakers/writers are expecting.
c) Process a variety of language to understand what speakers/writers convey.
In considering the nature of communication, Canale (1983) maintains,“information
could consist of something conceptual, something social and something cultural and
effective or evensomething psychological.” (4). In other words, not all people who engage
in communication have similar backgrounds, knowledge, experiences and personalities…
etc. Therefore, people can not predict authentic communication, but there will be gaps.
4. The Concept of Communicative Competence
The term “communicative competence” is comprised of two words, the
combination of which means “competence to communicate”.Hymes (1972) defines
communicative competence not only as inherent grammatical competence but also as the
ability to use grammatical competence in a variety of communicative situations. Here he
means that during communication? People are almost concerned with the use of grammar
rules which are inherited in meaningful context.
During the 1970s and 1980s many applied linguists gave their valuable contribution
to further development of the concept of communicative competence. Just few of them will
be mentioned, namely those whose empirical works seem to have had the most important
impact on the theory of communicative competence.
In attempt to clarify the concept of communicative competence, Widdowson
(1983) defines it in terms of knowledge of linguistic and sociolinguistic conventions. His
understanding to this notion is “Communicative capacity instead of communicative
competence… Communicative capacity is the ability to use knowledge as a means of
creating meaning in a language.”(Widdowson, 1983: 27). According to him, ability is not a
component of competence simply because it can not turn into competence, but he means
that it remains as a dynamic power of a continuous creativity.
Having defined the notion of communicative competence, Canale and Swain
(1980) understand communicative competence as synthesis of an underling system of
knowledge and skills needed for communication. In their concept of communicative
38
competence, knowledge refers to the conscious and unconscious knowledge of an
individual about language and about other aspects of language use. For them, there are
three types of knowledge: knowledge of grammatical principle, knowledge of how to use
language in social contexts in order to fulfill communicative functions and knowledge of
how to combine utterances and communicative functions. In addition, their concept of skill
refers to how an individual can use the knowledge in actual communication.
Unlike Hymes (1972), Canale and Swain (1980) or even Widdowson (1983),
Savigron (1972) put much greater emphasis on the aspect of “ability” in her concept of
communicative competence. She describes communicative competence as:
The ability to function in truly communicative setting. That is; in a dynamic
exchange in which linguistic competence must adapt itself to the total
informational input, both linguistic and paralinguistic, of one or more interlocutors.
(Cited in Djigunovie, 2007: 3)
According to her, and many other theoreticians Shehar (1995), Bachman (1998),
and Palmer (1996)…etc, the nature of communicative competence is not static but
dynamic. It is more interpersonal then intrapersonal and relative rather than absolute. In
her opinion, competence can be observed, developed, maintained and evaluated only
through communication (the actual use). Like many theoreticians in the field of language
learning and teaching (e.g. Stern, 1986), Savignon relates communicative competence with
language proficiency.
For similar reasons, Bachman (1990) suggests using the term communicative
language ability. This term combines in itself the meanings of both language proficiency
and communicative competence. Communicative language ability is a concept comprised
of knowledge or competence and capacity or appropriate use of knowledge in contextual
communicative language use. Bachman gives a big attention to the aspect of language
use. That is to say; the way language is used to achieve particular communicative goals in
specific contexts.
4.1. Modals of Communicative Competence
Linguists suggest that there are three modals of communicative competence and
they are the most common ones. These models are established to demonstrate a
developmental procedure and the framework of communicative competence by
introducing three versions of it.
39
Hymes was the first to use the term “communicative competence” to contrast with
Chomsky’s ideal competence. In Canale and Swain’s framework, it includes socio-
cultural rules of use in the sociolinguistic component to highlight the importance of
context. And Bachman’s model deepens and extends the subdivisions of communicative
competence. The competence as a concept solves the problem of inadequacy of linguistic
competence, which has great influences on recent developments in language teaching.
4.1.1.Hymes’ Modal of Communicative Competence
In order to understand Hymes’ modalof communicative competence, we have
to recall back Chomsky’s’ use of “competence” that Hymes reactsto. In Chomsky’s
theory, his primary concerns were the “Ideal speaker-listener, the homogeneous speech
community, and perfect language knowledge.”(Harris,1999: 16). Hornberger (1989)
claims that Chomsky’s definition was limited to the knowledge of grammar, and
performance, was categorized into the other kind of knowledge of when, where, how, and
with whom, which in fact was not satisfactory. Therefore, competence was just related
to the production of grammatical sentences with no regard for their appropriateness.
In the publication of Gumperz and Hymes’ “The Ethnography of
Communication” in 1964, Hymes had shown his focus on the communicative
competence which gives importance to appropriateness in language use. Hymes proposed
a model which included both use of grammar and rules of use, which he generalized into
four questions as the framework of communicative competence, as follows:
a) Whether (and what degree) something is formally possible.
b) Whether (and what degree) something is fusible.
c) Whether (and what degree) something is appropriate.
d) Whether (and what degree) something is done .( Hymes, 1972: 284)
These four sectors consider the individual’s linguistic system, the psycholinguistic
capacity of the individual, the nature of the communication, and possibility, feasibility, and
appropriateness respectively. Hymes provides a good starting point for the development of
communicative competence and gradually it becomes the aim of language learning and
teaching.
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4.1.2. Canale and Swain’s Model of Communicative Competence
Canale and swain’s (1980) version of communicative competence is composed of
grammatical competence, socio-linguistic competence, and communication strategies
(strategic competence). Later on, Canale (1983) added another one which he calls
discourse competence.
According to Hornberger’s(1989) idea, Canale and Swain’s communicative
competence includes socio-cultural rules of use in the socio-linguistic component to
highlight the importance of context, but in fact, they seem to emphasis more on Hymes’
appropriateness sectors. Moreover, they limit the conception of appropriateness to the
context, but somehow ignore the form (grammatical rules) in order to achieve the
communicative function.
Canale and Swain’s version of communicative competence relates more with the
communicative approach application in language teaching. They see that acquisition of
socio-linguistic skills is a counter part of the focus on the pedagogical application in
communicative language teaching. They have claimed that communicative approach in
language teaching must integrate the two types that are mentioned before: grammatical and
communicative knowledge.
4.1.2.1. Grammatical Competence
Grammatical competence concerns the mastery of second language (L2)
phonological and lexico-grammatical rules of sentence information, that is to say; being
able to express and interpret literal meaning or utterances (acquisition of pronunciation,
vocabulary, word and sentence meaning, construction of grammatical sentences, correct
spelling…etc).
4.1.2.2. The Socio-Linguistic Competence
Socio-linguistic competence concerns the mastery of socio-cultural rules of
appropriate to of L2, that is to say; how utterances are produced and understood in
different socio-linguistic contexts (understanding of speech act conventions, awareness of
norms of stylistic appropriateness, the use of language to signal social relationships…etc).
That is to say, it refers to learning of how the context including norms, cultural values, and
other social–cultural conventions contribute to the development of communicative
competence.
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4.1.2.3. Discourse Competence
It concerns the mastery of rules concerning cohesion and coherence of various
kinds of discourse in L2 (use of appropriate pronouns, synonyms, conjunctions,
substitution, repetition, marking of continuity, topic-comment sequence …etc).In other
words, it is the knowledge of rules which regards the grammatical links (cohesion) and the
appropriate combination of communicative functions (coherence) of various types of
discourse.
4.1.2.4. Strategic Competence
It concerns the mastery of verbal and non-verbal communication strategies in L2.
These strategies are used when attempting to compensate for deficiencies in grammatical
and socio- linguistic competence or to enhance the effectiveness of communication
(paraphrasing, how to address the others when and certain of their relative social status,
slow speech for topical effect …etc.
As it is clear from the way their framework is described, their main intentions were
to discus the kind of knowledge and skills an L2 learner needs to be taught and to develop
the theoretical basis for a communicative approach in foreign language teaching based on
the understanding of the nature of human communication. Their framework indicates that
the rules that an L2 learner must learn to be communicatively competent in the use of the
target language are not limited to systematic rules of grammar only but also applied to all
aspects of language.
