Teaching and learning English grammar

Comparing the English Grammar Profile to the English Language Teaching ‘grammar cannon’: early insights from a corpus informed research project. Graham Burton Mary Immaculate College, Ireland Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy

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Structure 1. project outline: research questions and rationale 2. project design: three steps 3. pilot study: problems and insights

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Overview of study (1): research questions 1. What is the ELT grammar canon? • What grammar is taught? • At what level is it taught?

2. Where do the EGP and ELT canon converge and where do they diverge?

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Overview of study (2): rationale ELT grammar canon is strongly established: • perpetuated by ELT publishing industry • individual coursebooks sell 100,000s a year (Gray, 2002) • coursebooks series very often act as a course syllabus How valid is the content of ‘canon informed’ coursebooks etc.?

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Overview of study (3): rationale ELT publishing responds to commercial demands, not academic findings: • Littlejohn (1992): ELT materials need to be “conservative rather than radical, and minimally evolutionary rather than revolutionary” • O’Keeffe & Mark (in press): “The success of any textbook […] which does not cover all of the established canon is likely to be questioned.” • Burton (2012): over a third of coursebook authors have never used corpus data

EGP data needs to be accessible. 5

Establishing a data set Exploring the grammar canon – potential data sources: • coursebooks • teaching materials from large language school chains • exam syllabuses and national curricula

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Pilot study: design Design: • all levels of four popular General English coursebook series • five areas of grammar: • • • • •

present perfect comparative and superlative forms, as … as can could if clauses (conditionals)

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Pilot study insights (1): alignment difficulty in aligning coursebooks to CEFR referenced data CEFR

coursebook levels

A1

Starter (Beginner)

A2

Elementary

B1

Pre-Intermediate Intermediate

B2

Upper Intermediate

C1

Advanced

C2

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Pilot study: insights (1) difficulty in aligning coursebooks to CEFR referenced data CEFR

coursebook levels

A1

Starter (Beginner)

A2

Elementary

B1

Pre-Intermediate Intermediate

B2

Upper Intermediate

C1

Advanced

C2

– 9

Pilot study: insights (1) difficulty in aligning coursebooks to CEFR referenced data CEFR

coursebook levels

A1

Starter (Beginner)

A2

Elementary

B1

Pre-Intermediate Intermediate

B2

Upper Intermediate

C1

Advanced

C2

– 10

Pilot study: insights (1)

Empower (CUP)

SpeakOut (Pearson)

face2face (CUP) 11

Pilot study insights (2): ‘macro’ and ‘micro’ level grammar ‘macro’ level: • contents pages of coursebooks / other teaching materials • examination specifications • national curricula

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Doff et13al (2015)

Doff et14al (2015)

15 Cambridge English Language Assessment (2014)

Ministério da Educação (n.d.) 16

Pilot study insights (2): ‘macro’ and ‘micro’ level grammar ‘micro’ level • details of grammar within lessons in a coursebooks:

• ‘present perfect to talk about recent past events that have an effect on the present’ • ‘present perfect to talk about our experiences’ • ‘present perfect to talk about unfinished states’

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Pilot study insights (3): recipe metaphor recipe metaphor: dishes and ingredients • dishes: macro level grammar • probably broad agreement

• ingredients: ‘pool’ of micro level points associated with a macro grammar point • different coursebooks choose different ingredients from pool for their dishes

• in the canon: dishes the same, recipes vary

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Pilot study insights (4): ‘disagreement’ vs. ‘lack of agreement’ • disagreement not common (i.e. grammar item is A2 in one coursebook, B1 in another) • lack of agreement more common (i.e. grammar item is in one coursebook series, but not another) • canon at ‘micro’ level not a list of ‘must teach’ grammar items • a list of forms, uses, etc. that coursebooks choose from

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Pilot study insights (5): advanced levels Advanced levels of coursebooks (i.e. C1) showed: • greatest lack of agreement among themselves • least correspondence with EGP • many micro level points in EGP missing from canon

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Pilot study insights (5): advanced levels missing from canon: • present perfect: negative questions; negative with still • comparatives: superlative adverb + clause, no / not any + comparative; not that much + comparative, the slightest … / the faintest … • could: you could have … (criticism) • conditionals: ellipted if clause (e.g. if needed/required) McCarthy (2015): little consensus in coursebooks at advanced levels • McCarthy: NS corpora can inform content at C levels • could EGP also be a useful source for this? 21

Pilot study insights (6): ‘fewer’ • fewer not included in the EGP • rarely included in ELT coursebooks: • face2face: Upper Intermediate (CUP) – in ‘Language Reference’ • Touchstone Student’s Book 2 (CUP) – specific focus in lesson • Complete CAE (CUP) – specific focus in lesson

• corpus evidence: • 360 hits for fewer in passing papers in CLC (6.10 per million) • at least 28% of all hits copied from exam questions • 41.30 per million in Cambridge International Corpus

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Pilot study insights (6): ‘fewer’ fewer – is this causal? • ‘inversion’ typically covered in coursebooks, and overrepresented in the CLC • fewer: typically not covered in, and underrepresented in the CLC

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Summary 1. project outline: research questions and rationale 2. project design: three steps 3. pilot study: problems and insights

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References Burton, G. (2012). Corpora and Coursebooks: destined to be strangers forever? Corpora 7(1) Cambridge English Language Assessment (2014). Cambridge English Preliminary: Handbook for Teachers. Cambridge: UCLES. Doff et al (2015). Cambridge English: Empower. Intermediate Student’s Book. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Gray, J. (2002). The global coursebook in English Language Teaching in D. Block and D. Cameron (eds) Globalization and Language Teaching, pp. 151–67. London: Routledge. Littlejohn, A. (1992). Why Are ELT Coursebooks the Way They Are? Unpublished Ph.D. thesis. Lancaster University. McCarthy, M. J. (2015). The role of corpus research in the design of advanced level grammar instruction. In M. A. Christison, D. Christian, P. A. Duff, & N. Spada (Eds.). (2015). Teaching and learning English grammar: Research findings and future directions, pp. 87-102. New York, NY: Routledge. Ministério da Educação (n.d.) Programa de Inglês. O’Keeffe, A. and Mark, G. (In press). The English Grammar Profile – describing a criteria-based empirical methodology for calibrating learner grammar competencies using the Cambridge Learner Corpus. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics. 20(4)

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