Title Page Name of author: Ola Bassam Sayed Ahmed Title of dissertation: The Application of Corpus Linguistics on The Grammar Teaching Materials of 10th Grade Students University: Tishreen University, Lattakia, Syria. E-mail:
[email protected] Telephone: (mobile) (+963) 9494708271
Note: This is a draft version of a master dissertation which will be published in the magazine of Tishreen university. Please reference the original source in any citations
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SYRIAN ARAB REPUBLIC Ministry of Higher Education Tishreen University The Higher Institute of Languages Department of English Language Teaching
The Application of Corpus Linguistics on The Grammar Teaching Materials of 10th Grade Students
Thesis Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master in English Language Teaching Department of English Language Teaching at The Higher Institute of Languages in Tishreen University
By Ola Bassam Sayed Ahmed Supervised by Dr. Dima Dayoub
Lattakia -Syria December, 2018
.…………………………………………….…………………………………………….……………………………………… SYRIA, Ministry of Higher Education, Tishreen University, The Higher Institute of Languages, Department of English Language Teaching
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الجمهورية العربية السورية وزارة التعليم العالي جامعة تشرين المعهد العالي للغات قسم تعليم اللغة اإلنكليزية
استخدام عينة البحث اللغوي اإللكترونية وتطبيقاتها في تصميم المادة التعليمية لقواعد اللغة االنكليزية :دراسة على عينة من طالب الصف العاشر في مدينة الالذقية
رسالة أُعدت لنيل درجة الماجستير في تعليم اللغة اإلنكليزية – قسم تعليم اللغة اإلنكليزية
إعداد عال بسام سيد أحمد
إشراف د .ديما ديوب
الالذقية – سوريا 2018
……………………………………….…………………………………………….……………………………………………. الجمهورية العربية السورية -وزارة التعليم العالي -جامعة تشرين -المعهد العالي للغات -قسم تعليم اللغة اإلنكليزية
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© 2018Ola Sayed Ahmed
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Abstract This research encourages the writers of language teaching materials to use an integrated approach to language skills. It reports the application of advances in Corpus Linguistics (CL) in creating English grammar teaching materials for 10th grade school students in one school in Lattakia, Syria. Unlike the input presented in the school textbook, the designed intervention materials include authentic language from spoken and written corpora. The process of writing these materials included careful selection of instances from a variety of spoken and written corpora to ensure relevance in terms of grammatical structure and theme, and appropriacy in terms of the students' cultural background and level of proficiency. Moreover, they include some corpus-based grammar rules which give an account of the messy nature of daily English language. The intervention materials were compared and contrasted with school textbook; qualitatively, by evaluating both materials according to relevant literature and corpus data, and quantitatively, by testing the research hypothesis that the communicative competence of students getting authentic linguistic input offered in the materials will be better than that of the control group, through a quasi-experimental study. The results show that authentic linguistic input improved the students' grammatical aspect of communicative competence whereas similar improvement was missing in relation to speaking skill. The results of this research are discussed in light of students' opinions of the intervention materials and should be useful for teachers wishing to improve their students' linguistic input or writers of language teaching materials in the Syrian context.
Key words: authenticity, corpus, materials, grammar, conversation, input
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To God, for being God To Mom, for being the anthem of my mind and the lullaby of my heart To Dad, for always being my spine and sword To Osama, & Anas, for being my armor and my spear To Hiba, for always being my anchor To Syria, our undeserved harbor
To those who are still willing to play fair in a world of twisted rules
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Acknowledgments I would first like to thank my thesis supervisor Dr. Dima Dayoub of Integrating Technology with English Language Teaching at Tishreen University. The door to Dr. Dayoub office was always open whenever I ran into a trouble spot or had a question about my research or writing. She consistently allowed this paper to be my own work, but steered me in the right the direction whenever she thought I needed it. Besides my advisor, I would like to thank the rest of my thesis committee: Dr. Laila Makdid and Dr. Iman Shamsini, for their insightful comments and encouragement, but also for the hard question which incented me to widen my research from various perspectives. My sincere thanks also go to Dr. Munzer Boubou who helped me in doing the statistical work of the data analysis. Without his precious support it would have taken me ages. I would like also to thank all the tutors at the Higher Institute of languages; Dr. Awras Othman, Dr. Ghiessah Sarko, Dr. Lubna Shaaban, Dr. Dima Farhat, Dr. Laila Makdid, and Dr. Iman Shamsini for the great experience I had in the first year of doing my Master. Many thanks go to Dr. Walid Akrama and my uncle Mr. Maher Ashoor who helped me in doing the paper work. My sincere thanks also go to my colleagues; Ammar Mahmoud, Nour Al-sheikh, Hla Tayeh, Hiba Tunb, and Hiba Mariam who supported me while doing the interviews and entering the data. I'm grateful to Dr. Abdulkarim Ayash, whose help and guidance saved me a lot of time and effort. Great thanks go to 10th grade students of Martyer Mohammad Firas Fa'ef Jadid, Maher Adnan Zahed and Nadim Asaad Ismaiel schools for their participation in the study as samples. Without their participation the study would not have been possible. I would like also to express my gratitude to the teachers of the previously mentioned schools for their support and collaboration. I would like to specially thank Mrs. Hadia Ahmar, Mr. Ahed Sankari, and Mrs. Sahar Ghali for their patience and immense experience. Special thanks also go to Ms. Nuhad Haj Ibreheem, Mrs. Bahia Mufti, and Mrs. Rawaa Raii. They sparked the love of English Language in me and encouraged me to continue my study. I thank my students at Tishreen and Al-Andalus universities for their excitement about my research and the lovely experience we had together. Last but not least, I would like to express my gratitude and love to all of my relatives for their undying belief in me, specially my grandparents who brought such amazing parents to my life, and my aunt Ghaedaa Ashoor, her daughters, and Lama I also owe a debt of gratitude to my laptop, my mobile, library genesis.com, sci-hub.com, shift & shai café, tea, cheese, and claretine, I could not imagine studying without them. vii
Contents Chapter One: Introduction
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1.1. Statement of the problem
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1.2. Significance
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Chapter Two: Literature Review
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2.1. Material development
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2.1.1. The importance of textbooks
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2.1.2. Textbook evaluation
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2.1.3. Origins of authenticity
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2.1.4. Authentiology terminology
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2.1.5. Task authenticity
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2.1.6. Authenticity debate in ELT
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2.1.7. Simplified vs. Elaborated input
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2.2. Corpus linguistics
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2.2.1. Corpus-based or corpus-driven
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2.2.2. Direct or indirect approach
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2.2.3. Spoken language vs. Written language
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2.2.4. The issue of contextuality
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2.2.5. Correctness, pedagogy, and spoken grammar
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2.3. Grammar
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2.3.1. Communicative language teaching
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2.3.2. Grammar and lexis
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2.3.3. Features of the grammar of spoken language
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2.3.4. Discourse circumstances of conversation.
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2.3.5. The real-time, context-bound, syntax of conversation
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2.3.5.1. Adaptive spoken units
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2.3.5.2. Inherent non-clausal units
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2.3.5.3. Ellipsis
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2.3.5.4. Heads and tails
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Chapter Three: Research Methods and Procedures
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3.1. Research hypotheses
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3.2. Approach: case study
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3.3. Procedure
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3.4. Target group and target context
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3.5. Data collection methods
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Chapter Four: Textbook Evaluation and Designed Materials
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4.1. Textbook
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4.2. Evaluation of textbook grammar exercises
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4.2.1. Adverbs of manner
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4.2.2. Reported speech
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4.2.3. Passive
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4.3. Designed materials
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4.3.1. The corpora selected
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4.3.2. Selection of instances
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4.3.3. Frequencies
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4.3.4. Tasks
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Chapter Five: Data Analysis and Conclusion
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5.1. Quantitative data
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5.1.1. Questionnaires
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5.1.1.1. Student questionnaire
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5.1.1.2. Teacher questionnaire
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5.1.2. Tests
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5.2. Qualitative data
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Chapter Six: Discussion of Findings and Recommendations
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6.1. Discussion of findings
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6.1.1. Corpus-based materials and form learning
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6.1.2. Corpus-based materials and speaking
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6.1.3. Students' responses to intervention materials
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6.2. Implications
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6.3. Limitations and ethical issues
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6.4. Suggestions for further studies
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Bibliography
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Appendix A
Answers to teacher's style of teaching questionnaire
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Appendix B
Student questionnaire
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Appendix C
Teacher questionnaire
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Appendix D
Placement test
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Appendix E
Pre-test
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Appendix F
Post-test
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Appendix G
Semi-structured interview questions
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Appendix H
Textbook grammar exercises units 10 and 11
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Appendix I
Most frequent adverbs of manner across corpora
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Appendix J
Frequency of the reporting verbs in textbook and materials across
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Appendix K
corpora
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Appendix L
New vocabulary in designed Materials
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Appendix M
Original text of conversations as it appears in corpora
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Appendix N
Intervention materials (corpus-based grammar teaching materials)
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Appendix O
Students opinion of the intervention materials
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Students opinion of the intervention materials (translated)
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List of Tables Table 2.1
Types of inserts in conversation
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Table 2.2
Types of ellipsis
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Table 4.1
Corpus-based insights into actual language use and their implications
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for a usage-based cognitive grammar Table 4.2
Lexical density and frequency of discourse features between
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intervention materials and textbook Table. 4.3
Distribution of grammar task types of the textbook and the designed
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materials Table 5.1
Grammar teaching and learning in student questionnaire
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Table 5.2
Language of school textbook as a source of input in student
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questionnaire Table 5.3
Medium of learning and teaching in student questionnaire
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Table 5.4
The scores of the sample and control groups in interview (speaking
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test) Table 5.5
Themes of the students' opinions of the intervention materials and
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their frequency
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List of Figures Figure 2.3
Language and context, system and instance
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Figure 2.2
Two dimensions of learning in CLT
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Figure 2.3
The interrelated functions associated with conversational grammar
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Figure 5.1
The need to get private English tutoring according to student
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questionnaire Figure 5.2
Exercises deletion by teachers in relation to language areas according
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to student questionnaire. Figure 5.3
Time allocation by teachers in relation to language areas according
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to student questionnaire. Figure 5.4
Correlation between interview scores areas and the pre-test and post-
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test
List of Abbreviations EFL: English as a Foreign Language. ELT: English Language Teaching. CLT: Communicative Language Teaching. CL: Corpus Linguistics. CR: Consciousness Raising. DDL: data-driven-learning. FGP: English for General Purposes. ESP: English for Specific Purposes. NNSs: Non-Native Speakers. NSs: Native Speakers. COBUILD: Collins Birmingham University International Language Database. VOICE: Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English. SBCSAE: Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English. LSWE corpus: Longman Spoken and Written English corpus. ELF: English as a lingua franca. SPSS: Statistical Package for Social Science. PPP: PPP approach (perceiving, practicing, producing). III: III approach (Illustration-Interaction-Induction).
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Chapter One Introduction Teaching materials play a vital role in second and foreign English language teaching classrooms. Grammar teaching, on the other hand is a part and parcel of the popular Communicative Language Teaching (CLT). Canale & Swain, (1980) who laid the theoretical basis of CLT find it necessary for a CLT syllabus to include aspects of grammatical and sociolinguistic competencies. Advances in technology have been of great benefit to English language teaching. Corpus technology particularly helped in material design, reference and dictionary creation. Exploiting the abundance of authentic language collected in corpora just seems as the right decision for practitioners and material designers. This research discusses the potential effects of applying corpus technologies in developing grammar teaching materials. It also explores the possible effects of presenting authentic examples of conversation from spoken corpora on the students' oral production. It includes a statement of the problem that stirred this research, a review of related literature, the methodology used in the research, a specification of the target sample and context that the research will be conducted on, a description of the intervention materials design and basis, an analysis of the data, and a discussion of the findings.
1.1. Statement of The Problem English language teaching in Syria revolves around Teaching English for General Purposes (EGP). Grammar teaching is an essential part of foreign language teaching in Syrian schools. However, Syrian grammar teaching materials need to rise to the level of the importance they are given for the following reasons: •
Whether grammar teaching is beneficial or not, it is there and it will continue to exist in Syrian schools because I noticed -as a Syrian English language student and teacherhow teachers, students and parents looked at grammar teaching as the essence of language teaching. Newby (2015) agrees that the right question is not whether but how to teach grammar and make alterations to the traditional practices which focus on knowledge of form rather than using it and triggers boredom instead of motivation.
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Syrian students rely heavily on the input they get from textbooks and from their English language teachers in classroom. All school English language teachers in Syria are nonnative speakers, hence falling behind native teachers because they cannot be "admirable, infallible informants" of language (Seidlhofer, 1999, p.237). And if a native-like language proficiency is the target of language teaching and learning, then the teaching materials presented in official textbooks should present a native-like model
of language because it might be the only honest account of language that the students know of. It is important to note that native-like input could be offered by any proficient speaker whether she is native or not. It is the fact that not all non-native speakers have a native-like English language proficiency. •
Despite the vital role the official English textbooks play in the learning/ teaching process in Syria, they are lacking in reflecting the technological advances of materials development as will be seen in 4.2.
•
The objective of these textbooks is to prepare a good English speaker. However, they never provide the learners with the actual language used in daily life.
