A Hundred and One Rules in Arabic Grammar!

The Pedagogy Section

The Explicit/Implicit Controversy

Although many professionals agree on the benefits of some grammar instruction, the question of how to teach grammar has met with little agreement. The controversy has become particularly acute with the advent of the communicative language teaching revolution, which has consistently underscored the importance of stressing meaning over form. For years, our profession has been grappling with polarized views concerning the teaching of grammar within a communicative framework. Some scholars (Higgs and Clifford 1982) advocate an explicit method of grammar instruction, with direct teacher explanations followed by related manipulative exercises. Many of us have probably experienced this method of grammar instruction, since most textbooks tend to present grammar in this fashion.

Unfortunately, many of the textbooks' manipulative drills are grounded in shallow and artificial contexts, so these drills become rather meaningless to students. Another problem with explicit grammar instruction is that it advocates a direct and overt role on the part of the teacher. Consequently, this practice designates a rather passive role on the part of the students. Interaction for them is supposed to take place after the explanation and after a plenty of structural manipulation of the grammatical elements. In Rivers' (1983) terms, "skill-getting" should be stressed before "skill-using."

On the other side of the spectrum, implicit grammar explanation as espoused by Krashen (1985), Terrel (1977), and Dulay and Burt (1973) reject the need for formal grammar analysis. These researchers argue that students can acquire language naturally if they are provided with sufficient comprehensible input from the teacher. In other words, if students are exposed to a sufficient amount of comprehensible input, they will eventually be able to hypothesize and determine the functions as well as the meanings of linguistic forms. Theoretically, the learners should be able to do the hypothesizing on their own.

However, Herron and Tomasello (1992) advise that the inductive method cannot guarantee that the learner will discover the underlying concepts or that the induced concepts will actually be correct. Furthermore, the inductive approach can be frustrating to adult learners, many of whom have already become analytical with regard to the rules that govern their native languages. The learners intuitively yearn to speed up the learning process by consciously comparing and contrasting their own native rules to the rules that govern the new target language.

Reformulating Grammar Instruction

Although explicit and implicit teaching are clearly opposites, they share some notable deficiencies. Neither approach acknowledges the critical role of the teacher in negotiating classroom explanations, and neither approach acknowledges the contributions and backgrounds that the learners bring to the instructional setting (Tharp and Gallimore

1988). Moreover, neither approach recognizes the natural learning tendencies that occur between human beings outside the classroom.

Learning is a dynamic, reciprocal, and interactive process. However, our profession has been grappling with two established methods, neither of which recognizes the mutually responsive interactions that are fundamental to learning as it occurs naturally between humans in everyday life.

Therefore, we believe it is time for the profession to begin a serious reappraisal regarding teaching of grammar. We are advocating a whole language and guided participatory approach that contrasts with traditional explicit or implicit teaching. In many ways, this alternative approach may serve as a viable compromise between explicit/implicit polarized views. For a number of reasons that will be discussed later, we believe that a whole language and guided participatory approach might hold the key to dramatic improvement in the teaching of grammar.

Basic Principles of Whole Language Teaching

Before discussing some practical applications of this approach, we should discuss some basic principles of whole language and guided participatory teaching. Many specialists in first language development have been exploring the implications of whole language teaching for the past decade. Likewise, researchers in cognitive psychology have been investigating guided participation in the areas of science, math, and social studies. Unfortunately, foreign language education has been lagging behind these other disciplines. First we will discuss some basic principles of a whole language approach to grammar instruction, and then we will discuss how to use guided and joint problem solving to enhance grammar explanations.

As early as 1976, psychologist Ken Goodman stated that "language is language only when it is whole" (quoted in Fountas and Hannigans 1989, p. 134). According to Goodman, the whole is always viewed as being greater than the sum of its parts, and it is the whole that gives meaning to the parts. In terms of grammar instruction, words, phrases, or sentences are not linguistic islands unto themselves; on the contrary, these linguistic elements only gain meaning when they are placed in context, and when used in conjunction with the whole. According to Goodman, once students experience the whole, they are then better prepared to deal with the analyses of the parts.

We should acknowledge that Goodman is primarily addressing the needs of first language learners. However, research in first language development has oftentimes acted as a catalyst for theoretical advancement in second language development. Furthermore, many second language specialists are currently emphasizing the importance of content-based instruction, authentic texts for listening and reading comprehension, and the need for connected discourse in grammar instruction, all of which emphasize the importance of whole language rather than fragmented speech in second/foreign language classroom.

Conceptually, then, we need to reappraise our orientation to grammar instruction if we have too often focused on fragmented discourse and artificial exercises. Many language programs stress a bottom-up approach by emphasizing the "bits and pieces' of language (sound, vocabulary lists, verb drills, etc.). This classroom practice usually results in non-language

that can be characterized as being unnatural, cognitively undemanding, and dull (Cummins 1984). On the other hand, a whole language approach stresses natural discourse and encourages students to comprehend meaningful and long samples of discourse from the very beginning of the lesson.