Since Canale and Swain’s (1980) framework of communicative competence was
put in detail, there have been numerous studies that have analyzed it more
comprehensively. Among those studies Bachman and Palmer (1982), Kasper and Rose
(2002), O’Malley and Chamot (1990), Skehan (1995), Tarane and Yule (1989), and
Verhoeven(1997).
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The use of linguistic
System
Functional aspects
of communication
Table 5: The Components of Competence
4.1.3.Bachman’s Model of Communicative Competence
Bachman’s model of communicative competence (1990) is considered as a
more current attempt to take forward the subdivision of communicative competence
provided by Canale and Swain. That is to say, Bachman (1990) proposed the framework of
the communicative language ability (CLA) which should include language competence,
strategic competence, and psychophysical mechanisms.
Bachman’s interest is placed on the influence of strategic competence; a language
test performance and its measurement. His idea can be generalized in the sense that in
order to achieve communicative goals, language competence is the main implement that
the strategic competence determines the most effective means These three versions of
communicative competence that are mentioned before indicate three stages of
development, which are the initiation, the complementing, and the application. This
development was encouraged by the global spread of English, which also strengthened
a) Grammatical
competence
Linguistic competence
( sentence–level grammar)
b) Discourse
competence
Complement of a
(Inter-sentential relationships).
c) Sociolinguistic
competence
Socio-linguistic rules of language and
discourse = understanding of social
context.
Appropriateness of utterances (
sauvignon1983)
d) Strategic
competence
Compensatory strategies:
Effectiveness of communication (
Swain (1984), Yale and Tarone (1990)
communicative goals.
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people’s communicative needs. When communicative language teaching (CLT) appeared
in 1970s, the goal of communicative competence became the focus in the teaching contexts.
These many view points towards communicative competence are not the only
ones because many others later on looked for their analysis to this concept. The coming
view points are going to wonder what communicative competence looks like and how it is
applied in language teaching to be achieved by foreign language learners.
4.2. Interrelationship between Communicative Competence and Actual
Communication
Byers,P. and Byres,H. point out that,
The basic process of human communication through all verbal and non-verbal modalities
must be learned with an appropriate competence before any subject matter can be placed in
an appropriate context. (1972: 7).
Therefore, to achieve successful and effective communication and to have the
ability to use cultural patterns or codes appropriately is the fundamental element to
participate in socio-life, which is the main concern of communicative competence.
Anderson (1990: 5) defines competence in speaking as, “An ability to convey
what is intended by using appropriate speech in specific circumstances”. He implies that it
is obvious to know that there are at least two aspects that communicative competence
centers on: knowledge and ability. The knowledge, here, means the knowledge of
linguistic system of a language and ability means the way to use them appropriately.
5. Communicative Methods of Language Teaching
New developments in the field of linguistics have always been followed by
changes of approaches in the field of applied linguistics and subsequently by new trends in
the methods used in teaching foreign languages. The shifting of emphasis from the audio-
lingual method, according to which students were mainly taught the forms of the language
but were, not, taught the communicative use of these forms, to the teaching of the foreign
language as communication which considers the foreign language in terms of its
communicative functions has become absolutely necessary. Here are some approaches that
have appeared recently which gave communication the most prominent position in its
principles
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5.1. The Context Approach
The context approach is generated by the various groups which were contrasted
with the considerations of context that could apply to class. According to Bax (2003), one
might begin by looking at and analyzing the learning context. From there, one would move
on to take account of individuals’(learning styles, strategies), classroom culture (group
motivation, school environment), local culture (regional differences, status of teachers and
students in the community) and national culture (politics, religion). Only then would one
deal with a teaching approach (methodology, materials, and methods) to accomplish those
aims, and finally consider a language focus (lexis, phonology, grammar).
Halliday and Hasan (1989, in Kramsch, 1992) argue that the notions of language
and context are inseparable: language is operative in a context of situation and contexts are
ultimately constructed by a range of discourses produced within a community. That is to
say our ideas, our knowledge, our thoughts, our culture are all there (community) almost
independent of language and just waiting to be expressed by it. The meaningful context is
critical for language learning and it has been widely recognized. This context includes the
understanding of culturally defined aspects of communicative events such as role
relationships and norms of interpretations.
5. 2. The Communicative Approach
The Communicative Approach (CA) draws upon some changes and innovations
coming mainly from applied linguistics. Language is considered a social phenomenon by
this approach, as it is a means of communication and interaction between members of a
community. The goal, then, of teaching foreign language is to develop students’
communicative competence (Hymes 1972). Communicative competence extends
Chomsky’s concept to the ability to understand and produce messages appropriate to a
socio/psycho/cultural situation, so that language users can relate their linguistic knowledge
to everyday conventions. Later on, this knowledge of language use was extended to the
capacity to participate in discourse and to the knowledge of pragmatic conventions
governing that participation. This is then a set of language knowledge competencies which
interact during real communication.
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5.3. Characteristics of Communicative Methods
Finocchiaro and Brurnfit (1983, cited in El Tawassal, 2000: 148) sum up the major
characteristics of the communicative approach which are presented in the following table:
1. Communicative competence is the desired
goal.
2. Contextualization is a basic premise.
3. Language learning is learning to communicate.
4. Students are expected to interact with other
people.
5. .Sequencing is determined by Consideration of
content, function or meaning which maintains
interest.
6. Communication is sought.
7. Comprehensible pronunciation is
sought.
8. Communication may be encouraged
from the beginning
9. Meaning is paramount.
10. Communicative functions and are
not normally memorized.
Table 6: Characteristics of Communicative Methods
Communicative Approach, however, is a theory of language teaching that starts
from a communicative model of language and language use, and that seeks to translate
these already mentioned characteristics into a design for an instructional system, for
materials, for teacher and learner roles and behaviors, and for classroom activities and
techniques.
6. Features of Communication
Richard (1983) mentions five features of communication with brief
explanations. Below is a summary of these features in an attempt to clarify the concept of
communication.
6.1. Communication is meaning-based: The first step in learning to communicate is to
learn how to create propositions, for language is comprehensible to the degree that hearers
are able to reconstructpropositions from the speaker’s utterances. But, communication in a
foreign language implies more than constructing propositions, because speakers use them
in a variety of ways, for example, asking, affirming, denying, expressing an attitude… etc.
46
6.2. Communication is Conventional: Language learners’goal is to have native speaker
syntax and usage, and be able to produce an infinitive number of novel utterances by using
these ‘internalized’ rules. Communication largely consists of the use of language in
conventional ways, besides, the constraints that affect both the lexical and grammatical
structure of discourse. Conversational opener’s routine formulae, ceremonial formulae and
memorized clauses are features of conventionalized language.
6.3. Communication is Appropriate: Mastery of a foreign language not only requires use
of conventional utterances that express prepositional meaning but also knowledge of
different communicative strategies and styles according to the situation, the task and the
roles of the participants.
6.4. Communication is Interactional: Conversation between people has an “interactional
function” which can be called as the use of language to keep open the channels of
communication between people and to establish a suitable rapport. Generally, in the initial
stages of conversation with a stranger, speakers introduce carefully chosen topics that
reflect mutual agreement.
6.5. Communication is Structured: Another aspect of communication is its ongoing
organization which can be viewed from two different perspectives: a macro perspective
that reveals the differences in rhetorical organization that reflect different discourse
‘genres’ or ‘tasks’; and a micro perspective showing how some of the processes by which
discourse is constructed out of individual utterances are reflected in speech.
7. Communicative Language Teaching
The origin of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) dates back to late 1960s.