1.2. Significance The significance of this study lies in: first, its attempt to bridge the gap between the objectives of the Syrian English textbooks and their outcomes. This is done with careful attention to the reputation of grammar in the minds of Syrian teachers and students, as well as the technological advances of exploring the different aspects of language. Second, by trying to find a way to improve oral language production competence in an integrated way through improving grammar teaching materials, this research seeks to maximize the benefits the Syrian students get from the linguistic input of school textbooks. Hence, this research aims at a practical attainable goal of changing what could be changed instead of trying to change the difficult circumstances and conditions of language teaching in schools, such as, teacher training, classroom population, school accommodation, or language attitude. Third, this research despite its focus on grammar does not treat grammar as the only part of language competence that matters but rather it studies grammar as one face of language’s many connected faces. It has a holistic view of language where making change in one aspect could possibly change the whole. Forth, the value of this research also lies in the qualitative comparative evaluation of grammar exercises of the Syrian English Textbook for 10th grade. It compares the language used in the textbook with authentic corpus language and with research findings about similar language textbooks. Last but not least, this research exploits the latest technological advances of linguistic study, and brings the fruits into the relatively traditional Syrian English language classroom without changing the unique features of its language teaching context. Although the period of the teaching trial in the current study is relatively short, the value of it lies in the practical possibilities it introduces to official material designers.
1.3. Aim of the Study The aim of this study is to test whether or not authentic language presented in the shape of grammar teaching exercises and conversations has an effect on the grammatical competence and speaking skill of the 10th grade students in Lattakia's public school and whether this effect (if any) is positive or negative. It also tries to get some glimpses of how the students will react to such language. In doing so, improvements to school English language teaching materials will be possible especially when this research takes into consideration the needs and nature of the language teaching classrooms in Lattakia and how students and teachers deal with grammar exercises. Moreover, exploring the opinions and reactions of students to such materials gives insight on how well students will receive linguistic input resulted from recent technological advances which in turn will inform what to include and what to exclude when writing grammar teaching materials. This study will therefore address the following research questions: i.
What difference (if any) do corpus-based grammar teaching materials make in improving English grammar learning to high-school students (10th grade) in Lattakia?
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What difference (if any) does the authentic language of the corpus-based grammar teaching materials make in improving oral English language production to high-school students (10th grade) in Lattakia?
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What are the students' responses to the new materials?
Chapter Two Literature Review 2.1. Material Development Developing English language teaching process entails the development of English language teaching materials. Teaching materials are a cornerstone in classroom activities and environment. Teachers and syllabi designers used to rely on their intuition in selecting and creating teaching materials. In their effort to improve language learning, applied linguists proposed some methods in language teaching which determined the type of materials and activities used in classroom. In a period of 100 years, 7 main methods trod on each other (Richards, 2001). Starting from audio-lingual method, teachers and linguists started to pay some attention to learner’s needs. The changing needs of learners affected language teaching syllabi and methods. However, those methods did not achieve what they claimed to achieve because of “the limited views of language, teaching and learning which they embodied” (Swan, 2009, p. 129). Consequently, the movement from syllabus design to syllabus or material development took place in the 1950s with English for Specific Purposes leading the way to needs analysis and genre analysis. Materials development as defined by Brain Tomlinson (2001) is: both a field of study and a practical undertaking. As a field it studies the principles and procedures of the design, implementation and evaluation of language teaching materials. As an undertaking it involves the production, evaluation and adaptation of language teaching materials, by teachers for their own classrooms and by materials writers for sale or distribution. (p. 66) Thus, as a step to insure that language teaching will meet its objectives, one must research the type of materials and syllabi used in classroom and constantly search for innovative and new approaches to materials and syllabi design. It is only by research and experiment one can know whether a particular approach to teaching language is valid or not.
2.1.1. The Importance of Textbooks According to Richards (2001), textbooks have the following advantages: they provide a frame for the teaching/learning process, they help in standardizing learning experience, they try to provide the learner with high-quality learning, they introduce multiple resources to the classroom e.g. CDs, videos, tapes and self-study textbooks, they save teachers’ time, they can provide effective language input to the classroom, they help in training inexperienced teachers, they have an appealing design. Thus, a careful attention should be paid to design textbooks that
stand up to their vital role in classroom. My research is concerned with textbooks ability of providing effective language input to the classroom. The input that meets the students’ needs and achieves the textbook’s objectives of preparing efficient language speakers.
2.1.2. Textbook Evaluation The verb evaluate is defined in Oxford’s Advanced Learner’s Dictionary as following “to form an opinion of the amount, value or quality of something after thinking about it carefully” (Hornby et al., n.d.). If we apply this definition on textbook evaluation, this carful thinking entails asking questions about the suitability of the textbook to the course, the students and teachers regarding the different needs and usages the textbooks is supposed to meet. Materials evaluation for Littlejohn (1998) is the process in which the suitability of a textbook and its methodology in a certain language learning context is measured for implementing proper actions. Textbook evaluation is of great importance because the success of the course is in part attributed to the success of the textbook in meeting the learning context’s needs. Different approaches to textbook evaluation emerged according to the time of evaluation; pre-use, inuse, or post-use, the scope of evaluation; external or internal, and the strategy of evaluation; impressionistic, checklist, or in-depth (Demir & Ertas, 2014). However, the scope of this study does not allow for a full evaluation of the school textbook, albeit, an in-depth evaluation of the grammar exercises will be presented in 4.2
2.1.3. Origins of Authenticity The word 'authentic' is recurrent in ELT field and particularly associated with materials. However, it causes a lot of controversy. Although, the word has positive implications when used in everyday language of newspapers and TVs, and is defined by Merriam-Webster dictionary as "based on fact" in this era of facts, but it seems to elicit ambiguity in ELT. Mishan (2005), traced back the origins of authenticity in ELT and found that it stems out from 3 sources; Communicative approaches, Material focused approaches, and humanistic approaches. Communicative approaches view communication as both means and end of language learning. In order to provide the learners with a learning experience which equips them with all that is necessary to get an adequate communicative competence outside the learning environment, the syllabi, tasks, language, and other features of the language learning process should be true to the communicative situation they might encounter outside the classroom and yet be suitable to and applicable in the classroom. Hence, authentic materials seemed to fit the bill for what makes an utterance for Hymes (1972) and the communicative approaches which
will be explained in 2.3.1. i.e. for a learning process of communication to be fruitful, it should provide the learner with knowledge about features of communication, such as, context, function, cultural background of target language, etc. Most of those features are inherently existent in authentic materials (written or aural) and are absent from contrived teaching materials. Material focused approaches move the text to the focal point of language learning. They use techniques such as holistic reading for meaning, translation, and induction. Language learning is viewed as a process of dissecting texts. Those texts are seen to present a model of the target language which in turn needs to provide a variety of the features of the target language. For this reason, authentic materials were a suitable substitute for course books which "suffer from grammatical artificiality" and do not incorporate the grammatical items found in different registers (McCarthy & Carter, 1995, p. 154). Still and all, the industry of language teaching materials is becoming more artificial when the need to more communicative, day to day, authentic materials is increasing (Mishan, 2005). Humanistic approaches stress the individuality of learners and try to cater for all learner styles of language learning. These approaches made the shift from teaching to learning and then to the learner who "stands at the center of –and ultimately controls – the learning process" (Mishan, 2005, p. 7). This brings the topic of learner autonomy to the heart of language learning. In Holec’s simple words, autonomy is “the ability to take charge of one’s own learning” (Holec, 1981). Though needs more clarification, this definition caters for all the three versions of autonomy discussed by Othman (2009), namely the technical version, the psychological version and the political version. The technical version is more concerned with hands on techniques and practices that successful learners do from setting aims and objectives for their learning to evaluating their process of learning with all of the decisions that has been taken along the way. The psychological version is more concerned with the mindset of the earnest students. The political version of autonomy is concerned with the right of the learner to have a wide range of opportunities from which he/she can choose. This ability cannot be implanted in the learner but rather be cultivated and fostered through creating a rich learning environment. One of the important factors controlling the learning environment is the language input. It should be abundant and rich enough to enhance the three versions of autonomy. Since traditional materials do not provide such opportunity, material designer sought the help of authentic materials which "tend to stimulate learners to further independent discovery and learning ...(and) may be left to direct the learner" (Mishan, 2005, p. 10).
2.1.4. Authentiology Terminology Authenticity includes materials such as newspaper articles, radio recordings, news videotapes, etc. and the language used in the previously mentioned materials. Because it encompasses the continuum from the layout of a text, passing through its language, the authors of it, and its context, to the readers and their response to it (Mishan, 2005). It is necessary to distinguish between all of the following terms; materials' authenticity, language authenticity, text authenticity, task authenticity and learner authenticity before proceeding for a definition of authenticity in this research. For the purpose of this study, I would like to make a distinction between authentic text, which may be a full piece of news in a news podcast or a scene in a movie, and authentic language, which is the language instances included in the authentic texts. The term also includes task authenticity which is "those procedures that attempt to replicate and rehearse in the classroom the kinds of things that learners need to do outside of the classroom" (Nunan, 2004, p. 54). And it also includes learner authenticity which is how the learner interacts and interpret the text (Mishan, 2005). The definitions of authenticity varied. Gilmore (2007) found eight possible meanings of authenticity in literature, from which I can provide a definition that suits my research; authentic text is any production of language produced by any proficient speaker of English to convey a message to another speaker of English in a real situation without any pedagogical intentions backing the creation of that production.
2.1.5. Task Authenticity The importance of task authenticity comes from the fact that authentic text especially that processed by concordancers "can only be made pragmatically real as discourse if it is reconnected up with context" (Widdowson, 1998, p. 712). Task authenticity can be tackled from two perspectives; objective, that depends on the degree to which the task is similar to the ones that the learner might encounter in real world, and subjective, which depends on the degree to which the learner considers the task authentic and responds to it in an authentic manner (Widdowson, 1978). A possible analogy of the objective and subjective authenticity could be made with immediate and target contexts of the learning experience. The degree of contextualization of authentic materials will be fully discussed in 2.2.4. Mishan, (2005) suggests a framework for task authenticity in which, the task should (1) be true to the communicative purpose of the authentic text, (2) be suitable for the type of authentic text being used, (3) result in learners interacting with the authentic text, (4) resemble real life tasks, (5) stimulate the existing interlanguage of the learners, (6) encourage motivated
communication between learners. This framework will be consulted in the design of the intervention materials with some modifications to suit the purpose of this study in chapter four. However, the notion of task that aims at the achievement of a real-life communicative purpose cannot cover grammar teaching because grammar activities are "designed to develop an awareness of grammatical forms or to promote the comprehension or internalization of forms" (Purpura, 2004, p.111). Thus, the focus of language teaching should fall somewhere on the continuum between form and content. Roca (2015) suggested a typology of activities found in 16 different textbooks officially used in schools or language schools. A corpus of activities was created according to the type of each task and then the focus of each task was tagged to it. The results show that there are three main types of tasks; tasks that focused on content (52%) such as close ended and open ended questions, role plays, argument driven discussions, and oral and written production, tasks that focused on form (33%) such as, multiple choice, filling in gaps, error correction, and searching for forms, and forms that focus on both form and content (17%) which were a mix of the afore mentioned tasks. Grammar exercises are inherently form-focused; however, that does not dismiss the lexicogrammatical connections they present between form and meaning and thus between form and the communicated content. The relationship between form and meaning will be further discussed in 2.3.2. Hence, the immediate context of doing a language exercise seems to be prioritized over the communicative context of the text that makes the grammatical input in grammar exercises.
2.1.6. Authenticity Debate in ELT Two camps were involved in the debate of whether to incorporate authentic materials in syllabi or not. The main premises of authenticity advocates are that authentic materials reflect real language in use to learners, and thus they meet the learners’ communicative needs more sufficiently. Flowerdew (1993) notes that using authentic examples is more truthful to representing actual language use to the students and that fabricated examples impose a danger of presenting a deceptive, neat, and smooth language to the learner. This inhibits the learner's ability "to be able to operate independently in the L2 outside the classroom" (Gilmore, 2004). Moreover, textbooks examples-being contrived, invented or concocted- do not feature the kinds of grammatical items found in spoken language and consequently in corpora, and thus depriving the students of forms that "enable a greater degree of interpersonal and interactive language uses" (McCarthy & Carter, 1995). On the other hand, those against the use of authentic materials find them difficult to select and not suitable for all learners due to their complex vocabulary (Richards, 2001). Gilmore
(2004) questions this claim deeming it as an underestimation of the learners' ability to understand then use the structures of the language. Widdowson (1998) justifies the use of contrived examples because they are made for the purpose of teaching and that they lose their effectiveness if they resemble real language. This is because real examples do not account for the interests, levels and cultures of learners. Albeit, the material writers' "invented examples would, appeal for their authenticity to a non-existent context, which would eventually be evaluated by [their] intuition, with all the misleading consequences of that" (Sinclair, 1991). The intuition of material writers could be right sometimes but it "fails to provide an accurate reflection of the language actually used by speakers and writers in natural situations" (Biber & Reppen, 2002). Carter described the two parties as two paradoxical realities of language. The first is "unreal English, which is unlikely to be reproduced in actual contexts of use but is easier to comprehend, and more real pedagogically; the unscripted text is real English, but more difficult to comprehend and to produce, and therefore likely to be considered less real pedagogically" (Carter, 1998). In order to
bridge the gap between those two realities, he suggests for material writers to edit authentic materials so they become more teachable and learnable while maintaining the features of corpus based English in a process he called "text modification and modeling"(Carter, 1998). Widdowson agrees with this approach suggesting that authentic examples should be "incorporated into pedagogic prototypes at appropriate stages" (Widdowson, 1991), and that their pedagogic effectiveness should be tested.