By introducing the lesson with a whole text (for example, a story, poem, song, taped listening selection or cartoon), the teacher is foreshadowing the grammar explanation through the use of integrated discourse that will highlight the critical grammar to be taught. Galloway and Labarca (1990) explain that foreshadowing of new language elements is beneficial, for it provides "learners with a 'feel' for what is to come and can help students cast forward a familiarity net by which aspects of language prompt initial recognitions and later, gradually, are pulled into the learner's productive repertoire." In this way, the lesson highlights the functional significance of the grammar structure before the learners' attention is focused on form. In a way, this is like using advance organizers to assist the students by providing an "anchoring framework" for the new concepts to be learned. Unlike many classroom textbooks, which may offer a group of disconnected sentences or a "contextualized" drill, a whole language and guided participatory approach invites the learner to use language functionally and purposefully through integrated course.

This practice is in agreement with Krashen's (1982) Input Hypothesis, which stresses the importance of comprehensible input that "contains structures a little beyond our level of competence." As a result, from the very beginning of the lesson the teacher and learners are engaged in authentic use of language through joint problem-solving activities and interactions. By using pictures, mime, and gestures, the teacher scaffolds and guides the learners to eventually comprehend the story or other sample of connected discourse. Once comprehension is achieved, the teacher can then turn the students' attention to various linguistic elements.

Unlike bottom-up processing, which is traditionally linear in approach, grammar instruction using a whole language approach is cyclical. During the first stage of the cycle, the teacher foreshadows the grammar structure with an appropriate text. At this point, the meaning or comprehension of the text is of prime importance. The second stage is actually an extension of the first stage, since once again the emphasis is on meaning.

However, the second stage differs due to an increased level of learner participation. Now the learners have a general idea of the significance of the text; consequently, they can become more participatory through various activities, mime, role playing, etc. All of these activities serve to deepen comprehension for the learners. Once comprehension is achieved and meaning is understood, the teacher moves into the third stage and turns the learners' attention to focus on form, or the various linguistic elements of the grammatical structures.

After this stage, the teacher completes the cycle by encouraging learners to interact with integrated discourse through expansion activities such as rewriting or recreating similar stories, paired activities, or group activities. Through these extension activities, the learners become more aware of the

function of the grammatical structure. That is, they learn that they can carry out a particular task or function by exploiting or using the appropriate grammatical structure. This approach is in agreement with Larsen-Freeman's (1991) suggestion that meaning, form, and function need to be "interacting dimensions" of grammar instruction.

A Model for Integrating Form in a Whole Language Approach

Focus on form has recently become the topic of intense research and has been shown to be an important design feature of language teaching (Long 1991). The theory of learning and development has emphasized the importance of creating a zone of proximal development with the learner so that what the learner requires help on today will emerge as independent, automatic performance at a later time. Grammar teaching can also be viewed in this way. It is no less an interactive process between expert and novice than any other aspect of developing communicative ability in learners. Learners need to be guided to reflect on language they use to create their own meanings.

No language teaching should be driven by grammar instruction alone, nor should grammar instruction be literally interpreted to mean instruction on morphology (e.g., adjective or subject-verb agreement, rules for pluralization, etc.) or meaningless manipulation of forms. When the teacher focuses on form, attention is drawn to the formal properties of the language, which includes its sound system, word formation, syntax, discourse markers, and devised for relating one sentence to another, to name a few. Our colleagues who teach reading in the elementary schools call this form of instruction "language Arts." Classes that focus on language form for the purpose of increasing comprehension and meaning have been shown to result in greater language gains than classes where no focus on form is available or where forms are learned as meaningless structures (Lightbown and Spada 1990). Therefore, the issue is not whether a teacher should focus on form; rather, answering the question of how and when and in what context will ultimately clarify this important design feature of foreign language instruction. The following is a four step model for contextualizing interactions with students about the forms in a whole language lesson.

1. Presentation of Meaningful Language

This step represents the "whole" language you are presenting in a thematic way. It can be an interesting story (folktales and legends work well), a TPR lesson, a recorded authentic listening or video segment, an authentic document, or a demonstration of a real-life situation. Materials from the textbook (narratives, dialogues, stories) may even be used if they are found to be interesting and episodically organized. The presentation does not consist of isolated, disconnected sentences illustrating the target form in question. Rather, it is thematic, contextualized whole language intended to capture student interest and

provide opportunities for the teacher to create comprehension through the negotiation of meaning. The structure should appear often enough during the presentation to be salient to the student without making the language

sound unnatural or stilted. Authentic stories, documents, or listening segments can guarantee naturalness and often contain naturally occurring repetitions.

The presentation should also be interactive. By scaffolding participation in the activity, teachers can guide students through the new elements of the language to be learned. This guided participation may take the form of student repetition of key phrases cued by the teacher during a storytelling session, student-teacher role reversal in a TPR activity, cloze exercise based on listening segments, or discussions that anticipate the content of a reading. The goal here is to enable students to stretch their language abilities by using the new elements of the target language in meaningful ways through the help and mediation of the teacher. This step may last either part of or the entire class session. For example, a storytelling lesson may contain pre-storytelling activities, dramatization, pair-work comprehension checks, or story-telling exercises. The length of time required depends on the nature of the activity and the amount of negotiation work required to charge the language with meaning.

