Metadata
- Author: Scott Thornbury
- Apple Books Link
Highlights
they also need to know a good deal about the way the language works: its components, its regularities, and the way it is used.
Acquiring your mother tongue is an unconscious process, like learning to walk, and leaves no trace in memory.
It is not surprising, then, that we have a hard time trying to describe what it is that we intuitively ‘know’ about the language that we speak
In an ideal world, the language teacher will be both language proficient and language aware.
Put simply, it is the knowledge that teachers have of the underlying systems of the language that enables them to teach effectively.
working out something for yourself pays greater dividends in terms of memory and understanding than simply having it explained to you.
The goal of language analysis for teachers of English is strictly a pedagogical one
what is it that a teacher needs to know about English in order to teach it effectively as a second language?
‘The language-aware L2 teacher is more likely to be effective in promoting student learning than the teacher who was not language-aware’.
a discovery approach to grammar is an effective pedagogical option in second language classrooms.
Language teachers, regardless of the methodology they adopt, are still language teachers.
‘One great danger of acquiring specialist knowledge is the possible desire to show learners that you have this knowledge’.
anguage teaching brings together two of the qualities that most uniquely define us as humans: language and cultural transmission, i.e. teaching.
How much knowledge about language is necessary, then?
Teaching beginners, too, is probably more a matter of facilitating the acquisition of a critical mass of vocabulary and formulaic language than of transmitting ‘facts’ about the language. At the other end of the spectrum, however, such as the teaching of advanced adults, or those preparing for formal examinations, or those needing to read or write academic texts, an extensive knowledge of grammar, lexis, phraseology, phonology and discourse will be a requirement.
grammar is just one area of what is called ‘linguistic competence’, other areas being, for example, knowledge of vocabulary and of phonology
Grammatical knowledge (whether explicitly taught or picked up more naturally) is probably therefore a necessary – though not sufficient – condition for language acquisition.
terminology can have its uses in terms of facilitating classroom communication: if a student knows what a verb is and
Introductory unit
what tense means, it may be easier and less time-consuming to correct a tense error by saying ‘wrong tense’ than by any other means
The complaint ‘I’ve taught them all the tenses: there’s nothing left to teach’ is a sad reflection of this ‘verb’s eye view’ of grammar.
What is ‘proper’ English? What English should we teach? Who decides?
Learners need rules that are easy to understand and to apply. These are called pedagogical rules.
This
freedom to ‘bend the rules’ is sometimes known as ‘grammar as choice’, to distinguish it from
‘grammar as structure’