Until then Situational Language Teaching represented the major British approach to
teaching English as a foreign language. In Situational Language Teaching, language was
taught by practicing basic structures in meaningful situation-based activities. But just as
the linguistic theory underlying Audio-lingualism was rejected in United States in the mid-
1960s, British applied linguists began to call into question the theoretical assumption
underlying Situational Language teaching. (Richards and Rodgers, 1991)
The American Linguist Noam Chomsky (1965) demonstrates that the current
standard structural theories of language were incapable of accounting for the fundamental
characteristics of language -the creativity and uniqueness of individual sentences. Then,
British applied linguists such as Widdowson (1983) emphasize another fundamental
47
dimension of language that was inadequately addressed in current approaches to language
teaching at that time -the functional and communicative potential of language. They saw
the need to focus in language teaching on communicative proficiency rather than on mere
mastery of structures. (Richard and Rodgers, 1991)
7.1. Definition of Communicative Language Teaching
CLT is an approach to the teaching of second and foreign languages that
emphasizes interaction as both the means and the ultimate goal of learning a language.
Widdowson (1983) also referred it as “communicative approach to the teaching of foreign
languages” or simply the “Communicative Approach”
Communicative language teaching can also be understood as a set of principles
about the goals of language teaching, how learners learn a language, the kinds of classroom
activities that best facilitate learning, and the roles of teachers and learners in the
classroom. Communicative language teaching makes use of real-life situations that
necessitate communication. The teacher sets up a situation that students are likely to
encounter in real life. Unlike the audio-lingual method of language teaching, which relies
on repetition and drills, the communicative approach can leave students in suspense as to
the outcome of a class exercise, which will vary according to their reactions and responses.
The real-life simulations change from day to day. Students' motivation to learn
comes from their desire to communicate in meaningful ways about meaningful topics.
Berns, an expert in the field of communicative language teaching, writes the following,
Language is interaction; it is interpersonal activity and has a clear relationship
with society. In this light, language study has to look at the use (function) of
language in context, both its linguistic context (what is uttered before and after a
given piece of discourse) and its social, or situational, context (who is speaking,
what their social roles are, why they have come together to speak)". (Berns,
1984, cited in Galloway, ERIC, 1993: 1)
That is to say, the change of focus, from grammar to communication within
linguistic theories (as the field of sociolinguistics developed), FL language teachers and
researchers have shifted the object of their linguistic analysis accordingly. Teachers and
researchers are aware of the need to improve students’ communicative competence and try
out new ideas to contribute to meeting that need. They are not new ideas for FL teaching,
48
but each one of them has a place in CLT and will help language learners acquire the
knowledge of appropriateness in all facets of their target language.
8. Pragmatics
This field is interested in the language ‘rules’ which govern, say , politeness
conventions in a particular culture, within pragmatics there are approaches to research
questions, formal pragmatic is not interested in rules and rule–like patterns in discourse. In
this area, a research might be concerned with these constrains on the use of particular
expressions in conversation. (Rose and Kasper, 2001)
Pragmatics is important in conveying and interpreting meaning. It constraints
on language comprehension and production may be loosely thought of as the effect of
context on strings of linguistic events. The following conversation illustrates how
pragmatics is directly concerned with the contribution of context to the meaning:
(Phone rings. A ten year-old child picks up the phone)
Stefanie: hello
Voice: hi, Stef, is your mum there?
Stefanie: just a minute (cups the phone and yells) mum! Phone!
Mum: (from upstairs) I am in the tub
Stefanie: (returning to the phone) she can’t talk now. Wanna leave a message?
Voice: oh, I will call back later. (Kasper, 1997: 258)
Pragmatic meaning allowed the three participants to interpret the meaning
beyond the linguistic consideration, “Is your mum here?” is not, in telephone context a
question that requires yes/no answer. Stefanie’s “Just a minute” shows to the caller that his
mother is indeed home, and led the caller that she would either check to see if she was
home, and /or get her to come to phone him. Then, Stefanie’s “mum! Phone!” is easily
interpreted by her mother as someone on the phone who wants to talk with you. The caller
doesn’t respond ‘no’ to Stefanie’soffer to take a message but implicitly does so with “I
will call back later”
9. The Contribution of Context to the Meaning
According to Truebgill (1974), language like other forms of social activities
has to be appropriate to the speakers using it. Behaving does not only mean to be
appropriate to individuals. It also needs to be suitable for particular occasions and
49
situations. Language, in other words, varies not only according to the social characteristics
of speakers (such as social class, ethnic groups, age and sex) but also according to a social
context in which they find themselves.
Hymes (1972) argues that social factors restrict grammar use because the rules
of use are dominant over the rules of grammar. Hymes further expands this claim to say
that, children should acquire knowledge of appropriateness. For him children should
acquire knowledge of socio-cultural rules such as: when to speak, when not to speak, what
to talk about, with whom and in what manner. Hymes adds “children develop a general
theory of speaking appropriately in there community from a finite experience of speech act
and their independence with socio-cultural features.”(Cited in Widdowson, 1978: 27).
10. History of Culture Teaching
It is commonly known that, classical language (Latin and Greek) were studied
so that learners should read and translate the works of literature written in their languages.
This principle was acknowledged by Grammar Translated Method (GTM) which was
based on the idea of getting access to the so-called “great work”. (Kramsh 1996, Larsen
and Freeman 2000, cited in Sluveer, 2004: 7)
The aim of education in general was to educate people who were knowledgeable
in history, literature and fine arts. Such people were said to possess culture. Kramsh (1996)
maintains that, “Forall modern languages the way to universality was through their
literature.”(4). The culture which focuses on the products and contributions of society and
its outstanding individuals, often referred to as / larger /by/ capital ‘C’ culture (Chastain,
1988: 303). It comprises history, geography, institutions literature, art and music as well as
scientific, economic, sports and other achievements that are valued and that people take
pride in.
In the second half of the 19th century, paralleled to GTM, other methods of language
teaching together with different approaches to culture started to develop. In the case of the
oral, natural, and direct method; they all emphasis on the importance of oral language and
viewed culture as a way of life.
The growth of science such as anthropology and sociology poured the way to
these approaches to make a splash. After the Second World War, the way of life meant
culture to be referred to as a culture with small ‘c’ (Tomalin and Stenpleski, 1993) or
behaviour culture. (Pulverness, 1995 and Chastain, 1988) and it was seen to contribute
50
directly to the students’ ability to “function linguistically and socially in the contemporary
culture.” (Chastain, 1988, Cited in Sluveer, 2004: 7).
Culture was seen in courses based on this idea “as mere information conveyed
by language, not as a feature of language itself” (Kramsh, 1996:8).In other words, the
teaching of culture was considered to be supplementary to language teaching, not part of it.
10.1. Definition of Culture
It is clear that we can not confine the definition of culture to small ‘c’ and
capital ‘C’.According to Tipperman et al. (1994, in Sluveer’s 2004: 7), “Culture is
humanly created environment for our thoughts and actions.”. This is something all humans
share and what distinguishes us from the animal world. In other words, culture is a human
specificity which reflects human thoughts and actions. For many people culture would
mean art, literature, customs and everyday life peculiar to a certain group. These can be
called observable symptoms of culture. However, culture also includes invisible features
like beliefs, values, norms and attitudes. This is to be met in the New Encyclopedia
Britannica which offers a definition combining these aspects of culture:
Behaviour peculiar to homosapians together with material objects used as an
integral part of this behaviour, specifically culture consist of language, ideas,
beliefs, customs, codes, institutions, tools, techniques, works of art, rituals
,ceremonies and so on. (1991: 874).
The first effort to define culture was made by the anthropologists. In his book
Primitive Culture , Taylor, in his book primitive culture (1971) , gave what is considered
as a classic definition, “Culture is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief,
art, morals, law, customs, and many other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a
member of society”(cited in the New Encyclopedia Britannica, 1991: 874).The advance of
anthropology led to a more thorough study of the meaning of culture. The American
anthropologists Kroeber and Kluckhohn (1952, in Seelvey 1993) have examined over three
hundred definitions of culture in Culture. They conclude that culture is a very broad
concept embracing all aspects of human life. They define culture as patterns of behaviour
acquired and transmitted by symbols consisting of the distinct achievements of human
groups, including their achievements.
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10.2. The Relationship between Culture and Language
Many scholars stress the relationship between culture and language. For Brown
(2000), a language is a part of culture, and a culture is a part of a language, the two are
intricately interwoven so that one cannot separate the two without losing the significance
of either language or culture. In Brown’s sense, culture is presented through language.