Even in the direct approach to corpus
linguistics, where students are directly involved with concordance lines, Romer (2011) suggests using corpora that communicate with the learners' levels and needs.
2.1.7. Simplified vs. Elaborated Input Having agreed that authentic language should not be a source of linguistic input to the language learner without any sort of handling its unkempt nature, a probable effective model of modification should be used and tested in research. Long & Ross, (1992) see that an effective modification of input should not be conducted at the expense of sacrificing the language units of the text or the semantic ones. The following examples show the two main types of input modifications that exist in literature; simplification, and elaboration (Yano, Long, & Ross, 1994): 1. NS baseline version: Because he had to work at night to support his family, Paco often fell asleep in class. 2. Simplified version:
Paco had to make money for his family. Paco worked at night. He often went to sleep in class. 3. Elaborated version: Paco had to work at night to earn money to support his family, so he often fell asleep in class the next day during his teacher's lesson. (p. 193) After examining the simplified versions of authentic texts presented in the studies done by Oh (2001) and Yano, Long, and Ross (1994), I can describe simplification as the process of stripping the text from its flexibility and interconnectedness to shorter, straightforward utterances that resemble the logical codes of a programming language. It involves the use of utterances of fewer words, less complex sentence structures, and a smaller range of lexis (Parker, & Chaudron, 1987). On the other hand, elaboration is the natural text adjustments implemented by NSs to aid comprehension of their utterances by NNSs (Yano, Long, & Ross, 1994). It involves the use of redundant language characterized by repetition, paraphrasing, synonyms, and slower speech and the use of thematic structures (Parker, & Chaudron, 1987). The main premise for these input modifications is Krashen's first hypothesis for optimal input which suggests that the more comprehensible the input is, the easier the language acquired (Krashen, 1982). Long & Ross, (1992) summarized the results of 16 studies exploring the use of simplified and elaborated input. The following were common among most of the afore mentioned studies: (1) Comprehension of content improved by linguistic simplification, (2) elaboration consistently improved comprehension, (3) learners of lower L2 proficiency benefited more from either type of modification (Long & Ross, 1992). However, simplification brought about many problems. Yano, Long, and Ross (1994), point out that simplification might affect the learner's output and learning by presenting a deceiving model of language that leaves learners unprepared for actual texts. The content of simplified versions of texts is less coherent, less readable, and is less communicative (Honeyfield, 1977). Moreover, Honeyfield (1977) warns that the use of simplified texts would ultimately lead to learners developing strategies that work only with such texts. Brown (1985) sets forth that simplification results in the exclusion of information due to the change of syntax. This begs the question of whether that level of comprehensible input is worth the pain. Do learners allocate the cognitive ability made available by simplification to focus more on linguistic forms? In his study of intake Leow (1993), found that " learners' intake of linguistic items does not largely depend on the comprehensibility of the input" (p. 342). O'Donnell (2009) found little difference in comprehension between elaborated and unmodified texts when the original text was relatively easy.
Projecting this on the current study begs the question of whether simplification or elaboration will result in the same findings regarding transcribed spoken language rather than written reading texts? Relying on the afore mentioned arguments, an elaborative approach comes in accordance with characteristic of spoken language. Because elaboration is based on conversations between NSs and NNSs in the first place, second, it is in harmony with characteristics of spoken language such as, repetition, paraphrasing, and thematic signals. Albeit, since either type of modification was found to facilitate comprehension when learners are of lower proficiency -which is the case of this study- a use of simplification should not be excluded when necessary.
2.2. Corpus Linguistics Corpus linguistics is a method for exploring other branches of linguistics such as syntax, phonetics, pragmatics, translation, sociolinguistics, etc., (Leech, 1992). It emerged due to technology revolution by transferring the old idea of observing language in use to provide linguistic descriptions from manual application to automatic one (Svartvik, 1992). Advances in technology allowed for the first corpus (Brown corpus) to be compiled in Brown University in 1960s (Bonelli, 2010). Machine-read data and concordancers permitted linguists and language researchers to explore corpora which are large amounts of authentic language productions in order to develop language teaching and learning. Tognini-Bonelli (2001) reviewed the definitions of corpus presented in literature, from which I can provide the following definition; a corpus is a collection of texts that are made available in a machine-read version, compiled according to some explicit criteria for a specific linguistic purpose. This collection of texts is usually authentic. Authenticity, is actually the promised land that corpora brought to linguistics with the technological revolution. There are many types of corpora; onemodal vs. multi-modal (Jones & Waller, 2015), monolingual vs. multilingual, general vs. specialized (Tognini-Bonelli, 2001), and dynamic vs. static (Greenbaum, 1992). When corpora first appeared, linguists were skeptic of the validity and feasibility of such tool of linguistic research. A gap between traditional linguists who based their research on intuition and previous knowledge of language and CL linguists who favored statistics was growing. Fillmore (1992) argued that there is no way for relying solely on neither intuition nor on big data in providing a generative description of language, since the representativeness of big data is an intuitive decision and the truthfulness of intuitive decisions is better contrasted with data. As a result, he finds the collaboration of the two methods inevitable, since the
examples provided by corpora are eye-opening and the manual introspection of these examples to provide inferences about language is indispensable. Hunston (2002) agrees with Fillmore in that corpora alone cannot do anything, but with proper investigation they provide invaluable insights about the frequency, collocations, pragmatics and word choice that cannot be reached with intuition alone. This highlights the limitations of corpora to providing what language is but not what it might be and what language is but not why it is this way (Fillmore. 1992; Hunston, 2002, emphasis in original). Moreover, the minute a corpus is created, it becomes time-bound and dated which limits the solidity of the conclusions based on corpus data (Jones & Waller, 2015).
2.2.1. Corpus-based or Corpus-driven As a result of the arguments mentioned, three types of linguists appear in the field; traditional linguists who refuse to CL, corpus-driven linguists who rely solely on corpora and findings of machines, and corpus-based linguists who use the methods of the two previously mentioned groups. Tognini-Bonelli (2001) illustrates the difference between the corpus-based and corpusdriven approaches. Corpus-based approach considers corpora as a tool used by linguists to validate a presupposed model of language. The validation process takes three forms; insulation where the linguist dismisses corpus evidence and refutes it. Standardisation, where the linguist tries to validate a presupposed model of language by the corpus patterns, and instantiation, where the linguist tries to validate his intuitive judgment of the data taking into consideration what is probable but not there in corpora (Tognini-Bonelli, 2001). Thus, the corpus is viewed as a handy tool to linguistic theory, rather than a compass which might change the theory itself as in the corpus-driven approach. This research uses more of a corpus-based approach to corpora which aims for “testing and improving … theories, and often use(s) corpus annotation” than it uses a corpus-driven approach which “aims to build theory from scratch, completely free from pre-corpus theoretical premises” (Gries, 2010, p. 228). Corpora can also be used in both bottom-up and top-down perspectives (Flowerdew, 2009). Thus, concordance lines will be elicited according to previously known grammar structures (top-down). The analysis and comparisons of these lines will lead to new patterns and grammar rules (bottom-up) reached to by computational, pattern and pragmatic linguists such as Biber, et. al, (2002) and Hands, (2011). A corpus-based approach to corpora is more suitable to this research because I am in no position–neither in time nor in proficiency– to reach conclusions about language presented in corpora. However,
I use the findings of corpus-driven and corpus-based linguists to evaluate the textbook studied in this research.
2.2.2. Direct or Indirect Approach The previously mentioned approaches to corpora are linguistic ones which care about language description, however, Leech (1997) identified three ways to exploit corpora in teaching: the indirect, the direct and teaching-oriented corpora development. The indirect use of corpora is concerned with reference publishing and materials development. The direct use of corpora mainly focuses on the importance of corpora in teaching such as in data-drivenlearning (DDL). DDL is the utilization of concordancers and corpus data by students to answer questions that arise in their process of language learning (Hunston, 2002). Teaching-oriented corpora development focuses on developing corpora for different learning contexts such as first language and second language teaching, and teaching English for Specific Purposes (ESP) (as cited in McEnery & Xiao, 2011). My research is concerned with the indirect way of exploiting corpora technologies in developing teaching methods and materials that Susan Hunston (2002) believed it to be “most far-reaching and influential, in that even people who never heard of a corpus are using the product of corpus investigation” (p. 96). This application of CL is invaluable because the materials include the corpus findings about patterns, frequencies, and registers, and real spontaneous language (Romer, 2011). Unlike the direct approach which is student or teacher centered the indirect approach is researcher-centered (Romer, 2011). This makes it easier for younger or novice learners to get access to corpus data without having to deal with concordancers to reach for conclusions about a language they cannot deciphers its patterns in such stage. Despite of the importance of involving the learner in the process of learning, it is of a great difficulty to apply DDL on Syrian school students due to the lack of equipment, the huge number of students in classroom, and the unfamiliarity of such method to teachers let alone the students.
2.2.3. Spoken Language vs. Written Language In 2.2 I listed some types of corpora, one of which is the multi-modal corpus which is a corpus that includes transcripts of written and spoken language. Spoken language makes the larger part of the human language. It makes the first mode of language for babies and societies. Due to the industrial revolution and the communication revolution that followed it, language ceased to be only an academic and prestigious requirement and started to gain more importance in informal contexts such as tourism and social media. This skyrocketed the importance of
spoken language and placed an urgent need for description of this mode of language and of the way it is acquired. As a result, the traditional grammar books which relied on the study of written language became of less interest to the language learner. Although the descriptions of written language are the ones used in academia and literature, the daily need of a handy tool of communication stands in the spoken language favor. Despite that the interest in spoken language has been around for quite a while, the spoken uses and functions of linguistic items get minor attention when presented in dictionaries and references based on written language (Mauranen, 2004). However, more research is done about discourse properties and the difference between the two main modes of communication. When reading this sentence, you presume that I had enough time to think of the meaning that I want to convey, the vocabulary I choose, the structure, and the punctuation all of that with a formal academic purpose in my mind. However, had the meaning of the previous sentence was conveyed in speech, many things would have changed. It would probably not be a typical sentence, but rather fragments of a sentence pronounced while thinking of the meaning. There would be a lot of pauses, false starts, silence fillers, repetitions, informal simple words stressed by tone, and a lot of gestures. The meaning would probably be more abstract and less detailed but more comprehended. Literature on the differences between spoken and written language found a lot of important surface differences but also more common properties with the written language (Akinnaso, 1982; Brown, & Yule, 1983; Chafe, & Danielwicz, 1987). Among the differences between the two modes is the real-time demands of immediate interaction on the memory of the speaker and listener (Miller, & Jocelyne Fernandez-Vest, 2006; Mauranen, 2004; Chafe & Danielwicz, 1987). Spoken language uses less sentence-like structures, and less subordination or intonation and tends to be more fragmented (Miller, & Jocelyne Fernandez-Vest, 2006; Mauranen, 2004; Akinnaso, 1982). It also uses simpler and smaller range of vocabulary (Miller, & Jocelyne Fernandez-Ves, 2006, Chafe, & Danielwicz, 1987; Akinnaso, 1982). Unlike written language, spoken language relies on extra-textual things like tone, rhythm, gestures, face expressions, and pragmatic knowledge of interlocutors (Miller, & Jocelyne Fernandez-Vest, 1987; Mauranen, 2004,). Written language is more deliberate in its organization and does not fall subject to short-term memory (Miller, & Jocelyne FernandezVest, 2006; Akinnaso, 1982). Written language is also devoid of repetitions, false starts, hesitations and redundancies which are noticeable in spoken language (Akinnaso, 1982; Brown, & Yule, 1983). Although some constructions are more reoccurring in one of the two modes and rare in the other, Miller, & Jocelyne Fernandez-Vest suggest that this difference is a matter of typology
because the case is different in other languages. The differences between the two could also be seen from a personal preference and pragmatic point of view. Tannen (1982) concludes that "The difference between features of language which distinguish discourse types reflects not only-and not mainly-spoken vs. written mode, but rather genre and related register, growing out of communicative goals and context"(p.18). Leech (2000) agrees with Tannen in that the similarities and the differences between spoken and written language are equally important. He suggests that frequencies of descriptive grammar —which is based on performance grammar via studying corpora— should be categorized according to not only linguistic modes but rather linguistic varieties (Leech, 2000). Generally speaking, there is no new grammar of spoken language. It is more or less a process of pointing out tendencies of certain structures in occurring with certain modal varieties and adapting mechanisms that speakers use for the needs of each mode. This could be done by utilizing CL in providing comprehensive descriptions of general spoken language and across registers. The value of these descriptions lies in their usefulness for nowadays learner whose communicative competence is in demand at every moment of this social media age. Mauranen (2004) suggests that pedagogic descriptions of spoken language for EFL students is necessary and Brown, & Yule, (1983) think that those descriptions should consider two functions of spoken language; transactional and communicational and the previous knowledge of the student of each of those functions in his own language. By drawing on the students' knowledge of what happens while speaking and bringing attention to similarities and functions might be useful for learners to understand the nature of speaking in the target language. The following section will present some of the findings of CL studies in describing spoken language and its grammar.
