Learners acquire grammar along developmental routes that instruction can speed up but not reorder. The practical question is how to reconcile a coursebook’s grammar sequence with the learner’s internal syllabus.
Where the sources disagree
- Emergence vs pre-selection: Thornbury lets grammar emerge and reacts. Conti pre-selects patterns and explains grammar only after processing. Both reject PPP’s “present, then produce”.
- Readiness: Conti (via Pienemann) says you cannot quiz a learner into the next stage. Emergentists say stages are themselves frequency effects.
- Dellar attacks PPP and tense syllabuses but concedes a place for traditional form–meaning work. Swift’s Module 1 methodology answers treat guided discovery and structural approaches as positions to explain (beliefs, roles, suitability), not to refute. In the exam, describe the debate; don’t take a side.
Notes
- Grammar emerges from usage (emergentism)
- Teach grammar in processability order (Pienemann)
- Sentence builders and patterns-first lexicogrammar
- The illusion of learning - correct answers are not acquisition
- Focus on form vs focus on formS
More notes (by source)
A Journey in TEFL
- Guided-discovery grammar sequence - meaning, noticing, controlled to free
Barefoot TEFL Teacher (David Weller) - CCQs and ICQs - check with evidence, not nods
- Elicit before you present - context, one-answer questions, wait time
Blog de Cristina (Cristina Cabal) - Simultaneous-response team games for grammar review
Book - 100 Teaching Tips (Penny Ur) - Open-ended exercises - allow many right answers
ELT Planning (Pete) - Boers’ six evidence-backed practices for vocabulary and grammar
Geoff Jordan (applingtesol) - Interlanguage - teaching changes the rate, not the route
- Teacher trainers should teach the research on interlanguage
Hugh Dellar - Grammar should be taught through lexis, not PPP rules
Leo Selivan (Leoxicon) - Chunks are generative templates for grammar
- Colligation and bottom-up grammar
Sam Shepherd (ESOL, Learning, and FE) - PPP produces language-like behaviour
Scott Thornbury (An A-Z of ELT) - Grammar McNuggets - discrete items vs corpus reality
- PPP - a novice scaffold, not a production line
Steve Smith (Language Teacher Toolkit) - Mnemonics build declarative knowledge, not proficiency
Teaching English with Oxford - Inductive vs deductive grammar - match approach to rule type
The TEFL Zone (Rachel Tsateri) - Grammar teaching options - be eclectic (Thornbury)
Tim’s Free English Lesson Plans - Functional language plus a key-word transformation - Annoying Habits B2
From my books (highlights)
Key terms (DELTA M1)
developmental sequence · Processability Theory · Teachability Hypothesis · interlanguage · U-shaped learning · implicit vs explicit knowledge · declarative vs procedural knowledge · proceduralisation · PPP · guided discovery · structural syllabus