Therefore, without language culture cannot be transmitted and known to the world because
it is supposed to be a set of thoughts and actions that human beings produce. On the other
hands, language could transmit nothing if there is no culture. So, the two concepts are
related and we cannot separate them.
Kramsch (1998) identifies three ways of how culture and language are bound
together. First, language expresses a cultural reality (with words people express facts and
ideas. but also reflect attitudes). Second, Language embodies cultural reality (people give
meanings to their experience through the means of communication). Third, language
symbolizes cultural reality (people use their language as a symbol of their social identity).
Kailani and Almutawa (1989) argue for the same idea:
There is a close relationship between language and culture. The former is both
the product and a reflection of the latter. What the people of a particular culture
talk and think is shaped in the vocabulary they use. Thus, learning a second and
foreign language involves the learning of the culture of the people who speak it
because these two aspects are intimately bound together. (88)
Those linguists emphasized that the learning of the linguistic elements is
inadequate for the acquisition of communicative competence unless we know their
appropriate use within each situation. That is, when to use them and under what
circumstances they are appropriate? This social use of language involves cultural
conventions and illusions such as ways of thinking, customs, mores, idioms…etc .It is an
obligation that a foreign language learner should comprehend references or expressions
that often occur in the written or spoken language such as” he is old as hills», «pretty as a
picture” .The learner must also conforms to the norms of English culture, knowing which
expressions are polite, acceptable, formal, informal…etcIn terms of foreign language
teaching, being unaware of the cultural context indicates incapacity to use language
appropriately. Thus, gaining cultural knowledge should be integral part of the learning
process.
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10.3. The Main Goals for Teaching Culture
If the crucial aim of foreign language teaching is to develop students’ability to
communicate effectively and appropriately in various situations. The teaching of culture
should facilitate intercultural communication and understanding. Seelye (1993: 29)
formulates what he himself calls super goals for the teaching of culture “All students will
develop the cultural understanding, attitudes and performance skills needed to function
appropriately within a segment of another society to communicate with people socialized
in that culture.” .He goes on to say that these goals should be described in more detail to be
useful. Seelye (1993) suggests six instructional goals, which he summarizes as follows the
teacher should help the learner to develop interest in who in the target culture? did what?,
where?, when, and why?. In other words, in language classes where intercultural
understanding is one of the goals, students become more aware of their own culture and
more knowledgeable about the foreign culture.
Tomlain and Stempelski (1993) suggest that the teaching of culture should help
the pupils:
To develop an understanding of fact that all people exhibited culturally conditioned
behaviors.
To develop an understanding that social variables such as age, sex, social class, and
place of residence influence the way I wish people speak and behave.
To become more aware of conventional behaviour in common situation in the target
culture.
To increase their awareness of cultural connotations of words and phrases in the target
language.
To develop the ability to evaluate and refine generalization about the target culture, in
terms of supporting evidence.
To develop the necessary skills to locate and organize information about the target
culture.
To stimulate students’ intellectual curiosity about the target culture, and to encourage
empathy among its people. (cited in Sluveer’s Master Thesis 2004:18)
These goals, despite their differences in terminology, stress the knowledge of the
target culture, awareness of its characteristics and differences between the target culture
and the learner’s own culture.
53
ConclusionCommunicative competence have been defined and discussed in many
different ways by language scholars of different fields. There is, however, one thing in
common that is seen in the writings of all these scholars: linguistic, or grammatical
competence, should be considered just one aspect of overall competence an individual has
with language. With the change of focus from grammar to communication within foreign
language teaching theories, language teachers and researchers, too, have shifted the object
of their linguistic analysis accordingly. Although teachers and researchers are aware of the
need to improve students’communicative competence and try out new ideas to contribute
to meeting that need. These ideas will help language learners acquire the knowledge of
appropriateness in all facets of their target language.
Within communicative approaches, the teaching of culture was deeply
integrated in language teaching because it has very crucial and important impacts on
learners’ communicative competence. Culture is seen as a whole way of life which
provides learners with useful background to language learning. Today there exists a
widespread of consensus among scholars (Kramsch 1993, Byram 1989, 1994, Seelye 1993,
Chastain1988) that language and culture should not be treated as separate entities and
culture should be integrated into language classroom. That is to say that language is seen as
part of culture and culture as part of language, which why they cannot be separate and
should be taught together.
54
Chapter III
Correctness and Appropriateness
in EFL Learning and Teaching
Introduction
The concentration of foreign language teaching all over Algerian schools seems to
lie on communicative skills. It is interesting to know how the attitude towards grammar
teaching has changed over time and to know how communication became the main interest
of all teachers and learners of English as a foreign language.
Our interest falls on correctness and appropriateness in language teaching and
learning because this is usually the subject which helps to determine the learning-teaching
outcomes. As we are teachers’ trainees, we are interested in the attitude towards English
grammar and communication in order to decide what position we should take when
practicing our future profession.
The present study is conducted to investigate whether when we teach learners
of English as a foreign language how to compose and understand correct sentences along
with how to use them appropriately to achieve communicative goals, we will grantee
native- like language communicators. That is to say, we will attempt to check that
correctness alone or appropriateness alone do not guarantee good communicators in
English but rather the two aspects of the language are of equal importance.
1. Design and Methodology
The aim of this study is to find out what is the prevailing attitude towards the
importance of correctness (grammar) and appropriateness (communication) in English
language teaching and learning as a foreign language. That is to say, we aim to show that
the combination of both correctness and appropriateness is likely to ensure native-like
communicators.
The investigation is conducted through a survey –based methods. These methods
are qualitative ones aiming at collecting data from the target population. A pupils’
questionnaire and a teacher’s interview were administered to provide a genuine reflection of
the attitudes and beliefs of people we aim to work on.
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2. DescribingPupils’Questionnaire
The questionnaire was handed out to (78) 1AS, 2AS, 3AS pupils from different
streams belonging to a number of secondary schools in three different wilayas:
Constantine, Bordj Bouariridj (BBA) and Mila. The questionnaire which we distributed
among 78 pupils ended with the following responses, which constitute the principle source
of data.
The questionnaire is designed to investigate our sample’s attitudes and beliefs to
elicit the necessary information about the two notions of correctness (grammar) and
appropriateness (communication) in teaching English as a foreign language. The
questionnaire is made up of three sections, consisting of 22 questions whish are either
closed questions requiring from pupils to answer by ‘yes’ or ‘no’, or to pick out the
appropriate answer from a number of alternatives; or open questions which require
personal information.
2.1.Section One: Pupils’ Background Information
Questions one to three are devoted to know pupils status information. Pupils
are asked to specify their class (Q1), age (Q2) and gender (Q3). The informants are upper
secondary school students. The students chosen for the survey are studying different upper
secondary school streams, both literary and scientific streams. The Students’ are informed
and asked to partake in the study. The participation was voluntary and anonymous.
Questions four to seven are about pupils’ language background. Here, they are asked to
specify when they started learning English (Q4), how often they have English class (Q5),
and their level in English (Q6), ending with whether or not they like learning English (Q7).
2.2. Section Two: Studying Grammar (Correctness)
Questions eight to thirteen are designed to generate information about learners’
level and attitude towards studying grammar: how often they have grammar lessons, (Q8),
whether or not they like learning English grammar (Q9), in which ways they learn English
grammar (Q10), the reason why they study English grammar (Q11), the importance of
studying English grammar (Q12), and how good they consider their skills in English
grammar (Q13). Whereas, questions fourteen to sixteen are put to know pupils’personal
opinions about the effect of studying English grammar on their knowledge of
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English(Q14), how English grammar is useful in their future (Q15), and whether or not
they choose to study English grammar if they are given the choice (Q16).