2.2.4. The Issue of Contextuality As mentioned in 2.1.2, Firth (1935) contended that meaning cannot be comprehended in vacuum, it requires context to be grasped and processed. Contextual information of an utterance is so important that it sometimes disregards phonological information in determining the meaning (Scovel, 2001). However, the issue of context seems to be a source of uneasiness because of the limited procedures that can be taken to resolve it, or because of the ambiguous nature of its relationship with language teaching. Researchers and practitioners talk about the need for contextualized learning experiences and in-context linguistic examples. But it seems
that the word 'context' has different meaning in different contexts. Halliday (2007) clarified the different senses of the word, language considered as a system — its lexical items and grammatical categories - is to be related to its context of culture; while instances of language in use - specific texts and their component parts - are to be related to their context of situation. Both these contexts are of course outside of language itself. (p. 271, emphasis in origin) Thus, we have the cultural context of a language which contains infinite situational contexts of infinite instances. The relationship between the two layers of context and their relationship with language is explained in the Figure below.
Figure 2.1 Language and context, system and instance (Halliday, 2007, p. 275) When it comes to language teaching and learning, learners are learning the target language in order to use it in a target context which is again different from the context of the classroom. Hence, is it possible that all language teaching happens out of context; both the cultural and the situational? It could be true. Teachers Attempt to solve this problem by either teaching language in the situational target context while reserving the context of language teaching, or simulating the target context in the classroom. Moving on to corpus linguistics, Widdowson (1998) argued that the language of corpus is not authentic because it is isolated from its context (Widdowson, 1998 as cited in Handford, 2010). I would like to clarify some points before processing to explain the relative contextuality of corpus examples. First, in communication, the situational and cultural context is different among interlocutors who share same cultural backgrounds and situational information (Holtgraves, 2008), otherwise there would be no misunderstanding of meaning. Second, it is
impossible to re-make the exact same contextual conditions of an utterance or else traveling back in time would be possible. Third, the absence of context does not hinder listener from understanding narratives of reported events. With these points in mind, I agree with Halliday's suggestion that just as knowing what is happening in a context makes us understand the text, the learner might as well "use the text as a means to construe the situation" and in tandem the language to construe the culture (Halliday, 2007, p. 281). The language taken from corpora has a context in the first place whose elements are annotated with the text in many cases. "it is harder for a learner to authenticate contextualized invented examples than to (re-)contextualize authentic ones" (Römer, 2005, p. 279). The metadata of spoken and written corpora usually include the setting of conversation, the age and qualification of speakers and the relationship between them. Providing this information in ELT materials should help learner accelerate the process of envisaging the context of each corpus example. Moreover, it is clear for the student who is reading concordance lines that this text is not complete and that the rest of the text is important for understanding, which raises the student's awareness of the importance of context in communication (Charles, 2011). Similarly, parts of conversations accompanied with some contextual information, would incite curiosity in the students to further their understanding of the text and its context.
2.2.5. Correctness, Pedagogy, and Spoken Grammar Another frequent criticism of authentic language and particularly spoken authentic language is the degree of its correctness or of its conformity to standard/ non-standard dichotomy. Halliday (2007) thinks that the fragmentary nature of spoken language causes some problems to advocates of hierarchy and prestigious language because the recognition of its value threatens their authority, and to advocates of prescriptive grammar who idealize language and similarly want to pose their ideas of language on users of languages. For him only the language of speakers could be described as standard or nonstandard. It is a matter of personal choice and does not infer any degree of correctness of superiority. Another issue stems out of previous one regarding the variety of spoken English that should advise the norm or the criteria for use in education. Should researchers consult native spoken corpora only or include non-natives? To which degree should the different dialectical variations be incorporated in a description of spoken language or should researchers be content with the two American and British varieties? McCarthy & Carter (2001) suggest that there is no reason for excluding non-native speakers from corpora because any corpus of native language would include speakers of different proficiency levels. They suggest that the criterion for the norm
should be "expert users . . .whom we may look to as models, regardless of their status as native or non-native speakers" (p. 70). It is important to clarify that expert users do not reflect formal or standard English, but rather they have enough experience in using the language that their language could be taken as the norm despite its fragmentary nature and messiness. It should be noted that presenting this model of spoken language to students does not imply that students are encouraged to or "taught to produced incomplete sentences", but rather helps them free themselves from the worn-out perfectionist mindset that many times distinguish them from expert native speakers because "they spoke English so perfectly" (Brown, & Yule, 1983, p. 21, emphasis in original).
2.3. Grammar Grammar can be found in the way a sentence is formed in your morning newspaper, in dictionaries, or in fat grammar books. There are two types of grammar books: reference grammar books and pedagogical grammar books (Greenbaum, 1996). Reference grammar books are similar to any reference book which is consulted only when there is a need. They study grammar deeply and from a large scope such as dictionaries. On the other hand, pedagogical grammar books are grammar books designed for educational purposes. They vary in their scope and depth according to the level of their intended learner. They are designed carefully and they usually follow language teaching trends. These two types of books can follow either a prescriptive approach to grammar or a descriptive one. Prescriptive grammar is the grammar of those in authority. It is not policy free and it calls for preserving language in its correct prestige dialect. This approach to grammar did not prevail for long because language is “vigorous, dynamic, and constantly changing” (Fromkin, Rodman & Hyams, 2003, p. 16). Unlike prescriptive grammarians, descriptive grammarians believed that all languages with their dialects are acceptable and rule governed. They wished to describe the underlying rules of natural productions of language. Within the descriptive approach, two schools of grammar could be found, namely formal grammar and functional grammar (Freeman, 2001). Formal grammar is concerned with describing the structure or form of the language speakers’ mental grammar without questioning the registers they do in different situations. Unlike formal grammar, functional grammar questions the different registers language speakers do in different contexts in relation with the communicative purpose of language. Considering all these classifications, my research area would be in the pedagogical descriptive functional grammar.
2.3.1. Communicative Language Teaching
In 1964 Chomsky presented "a fundamental distinction between competence (the speakerhearer's knowledge of his language) and performance (the actual use of language in concrete situations)" (p.4), as a means of illustrating his model of generative grammar. In which only the performance of an ideal speaker-listener is reflective of that generative competence. This account of language was attacked by Hymes in 1972, because it does not incorporate language use and the effect of social situations on language. Hymes explains that each utterance should be viewed in terms of its possibility in linguistic system, feasibility, adequacy, and performance. This attention to the social aspect of language was reinforced by Halliday's sociolinguistic theory of language that defines text as "linguistic form of social interaction" whose meaning is affected by its function and is realized through a lexicogrammatical structure (Halliday, 1975, p.38). All of this made it possible for the birth of the Communicative Language Model (CLM) which in turn became the root of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) method and syllabi. Canale & Swain (1980) developed framework for communicative competence that consists of grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence, discourse competence and strategic competence. Grammatical competence refers to knowledge of language syntactic, semantic, phonetic and morphological systems. Sociolinguistic competence refers to knowledge of sociocultural rules and rules of discourse i.e. knowledge of the appropriateness of a particular utterance in a particular socio-cultural context. Discourse competence refers to the knowledge of strategies like coherence and cohesion that connect sentences with each other. Strategic competence refers to knowledge of how to use communication strategies in different contexts in order to sustain communication, overcome communication breakdowns and eliminate confusion or misunderstandings (Celce-Murcia, Domyei & Thurrell, 1993). Hymes was clear in stating that " there are several sectors of communicative competence of which the grammatical is one" (Hymes, 1972, p.281). Despite Hymes' plain words, the word 'communicative' seemed to lead to a misconception that CLT favors meaning at the expense of form. Savignon (1991) refutes this by saying "Communication cannot take place in the absence of structure, or grammar, a set of shared assumptions about how language works, along with a willingness of participants to cooperate in the negotiation of meaning" (p. 268). Thus, making it clear that CLT is concerned with both aspects of language and all that stems from them. The following section explains the divisions of grammar and the focus of this research. Howatt (1984) distinguished two versions of CLT; the weak version and the strong version. The weak version, which became the standard of CLT in ELT, is more concerned with providing the learner with opportunities to communicate and "learn to use" the target, whereas
the strong version is more about immersing learners in communication so that they are stimulated by a "use to learn" approach and thus learn the target language (Howatt, 1984, p. 279). Researchers associated those two contrary versions with two dimensions of CLT; the analytic dimension and the experiential dimension. The analytic dimension focuses on "the need to relate forms to meanings in the learning process, both for motivational reasons and to establish the form-meaning connections that are a necessary basis for communication" (Littlewoord, 2011, p. 547). The experiential dimension focuses on integrating the learning of linguistic items in authentic experience, automatizing the skills needed in communication, and refining the learner's knowledge of language due to participating in communication (Littlewoord, 2011). The relation between the two complementary dimensions in relation to classroom behaviours is explained in the figure below.
Figure 2.2 Two dimensions of learning in CLT (Littlewoord, 2011, p. 548).
2.3.2. Grammar and Lexis Before Firth, mainstream linguists studied each aspect of language in isolation. Then he suggested that you cannot study morphology without phonetics, syntax without intonation, and semantics without sound (Firth, 1935). Thus linking all aspects of language to performance. Then Halliday (1961) explained that a proper description of language should include three primary levels; First, the form and structure of meaning component in an utterance. second, the sound, orthography or spelling of that structure. Third, the position of this performed form in a nonlinguistic or social context. M.A.K Halliday who is the father of systemic functional linguistics coined the term lexicogrammar to suggest that a lexical item (a meaningful string of letters or words) and its grammatical category are connected and should be studied with relation to each other (Halliday & Yallop, 2007). He discussed meaning and grammar in
relation to experience saying that grammar is natural not because it is a result of the real world but rather because grammar "construes experience, that constructs for us our world of events and objects” (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2006, p. 17). Hence, grammar is important because of its communicative semantic function in the real world. And any description or study of grammar should take into consideration the social context of lexical items. Language in systemic functional linguistics is a “semiotic system, . . . [which] is a social system with the added component of meaning” (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2006, p. 509). Thus, the tool which organizes concepts and relations in language is grammar. With the coming of this view of language, the separation between meaning and form that was followed by traditional linguists fell behind accompanied with similar methods and approaches. English Language Teaching paid more attention to the interplay between aspects of meaning and aspects of form in relation to their setting in social interaction. Many studies in Corpus Linguistics (CL) found this Lexicogrammatical connection between form and meaning to be true (Sinclair, 1991; Biber, et. al, 2002; Hands, 2011). This connection indicates a tendency for words to occur with certain other words and in certain grammatical structures (Hunston & Francis, 2000; Jones & Waller, 2015). Based on CL findings, Sinclair (1991) explained the 'unrandomness' of language in relation to grammar and meaning in an interesting way. He suggested that text is created in two complementary frames; the 'open-choice', or the 'slot-and-filler' and the 'idiom-principle'. The first is ruled by grammar where the first unit of a text controls the number of successive unit options. The second, is ruled by register where the setting, the interlocutors, the topic, the culture, etc., minimize the number of choices that the open-choice frame allows for. Although a meaningful text cannot be produced without paying attention to both frames, previous theories of language and applied linguistics favored the first at the expense of the second. Romer (2009) compared six strands that tried to explore the relationship between lexis and grammar; the idiom principle, pattern grammar, lexical priming, lexical bundles, collostructional analysis, and construction grammar. She found that "They all find that form and meaning are inseparable and that the unit of meaning is not the word in isolation but a construct or a phrasal unit" (Romer, 2009, p.148). Sinclair & Carter (1991) find it wise to use those descriptions of language in making fundamental changes in the field of Applied Linguistics especially in relation to syllabi and methods.
2.3.3. Features of The Grammar of Spoken Language In their grammar book based on the Longman Spoken and Written English Corpus which contains almost 40 million words, (Biber, et. al, 2002) provided a comprehensive account of
the features of real spoken and written language. However, they assigned a chapter for the features of spoken English. Biber, et. al explain the behaviors followed by interlocutors to accommodate to the needs of the communicative situation. Conversation is bound by three factors; the circumstances of the conversation, the performance of the speakers, and its grammar which is distinct from that of a written text (Biber, et. al, 2002). Those three factors affect each other and originate the distinctive features of a certain speaking event i.e. the absence or change in any of these three factors in any transcribed speaking event would have affected the meaning and the course of that particular conversation. The thing which emphasizes "the inseparability of lexis and grammar" (Römer, 2009) on one hand from a linguistic point of view and the inseparability of grammar and conversation from an ELT or an applied linguistic point of view. However, it is important to note that these factors or features are not exclusive to conversation but their manifestations are relatively very apparent and common in conversation when compared to written language. Contrastive corpus analysis also provided some valuable findings about the language used in textbooks and the 'real language' used in everyday communication. The findings of these studies agree with Biber, et. al's (2000) account which will consult the following classification with some references to the findings of other contrastive studies.
