Describing and Explaining Grammar and Vocabulary in ELT

Key Theories and Effective Practices

Dilin Liu

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136199325
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Language description plays an important role in language learning/teaching because it often determines what specific language forms, features, and usages are taught and how. A good understanding of language description is vital for language teachers and material writers and should constitute an important part of their knowledge. This book provides a balanced treatment of both theory and practice. It focuses on some of the most important and challenging grammar and vocabulary usage questions. Using these questions as examples, it shows how theory can inform practice and how grammar and vocabulary description and explanation can be made more effective and engaging.

Part I describes and evaluates the key linguistic theories on language description and teaching. Part II discusses and gives specific examples of how challenging grammar and vocabulary issues can be more effectively described and explained; each chapter focuses on one or more specific grammar and vocabulary. An annotated list of useful free online resources (online corpora and websites) for grammar and vocabulary learning and teaching, and a glossary provide helpful information.

1

Language Description

Purview, importance, and principles

1.1 Introduction

As mentioned in the Preface, grammar and vocabulary description (including explanation) is an essential part of language description —the analysis and description of how a language works (i.e., how its lexical, morphological, and syntactical components combine to convey meanings).¹ Historically, language description has focused almost exclusively on grammar, a practice rooted in the long tradition of treating grammar and vocabulary as two separate domains, with the former dealing strictly with the study of language rules and the latter referring simply to the individual words in a language. In language teaching, this separation has often been shown by the fact that there are textbooks and classes devoted exclusively to one or the other (especially to grammar). However, contemporary linguistic research findings from functional, Cognitive, and corpus linguistics have seriously challenged this rigid separation of the two. It has been found that grammar and vocabulary are actually two inherently connected parts of one entity or the two ends of one continuum because “a grammatical structure may be lexically restricted” (Francis, 1993, p. 104) and, conversely, lexical items are not only grammatically confined (i.e., confined to certain grammatical structures) but also grammatical in nature themselves because the choice of a lexical item often has implication for the sentence structure it appears in (Biber, Conrad, & Reppen, 1998; Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad, & Finegan, 1999; Hunston & Francis, 2000). As a result of this new finding, many linguists and applied linguists have argued for the integration of grammar and vocabulary in the study of language and have adopted the term lexicogrammar to describe this integration (e.g., Halliday, 1994; Hunston & Francis, 2000). This book adopts this approach to language description by covering both grammar and vocabulary. Given this fact and the fact that the term “language description” may not be clear enough about what it means or what it actually covers, the book is thus entitled Describing and explaining grammar and vocabulary in ELT. However, for the sake of simplicity, “language description” rather than “grammar and vocabulary description” will be used most of the time hereafter in this book.

Language description plays a very important role in language learning and teaching because language teaching materials and the language features taught in class are often based on the language descriptions provided by linguists. Of course, language teachers and material writers usually do not present to learners verbatim the descriptions provided by linguists because such descriptions are not intended for language learners. They generally have to make selections, adaptations, and/ or simplifications of such descriptions in order to make the information accessible and helpful to language learners. As a result, what is presented to the language learners is what I would like to call pedagogical language description, which is tailored to help learners better understand and grasp a language as well as to help teachers master the language analysis skills necessary for successful language teaching. Thus, one noticeable difference between pedagogical language description and general language description is that the former uses less technical terminology. Pedagogical language description constitutes a crucial part of pedagogical grammar because a key function of pedagogical grammar is to offer a description and analysis of the grammar of a language for the purpose of teaching/learning that language (Liu, 2012b). In practical terms, pedagogical language description refers to the presentation of grammar and vocabulary usage information to learners to help them grasp the grammar and vocabulary being taught. This book deals mainly with pedagogical language description. However, for the sake of simplicity, the adjective pedagogical will not be used in the remainder of the book unless needed for clarity.

1.2 The purview of language description

The purview of language description, which refers to the range of issues covered in its description, has changed along with the development in linguistic theories. This is because language description has historically been influenced, as expected, by the dominant linguistic theories and approaches, such as prescriptive and structural grammar/linguistics (or prescriptivism and structuralism) in the first half of the twentieth century, generative grammar/linguistics (or generativism) in the late 1950s through the early 1970s, and the more recent systemic functional linguistics, Cognitive Linguistics, and corpus linguistics. ² As a result, the approaches to language description as well as the descriptions of some specific language features and rules have changed, sometimes significantly, from one period of time to another and varied from one reference/ textbook to another. Along with these changes, the scope of grammar/vocabulary description has expanded. A detailed discussion of many of the changes that have helped with the expansion of the scope of linguistic description will be presented in the remainder of the book, but a brief mention of them is necessary here to help 1) delineate the characteristics of language description under each major linguistic theory and 2) chart the expansion of the scope of the description.