2.3. Section Three: The Use of English (Appropriateness)
Questions seventeen to twenty are devoted to what extent English is used outside
teaching-learning situations: the use of English outside English classes (Q17), the use of
English grammar outside the school (Q18), with whom they speak English outside
school(Q19), and the reason why they learn English (Q20). Questions twenty one and
twenty two were devoted to culture: the importance of learning culture while learning
English (Q21) and whether they prefer to study English culture during English courses or
in a separate course (Q22).
3. The Administration of Pupils’ Questionnaire
The questionnaire was handed out to (78) 1AS, 2AS, 3AS pupils from different
streams belonging to a number of secondary schools in three different wilayas:
Constantine, Bordj Bouariridj (BBA) and Mila. The learners were kindly invited to fill in
the questionnaire and on the basis of their answers; we collected raw data to be analyzed
with the ultimate goal of confirming our hypothesis.
4. Analysis ofPupil’s Questionnaire
4.1. Section One: Background Information
Question 01: You are in a:
A. Literary class
B. Scientific class
Streams Numbers (NB) Percentage (%)
Literary class 47 60.25%
Scientific class 31 39.75%
total 78 100%
Table 7: Pupils’Streams
As shown in table 1, the majority of the pupils of the present research (60.25%)
belong to the literary stream, (39.75%) of them are, however, from a scientific stream.
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Since languages are usually allocated to the humanities (Hutchinson and Waters, 1987;
cited in Boulmarka, 2000:78), English teaching is more emphasized in the literary streams
than it is in the scientific ones. People of literary classes would receive more English
instruction than pupils of the scientific classes this would lead to differences in the pupils’
language proficiency because of the differences in the importance attached to English in
each stream and the time allocated to it.
Question 2: Specify your age:
Level (In secondary
school)
NB Age %
1st year 30 15 ---18 38.46 %
2nd year 20 16 --- 18 25.64 %
3rd year 28 18 ---21 35.89 %
Total 78 15 ---21 100 %
Table 8: Pupils’ Age
Pupils of the first year range from 15 to 18 (38.46%), normally the age 15 is
the due age of first year student in the Algerian context (secondary school) whereas the age
of (18) is supposed to be for repetitive students. The same thing is for second (16-18) and
third year (18-21) students.
Question 3: Gender
A. Male B. Female
Gender NB %
Male 28 35.89%
Female 50 64.10%
Total 78 100%
Table 9: Pupils’ Gender
As shown in the table, females (64.10%) are dominant over males (35.89%).
This is mainly due to the increasing number of females in Algerian schools.
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Question 4: When did you start learning English?
Schools NB %
Primary school 0 0%
Middle school 78 100%
Total 78 100%
Table 10: Pupils’ starting learning English
The landslide majority of the pupils start learning English at middle school
with a percentage of 100%. Few years ago, pupils were given the choice to choose their
second language either French or English language. But this strategy has changed recently
with the new reforms where English was eliminated from the primary school and
transformed to be taught starting from the middle school.
Question 5: How often do you have English class at school?
Streams NB Hours %
Literary classes 47 3 -8 60.25%
Scientific classes 31 3 39.74%
Total 78 3-8 100%
Table 11: pupils’ English classes
Literary class pupils have from 3 to 8 hours (60.25%) English classes a week.
Literary classes are divided into philosophy and foreign language classes. The latter have 8
hours in the second year and 4 hours in the third year. This is because English is the
fundamental course for them whereas the philosophy classes have 4 hours. On the other
hand, the scientific class pupils have 3 hours (39.74%), this is because English for them is
not a main course.
Question 6: How do you rate your level in English?
A. Good
B. Average
C. Bad
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Pupils’ level NB %
Good 15 19.23%
Average 49 62.87%
Bad 14 17.94%
Total 78 100%
Table 12: Pupils’ level
If we assume that no pupil over or under-rated himself, the answer tabulated
above reveals that while (17.94%) of the pupils evaluate their level in English as being
bad. Most probably the ones who said so they do not like English (62.87%) responded by
saying that they have an average level, the remaining (19.23%) evaluate their level as good
so , we assume that the majority of the pupils have a good mastery of English language.
Question 7: Do you like learning English?
A. Yes
B. No
Answers NB %
yes 65 83.33%
No 13 16.66%
Total 78 100%
Table 13: English like or not
Most of the pupils (83.33%) answer that they like English. Their main
arguments are; English is considered as an international language or the language of the
world. They need it to communicate with passengers, friends, foreigners…etc) all over the
world. Those who answer no (16.66%) justify that they would not major in English and
others say that they dislike their English teacher.
4.2. Section Two: Studying Grammar (Correctness)
Question 8: How often do you study English grammar?
A. Every English lesson
B. Once a week
C. Few times a week
D. Few times in a term
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Grammar courses NB %
Every English lesson 30 38.46%
Once a week 38 48.71%
Few times a week 10 12.82%
Few times in a term 0 0%
Total 78 100%
Table 14: pupils’ grammar courses
The table above shows that the majority of pupils study English grammar once
a week this is mainly because there are many subjects taught a long with grammar such as
reading comprehension, phonetics, written expression…. This is may be an exception for
foreign languages pupils who may study grammar in every English lesson. Whereas,
grammar is studied few times a week because it may not be part of the program.
Question 9: Would you like to study English grammar?
A. In just one lesson
B. In two lessons
C. In a lot of lessons
D. In all lessons
Items NB %
A 10 12.82%
B 16 20.51%
C 23 29.48%
D 29 37.17%
Total 78 100%
Table 15: Intensifying the English Grammar Lessons
Question 10: In which way do you learn English grammar?
I learn English grammar through:
A. Learning the rule by heart.
B. Learning the rules and giving examples.
C. Reading a lot of example and guessing the rules.
D. Building new sentences after a given pattern.
E. Translating to and from English.
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Items NB %
A- 16 20.51%
B- 38 48.71%
C- 19 24.35%
D- 1 1.28%
E- 4 5.12%
Total 78 100%
Table 16: Ways of Learning
As for The best ways of learning English grammar there are similarities and
differences in attitude. The most common answer is learning the rule and giving examples
(48.71%). It is clear that this is the most prevailing strategy used by the teacher, giving the
rule and checking the learners’ understanding through example. (24.35%) prefer to learn
English grammar through reading a lot of example and guessing the rules because of the
new reforms which mainly insist on learners should extract the rules by themselves
specially after reading comprehension. The other way is learning the rules by heart
(20.51%). This way is very traditional but in fact it is still used and preferred by some
teachers and learners. (5.12%) of students think that translating to and from English is the
best way to learn English grammar while only (1.28%) think that the best way is building
new sentences after a given pattern. This shows that pupils do not need to build up new
sentences after giving them a sample, they need to know the rules and apply them in
correct situation not just imitating the teacher sentence pattern.
Question 11: Why do you study English grammar?
I study English grammar because
A. Grammar improves my knowledge of English.
B. It helps me to express my self correctly.
C. It helps me to understand spoken and written English.
D. I like English grammar
E. My teacher gives lessons of grammar.
Items NB %
A. 19 24.35%
B. 07 8.97%
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C. 43 55.12%
D. 06 7.69%
E. 02 4.93%
Total 78 100%
Table 17: Reasons of Studying Grammar
The reason for learning English grammar seems to be quite similar among
student from the three areas. Students state that they study English grammar because it
helps them to understand both spoken and written English (55.12%) and also helps them to
improve their knowledge of English (24.35%). This is because of the common belief
among pupils that grammar is the core of English and learning it would lead to a good
writing and speaking skills. Some other pupils answered that grammar helps them to
express themselves correctly (8.97%) and they like it (7.69%) but in fact they are not
numerous. The last few (4.93%) answer they learn grammar because their teacher gives the
lessons.
Question 12: How important do you find it to study English grammar?
A. Very important
B. Important
C. Not that important
D. Not that important at all
E. I do not know
Items NB %
A. 47 60.25%
B 20 25.65%
C. 1 1.28%
D. 3 3.84%
E. 7 8.97%
Total 78 100%
Table 18: The importance of English grammar
As for the importance of studying English grammar, the majority of pupils
(60.25%) find grammar very important, and (25.65) find it important. This is due to many
reasons such as; grammar helps them to express themselves correctly, to understand both
spoken and written English As they said in previous question on the other hand, a small
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number of pupils (3.84%) decide that English grammar is not that important and others
(1.28%) do not know whether or not it is important.