2.3.4. Discourse Circumstances of Conversation. Conversation is bound by context in that it is restricted by the time, the place, the topic, the speakers and their knowledge and roles in that context, and all the pragmatic needs of that certain context. This is reflected in conversation by the frequent use of pronouns and the repetition or omission of certain words due to use of gestures. This manifest itself in the use of substitute pro-forms like the use of 'others' instead of a noun clause, ellipsis like the omission of the wedding vows when a couple say 'I do', and inserts, such as the use of 'okay' or 'sorry' in relation to contextual references rather than the topic of the conversation (Biber, et. al, 2002). Conversation avoids elaboration or specification of meaning. Since it happens in a shared context, the speakers, under the pressure of real-time production, avoid the use of detailed descriptions of things. "Conversation has a very low mean phrase length, more particular of noun phrases—an observation clearly related to the high frequency of personal pronouns" (Leech, 2000, p.695). From a foreign learner point of view, since conversation tends to repeat general vocabulary and avoid specification, this might mistakenly be assumed as fewer words to learn in order to understand, but that is not the case, because this vocabulary
poses a challenge for the learner when certain textual references are unknown to her (Brown, & Yule, 1983). The issue of the contextuality of corpora will be thoroughly discussed in 2.2.4. Conversation is interactive. Both of the writer and the speaker try to elicit a response from their reader or interlocutor, but the written text seems to be somehow narcissistic in that the writer possesses all the information and has the final word. On the other hand, speakers speak to form connections and do transactions while prompted by time, i.e. it is a two-way communication. One speaker might have all the information but she needs to get the listener's hearing, attention, awareness, and affirmation. For this reason, speakers use a variety to techniques to keep the conversation going and check whether they are on the same page. Those routinized techniques include; greetings and farewells, such as, 'hi' and 'goodbye', question tags, such as, 'haven't you?' and 'did she?' which take one quarter of conversation, backchannels. such as 'Mm' and 'yeah', imperatives, such as, 'phone them up!', response elicitors, such as, 'okay?' and 'see?', attention signaling forms, such as, 'Hey, hey', discourse markers, such as, 'you know', and 'well', and vocatives, such as, 'Mom', and 'honey' (Biber, et. al, 2002). Conversation expresses stance. Communication in general and specifically conversation, centers on the relationship between the self and the other, how the self wants to be preserved and what message the self wants to tell to the other. Whether the conversation is interactional like in a morning chat with a neighbor, or transactional like in a phone call between an employer and an employee, the speaker's main concern is either listener-oriented where she wants to agree and be nice to the neighbor or message-oriented where the employer and the employee want to make their message clear and get thing going and done (Brown, & Yule, 1983). In order to reach these ends, speakers use routinized polite formulae, such as, 'Would you…', 'thanks', 'please', etc., endearments, such as, 'dear', 'dude', 'guys', etc., interjections, such as, 'wow', 'oh', and 'ugh', exclamations, such as, 'good boy!' and 'how wonderful!', and personal stance markers, such as, 'of course' and 'I guess …' (Leech, 2000). Conversation takes place in real time. Conversation is acute. The speaker is always rushed by time, situations, and other speakers. Miller & Weinert, (1998) suggested five key properties of spontaneous spoken language; the first two are: i.
Spontaneous speech is produced in real time, impromptu, and with no opportunity for editing, whereas written language is generally produced with pauses for thought and with much editing.
ii.
Spontaneous speech is subject to the limitations of short-term memory in both speaker and hearer. (p. 22)
Those two properties manifest in the linguistic forms used by speakers. The need to produce language instantly seems to affect the grammar of spoken language the most. Dysfluencies, reduced forms, and restricted and repetitive repertoire are pervasive in spoken language and are relatively rare in written language. Dysfluencies are the pauses, hesitators, and repeats that the speaker uses to win more time in order to process the language then produce it. False starts and repairs when the speaker suddenly stops and decides to form his message in a different way also make the spoken language dysfluent (Biber, et. al, 2002). Moreover, speaker tend to omit vowels from words and use contractions like 'it's' and 'you've' in order to produce readily. Furthermore, speakers repeat a lot of words and structures, whether they were introduced by themselves or by other speakers in a phenomenon called local repetition (Brown, & Yule, 1983; Biber, et. al, 2002). When compared with written language, spoken language is characterized by a small repetitive lexicon. Time constraints make it difficult for speakers to explore the full terrain of language's vocabulary and grammar, and then exhaust a limited frequent dictionary with multi-meanings and different functions, which in turn results in the phenomena of lexical bundles and favorite lexicogrammatical associations such as the repetitive use of the modals 'will', 'can', 'would', and 'could' (Biber, et. al, 2002). Conversation employs a vernacular range of expression. Spoken language has a lot of varieties. Age, gender, geography, education and familiarity with the interlocutor, affect the way we produce language. Unlike writing, which is associated with prestige and academia, speaking comes as a natural ability that speakers of a certain group wish to personalize whether by being informal with closer circles of people, or by marking their geographical origins by preserving accents, dialects and local grammatical forms, such as the southern American second-person pronoun 'y'all', (Biber, et. al, 2002), or by just considering a form more convenient such as the use of double negation. The connections between the circumstances of conversation are explained in the following figure.
Figure 2.3 The interrelated functions associated with conversational gramma (Leech, 2000, p. 701)
2.3.5. The Real-time, Context-bound, Syntax of Conversation Written texts are made of paragraphs that consist of coherent and cohesive sentences, with each paragraph usually discussing one idea. Sentences or clauses, in turn are made of constituents whose relationship with each other is governed by rules of grammaticality. When contrasting a written text with a transcription of a conversation, the first thing to be noticed is the absence of those divisions and elements. " Conversational turns often consist just of phrases, or of incomplete clauses, or of clauses with subordinate clause characteristics but which are apparently not attached to any main clause, etc." (McCarthy & Carter, 2001, p. 52). It is fair to say that analyzing conversation cannot be done using the same approaches, methods, categories, or classes that are used with written language. As a result, the "sentence" is not apt as a unit for analyzing spoken language anymore (Miller & Weinert, 1998). In a similar way of tests of grammaticality judgment which measure how the intuition of a language learner scores compared to native speakers, Sinclair & Mauranen (2006) studied
transcriptions of different varieties of spoken English language and asked fluent speakers to dissect conversations into units. Speakers were able to finish the task with ease and "their responses are sufficiently similar for us to postulate that there are “natural units”, often called chunks, discernible in text" (p. 153). Those bricks of conversation substitute for the notion of sentence as a unit for studying written language. Thus, when studying spoken language our focus should shift to a "maximal parsable unit" as called by Leech (2000), which is "a unit that can be grammatically analyzed but that cannot be grammatically connected to anything else to form a more extensive syntactic unit" (p. 703). Researchers studying spoken language attributed this "chunkability" of language to real-time processing and relying on the nonverbal elements of the context (Leech, 2000; McCarthy & Carter, 2001; Biber, et. al, 2002). They explored the characteristics of such units and laid different classifications. However, the characteristics address the units in terms of the cause of their occurrence, whether inherent or directly affected by the circumstances of conversation, in terms of the absence of such units, and in terms of the position of such units. Four main characteristics of the grammar of spoken language seems to emerge from literature with each containing many subsumed phenomena. The following passages explain them closely.
2.3.5.1. Adaptive Spoken Units Speakers adjust to the urgent circumstances of conversation very well. This adaptability has two extreme results; the first is fragmentary ungrammatical structures and the second is complex long grammatical structures. Non-clausal units or simple indeterminate grammatical structures which do not form sentences but convey a communicative message are quite frequent in conversation. They either result from one of the circumstances of conversation, such as incomplete utterances, fresh starts, interruptions, hearer completion, and abandoning, or result from the limitation of the speaker's short memory, such as syntactic blends in which the start and end of a sentence do not correspond grammatically (McCarthy & Carter, 2001; Biber, et. al, 2002). Consider the following utterances which are showcased by Biber, et. al, (2002) and taken from Longman Spoken and Written English corpus (LSWE corpus) and ⎯ That's such a neat, it's so nice to know the history behind it. (Fresh start) ⎯ About a hundred, two hundred years ago we had ninety-five per cent of people - I- in this country were employed in farming. (syntactic blend). (emphasis in original, p. 438)
The structure of those utterances is not grammatical according to the traditional written terms or to prescriptive grammar, however they are appropriate and communicative in the context of conversation. Another manifestation of adapting to the time constraints of conversation is what is known as "the add-on strategy". This strategy is employed whenever a speaker takes control of a conversation for longer than usual such as when narrating a story, explaining something, telling a joke, or describing something. Comparatively speaking, the effort required from a speaker in a long turn is considerably more intensive than the one made in a short term, because the speaker needs to make sure that her utterances are structured and sequenced in a way that helps the listener envisage what is being said for a longer period of time (Brown, & Yule, 1983). However, speakers seem to be skilled at producing long utterances which may appear very complex but are easily divided "into a linear sequence of short finite-clause-like segments" in which "each unit expresses. . . a single idea, and within each unit, the processing required is simple" (Biber, et. al, 2002, p.438). The following extract is taken from SBCSE and used in the intervention material of this study, the speaker is giving a lecture: They move very coolly, |... very slowly. | and that's what it's like, in a solid. | Like the ice. | But in a liquid | ((He changes something and the machine sound is louder)) the molecules are moving a little quickly, | ...Okay? | Although the previous example is not a complete turn but the idea that the lecturer wants to convey is made clear via short utterances describing the molecules in solid materials then progressing those in liquids.
2.3.5.2. Inherent Non-Clausal Units The ultimate purpose of conversation is communication. Speakers go far ways in keeping communication going when they experience a shortage of focus on the structures that convey their message. The speaker thinks better of simplifying the language used instead of having to alter her utterance. One way of simplifying the language is the frequent use of "single (nonverb) phrase or verb" (Leech, 2000, p. 704). Another way of simplification which may give the impression of a grammatical clausal structure is the recurrent use of coordination, however, coordinators in conversation cannot be treated as cohesive devises that connect parallel structure but rather as discourse connectors that set the beginning of a turn whether it makes an independent clause or a non-clausal unit (Leech, 2000). The structures that result from the nature of conversation are divided into syntactic non-clausal units and inserts.
Syntactic non-clausal units include condensed forms that are similar to ellipsis but because the omitted element is not conclusive and the slot may be filled with different possibilities, this phenomenon is treated separately (Biber, et. al, 2002). The following examples present three different types of condensed forms taken from LSWE corpus: More Sauce? (condensed question) Up the stairs, now. (condensed directive) Very special. Prawns in it and all sorts. (condensed statement) (Biber, et. al, 2002, pp. 440-441). The previous examples are devoid of verb forms, nevertheless, they can be clearly understood from their contextual elements. The speaker is skilled enough to omit any elements that require more processing and less meaning and maintain the ones which hold most of the communicative message. The utterances, although very simple and economical, seem to be well-thought-of because any miscalculation in the degree of familiarity with the listener would make the utterance come as awkward. We immediately assume that the utterer of " Up the stairs, now." is probably a mother or a family member to the listener. A mere 'please' added to end of the phrase would have signaled a total different context. Inserts are non-clausal units which are "peripheral to grammar" and focal to the meaning of the communicated message and the affective content attached to it (Biber, et. al, 2002, p. 449). They are very important to interactional conversation in which they help to present speakers in the way they wish to present themselves and also very important to transactional conversations in which checking the understanding of the listener is vital. Biber, et. al, (2002) distinguished eight classes of inserts listed in the table below: Table 2.1 types of inserts in conversation type of insert
Example
Interjections
Oh, wow, whoops, ouchm
Greetings/farewell
Hi, hello, Morning, see you, bye,
Discourse markers Okay, well, you know, I mean, right, actually, like, 'cos, so Attention-getters
Hey, Hey, Say
Response-getters
Huh?, okay?, right? Eh?
Response forms
Yeah, yes, no, Mhm, Uh huh
Hesitators
Uh, um, er,
Polite formulas
Please, thank you, pardon me, thanks
Expletives
God, Jesus, Damn! Bloody hell!
(taboo expressions)
2.3.5.3. Ellipsis Ellipsis, is defined by Biber, et. al, (2002) as "the omission of elements which are recoverable from the linguistic context or the situation". It is an important feature in disregarding the units of language that do not add value but rather exhaust the real time interaction. One reason interlocutors skip some linguistic units of their speech is the need to reduce the cognitive load of processing long stretches of words and consequently release some of the pressure caused by real-time communication (Biber, Conrad, & Leech, 2002). Another factor that encourages the use of ellipsis is the shared context of conversation where "a lot of referents can be mutually taken for granted" (McCarthy & Carter, 1995, p. 209). However, this feature is misrepresented in standard prescriptive grammars as being uncommon or of less importance (Biber, et. al, 2002; Carter, 1998; Carter & McCarthy, 1995; McCarthy & Carter, 1995). Researchers differentiate between three types of ellipsis in terms of retrievability; textual ellipsis, in which the deleted item can be retrieved from the text itself, structural ellipsis, where the deleted item is retrieved from the structure of the sentence, and situational ellipsis, where the omitted item can be retrieved from the context (Carter & McCarthy, 1995). However, there is a simpler classification based on the place of the ellipted item, whether it is towards the beginning, or the end of the utterance (Biber, et. al, 2002). The following examples from LSWE corpus explain different types of initial and final ellipsis. Table 2.2 types of ellipsis Type of ellipsis
Example
Omitted items
Ellipsis of a subject
^ Don't know, get a dictionary.
'I'
Ellipsis of an operator
Oh. ^ You serious?
'are'
Ellipsis of subject and
^ Know what I mean?
'Do you'
You said by Monday last time. Did I ^?