2. Attention

This step focuses learner attention on some aspect of the language used during the presentation activity. In this step, the teacher highlights some regularity of the language. This can be achieved in several ways. Teachers can ask questions about patterns found in a written text or about words and phrases repeated in a story. Overhead transparencies of example sentences from the presentation can be prepared, with important words and phrases circled or underlined. The point to this step is to get learners to focus attention on the target form without needless elaboration or wasted time.

3. Co-construct an Explanation

Learners and teachers should be co-constructors of grammatical explanation. After learners focus attention on the target form, the teacher assists them in raising their awareness about the target structure. During this step, students are guided to hypothesize, guess, make predictions, or come to generalizations about the target form.

Co-constructing an explanation requires teacher questions that are well chosen, clear, and direct. Questions are powerful tools in the hands of teachers who can adjust their questioning "in flight" to meet the emergent understandings of their students. For example, asking students questions such as "what words do you hear or see repeated in the text, and what could they mean?," "What pattern do you see in this group of words?," and "How do certain words change as their meanings change?" is a way to help students to draw insights from the language they hear and understand. These cognitive "probes" help learners discover regular grammatical patterns, sound systems, word order, unique cultural meanings of words, or language functions.

As students hypothesize and generalize about the target form, teachers build upon and extend students' knowledge without overwhelming them with superfluous grammatical details. Hypothesis testing can also be conducted, with teachers leading learners in trying out their new knowledge

by applying their generalizations to new situations. Teachers are also aware that the help they provide is graduated and may range from brief hints about the target form to explicit instruction if needed (Aljaafreh 1992).

It is important to note that, unlike guided induction techniques, which primarily rely on teacher questioning, a co-constructed explanation is not inquisition. Rather, co-constructed explanations recognize that students may not be able to perceive the formal properties of language on the basis of the teacher's questions alone. What is obvious to an expert language user is often a mystery to the novice. A co-constructed explanation is as participatory for the teacher as it is for students. That is, teachers need to assess the abilities of their students and assist them by providing as well as eliciting information when necessary. As Tharp and Gillimore (1988) point out, teaching is responsive assistance and cannot be reduced to series of actions to be performed in the same order in every instructional circumstance. By listening closely to learner contributions during this step, teachers can assess how much help is needed to attain the concept. In time, some learners may be able to work in small groups on their own grammar problems and report back to the class about their discoveries (Fotos and Ellis 1991).

4. Extension Activity

Focus on form is only useful if this knowledge can be pressed into service by the learners in a new way at a later time. In whole language teaching, the teacher never loses sight of the "whole." Therefore, the extension activity provides learners with the opportunity to use their new skill in creative and interesting ways while at the same time integrating it into existing knowledge. The extension activity should be interesting, be related to the theme of the lesson in some way, and, most importantly, allow for creative self-expression. Extension activities are not work sheets on which learners use the target form to fill in the blanks of disconnected sentences. Rather, they can be information-gap activities, role play situations, dramatizations, games, authentic writing projects, paired interviewed, class surveys, or simulations of real life situations. The possibilities are endless, as long as the learners have the chance to try to use the target form in ways that they see are useful and meaningful. The extension activity closes the circle and puts the "whole" back into whole language teaching.

The discussion above should lead to the conclusion that language learning is a thinking process, or from the learner's viewpoint, a guessing game. Teachers need to design cognitively demanding activities that will encourage learners to hypothesize, predict, take risks, make errors, and self correct (Fountas and Hannigan 1989). By doing so, the learners become active participants in the learning process. All the whole language and guided participatory activities should encourage the learners to be active thinkers and hypothesizers as they collaborate in language learning activities with the teacher or with their peers.

Whether listening to a storytelling activity, co-constructing a grammar explanation, or collaborating with peers during an extension activity, the learners are actively discovering and hypothesizing about the target

language. This approach concurs with Bruner's (1986) advice that students need to be cognitively challenged through the use of discovery methods. Moreover, all he classroom activities should encourage interaction and the functional use of language by giving learners opportunities to share information, ask questions, and solve problems collaboratively.

Finally, a distinguishing theme of whole language and a guided participatory approach to grammar instruction is that learning needs to be integrated, contextualized, and meaning-centered activities (Pearson 1989). Such activities facilitate comprehension and retention on the part of the learners. Furthermore, the extension activities encourage learners to integrate meaning, form, and function while experiencing language in context. It should be mentioned that creating integrated and meaning-centered activities is probably one of the most difficult aspects of whole language teaching, since, many textbooks still stress context-reduced practice and fragmented materials.

Creating contextualized activities is the only way to implement, encourage and succeed at whole language teaching. Through whole language learning students are able to converse with more confidence, and their listening, reading, and writing skills improve. As they use Arabic in real communication, it becomes less "foreign" and more natural , integral part of their experience. We know the best way to learn a foreign language is to live with those who speak it, and our students should be encouraged to take this step and go to the Arab World for a semester or a year program. In preparation for that event, and also for those students who will not venture beyond the classroom, there is much practice to be done with peers and with teacher, whose responsibility is to find or create meaningful practice.