Question 13: How good do you consider your skills in English?
A. Very good
B. good
C. Satisfactory
D. Less than satisfactory
E. Poor
Items NB %
A 09 11.53%
B 37 47.43%
C 19 24.35%
D 05 6.41%
E 11 14.10%
Total 78 100%
Table 19: Pupils’Skill in Grammar
The table shows that the majority of students consider that their level in
English is good (47.43%), satisfactory (24.35%) and good (11.53%). This may be because
they consider grammar as the fundamental core of the language and they give it great
importance and do their best to study it. The least few maintain that their skill in grammar
is less than satisfactory (6.41%) or poor (14.10%). This is because they do not study it or
they hate it.
Question 14: Do you think that the knowledge of English improves thanks to English
grammar?
A. Yes, so much
B. Yes a little
C. No, not at all
D. I do not know
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Items NB %
A 43 55.12%
B 23 29.48%
C 06 7.69%
D 06 7.69%
Total 78 100%
Table 20: The Role of Grammar in English Knowledge
A clear majority of pupils (55.12%) claim that the knowledge of English
improves much due to English grammar (yes, so much) and other consider it not as much
as so but as little (29.48%). This clearly means that those pupils give the importance of
learning the grammar. On the other hand, only few pupils (7.69%) believe that grammar
has nothing to do with improving the knowledge of English.
Question 15: Do you think that you will use English grammar in future?
A. Yes, in my future studies
B. Yes, in my future work
C. Yes, when I will travel
D. Yes, in my spare time
E. No, at all
Items NB %
A 30 38.46%
B 17 21.79%
C 16 20.50%
D 02 2.56%
E 11 14.10%
Total 78 100%
Table 21: English Grammar and its Role in Future
Regarding students’opinion on future ways of using English grammar, the
majority of students (38.46%) hope that they will use English grammar in their future
studies because they hardly believe that English is the language of sciences and they may
major in English at the university level. (21.79%) of them maintain that they will use it in
their future work because English grammar allows them to use English correctly. Others
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(20.50%) guess that they will use it when they travel; a few (2.56%) others suggest that
they will not use it at all. The latter is because they do not consider grammar as important.
Question 16: Would you choose to study English grammar if you were given the
choice?
A. Yes
B. No
Because:……………
NB %
A–yes 54 57.69%
B–no 24 30.76%
Total 78 100%
Table 22: Pupils’ Choice to Study English Grammar
The results tabulated above show that the majority of pupils (57.69%) prefer to
study English grammar if they are given the choice. Students state that it improves their
knowledge of English language and that it helps them to express themselves correctly.
Others said that, I will use it in my writing and it is very important in future. Those who
answer by no (30.76%) stated that they dislike English and the teacher of English as well.
In addition to that, they said I prefer to speak English rather than learning the rules by
heart.
4.3. Section Three: The use of English (Appropriateness)
Question17: How often do you use English outside class?
A. Always
B. Sometimes
C. Rarely
D. Not at all
Alternatives NB %
A 20 26.61%
B 44 56.41%
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C 10 12.82%
D 4 5.15%
Total 100%
Table 23: Using English Outside Class
There is no difference in how often pupils of three areas think that they have to
use their knowledge of English outside school. As many as (56.41%) of the pupils state
that, they use their knowledge sometimes and those who say always are (26.61%). Further
more, (12.82%) of pupils acknowledge that they use English rarely and (5.15%) of them
never use English outside class or school.
Question 18: How often do you use English grammar outside school?
Alternatives NB %
A. Very often 5 6.41%
B. Often 14 17.94%
C. Sometimes 45 57.69%
D. Seldom 4 5.12%
E. Never 10 12.82%
Total 78 100%
Table24: Using English Outside School
Concerning the use of English grammar outside school, most of student use it
sometimes (57.69%) this is mainly because of the dominance of French language over
English. Only (17.94%) of pupils use English often and (6.41%) very often. Apart from
those who use English grammar outside school, there are also pupils who never use it
outside school (12.82%) only (5.12%) few of them who may use it seldom.
Question 19: With whom do you speak English outside school?
A. Teacher
B. Classmates
C. Friends
D. The users of languages
Alternatives NB %
Teacher 20 26.64%
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Classmates 15 19.23%
Friends 30 38.46%
The users of language 13 16.66%
Total 78 100%
Table 25: With Whom to Use English
The common shared idea between the majority of pupils of three areas is that
the use of English to speak with their friends (38.46%), simply, because most of students
feel free when talking to their friends. And they are in the same level. Where as the teacher
comes in the second position (26.64%) to mean that they fear the teacher or dislike their
teachers. Moreover, (19.23%) use the language with classmates and (16.66%) with other
users of language. Some others go further to say that they use English with their family
such as sisters, grand mothers.
Question 20: Why do you learn English?
A. It is part of the program
B. It can help you to travel abroad
C. It has a bright future
D. It helps to communicate with other
Items NB %
A 13 16.66%
B 19 24.35%
C 18 23.07%
D 28 35.89%
Total 78 100%
Table 26: The Reasons for Learning English
Here we can notice that the highest percentage of the pupils (35.89%) claims
that they learn English to communicate with others (friends, passengers…). Others
(24.35%) show that they learn English because it will help them to travel abroad. Some
others (23.07%) say they learnt it for the purpose it has a bright future. The least
percentage (16.66%) of pupils shows that they learn English just because it is part of the
program.
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Question 21: Do you think that learning English culture is important while learning
English?
1. Yes, very important
2. Yes, important
3. Not important
4. I do not know
Items NB %
A 50 64.10%
B 20 25.64%
C 3 3.84%
D 5 6.41
Total 78 100%
Table 27: The Importance of Culture
As shown above the majority pupils (64.10%) believe that culture is important
while learning English. (3.84%) think that it is not important to learn culture. (6.41%)
claim that they do not know whether or not it is important.
Question22: Should culture be taught in English course or in a separate course?
A. In English course
B. In a separate course
Items NB %
A. 63 80.76%
B. 14 17.94%
Total 78 100%
Table 28: Learning Culture
It is obvious from the table above that most of the pupils preferred to integrate
culture with its language not to separate it. (80.76%) agree with the idea of teaching culture
in English course this is mainly because to allow them to master both the language and the
culture. For those who say we should learn culture in separate course (17.94%), they want
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to be in direct contact with the culture not learning it indirectly in just one lesson or
activity.
5.Description of Teachers’ Interview
The second qualitative method chosen for this investigation is an interview.
The interview consists of 12 open questions. The questions are arranged in order to find
out teachers’ attitudes towards teaching English grammar and their ideas about the changes
in attitude towards the importance of English grammar knowledge that have taken place
during the years they have been practicing their profession besides, their attitudes towards
the use of English in meaningful contexts.
The interviews were carried out with five upper secondary school English
teachers in two areas Bordj Bou Arréridj (BBA) and Constantine. The interviews were
carried out by meeting each teacher individually at the local schools where they work. The
interviewed teachers all have experience from teaching English language at upper
secondary level and were currently teaching English to upper secondary school students.
The interviews were performed in English.
5.1. Administration of the Interview
Five teachers were interviewed, Three teachers from Constantine and two from
BBA. A careful note-taking was the strategy adopted for recording the interviewees’
responses. These answers are the second source of our data.
5.2. Findings of the Teachers’ Interview
Teachers and their experience:
The Five teachers have experienced teaching English at upper secondary
school longer than nine years, however one of the teachers has been teaching at upper
secondary level only two year.
The Reasons why they teach English grammar:
All five teachers teach grammar to their students. The main reasons stated by
the teachers of Constantine are they think that grammar is the basis or structure of
language and therefore is important in language acquisition. They also suggest that
grammar enables the pupils to use language correctly besides that, they consider that
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without grammar no effective communication can take place. For BBA teachers, they
maintain that they teach grammar for it enables pupils to improve their writing and
speaking skills.