'say'
operator Post operator ellipsis
2.3.5.4. Heads and Tails
Speakers seem to play with the traditional sequence of clause parts in order to aid the production of complex utterances without inhibiting comprehension and release some of the pressure they face due to instant language production (Biber, et. al, 2002). A result of this reorganization is the phenomena of heads and tails or "prefaces and tags"(Biber, et. al, 2002). or "pre-clause and post-clause satellites" (Leech, 2000) or "left dislocation and topical information"(Carter & McCarthy, 1995). Heads is "the phenomenon where items semantically co-referential with the subject of object of the clause are positioned before the subject" (Carter & McCarthy, 1995, p. 148) They serve as attention directors which attract the attention of the listener to what comes foremost and thematic determiners of what will follow (Leech, 2000). Tails or tags, on the other hand, refer to "the slot available at the end of a clause in which the speaker can insert patters which amplify, extend or reinforce what they are saying or have said" (McCarthy, Hughes & Carter, 2010, p. 184). Consider the following example from LSWE corpus, "North and south London, they're two different worlds, aren't they in a way?" ((Biber, et. al, 2002, p.439). In the last decade, CLT had changed the view of communication moving it from being a destination to linguistic competence to becoming a means of transportation to succeeding in other life aspects like education, work, and travel, etc. This shift in the point of view yielded a parallel shift of focus on the different aspects of language. Form which dominated ELT in the method era was not discarded, however, the relationship between form and other features of communication, such as content, register, discourse, and context dominated the view of linguistic study. As a result of this, an integrated approach to teaching English language was preferred to isolated skill learning. The end goal was not proficiency for its own sake but rather helping the learner overcome the language obstacle towards her own life goals, i.e. authentic communication. The use of authentic materials has been in the view of ELT for quite a while, however the advances of technology unlocked new levels to linguistic inspection by making huge data available to studying real communication where language is no obstacle to interlocutors. Studying those successful end-goal instances is supposed to yield invaluable insights as to how to help those are still struggling. The study of spoken grammar gained a substantial importance in ELT because (1) speaking makes the larger part of communication, (2) studying spoken language was not as possible as it was before the coming of CL, (3) form teaching is still important and form studying is the most tangible aspect of linguistics, (4) spoken grammar seemed to fit the bill for an integrated approach to teaching language, and because a corpus-based account of spoken grammar would be the fastest rout to helping the
majority of language learner because of the availability and the prominence of grammar whether in grammar resources or course textbooks. With this in mind, corpus-based grammar of spoken and written English seems to be a promising solution to the Syrian ELT context where spoken exercises are deleted by teachers most of the time due to different factors, and where form-learning has the reputation of being the most important step in language learning just like many eastern cultures as the student questionnaire shows in 5.1.1.1. The following chapter will explain the design of the study in details and the procedures conducted to answer the research questions.
Chapter Three Research Methods and Procedures 3.1. Research Hypotheses The hypotheses of this study are the following; a. The 10th grade students who receive the intervention materials (grammar exercises based on the language and grammar of spoken English) would score better in the grammatical ability test than those who receive the textbook materials. b. The 10th grade students who receive the intervention materials (grammar exercises designed from authentic language from spoken corpus) would score better in the speaking ability test than those who receive the traditional materials. The dependent variables are the students' scores in the grammatical and speaking tests, whereas the independent variable is the intervention materials. There are many extraneous variables affecting the hypotheses. The levels of students, gender, duration of class, number of students, school, and country are all in control as elaborated in 3.4. The effect of other extraneous variables like grammatical structures, exercise type, grammatical metalanguage and textbook layout can be controlled while writing the intervention materials as it is explained in 5.3. The last extraneous variable is the teaching style of the teacher. This variable was controlled by distributing an open-ended questionnaire to 10 random teachers asking them about their behaviors in teaching grammar exercises and time allocations. Then I followed the conventional practices that emerged from the results see (Appendix A).
3.2. Approach: Case Study Among the variety of quantitative and qualitative approaches to research, I think a quasiexperimental case study can give me satisfying answers to my research questions for the following reasons; First, an experimental research is a created one. The researcher studies variables that he/she imposed on a group in a particular context. This describes my research accurately, because the corpus-based grammar materials are imposed on the target group. Second, a case study is a qualitative research method that investigates a bounded unit that belongs to a bigger category (Richards, 2011). Meaning, it investigates the variables on a selected case or sample in relation to its larger group or community. Thus, a case study could give some insights about the effects of the corpus based materials on the Syrian English teaching context. Third, since researching the effect the new materials could make in all of Syrian English teaching classrooms is impossible, a case study allows for an in depth study of the materials’ effect on a reasonable target group. Fourth, the variety of data collecting methods
a case study offers is tempting and compensating for its small scale nature. Fifth, a quasi-case study compares the effect of the variables to a purely natural control sample that has not been altered in any way. Sixth, other research traditions do not suit my study such as ethnography and narrative method which study an already existing case, grounded theory method which aims at making hypothesis and action research which demands that the researcher should be an insider of an existing phenomenon.
3.3. Procedure First of all, a short questionnaire (see Appendix B) was administered to 104 students (55 girls and 49 boys) from two high schools in Lattakia Adnan Al-Malki and Nadim Ismail. The aim of it was to know whether grammar teaching receives sufficient importance and time allocation for its materials to make any difference. The findings showed that grammar exercises take most of class time and are never skipped unlike listening and speaking exercise. Then, materials were designed and piloted to ensure comprehension, suitability, teachability and time needed. The process of writing the materials will be described in 4.3. The study was conducted over a one-month period from 28/3/2017 to 2/5/2017 using 4 intact classes of second term 10th grade students from Mohammad Firas Fa'q Jdeed school in Al-Mashrou Al-Awal area in Lattakia, Syria. Two of the classes, one males and one females, were randomly assigned to the control group, receiving only their textbook input, whereas the other two classes were assigned to the experimental treatment, receiving corpus based input. Both groups had to sit a placement test, pre-test, a post-test, and an oral interview as a speaking test.
3.4. Target Group and Target Context A total of 38 10th grade students, from four classes (2 males and 2 females) took part in this quasi-experimental study. Ages ranged from 15 to 16 years old. The original number of students was 55 but due to absences in the post test and the oral interview, the number decreased to 38. The average student from this population have studied English as a foreign language in public schools for about 10 years. Their estimated English language level is supposed to be a lower intermediate since all of them have passed the national English test in ninth grade. However, according to the placement test they did at the beginning of the experiment, their average language level is pre-intermediate. Those students have been taught English in the two main methods most preferred among teachers in middle east: the traditional grammar translation method and the direct method, taking in mind all teaching styles preferences. This population uses the Syrian English textbook English for Starters 10 and is able to reflect upon its learning process. The input materials were the teaching materials for 16 students (6 males
and 10 females). The control group included 2 more classes of tenth grade students (12 males and 10 females) of the same school. This group continued its English learning at school normally. This school is based in an area that almost represents all societal differences of individuals in Lattakia such as, status and religion. The classes are well lit but somehow noisy because of nearby elementary school. The school used for the study separates females from males as any city public school. It uses the shifts system in which females attend school in the morning for one week and males attend in the afternoon and they switch time the next week. English classes were held 3 times a week. Each class lasted for 45 minutes. Two teachers were teaching the sample and control groups before interfering; one teaching males and the other teaching females. Since my research uses the plan of a quasi-experimental case study, I did not teach the control group at all. However, I was the teacher of the sample group for one of the three classes held weekly. I asked the teachers of the sample group classes to stop teaching grammar to students in the two other weekly classes. Thus, each week, the sample group was taught grammar by me for 45 minutes (a total of 4.5 hours of input over the course of investigation) and the other skills by its original teacher. By administrating this experimental study in a public school, the extraneous variables of school (setting), context, gender, duration of class, number of students, and country are all controlled.
3.5. Data Collection Methods Triangulation of data resources could be achieved easily in case study research due to the array of data collecting tools it provides. a. Student questionnaire (see Appendix B): It seeks to provide an idea about how the students of 10th grade view English language teaching and learning in their school including their interest, the teacher’s time distribution, the textbook, the language of the book in relation to daily language and what they see as most important in learning English. It contains 11 items: 8 items required that the student chooses only one answer from a scale of choices (strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, strongly disagree) while the last 3 items required from the student to rank each one of the 7 choices provided (speaking, vocabulary, pronunciation, listening, grammar, writing and reading) from most important to least important. The questionnaire was administered in two high schools in Lattakia Adnan AlMalki and Nadim Ismail. It was administered in Arabic to ensure full comprehension of the items. The total number of the participants is 104 (55 girls and 49 boys). All of the
participants are 10th graders. The whole process happened under the supervision of each of the schools’ managers. b. Teacher questionnaire: this questionnaire (see Appendix C) seeks to know how English teachers teach the 10th grade English textbook English for Starters 10 so I can copy their behaviors while teaching the input materials in order to ensure that the style or method of teaching does not become an interfering factor and that the findings of the study are caused by the materials alone (see the analysis of the questionnaire in Appendix A). It was distributed to 8 random 10th grade English teachers with the two school teachers of male and female students of the sample and control groups. It includes two open-ended questions asking teachers about their time allocation approach and the steps they use while teaching. It also includes seven multiple-choice questions about their preferences in teaching grammar, giving feedback, allowing participation, and assigning homework. c. Placement Test: Participants of both groups had to complete the grammar and vocabulary part of Oxford Solutions Test (see Appendix D). It contains 50 multiple choice questions about the main grammatical structures. It covers three level; elementary, pre-intermediate, and intermediate. d. Pre-Test: Participants of both groups had to set a pre-test in order to measure their initial knowledge about the grammar units that will be taught to them, using the corpus-based materials for the sample group and textbook materials for the control group. The test (see Appendix E) was taken from English Grammar in Use: А self-study reference and practice book for intermediate learners of English (Murphy, 2012, pp. 329-333) with some modifications. Because the focus of the units under study is adverbs, reported speech, and passive, the items presented about adjectives in the original form of the self-study test by Murphy were replaced by ones about adverbs from the same book. It consisted of three sections and a total of 24 multiple-choice items, covering adverbs, passive, and reported speech. e. Post-Test: Participants of both groups had to sit a post-test (see Appendix F) in order to measure their progress if there was any. It contains the same sections and items of the pretest but rearranged. The distracters were also rearranged and the format of the whole paper was changed. The marks of a posttest testing the two groups’ competence regarding the same grammar units will give the basic data for the research. One more question was added to the post-test given to the sample group. This question asks them in Arabic about their opinion about the input materials they received in comparison with those of the textbook in order to collect data about their attitude towards the new materials.
f. Semi structured interview: participants of both groups were asked to set a speaking test in the form of a semi-structured interview. This test was taken from the speaking section of The Preliminary English Test (see Appendix G). The aim of the interview is to know whether the corpus-based material affect the students’ oral production. And if it does, the interview data will tell about the nature of this effect. Six examiners including me and my supervisor administered the interviews with the participants. All of the examiners hold a degree in English language and have been teaching English as a foreign language for several years.
Chapter Four Textbook Evaluation and Designed Materials 4.1. Textbook The textbook under inspection is the 10th grade English language textbook assigned by the Syrian Ministry of Education English for Starters 10 (ES10). It was first published in 2010 by Syrian Educational Publishers. It is designed by Simon Haines from York Press.
4.2. Evaluation of Textbook Grammar Exercises A total of ten exercises from units 10 and 11 in ES10 were studied (see Appendix H). Six of them appear in the student book (two about adverbs of manner and four about passive) and four appear in the activity book (two about passive, one about adverbs of manner, and one about reported speech). The grammatical structures of the intervention materials were dictated by the grammar exercises of the two units being studied. Teachers start the second semester with those units. Therefore, this study deals with adverbs and adjectives of manner, indirect speech, and passive. The number of exercises assigned for those structures in the student book and the activity book is 10 exercises none of which has the format of conversation. The metalanguage accompanying the exercises could be seen only in the student book. It is presented in the form of inductive questions which entails that the greater part of metalanguage information is provided by teachers. The focus of the inductive questions is on the grammatical form of the structure rather than the function of it. The examples presented are decontextualized detached sentences revolving around the theme of the unit. The exercises tend to move from easy tasks that require the implementation of receptive skills to more difficult ones requiring the implementation of productive skills. The layout is neat and user-friendly. The instructions guiding the students along the exercises are clear and easy to understand.
4.2.1. Adverbs of Manner Adverbs are one of the open categories of the parts of speech. As their name suggests adverbs mainly modify verbs but they also modify adjectives, and other adverbs (Huddleston & Pullum, 2005). According to the Collins COBUILD English Grammar, which is based on Collins Birmingham University International Language Database (COBUILD) corpus, there are eight types of adverbs; adverbs of time, frequency, and duration, adverbs of place, adverbs of manner, adverbs of degree, sentence connectors, sentence adverbs, broad negative adverbs, and focusing adverbs (Hands, 2011). Adverbs of manner, or process adjuncts "relate to the process conveyed by the verb and its complements" (Greenbaum, 1996, p.149). They give
information about how something is done, how the doer feels, and the circumstances that accompanied the action (Hands, 2011). Adverbs are distinguished for the suffix -ly but, they have four types of form; simple adverbs such as hard, compound adverbs such as hereafter, adverbs derived by suffixation such as afterward, and likewise, and fixed phrases adverbs such as in the end (Biber, et. al, 2002). Biber, et. al found that different registers prefer different types of form "In conversation, over 60 per cent of the common adverbs are simple forms, while about 55 per cent of the common adverbs used in academic prose are -1y forms" (2002, p. 194). A quick look at the adverbs presented in the book shows that it does not rely on simple frequency lists of the most used adverbs of manner (see Appendix I) because half of the adverbs presented in the unit assigned to introduce adverbs to students scored zero in the number of hits in the relatively small corpora of Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English and Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English. Since those two corpora fall towards the spoken language corpora rather than the written ones, perhaps the textbook designers relied on other corpora that contain more academic and written language. However, only three adverbs presented in the textbook were among the thirty most frequent adverbs of manner across corpora used in this study 'carefully', 'quickly', and 'slowly'. (see Appendix I). Moreover, only one adverb introduced in this unit is a simple form adverb. Hence, the textbook is biased towards academic and written registers and does not offer a balanced input to students while stating that "the focus at this stage of the course (English for Starters series) is on all four skillslistening, speaking, reading and writing" (Haines, 2008a, p. cover).
