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The Language Teacher | |
In "How Much Does Correctness Matter?" Michael Swan (1997) argues that when we describe usage as "incorrect," we may be talking about any one of three things: (1) foreign learners' mistakes, (2) native speakers' mistakes, or (3) native speaker variation. I take issue here with the first point. Swan refers to an experiment carried out in the 1980s (Hughes & Lascaratou, 1982), where mistakes made in English by Greek secondary-school students were evaluated by three groups: Greek teachers of English (GTs), British teachers of English, and British non-teachers (BNs). Each group graded the mistakes on a scale from 1 (least serious) to 5 (most serious). Examining the average grades given by the GTs and the British non-teachers BNs, reveals that the groups used quite different criteria in their assessments of error gravity: mistakes which the GTs regarded as most serious often troubled native speakers least, and vice-versa. The latter were most disturbed by mistakes which impeded understanding, while the Greeks were most upset by infringements of common grammar rules their pupils had been taught repeatedly. The final two sections of Swan's article are a vibrant plea for a more "informed and realistic attitude to correctness." Mistakes, whether made by nervous foreign learners or by less educated native speakers, should be treated with much greater tolerance. Language should no longer be used as an "elite filter": the criterion for judging linguistic performance should be intelligibility, and grammar should be denied the "degree of symbolic importance out of all proportion to its real value" it has so long enjoyed. My point is that attitudes towards grammar, and mainly teachers' attitudes, depend to a large extent on how you define grammar and its place in teaching. There may still be a tendency among some mother tongue or foreign-language teachers to view grammar as a Decalogue, the slightest infringement of which is considered a linguistic mortal sin. For others, grammar is simply the set of rules currently followed by educated native speakers to express themselves and communicate with each other. There is nothing immutable or holy about these rules: in fact, they are part and parcel of a particular language and, as Swan himself points out, are constantly being adapted to changing needs or circumstances. In this paper, I will first take a fresh look at the examples quoted and at the assessments in question, and then examine to what extent disregarding current grammatical rules may jeopardize intelligibility and thus handicap or prevent communication. Foreign Learners' Mistakes and Intelligibility Taking Swan's (1997) examples 1, 2, and 4: We agreed to went to the cinema by car (GT 4.6; BN 2.2); We didn't knew what had happened (GT 4.2; BN 1.8); One children was slowly crossing the street (GT 4.1; BN 1.8), we notice that in the first case, the primitive tenses are wrong, and in the second, the plural is used instead of the singular. These mistakes come down to using the wrong word and we can therefore label them as lexical. They do not impede comprehension; for a native speaker knew poses no problem (at least in written form) while went is semantically linked to go and the error will be redressed automatically. It is therefore hardly surprising that the native speakers in the experiment should consider these mistakes as mild peccadilloes. A language teacher, however, might object that in both examples the learner has in fact used the past tense instead of the infinitiveŅa big grammatical mistake. Similarly, example 4 could be considered a serious infringement of concord. The sentence The people are too many so and the cars are too many (GT 3.0; BN 4.3) contains a serious syntactic flaw which makes its interpretation difficult. As regards The bus was hit in front of (GT 2.6; BN 4.3) and There are many accidents because we haven't brought roads (GT 2.4; BN 4.1), however, I do not understand the native speakers' severity. Reading aloud the last example--an instinctive reaction for any experienced teacher--will clarify it at once. As Swan himself points out, the two groups of assessors obviously had different criteria. As a teacher, I can readily imagine my Greek colleagues' irritation that basic grammatical notions had not been assimilated. Unlike Swan, however, I would not view the problem in terms of compliance or disobedience but ask myself a series of questions: Do such errors tend to repeat themselves? Are they part of a pattern? Why do they occur? Are the learners really concerned about accuracy--grammatical or otherwise? Has its communicative importance been underscored, both in their mother-tongue and their foreign-language education? Is the teaching method adapted to the learners' level and motivation? In addition, the native speakers may have been particularly lenient because they were dealing with foreign learners. Neither teachers nor native speakers seem totally consistent in their application of respective criteria. This simply shows the difficulty of rating error gravity objectively and universally. In fact, the experiment may have contained two initial major flaws: (a) The sentences were presented out of context and (b) it is impossible to compare the assessments of native speakers with those of teachers who know what pupils have been taught, what methods have been used, and which points have been emphasized. This experiment, therefore, does little to support Swan's later claim that grammatical correctness is a much less important component of comprehension than is often thought. Grammar as an Essential Component of Communicative CompetenceThe arguments against grammar teaching are well-known: insisting on grammatical accuracy paralyses learners, interferes with the acquisition of communicative skills, and prevents progress. As Master explains (1994, p. 229), communicative competence became, in the early 1980s, the primary object of second language instruction, while grammatical instruction fell into disfavour because it was thought to influence the learner's linguistic editor or monitor (Krashen, 1981; 1982;1985) but not to aid acquisition. The proponents of the Natural Approach held that