A friend emailed me a notice about a talk by the grammarian Michael Swan recently. The seminar had a very intriguing title: What is happening to English, and how much does it matter? & Getting activity, movement and creativity into grammar lessons. But hey and wow, it’s Michael Swan! I have his book on the shelf. This definitely merits a long drive into Jurong, I thought to myself.
There was a very good turnout for the talk and Swan began the talk by telling us that we need to unlearn many things about grammar that we learnt in school because those rules are not in use anymore. He then went on to give 5 principles (well, it’s 4 +1 but I’ll explain later) to consider when teaching English and I thought these may be useful to you if you weren’t there to listen to him.
1. The room is your enemy. An intriguing statement but Swan simply meant that as teachers, we are often too concerned with what we should be doing in any lesson. But the really important issue should be what pupils do in a lesson. This means getting pupils actively using the language is more important than all the teaching that we try to do.
2. Quality and quantity are both important. We need pupils to use a large amount of language but we also want this language to be rich. How often do we have pupils talking during our classes and using a variety of structures, vocabulary and expressions? How can we create such a situation in our classroom where this can happen?
3. Group work and pair work are important for grammar practice. To allow for this we need to be tolerant of some noise and a loss of control. Teachers often worry about the mistakes pupils make in group and pair work and they are also worried that pupils may resort to using their mother tongues to get the task done. Well, you can’t do much about this but with group and pair work, you’d be assured that many more pupils will have opportunities to speak in English.
4. Activities that have an information gap present the most opportunity for language use and practice. An information gap simply means that one party has some information that the other party lacks. When this is the case, there is more motivation to communicate as the need for communication becomes real.
5. This fifth principle was not shown or clearly mentioned (as it often happens in talks) but from my notes, I decided that this could be it: Don’t try to teach too much. Rather focus on giving a lot of practice so that pupils learn and are able to use a smaller number of structures but with greater confidence. In other words, do more with less.
In any lesson, who gets to be most interesting? Swan said that it should not be the teacher or the materials. The students should the most interesting. So while their English might not be perfect, we can make them the most interesting by creating activities that allow them to be creative. One activity that he used to illustrate this is writing horoscopes for each other after reading some examples. A book that he mentioned which has good activities for grammar and oral fluency is Penny Ur’s classic Discussions that Work. I know that this is in RELC library but I’m sure it’s in NIE too.
Swan’s presentation was witty and full of old fashioned charm and he certainly was not the dull grammarian I’ve always imagined him to be. What he said about the changes in English also made very good sense. In a nutshell, his message is language change and variation is natural and inevitable. He pointed out that while native speakers are a valuable model of the language, native speaker competence is not a realistic aim. His advice to language teachers amidst the changes in English is simple:
1. Keep calm as these changes are merely small ripples in the vast English language ocean.
2. Stay informed by using good grammars and usage guides and good dictionaries. And keeping company with young people can also help us keep up with the changes and be more contemporary in our language use.
3. Be realistic. He suggested that teachers can only teach a small part of the language so they should concentrate on what matters most. He advised against perfectionism and to remember that rules are approximations. And as for accuracy think about: how much do we need; how much can we achieve? And how much can we afford.
I am not sure what you make of his views but here’s my take and let me summarise it in 5 points.
1. We need to unlearn old rules instead of hanging on to them and passing them on to our pupils mindlessly. Teachers often tell me that they were taught certain rules for example, not to use because to begin a sentence and they say this to their students without explaining why. Swan gave some other examples like the use of shall and whom, both of which are on their way out. Times have changed and so have rules.
2. We cover too much material in class but we don’t have enough opportunities for pupils to use real language. Worksheets don’t teach language and we do the most harm when we rely on worksheets to teach English. In short, we have quantity (of the wrong sort) and not enough quality.
3. Teachers are still too focused on what they want to teach rather than what students should learn, and on what they need to cover, than on what students need to be doing with the language taught. Try writing a lesson plan focused on what pupils will do instead of what you will do.
4. We still need to teach less. Do more with less. Help students master the basics of grammar well rather than teach the whole gamut.
5. We need better references for grammar and we need to be more diligent about looking up things that we don’t understand. Doing this will also help us understand the changes going on in the language.
And incase you're wondering, yup that's a photo of Michael Swan taken at the talk.
Speaking of unlearning reminded me of a Youtube video on unlearning featuring my favourite Star Wars guru, Yoda. You can watch it here:
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