When prescriptive grammar was prevalent, the focus of language description was on defining correct forms and usages in language. Even some common usages were described as being incorrect. I remember seeing the use of “their” with a singular antecedent included as an error (e.g., Everyone should do their best) in the error finding section of the TOEFL test I took in the early 1980s. I also remember spending a lot of time both in and out of class studying prescriptive rules in order to catch such so-called “errors” that we now understand as common and acceptable usages.

The stress on correctness in form advocated by prescriptive grammar was also noticeable in structural and generative grammars, two linguistic theories that were interested mostly in formal structural issues such as phonology, morphology, and syntax, overlooking questions of meaning and use (pragmatics). For example, in the language descriptions used in the audiolingual approach, an approach heavily influenced by structural and behavioral linguistic theories represented by Bloomfield (1933) and Skinner (1957), language is presented essentially as a system of rules or patterns of form that can be manipulated to produce grammatical sentences and can be learned via various pattern drills or habit formation (an issue that will be discussed in detail in the next chapter). This type of language description and teaching practice does not pay much attention to how language learners should use/choose specific linguistic forms to convey their meanings in real life situations. Therefore, as Holme notes (2009, p. 1), the drills based on structural and behavioral linguistic theories and descriptions often resulted in the learner “forever producing versions of a structure that represented meanings they might never use.”

Similarly, in the language descriptions based on the generative linguistic theory of Chomsky (1957, 1965), language is also treated as a manipulatable system of rules, but it is presented as a much more abstract system. Furthermore, human knowledge of language rules is considered essentially innate in the form of Universal Grammar (UG) and is activated by minimal language input. The activation may involve the setting of some language-specific parameters (rules) of the UG. In this theory, language production or use is mainly a generation of surface sentence structures from deep structures via transformational rules.

These language descriptions and the traditional linguistic theories (structuralism and generativism) on which they were based “all failed,” as Roulet (1975, p. 75) pointed out more than three decades ago, “to provide information on the use of language as an instrument of communication” because most of what these theories and descriptions did was (pp. 75–76):

(a) to describe only the system and not the use of the language;

(b) to treat only the structure of the sentence and neglect communicative units such as text and dialogue ;

(c) to study systematically the referential function of language, neglecting other functions (such as interpersonal and relational/textual functions);

(d) to study only one variety of the language, itself considered as homogeneous and representative and to pay no attention to other varieties which are part of the verbal repertoire of the linguistic community.

Before I move on to the changes that contemporary linguistic theories have brought to language description, it is necessary to note that traditional descriptions have the advantage of being simple and straightforward and hence “relatively easy for teachers and students to use,” a point that Willis (2003, p. 111) made in his discussion of the traditional description of the use of the present and the past tenses. However, this advantage is often gained at the expense of accuracy and adequacy in language description. Of course, given the limited class time and other constraining factors in language teaching, it is often very difficult to find the appropriate compromise or balance between accuracy and adequacy on the one hand and simplicity and comprehensibility on the other, an issue I will return to below in Section 1.3 of this chapter.

The emergence of Halliday’s systemic functional linguistics (1973, 1994) as well as the work of sociolinguists such as Hymes (1971) and other functional linguists (Givón, 1984; Hopper, 1987) had a significant impact on language description. Systemic functional linguistics views language as a system of choices (rather than rules) available to and made by language users in interactions in various social contexts; hence, function and use are the foundations, rather than secondary or subsidiary issues, of its linguistic analysis and description. Thanks to the influence of functional linguistics as well as the growth of globalism and as a reaction against the meaning-impoverished traditional teaching methodologies of grammar-translation and audiolingualism, issues of meaning and use (pragmatics) have, since the 1970s, become an important part of language description in some grammar books for language teachers (e.g., Celce-Murcia & Larsen-Freeman, 1999) and also in some textbooks for language learners (e.g., Larsen-Freeman’s textbook series Grammar dimensions: Form, meaning, and use, 1993). Another important influence of functional linguistics on language description is its treatment of lexis and grammar as the two ends of one continuum, rather than two separate domains, a point already noted earlier. This collapsing of the rigid traditional separation of lexis and grammar has since been further supported and strengthened by Cognitive Linguistics and corpus linguistics, two new contemporary linguistic theories/approaches that have introduced some significant changes in language description and further expanded its scope.³