Teachers’attitudes towards English grammar:
Teachers of Constantine answered that they have positive attitudes towards
teaching English grammar but they prefer to teach it in context. The same answer was
given by BBA teachers.
The importance of teaching/ learning English grammar rules:
There are no major differences in the attitudes between all teachers regarding
whether or not students should know the rules of grammar. The teachers from both Areas
stress that there are some basic rules that students should know, but that it is more
important that they can apply the rules practically than to be able to cite the precise rules of
grammar. Still, the teachers find the knowledge of grammar and its use important.
The teachers’ attitude towards the effect of English grammar knowledge:
The teachers pointed out that all of the language skills improve due to studies of
English grammar. A student with good knowledge of grammar has the possibility to
express themselves correctly, building up correct sentences, and writing coherent
paragraphs.
The changes in attitude towards English and English grammar
Teachers of BBA argue that attitude toward English grammar has changed in that it
became pupil centered that is to say, pupils extract the rules by themselves unlike before,
those rules were given explicitly to be learned by heart. Whereas teachers of Constantine
believed that the changes concern the new tendency of teaching grammar within context to
be used appropriately.
Pupils’ attitudes towards English grammar:
When asked about change in students’ attitude towards grammar in particular, the
majority of teachers said that it has changed very much. They have become more positive;
because it is being taught in meaningful context beside it is easy and not vast.
The communicative role of grammar:
In this question, all teachers agree that grammar plays a great role in helping pupils
to be communicatively competent. For example a teacher from BBA said,” grammar
allows pupils to put words side by side to form sentences, these sentences are then used in
discourse”.
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Good students of grammar are the best communicators:
All teachers agree that good pupils of grammar are not necessarily the good
communicators in the classroom because there are other ways to learn how to
communicate than usinggrammar (chat, watching TV…)
The importance of teaching culture in foreign language classes:
All teachers point out that culture should be integrated into foreign language classes
because it helps pupils to use language appropriately.
Learners’ attitude towards culture:
Concerning this matter, all teachers came to the point that pupils are interested to
learn language along with its culture. Because, language is part of culture and through
language culture is conveyed.
6. Conclusions about the Study Findings
The attitude towards English grammar and grammar teaching has changed
over time. It has shifted from having the main role and being the target of all studies
concerning language to losing its central role. The focus on today’s knowledge of language
is on communication and grammar has gained the role of providing comprehensibility of
communication.
There are differences in attitudes towards the importance of English grammar
expressed in the three areas (Constantine, Mila and, BBA). The attitude towards the
importance of English grammar expressed in most pupils is positive. This means that the
first variable of our hypothesis is confirmed. In total, there are no major differences in
attitude towards English grammar among pupils. Learners from all areas have a positive
attitude towards the importance of knowledge of English grammar. They find the ability to
express themselves grammatically and correctly in speech and writing is more important
than the knowledge of the precise grammatical rules. This means, that they link grammar
or correctness to communication or appropriateness. Therefore, this positive link between
our hypothesis’ variables allows us to say that the findings of the investigation confirm the
study’s hypothesis.In other words, pupils are in need of grammatical competence as well
as a communicative one to be considered as good users of the language. A majority of all
students believe that they will have future use for their grammar knowledge. The
differences occur in exposure to English language and use of English outside school and
thus also self-evaluation of grammar knowledge.
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As far as culture teaching is concerned, most of the students welcomed the idea
of teaching a language through its culture. They prefer to study it hand in hand with
English. No language is to be learnt apart from its culture.
Concerning the teachers, as it is mentioned in the interview, they are positive
towards the importance of English grammar, but stress that grammar is not the central part
in language teaching as it used to be before. Despite the differences, teachers find that
English programs applied in secondary schools are too vague in their guidelines for
teaching grammar and call for some more specification. In spite of that, teachers see
clearly the importance of both grammar and communication to guarantee good users of the
language. They insist on the fact of creating balance between correctness and
appropriateness to ensure a successful learning teaching process of English as a foreign
language.
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Chapter VI
Pedagogical Implications
Introduction
This concluding chapter will move aside from the discussion of correctness in
terms of linguistic competence (grammar) and appropriateness in terms of communicative
competence which has been the main concern of this research. It will look at some
suggestions that are concerned with the different activities, procedures and methods used
inside the classroom during the instruction and these activities are most of the time
designed for students. Since the main concern here is communicative language teaching, it
must pay attention to functional as well as structural aspects of language, combining these
into a meaningful communicative instructor.
1. Recommendations for EFL teachers and learners
1.1. Communication Task Vs Learning Task
Communication requires the learner to deal with two tasks at the same time.
"He must learn the language by which he intends to communicate, he must communicate
by means of the language he intends to learn"(Klein, 1986:146).Both tasks are closely
connected, and in general they support each other: the more the learner communicates, the
better his access to the input, hence the better is his learning. The more he learns, the better
his chances of communication.
1.2. Know what you are doing
The focus of every lesson (or part of the lesson) should be the performing of
some operation, learning of how to do something. In fact, we mean that the starting point
(and end point) of every lesson should be an operation of some kind which the student
might actually want to perform in the foreign language. In reading, this might understand a
set of instructions; in writing it might be a letter reserving accommodation at a hotel; in
listening it might be a weather forecast on the radio; in speaking it might be asking for
directions in a strange city. All these operations should be taken into consideration
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throughout the teaching and learning process insuring that there is a clear answer to the
student who asks, "Why am I learning this? What am I learning? Hence the learner can ask
questions at a railway station: Does this train go to Birmingham? does it stop at
London?...etc. Every lesson should end with the learner being able to see clearly that he
can do something which he couldn't do at the beginning and that something is
communicatively useful. Many of the classroom activities should take communicative
dimensions if teachers and students ask themselves why they are doing them and are able
to relate them to the performance of some communicative tasks. That is to say, doing
activities should seem more overtly oriented towards communication. Role play, for
example, can only be communicative to the extent that the students (and the teacher) see it
as contributing to the performance of some real and specific tasks in the foreign language.
1.3. Processes are as Important as the Forms
A method which aims to develop the ability of students to communicate in a
foreign language will aim at replicating as far as possible the processes of communication,
so that practice of the forms of the target language can take place within a communicative
framework. There are two processes that can be used either individually or together in
teaching procedures. On the other hand, the more of them are used together the more the
exercise is likely to be communicative.
1.3.1. Information Gap
In real life, communication takes place between two (or more) people, one of
whom knows something that is unknown to the other(s).the purpose of the communication
is to fill this information gap. In classroom terms, an information gap exercise means that
one student must be in a position to tell another something that the second student does not
already know. Example: if two students are looking at a picture of a street scene and one
says to the other "Where is the dog when he knows that the dog is sitting outside the post
office because he can see it clearly as his fellow-student can; this is not communicative
because there is no information gap. But if one student has the picture of the street scene
and the other has a similar picture with some missing features he must find out from the
first student, here the same question becomes real, meaningful and communicative.
Johnson and Morrow state that, "The concept of information gap seems to be one of the
fundamental in the whole area of communicative teaching."(1975: 62). This means that,
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any exercise or procedure which claims to engage the students in communication should be
considered in the light of information gap. One of the main jobs for the teacher can be seen
by setting up situations where information gaps exist and motivating the students to put
them in appropriate ways.
1.3.2. Choice
A main characteristic of communication is that the participants have choice,
both, of what they will say and particularly how they will say it. This means that the
participant must choose only what ideas he wants to express at a given moment, but also
what linguistic forms are appropriate to express them.
1.4.To Learn it, Do it
It has been proved that education must be concerned not just with teaching but
with learning. One important consequence to that is learning becomes the learner’s
responsibility. The teacher can help, advice and teach; but only learners can learn."Sitting
in regimented rows under the eagle eye of a magisterial teacher, this is a scene which
destroys all hope of communication."(Johnson et al,: 64).This means that this should not
lead us to conclude that (the teacher can just sit back and lead the students). The learning
theory that is the student learns to do by doing. Only by practicing communicative
activities can the student learn to communicate. There is a great value in a framework
within which learning can be structured, and the provision of this framework is
one responsibility of the teacher. For instance, a lesson organized around grammatical
structure focusing on form and another lesson organized around the idea of learning to
"do" is something can be considerable in the language, but the essential point is that both
can be organized. The idea here is about organization of lessons. A communicative method
should encompass stages in lesson; presentation, practice and production.