comprehensible input provided by the instructor was sufficient for the learner to acquire grammatical competence. Since then, Krashen's theories have been challenged, and several researchers (see Odlin, 1994) have demonstrated the usefulness of a systematic presentation of grammatical points. In fact, grammar is not an instrument of linguistic torture but an essential component of communicative competence, and disregarding it may soon lead to serious misunderstandings or even total unintelligibility. Let us illustrate this with Swan's first two examples. I suggested above that they didn't pose much of an intelligibility problem: on hearing or reading them, native speakers will automatically interpret the utterances correctly. However, intelligibility alone is insufficient. If students say I am going to church instead of I am going to the church; What do you do? instead of What are you doing?; or I have been living here for three years instead of I lived here for three years, their utterances will be intelligible but wrong. I could adduce scores of similar examples--errors made by my own students--in which absence of grammar or wrong grammar jeopardizes correct interpretation. It is surely pointless insisting on communicative competence if what you communicate is imprecise. Teachers' Attitudes to Grammatical MistakesIf a foreign language teacher trying get his students talking interrupts them every time they infringe grammatical, lexical, or phonological rules, conversation and communication will soon come to a grinding halt, as will learning. If, on the other hand, he allows these mistakes to be repeated without reacting at all, they will probably impress themselves on the learners' memories and fossilise. It is utopian to hope they will go away of themselves, unless perhaps learners get sufficient intensive exposure, which is seldom the case in institutional foreign language learning. What then, is to be done? Clearly, there is no miracle cure. The best remedy will depend on factors such as the learners' age, motivation, and previous experience. If, for instance, their mother tongue education has developed an awareness of linguistic problems and a concern for linguistic accuracy, they may prove amenable to some form of metalinguistic discussion. In my experience, learners of any age enjoy the intellectual challenge this type of discussion represents. Also, a systematic, in-depth examination of important grammatical issues (articles, tenses, modality) greatly improves the overall performance and communicative skill of advanced learners. As Master (1994, p. 245) remarks, systematicity and completeness are essential: to become really proficient, learners need to be given the whole picture. Taking Swan's advice and telling students, for example, that third-person "s" is not communicatively important would be pedagogically counterproductive: learners, particularly beginners, need rules and some grammatical discipline. Moreover, providing the rules helps give order to the multitude of data they are confronted with, and boosts self-confidence and motivation. This does not preclude their being gradually introduced to the multiple dimensions of language: spoken vs. written usage, standard vs. non-standard varieties, regional differences, world Englishes, etc. Neither does providing rules exclude their being reminded and given evidence of the dynamic, evolutionary character of language in general and of the very rules they have been taught in particular. Mastering the Written LanguageAs Swan (1997) noted, the written language is a new and unfamiliar dialect for every native speaker who begins to learn it and not everybody is equally good at mastering its specific conventions. He argues that "spelling, punctuation, mastery of paragraphing and letter-writing conventions, and so on do not necessarily correlate with low ability or achievement in other areas." However, the ills afflicting both mother-tongue and foreign-language writing are more profound. It is surprising to see how many people are still afraid of putting pen to paper, or finger to keyboard, simply because this requires discourse-structuring skills they do not possess. Given the importance of such skills in our so-called information society, urgent action is needed. Also, there is growing concern in many university departments, science and arts alike, because increasing numbers of students now have trouble understanding complex, but not necessarily cryptic or tortuous, arguments or examination questions. Similarly, they find it extremely difficult to construct, in their mother tongue, a clear, coherent, and self-consistent piece of discourse: we find wrong or inappropriate words, clumsy and ill-balanced sentences, and a rickety, confused, and obscure final product. Indeed, my own (francophone) university now advises some first-year students to take a remedial course in French. Such extreme measures are not inspired by any misguided overvaluation of relatively unimportant aspects of language but by a very pragmatic awareness of real communicative requirements. Balancing Fluency with AccuracySwan (1997) suggests that "learners may have to devote valuable time to relatively unimportant aspects of the language, leaving less time available for work on things that matter more (like breadth of vocabulary or spoken or written fluency)." I cannot concur, because, in my experience, this brings us back to the problem of grammar. Advanced learners who have overcome all the hurdles of English syntax and acquired an extensive vocabulary still have to confront the grammar of the words they have learned. Understanding and assimilating the various patterns into which these words can fit is extremely demanding and time-consuming. I thus agree that breadth of vocabulary is an important component of fluency and that the latter is essential to language mastery, but fluency based on inaccuracy and imprecision is simply a form of camouflage. Clearly, absolute and immediate accuracy should not be demanded from the nervous beginner, but a concern for correctness and precision is part of any type of education: language teachers should, accordingly, instill it gradually into the minds of their pupils.
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