Like functional linguistics, Cognitive Linguistics attaches great importance to meaning and function in its approach to language. In this sense, Cognitive Linguistics may be considered a further development of functional linguistics, but it differs significantly from the latter in that it considers cognition key in the understanding and use of language. It is also important to note that, although a theory interested in the role of mind in language, Cognitive Linguistics differs drastically from generative linguistics in that it rejects the claim of the existence of an autonomous linguistic faculty or the innateness of language. The influence of Cognitive Linguistics on linguistic description arises largely from its following three key theories. The first is the theory of language as a symbolic system composed of symbolic units i.e., form–meaning pairings that can be as small as phonemes and as large as complete clauses or sentences (e.g., the plural s and the entire utterance What’s up? as a greeting). With language being symbolic, Cognitive Linguistics focuses on human experience (especially embodied experience) and conceptualization in language use and meaning. The second key theory of Cognitive Linguistics is that meaning is fundamental to language as it permeates every aspect of language, including grammatical structures. The third key theory is that language is not innate but usage-based. (These key theories will be examined in detail in Chapter 4.)

Based on the aforementioned theories, language usages are motivated rather than arbitrary, which will be shown with examples in Chapter 4. This understanding would in turn make language learning more interesting and effective. Langacker (2008b) summarizes the point this way:

The basic point is that conventional usage almost always has conceptual motivation. Though it has to be learned, it represents a particular way of construing the situation described. With proper instruction, the learning of a usage is thus a matter of grasping the semantic “spin” it imposes, a far more interesting and enjoyable process than sheer memorization.

(pp. 72–73)

Similarly, as Pütz, Niemeier, and Dirven (2001, p. xv) point out,

CL [Cognitive Linguistics] offers ways and means to facilitate foreign language learning because it enables us to point out the motivation behind every aspect of language. Language thus becomes explainable, and once learners see the way or ways a language works, they may start constructing and reconstructing their own hypotheses about the language they are learning.

In fact, as will be shown in the rest of the book, there have been quite a few studies that have produced interesting cognitive analysis-based descriptions of linguistic units and empirical evidence that these new descriptions are more effective than their counterpart traditional descriptions.

As for corpus linguistics and its influence on language description, it should be first noted that it is a usage-based approach just like Cognitive Linguistics but it differs from the latter in that it is an entirely data-driven approach that makes extensive use of advanced computer searching technology and large amounts of natural language data. The relationship between the two theories/approaches is an interesting and complex one. While they differ on the surface, with corpus linguistics being a study of the external aspect of language (i.e., language data) and Cognitive Linguistics focusing on the inner workings of language (the human mind), the two share three important commonalities: 1) both are usage-based with a focus on actual language data rather than intuitive judgment in their linguistic analysis; 2) both embrace a lexicogrammatical view of language; and 3) both are meaning-centered. Corpus linguistics offers Cognitive Linguistics “the kind of data that are at the heart of Cognitive Linguistics” (Gries, 2008, p. 412) while Cognitive Linguistics is able to provide corpus linguistics explanations for the motivations for the usages identified in the language data (Leech, 1992, 2000). As a result, corpus linguistics has produced many interesting research findings that have influenced language description, as will be shown Chapter 5.

Clearly, with the emergence of new linguistic theories and new understandings of language, the scope of language description has expanded from dealing with only traditional elements such as phonology, morphology, and syntax to covering important language use and functional issues such as discourse, texts, pragmatics, rhetorical styles, and register. The new theories have led to calls for treating and teaching grammar/language as a dynamic system (Larsen-Freeman, 2003; Larsen-Freeman & Cameron, 2008) and for other new perspectives and approaches (Hinkel & Fotos, 2002; Liu & Master, 2003). Moreover, research guided by the new theories has challenged and collapsed the traditional, rigid division between lexis and grammar. The new understandings of and approaches to language have resulted in more accurate, interesting, and useful pedagogical language descriptions, as will be shown in Part II of the book.

However, it is very important to point out that no single linguistic theory alone is adequate for developing effective and useful pedagogical language description, no matter how contemporary and sound the theory is. The reason that we should not try to base our grammar and vocabulary descriptions on one single theory is threefold. First, the purpose of pedagogical language description, as noted earlier, is to help language learners better grasp grammar and vocabulary usages, so, in designing and giving grammar and vocabulary descriptions, there are many factors we need to take into consideration (such as learner age and learning purpose), and some important principles we should follow (such as clarity and simplicity— issues that will be discussed in detail below in Section 1.4). Se...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Language Description
• Part I: Foundations: Key Theories and Approaches to Language Description
• Part II: Putting Theory to Practice: Striving for Enhanced Language Description and Explanation
• Annotated List of Free Online Resources for Grammar/Vocabulary Learning/Teaching
• Glossary
• References
• Author Index
• Subject Index