2. Communicative Methodological Framework
2.1. Pre-communicative Activities
Through pre-communicative activities, the teacher isolates specific elements of
knowledge or skill which compose communicative ability and provide the learners with
opportunities to practice them separately. Thus, the learners are being trained in the part
skills of communication rather than practicing the total skill to be acquired. This category
76
of activities includes the majority of the learning activities currently to be found in
textbooks and methodological handbooks such as different types of question and answer
practice. This kind of the activity aims at as Littlewoods states, "Providing learners with a
fluent command of the linguistic system, without actually requiring them to use this system
for communicative purposes."(1981: 85).This means that the learners’ main purpose is to
produce acceptable language (i.e. sufficiently accurate or appropriate) rather than to
communicate meanings effectively.
Such types of activities attempt to create links between the language forms being
practiced and their functional meanings. These activities can be categorized as quasi-
communicative because they take account of communicative as well as structural facts
about language, in contrast with purely structural activities such as performing mechanical
drills.
2.2. Communicative Activities
In such activities, the learner has to activate and integrate his pre-
communicative knowledge and skills in order to use them for communication of meanings.
Therefore, he is engaged in practicing the total skill of communication. We can distinguish
two subcategories to this type of activity depending on the degree of importance attached
to social and functional meaning. In functional communication activities, the learner is
placed in a situation where he must perform a task by communicating as best as he can.
Whereas in social interaction activities, the learner is encouraged to take account of the
social context in which communication takes place. The learner in this task is required to
go beyond what is necessary for simply as Littlewoods (1981: 86) states "Getting meanings
across, in order to develop greater social acceptability in the language the student uses."
This implies that this activity may involve producing speech which is socially appropriate
to specific situations and relationships rather at first meant to be grammatical accuracy.
This methodological framework can be represented diagrammatically as follows:
Pre-communicative activities: structural activities.
Quasi-communicative activities.
Communicative activities: functional communication activities.
Social interaction activities.
77
Conclusion
At the end, we can say that foreign language teaching, by its very nature, is
predicated on the convention that because we are all humans, we can easily understand
each other provided we share the same code; all we have to do is to learn that code and use
it correctly and appropriately. We all share the same basic human needs; we all have to
agree on how to fulfill these needs in various situation of every day life.
Culture in langue teaching and learning is not an expendable fifth skill in addition
to speaking, writing, reading and listening. But rather it is always the background of
language and communicative competence as well, which challenges learners’ ability to
make sense of the world around them.
78
General ConclusionThe present study is an attempt to highlight the importance of teaching English
grammar along with using English language in appropriate context. Fall out into four
chapters; the research has put forward a hypothesis that asserts the production of correct
English should go hand in hand with meaningful situations being the most controversial
and least understood aspects of language teaching. Correctness has been the concern of the
first chapter; appropriateness has been extended in the second one. For the third chapter
which is more practical, it is devoted to the analysis of the teachers’interview and the
pupils’ questionnaire.
Within this context, we have to point that both teachers and pupils are on the side of
teaching grammar rules and using English appropriately in meaningful situations which in
fact settles a clear confirmation of the study hypothesis. We also arrived at the point of
teaching English through its culture which is one aspect of communication.
On this basis and since the ultimate goal of teaching grammar is to grant learners
with the knowledge of the language, so that when they listen, read, speak and write they
will have no problem in making use of the language , we have made suggestions that may
be of considerable assistance to the teacher as well as the learner.
79
Appendix I
Pupils’ Questionnaire
Hello;
This questionnaire is intended to gather the necessary information for a research about
“Correctness and Appropriateness in EFL teaching and learning”.
I would like to find out your opinion towards the importance of learning grammar as
well as the use of the English language in meaningful situations to communicate
appropriately. Read the questions carefully and choose the answer that suits you best.
(Some questions need your own specific answer). Thank you in advance.
Please tick in the box for the chosen answer (√) and answer the questions when necessary.
Zohir Bedra
Section 1: Background Information
1. You are in a:
A: literary class B: scientific stream
2. Specify your age
............
3. Your gender:
A: male B: female
4. When did you start learning English?
A: primary school B: middle school
80
5. How often do you have English class at school?
………
6. How do you rate your level in English?
Good average bad
7. Do you like learning English?
Yes no
Because:
………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………… ………………………………………….
.…………….……………………………………………………………………………..
Sections 2: Studying grammar (correctness)
8. How often do you study English grammar?
A. Every English lesson
B. Once a week
C. A few times a month
D. A few times in a term
9. Would you like to study English grammar?
A. In just one lesson
B. In two lessons
C. In a lot of lessons
D. In all lessons
81
10. In which way do you learn English grammar?
I learn English grammar by:
A.Learning the rules by heart.
B.Learning the rules and giving examples.
C.Reading a lot of example sand guessing the rules
D.Building new sentences after a given pattern.
E. Translating to and from English.
11. Why do you study English grammar?
I study English grammar because:
A.Grammar improves my knowledge of English.
B. It helps me to express my self correctly.
C. It helps me to understand spoken and written English.
D. I like English grammar.
E. My teacher gives lessons of grammar.
12. How important do you find it to study English grammar?
A. Very important
B. Important
C. Not that important
D. Not important at all
E. I do not know
13. How good do you consider your skills in English grammar?
A. Very good B. good C. satisfactory D. less than E. poor
Satisfactory
14. Do you think that your knowledge of English improves thanks to English
grammar?
A. Yes ,so much
B. Yes, I do not believe so
C. Yes, a little
82
D. No ,I do not think so
E. No , not at all
15.Do you think that you will use English grammar in future?
A. yes, in my future studies
B. yes, in my future work
C. yes, when I will travel
D. yes, in my spare time (hobbies)
E. no, not at all
F. Another answer: …………
16. Would you choose to study English grammar if you were given the choice?
A. yes B. no
Because:.……………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………….
Section 3: The use of English (appropriateness)
17. How often do you use English outside your English class?
A. Always
B. Sometimes
C. Rarely
D. Not at all
18. How often do use English grammar outside school?
Very often Often Sometimes Seldom Never
19. With whom do you speak English outside school?
a. Teacher
b. Classmates
c. Friends
83
d. Foreigners
Any others (Please specify): …………………..
20. Why do you learn English?
I learn English because:
a. It is part of the program
b. It can help you to travel abroad
c. it has bright future
d. it helps you communicating with others
21.Do you think learning culture is important while learning English?
A. Yes ,Very important
B. Yes, important
C. Not , important
D. I do not know
22. Should culture be thought in English courses or on a separate course?
A. In English courses B. In separate course
84
Appendix II
Teachers’ Interview
1. How many years have you been teaching English? For how long time at upper
secondary level?
2. Do you teach English grammar to your students? Why?
3. What is your attitude towards teaching English grammar?
4. Do you find grammar knowledge important in language teaching and learning? Why,
why not?
5.What effects would you say grammar has on improving students’ English?
6. If you think about English grammar teaching and learning during the years you have
been working as a teacher, would you say that the attitude towards grammar teaching and
learning has changed? If yes, in what ways?
7.What would you say about student’s attitudes towards English grammar? Has that changed over time? In what matters?
8. Do you find it important, that your students know the grammatical rules of English
language? Why, why not?
9. Do you think that English grammar enables pupils to be communicatively competent?
10. Do you think that the best students of grammar are the best communicators in the
classroom?
11. Do you think it is important to integrate the teaching of culture into foreign language
class?
12. Do you think the pupils are more interested and motivated in learning the language
with some background knowledge in culture?
85
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Well , finally I could only thank you for your careful reading
and attention .
Again for further information please contact me in my email:
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