4.2.2. Reported Speech Reported speech is a way of communicating previous communication. The reporter could report about himself or others by using the exact wording i.e. direct speech, or by choosing to convey the meaning only i.e. indirect speech (Greenbaum, 1996; Carter & McCarthy, 2006). Both direct and indirect reports consist of a reporting verb and a reported clause which is separated by quotation marks in direct speech (Hands, 2011). There are four functions for indirect speech mentioned by Greenbaum (1996) "declaratives, interrogatives, directives, and exclamatives" (p. 358). Indirect speech is usually presented as a result of two transformations of the original speech; first, a shift of personal and possessive pronouns and reflexives to fit the reporting circumstances, second, a shift of tenses from present to past when the reporting verb is in the past i.e. backshift (Greenbaum, 1996; Biber, et. al, 2002; Huddleston & Pullum, 2005).
Only one exercise in the unites studied in this research deals with reported speech. Although the textbook does not include any previous mention of reported speech in the former units, this exercise, which appears in the activity book is set forth for students without reminding them of direct and indirect speech with an example. The exercise requires from the students to "rewrite the following paragraph, replacing all examples of direct speech with indirect speech" (Haines, 2008b, p. 60). This view of reported speech as transition from direct to indirect through backshift is not advised by Eckhardt (2001). She found after studying reported speech instances in Longman Spoken & Written English corpus: American Conversation and American Newspapers, that it is true that the most frequent tense combination in reported speech for the reporting verb and the reporting clause is past-past occurring for 67% of the instances studied with past-present, present-present, and present-past following consecutively, but "By reinforcing the backshifting Past-Past tense combination as the norm, textbooks seem to imply that Past-Present and Present-Present forms are not very common, when, in fact, the corpus results find them not uncommon" (Eckhardt, 2001, p. 73). Jones & Waller (2015) studied the occurrences of backshift among different registers and found it most frequent in newspaper texts, which again explains the preference of textbook designers of the grammar of written registers. A possible reason for not mentioning other variations in tense in the textbook could be the level of students it is designed to address. Introducing less frequent instances might cause confusion when learning a grammatical structure. In addition to this, the exercise, by asking the students to make this transformation, suggests that indirect speech is more important or more frequent because it is the goal of the exercise, notwithstanding that the "indirect mode and narratised mode, while being of secondary importance in conversation and fiction, seem to be primary in journalistic writing" (Rühlemann, 2009, p. 423). However, when examining the reporting verbs introduced in the textbook, it becomes apparent that it does not take into account what is most frequent in written registers let alone spoken registers. Three reporting verbs in past tense are presented for students to use in forming indirect speech said, asked, and replied (see Appendix J). Say is by far the most common reporting verb with said as the most frequent form of it (Eckhardt, 2001; Biber, et. al, 2002; Carter & McCarthy, 2006). Nevertheless, the other two reporting verbs fall way behind say because the most common reporting verbs according to literature are say (Eckhardt, 2001; Biber, et. al, 2002; Carter & McCarthy, 2006; Rühlemann, 2009; McCarthy, Hughes & Carter, 2010; Jones & Waller, 2015), and tell (Eckhardt, 2001; Carter & McCarthy, 2006; Jones & Waller, 2015), with different reporting verbs taking different ranks such as, be like and go (Barbieri, 2005, Rühlemann, 2009; Hands, 2011) ask (Carter & McCarthy, 2006; Hands, 2011).
The use of a variety of reporting verbs is a feature of newspaper writing (Barbieri & Eckhardt, 2007). It is also worth noting that the textbook uses the inverted from of reporting and reported clauses in half of the instances presented to the student such as 'because I've got enough fish for my family' replied the fisherman. The textbook emphasizes this structure even though it is very rare in conversation and more common in written register especially literary pieces and journals (Biber, et. al, 2002; Carter & McCarthy, 2006). This may lead to confusion and bookish way of speaking. One last issue to point out is the inseparability of form and meaning. The semantic function of direct speech differs greatly from that of the indirect one. While the former is very personalized and centered around the speaker's perspective, the latter is very impersonal and detached from the speaker's point of view (Rühlemann, 2009) the extent to which Miller & Weinert (1998) suggest that "There is no indirect speech; instead all the reported speech is conveyed as though directly reproducing the reported speaker" (p. 15). Although speakers usually imitate the voice characteristics and facial expressions of the original speaker, this view is extreme and it lies behind the emphasis on indirect speech at the expense of the direct one as discusses earlier. Moreover, the perspective of the reporting act was found to differ according to the reporting verb being used. Barbieri (2005) found that say and go frequently signaled first and third person direct speech, whereas be like signaled inner speech with say and go used alongside to account for the direct speech. The students have the right to know the different semantic functions of each choice available to form this grammatical structure in order to maximize their communicative competence.
4.2.3. Passive Six out of 10 grammar exercises in the textbook are assigned for passive voice (4 in student's book and 2 in activity book). The distribution of exercises in the two units under introspection shows that the textbook designer thinks highly of the importance of this grammatical structure for the language of students. Once again the preference of the written register is clear in this textbook because "passive verbs are ten times more frequent in academic prose than they are in conversation" (Biber, et. al, 2002, p. 3). The textbook's examples and instructions present be as the only auxiliary used to form passive voice. This is an outdated account of the verbs used to form passive, because "The overall frequency of get-constructions increased significantly in the 19th and 20th centuries" (Hundt, 2001, p. 77). Whereas in a study of Brown corpus, Biber, et. al, (2002) found that there is a continuous decline in the use of be-passive in written language. Furthermore, a recent study by Schwarz (2015) using Soap Opera Corpus showed a
parallel but a lesser decline in the use of be-passive in spoken American English since 2002 till 2010. Miller & Weinert (1998) found that "at least in British English, the GET passive is at least as frequent as the BE passive in spontaneous spoken language" (p. 89). This could be true for British English, but there is evidence from literature that however less commonly used, get-passive is more frequent in spoken registers (Carter & McCarthy, 2006; Biber, et. al, 2002; Hands, 2011). Thus, the textbook is misleading the students by giving an account of passive that is outdated and established on what written registers dictate. Long and short passive or agent and agent less. Tense frequency in passive
4.3. Designed Materials Since the purpose of this study is measuring the probable effects of authentic language on speech and the effects of introducing spoken language grammar on grammatical ability, other intervening factors like the layout and metalanguage used in the materials should be eliminated. Therefore, I will adopt the same layout and metalinguistic vocabulary used in the textbook. The same number of tasks that the book assigned for the grammatical exercises was preserved i.e. ten exercises; three exercises dealing with adverbs of manner, one exercise dealing with reported speech, and 6 exercises dealing with passive. Moreover, the number of instances presented as examples or as exercise items in each task was also preserved. However, when spoken corpora were consulted parts of conversations were presented to students instead of the written equivalent of one sentence, which explains the extra length of the intervention materials compared with that of the textbook corresponding exercises. The intervention materials also presented slightly different tasks from those used in the textbook as will be discussed in 4.3.4. The intervention materials had to follow some guidelines from two main fields that share the aspect of grammar; materials development and corpus linguistics. Stranks (2003) reviewed the literature on developing grammar teaching materials and concluded to six main guidelines for writing grammar teaching materials; a. the age and level of the learners who will be using the materials; b. the extent to which any adopted methodology meets the expectations of (a) learners, (b) teachers; (c) the educational culture within which the learners and teachers work; c. the extent to which any contexts and co-texts which are employed in order to present the grammar area(s) will be of interest to learners; d. the nature of the grammatical areas to be dealt with, in terms of their forms, their inherent meaning implication (if any), and how they are used in normally occurring spoken and /or written discourse;
e. the extent to which any language offered to the learners for them to examine the grammar used represents realistic use of the language, and the extent to which activities for learners to produce language containing the target grammar will result in meaningful utterances, and ones which bear at least some resemblance to utterances which the learners would be likely to want to produce in their own, non-classroom discourse; f. any difficulties that can be expected to encounter when learning these areas of grammar, especially with regard to any similarities or differences in form, function, and form / function relationship, between the target language and their mother tongue (Stranks, 2003, pp. 330-332). These criteria will be consulted when writing the materials. On the other hand, Mukherjee (2004) found a middle ground between pattern grammar of corpora and the cognitive assumptions of language learning and suggested the following implications for a model of usage-based grammar; Table 4.1. Corpus-based insights into actual language use and their implications for a usagebased cognitive grammar some typical features of language use as attested in corpora • linguistic forms differ with regard to frequency and distribution • language use is to a large extent based on recurrent patterns of different kinds • quantitative findings can often be explained by considering functional and context-dependent principles/factors • lexical and grammatical choices are interdependent
implications for a usage-based cognitive grammar knowledge about these frequencies and distributions should be part of the model the model should account not only for linguistic creativity but also for linguistic routine these principles/factors are part of speakers’ linguistic knowledge and should be included in the model lexicogrammatical patterns should be at the basis of the model
The following sections will give an account of the corpora used as a source of authentic language in the tasks, the process of selecting authentic language instances from these corpora, conversation selection, and task design.
4.3.1. The Corpora Selected Based on the fact that the majority of English language speakers are not native, and that authentic language could be any utterance of a proficient speaker regardless of being native or not, I chose Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English (SBCSAE) and the ViennaOxford International Corpus of English (VOICE) as the spoken corpora used for this study,
because both are free corpora and contain transcribed conversations accompanied with metadata. Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English (SBCSAE) is part of the International Corpus of English project and it contains a total of approximately 249,000 words. The researcher in Santa Barbara University are still adding to the corpus. This study used the forth version of SBCSAE. It is a free, native, written and aural, general corpus. It includes both the transcriptions and the audio of the conversations. The recordings are taken in USA and represent the American society with all of its regional origins, ages, occupations, genders, and ethnic and social backgrounds. The conversations are mainly done face-to-face and their transcriptions are accompanied with metadata of speakers' names, ages, relationships, and vocations. The second corpus is the Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English (VOICE) is a free, foreign, written, static, general corpus. It consists of 1 million words of spoken interactions involving 753 identified individuals from 49 different first language backgrounds using English as a lingua franca (ELF) recorded between 2001 to 2007. It was created by Dr. Barbara Seidlhofer of University of Vienna in Vienna, Austria. The last corpus used in this study is The English Web Corpus (enTenTen 2013). It is an English corpus made of a huge collection of texts from the internet. It belongs to the TenTen corpus family which includes 30 web corpora with a target size 10+ billion words. It is a free, written, general corpus. Sketch engine online concordancing interface makes enTenTen 2013 free for a one-month-trial. This version of enTenTen contains a total of 19 billion words. The British National Corpus was also consulted when evaluating the frequency of words presented in the school textbook, because it would make a good model of written and spoken language due to its strict distribution. The BNC contains 100 million words that are distributed in a parallel way amongst genres. It is important to note that the size of a corpus is important for the validity and generalizability of the inferences based on its data, however the design, coverage, and distribution of the corpus play a vital role in deciding the quality and validity of a corpus.
4.3.2. Selection of Instances At a first glimpse, having this abundance of language available to the material designer at a click or a press of a button, might give the wrong impression of easiness of her task. However, dealing with big data of compiled in concordancers and choosing appropriate samples for language teaching is something that should be done with attention to a variety of aspects. These
aspects are in a way similar to the ones that traditional material designer taken into consideration when creating a text to be presented as language input in a certain teaching context. Leow (1993), thinks that selecting from authentic materials should never take into consideration the "early-stage learners' limited cognitive capacity in the second language" (p. 344). The teaching material designer is always intrigued to ask questions like; what vocabulary should be incorporated in a certain unit? How difficult should be those vocabs? How many new vocabularies should be introduced? What language is considered acceptable in a certain culture? What is the suitable length of a text or an example? Whether the situational contexts of the texts are familiar to the students? Etc. In the following paragraphs, I will try to justify the choices I made while writing the materials Apart from the linguistic structures that were dictated to this research by the textbook, the intervention materials had to follow the same themes discussed in the units under study (units ten and eleven). The theme of unit ten was about short stories and travel, while the theme of unit eleven was about messages and their types. I adhered to the themes of the units when presenting authentic language from written corpora because of its availability in such a huge corpus like enTenTen 2013. Owing to the relative small volume of spoken corpora used in this research, I had to deviate from the themes of the units when presenting authentic parts of conversations from spoken corpora because the themes were not found in the data in correspondence with the grammatical structures under study. Another issue that requires attention when choosing instances is the cultural background and context of the students. If the instances are not in harmony with the students' cultural knowledge or are so off from what happens in similar context in Syria, comprehension will be more difficult and authentic materials will lose their contextuality as discussed in 2.2.4. Great attention should be given to avoid taboo topics such as discussing intimate relationships or topics that are acceptable everywhere but are difficult to be re-contextualized because of differences between countries such as laws and transactions. Those topics might be introduced gradually to students of older age or higher-level of proficiency. Moreover, the conversations selected had to happen in settings that the students might have visited or heard of by means of family members or local TV. For example, a conversation between a doctor and a patient was included in the material but a conversation between a patient and a clinical pharmacist should not be included because in Syria there is no clinical pharmacists.
4.3.3. Frequencies Since my research is a corpus-based one, it will rely on corpora as a tool to make decisions and as a source of language instances. In the process of choosing suitable conversations and examples from the spoken and written corpora consulted in this research, a last corpus was consulted and a mini corpus was being made. A corpus of the textbook was compiled and edited in order to know (1) whether the words in a certain example were mentioned before in the textbook or familiar to students or not while writing the materials, (2) whose lexical density is higher; the one of the textbook or the one of the intervention materials after the design is done. The corpus that was being made was that of the designed materials. The school textbook was transformed into a processible form for concordancers. Photos and instructions were deleted, then a word list of the textbook was created with a list of functional words used as a stop list. This list was consulted whenever an example contained words that might be difficult to students. The examples had to contain similar or synonymous words to those presented in the textbook with some new words which collocate well with textbook words. After writing the materials, the list of the words included in the intervention materials was compared to the ones in the textbook. 75 words were not mentioned in the previous units i.e. unit one to unit nine (see Appendix K). However, units ten and eleven mentioned 10 of the 75 words which makes the list of words particular to the intervention materials 65 words. However, looking at the list of these words, it is easy for a Syrian teacher to tell that most of them have appeared in previous books of the English for Starters series in 7th, 8th, and 9th grades, which makes the list of new vocabulary relatively acceptable. When comparing the word list of the intervention materials to a reference corpus of the textbook, the results showed that 84.96% of the words in the intervention materials scored positively as keywords compared with the textbook. Hence, it is possible for the material designer to introduce the most frequent words of spoken corpora gradually to the language learner hand in hand with authentic language from written corpora which are usually what the textbooks aim to model. Selecting conversations from spoken corpora was a challenging task because the textbook included only seven examples of conversations that contained very neat bookish turn-taking. The selected conversations had to maintain all the features of spoken language without shocking the students with unfamiliar levels of fragmentary language. The following table shows the lexical density and frequency of some features of the conversations in the intervention materials in comparison with the seven conversations presented in the textbook.
Table. 4.2. Lexical density and frequency of discourse features between intervention materials and textbook Discourse feature Lexical Density False starts Repetition Pauses Terminal overlap Hesitation devices Backchannels Interjections Ellipsis
Textbook 52.46% 0 18 0 0 0 0 0 0
Designed Materials 50.55% 2 12 13 2 11 13 2 5
Lexical density calculations are ones that calculate how much a text is demanding to be comprehended according to the ratio of the content words to the total words of the text using the following "formula L.D. = 100× L/T, where L is the number of lexical words and T is the total number of words in the text" (Gilmore, 2004, p.367). Although the materials are made up using data from both written and spoken corpora, the higher lexical density found in the textbook agrees with that of textbooks (55.64%) studied by Gilmore (2004) when compared with authentic language (48%). Lower lexical density is supposed to aid understanding and in turn aid The length of the parts of conversations was trimmed to ensure classroom convenience and time. Other features of discourse were introduced to students according to their difficulty and frequency of use in language. The conversations were selected so they introduce the features of discourse in a clear and simple way. The materials include a modified version of two conversations from VOICE and twelve others from SBCSAE (see original in Appendix L). The metadata of the corpora providing the setting of the conversation, and the participants' gender, age and roles were marked with a flag before each conversation. I added that information before each conversation so the students can get a better understanding of the context of the speech event. The modified version keeps some features of the original conversation such as pauses, hesitation markers, false starts, repetitions, ellipsis, backchannels and interruptions and leaves others such as repetitive turns by the same person when it may cause confusion and gestures. The grammatical mistakes in the conversations are not corrected. Referents of pronouns and reflexives are not always clear in the conversations so I provided them when their absence might cause incomprehensibility. "=" signals length in pronouncing a certain syllable, whereas dots and commas signal pauses and interruptions were stated between two parentheses (see Appendix M). Emoticons are also used to signal gestures. Hesitation devises were left as they
were transcribed in the corpus. VOICE used 'err' as a hesitation devise while SBCSE used 'um'. While teaching the materials, students frowned and laughed at the use of 'err' whereas 'um' did not stir any reactions. This could be due to the resemblance between 'um' and the common hesitation devise in Syria 'aaaa'. Only the medial ellipsis of 'are' in the last conversation presented in the materials was apparent and noted to students that it happens because of the nature of conversation. Stranks (2003) thinks that the avoiding ellipses in language teaching materials goes against guidelines 'd' and 'e' of writing grammar teaching materials mentioned in 4.3 because the language presented to learners is not usable in day to day communications.
4.3.4. Tasks The tasks in the intervention materials are so similar to those presented in the textbook. Six exercises presented authentic language from written corpora and 4 exercises presented authentic language from spoken corpora. Following the classifications of exercises suggested by Roca (2015) mentioned in 2.1.5 the tasks are a mainly form-focused with a twist towards content and context noticing. 6 exercises are purely form focused, 2 exercises are contentfocused and the focus of the remaining 2 exercises is form outwardly but it involves some content processing. Those exercises are the ones which presented parts of conversations instead of one sentence sexercise item. It might be true that the instructions of these two exercises do not require a communicative production from the learners but it involves role playing as a byproduct. Krashen (1982) suggests that second language students learn language either implicitly by picking up the language or explicitly by learning the grammatical rules of the language. Hence, students might pick up models of communication that have not been presented to them before for future use. Halliday (2007) talked about a context of situation from a textual point of view and submerged it in the context of culture. From a teaching point of view, the immediate context is a classroom and the target context is a future imaginary context in which the learner is supposed to need the language for communicative purposes. Achieving task authenticity in a classroom with a form noticing goal is not that simple because the only authentic text with such a goal is the text produced by the teacher and students while discussing a text in the immediate context. This seems to conform to the weaker version of CLT with its focus on the analytic dimension of communicative competence. Focusing on the experiential dimension of communicative competence in grammar exercise does not seem appropriate when it could be done in speaking exercises. However, because speaking exercises are usually deleted by teachers as the results of the student questionnaire show in 5.1.1.1 this experiential dimension is conveyed to students
via the situation context of the conversations. Thus, the context of the situation becomes a vehicle that transports the learners to an experience that might become a target context in the future without being inauthentic to the immediate context and purpose of the classroom or the form-focused nature of grammar exercises. I have mentioned the framework of authentic tasks provided by Mishan (2005) in 2.1.5, but is it possible to achieve such framework when writing grammar exercises? The communicative purpose of conversation is transactional or interactive communication, and grammar exercises do not achieve that purpose, because the goal of such exercises is form noticing. Conversations as a text type is dealt with as a reading text in literature or media. It is a communication between interlocutors that readers are meant to get meaning from. It is most suitable to be used as an input in listening exercises. However, using conversations in grammar exercises will encourage an integrated view of language, one that focuses on both meaning and form. Any type of text, whether it is a conversation or an article, a video, etc. serves as a situation marker when used in grammar exercise. Sentences from written texts or even contrived written examples have been used as items for form studying, but this will give students a poor example of language that do not cater for all modes of language. Using conversations particularly as models for such form-focused tasks might not achieve communication in the same immediate context of the classroom but it aids this purpose in future authentic contexts when student use these forms and models in real life conversations. Task authenticity is not achievable for Mishan (2005) without learner authenticity i.e. the task should result in learner interacting in an authentic way with the text, moreover the interlanguage of the learner should be stimulated by the task. When trying to achieve this in grammar exercises, the task engages the learners in a cognitive way while the authentic conversation engages them in an affective way. Tomlinson (2009) listed 6 principles for material development according to principles of language acquisition. He suggests that language learners should feel positive, excited and amused towards the task while being engaged cognitively with language in use. When examining the designed materials, this could be achieved to a degree by presenting conversations more than one sentence items. Students support this by expressing their interest in the materials as will be discussed in 5.2. The formfocused grammar exercises will ensure that learner are stimulated cognitively to interact with the task by noticing, completing sentences, making decisions about the examples presented and producing language. The interlanguage of students is also stimulated by such exercises and the authentic language, due to its unfamiliar form, is supposed to stimulate the student to associate old knowledge with the new models presented, especially when the vocabulary of the authentic
language has been introduced in previous units. Learners will not engage in communicative conversation motivated by the task, they will role-play the conversations and discuss their meanings besides discussing possible grammatical forms to complete the grammatical exercise. The tasks also provided some usage-based grammar such as the 'get-passive' usage rule. The exercise requires from the students to compare the two forms and then reach for some conclusions about the frequency, the context, and the meaning of each form. The inclusion of this information is suggested by Mukherjee (2004). Such type of information is new to students but is supposed to be of great benefit. The tasks are suitable for the age of the students and graded from simple tasks to more complicated ones that requires more steps to produce language and do the task. For example, the last exercise on passive merges between the previous two exercises requiring from the students to not only decide whether a sentence could be changed into passive but also rewrite the whole sentence when possible. The simple exercises are meant to check whether the students are ready and have the sufficient knowledge to do the more complicated tasks, because the material writer cannot assume that all students are ready and willing to learn some linguistic feature (Tomlinson, 2011). The tasks move through the traditional steps of PPP approach (perceiving, practicing, producing). This approach presents a grammatical form explicitly to students, then requires finishing of some practicing exercises, and at the end, the learners is supposed to be able to produce the grammatical point I a correct way. Carter & McCarthy (1995) think that this approach is not suitable for spoken grammar and should be replaced with III approach (Illustration-Interaction-Induction), in which illustration involves working with real data, interaction, discussing the examples illustrated, and induction, reaching personal conclusions about language. However, the later approach is more suitable for DDL where advanced students deal with concordancing lines, whereas the former, despite its drawbacks, is more suitable to the level and context of Syrian students. Hunston (2002) thinks that patterns are best taught in what is called as Consciousness-Raising (CR) way of teaching grammar and that the teacher should steer away from the traditional PPP because the patterned nature of spoken grammar cannot be presented the same way a tense could be presented. Nitta and Gardner (2005) specified five types of form-focused grammar activates which include CR; "grammar consciousness-raising tasks, interpretation tasks, focused communication tasks, grammar exercises, and grammar practice activates" (p. 4). Grammar consciousness-raising tasks are activities where data from the target language — not necessarily in the form of concordance line— is explored by learners in order to reach a clear understanding of some linguistic feature.
Interpretation tasks are activities which aim at helping the learner in noticing linguistic properties and link between form and meaning. Focused communication tasks encourage learners to produce the target language and use the form-meaning correlations they have learned. Grammar exercises train the leaner to use the form and meaning in a controlled manner as such in gap-filling, matching, completion, and rewriting activities. Grammar practice activates are designed to engage the students in a meaningful fluent communicative interaction. The types of activities in this classification could easily be arranged to be subsumed under the PPP approach while still being CR tasks. In fact, three of these types of activities appear in the textbook exercises. The following table shows how the ten exercises from the textbook and their corresponding ones from the intervention materials are classified according to Nitta and Gardner's form-focused tasks. Table. 4.3. Distribution of grammar task types of the textbook and the designed materials Teaching materials
GCR
IT
FCT
GEx
GPA
Textbook
3
0
1
6
0
Intervention materials
3
1
1
5
0
The difference lies in the interpretation task about the get-passive. This exercise aimed at linking the form with its usage. The grammar tasks of the textbook seem to be agreeing with recent research, however the language used in these tasks is not authentic. Hence, the tasks as an extraneous variable are well controlled. The presentation step of PPP could be done either deductively or inductively i.e. the rule could proceed or come after the examples. The textbook presents its grammatical points deductively, whereas the intervention materials tried to be more inductive, however, the steps of the PPP approach are inherently deductive. This move towards a more inductive teaching with a deductive framework seems to be middle ground between teachers who prefer the inductive way and those who prefer the deductive way found in the style of teaching questionnaire (see Appendix A). I tried to slightly move away from controlled production and give the students some free space to produce the language. For example, the second exercise, which is the first exercise to introduce conversations instead of one-sentence items, required from the students to complete the conversations with any possible answer they think of. The answers might vary and of course there would be some wrong answers whether in terms of form or meaning, but there is no one right answer. This exercise was meant to push the students to use their linguistic creativity in the foreign language and think out of the box of controlled answers and meanings presented in
the textbook. Another exercise that gives some space to students is the one dealing with reported speech. This exercise is meant to review some of the adverbs presented in the previous exercise while reviewing reported speech which was introduced to students in the 9th grade. Due to the nature of conversation, students could report any utterance of the turn-taking by a speaker. Unlike the conversations presented in the textbook, turns in authentic conversations do not include one sentence. The speaker might say a group of clauses about the same thing, and the student is free to report one or all of these clauses, the thing that gives some freedom of production to students.
