Table of contents

CHAPTER I: Theoretical aspects of grammar teaching ............................................ - 3 -

1.1. The importance of grammar teaching ........................................................ - 3 -

1.2. Attitudes towards grammar teaching ......................................................... - 6 -

1.2.1. Grammar in conventional teaching methods ...................................... - 6 -

1.2.2. Grammar in unconventional teaching methods .................................. - 8 -

1.2.3. Grammar in Communicative Language Teaching .............................. - 8 -

1.2.4. Grammar as product, process and skill............................................... - 9 -

1.3. Formal grammar vs. pedagogical grammar.............................................. - 12 -

1.4. Stages of teaching grammar .................................................................... - 15 -

1.4.1. Presentation..................................................................................... - 17 -

1.4.2. Practice ........................................................................................... - 21 -

1.4.3. Production....................................................................................... - 23 -

1.5. Recapitulation.............................................................................................. - 25 -

CHAPTER II: Reflective teaching. ......................................................................... - 26 -

2.1. The definition of reflective teaching........................................................ - 26 -

2.2. The purpose of reflective teaching........................................................... - 30 -

2.3. Reflective model of teacher’s professional development ......................... - 32 -

2.4. Self-observation techniques in reflective teaching ................................... - 34 -

2.5. Recapitulation ......................................................................................... - 36 -

CHAPTER III: Self-observation study.................................................................... - 37 -

3.1. Description of the self-observation study................................................. - 37 -

3.2. Data presentation and analysis................................................................. - 40 -

3.2.1 Use of L1 and L2............................................................................. - 41 -

3.2.2 Presenting the new structure. ........................................................... - 43 -

3.2.3 The complexity of the explanations ................................................. - 47 -

3.2.4 Amount of teacher control during explanations................................ - 50 -

3.2.5 Rule repetition frequency ................................................................ - 52 -

3.2.6 Use of teaching aids and materials................................................... - 52 -

3.2.7 Use of the coursebook ..................................................................... - 55 -

3.2.8 Selection and sequencing of exercises ............................................. - 56 -

3.3. Recapitulation ......................................................................................... - 59 -

- 2 -

CHAPTER IV: Interpretation of study results and conclusions ............................... - 60 -

4.1 Introduction ............................................................................................ - 60 -

4.2 Optimal solutions .................................................................................... - 60 -

4.2.1 Optimal use of L1 and L2................................................................ - 60 -

4.2.2 Optimal ways of presenting the new structure.................................. - 62 -

4.2.3 Optimal complexity of the explanations........................................... - 64 -

4.2.4 Optimal amount of teacher control................................................... - 67 -

4.2.5 Optimal rule repetition frequency .................................................... - 68 -

4.2.6 Optimal use of teaching aids and materials ...................................... - 69 -

4.2.7 Optimal use of the coursebook ........................................................ - 70 -

4.2.8 Optimal selection and sequencing of the exercises........................... - 71 -

4.3 Recapitulation ......................................................................................... - 73 -

Appendix................................................................................................................ - 74 -

Bibliography .......................................................................................................... - 80 -

Webgraphy............................................................................................................. - 82 -

Summary................................................................................................................ - 83 -

Streszczenie............................................................................................................ - 84 -

- 3 -

CHAPTER I: Theoretical aspects of teaching grammar

1.1. The importance of teaching grammar

During his primary education the author of this paper was faced with the need to

learn the rules of Polish grammar, which at that time sounded a lot like some mysterious

knowledge that his developing mind could barely comprehend and very often he had to

learn them by heart. At the same time he could use the language and communicate his

ideas without any real problem, so he often asked himself a question – what is the

purpose of learning something that complicated if he can manage very well without it?

In his young mind’s perception language consisted of words, so the important thing was

to learn them and not some abstract rules and he assumed that the same mechanism

works in case of foreign languages. It was only later that he discovered that grammars

of various languages differ and more elaborate ideas simply cannot be communicated in

the foreign language without a certain amount of knowledge of its grammar.

Unfortunately, such experiences seem to be quite common among learners,

resulting in their perception of grammar as something dispensable, at least in the first

stages of foreign language learning. It would probably be difficult to find a teacher of

English who hasn’t heard at least once a student saying that he doesn’t want to learn

grammar, but how to communicate.

The question is – how should the teacher actually respond to such a statement?

The situation is less complicated if he agrees with it, taking a stance which can be

actually supported by a number of methodologists. However, if he disagrees, how can

he convincingly explain to the learner that grammar is indispensable or at least very

useful? The argument, based on a common knowledge, that grammar is a set of rules of

language and that is why it should be learned might be insufficient. Perhaps the matter

must be investigated further for us to provide any more convincing arguments. A brief

inquiry into the literature concerning the topic of grammar can provide us with some

definitions of it. One of them comes from Ur (1993):

Grammar may be roughly defined as the way a language manipulates and

combines words (or bits of words) in order to form longer units of meaning.

(Ur, 1993:4)

- 4 -

This definition is quite close to the common understanding of what grammar is.

The main difference is that it tells us how the rules of language actually work – they

arrange and shape words. Nevertheless, knowing what these rules do is not a very

motivating factor alone. Some additional information is provided in Thornbury’s

(2004) definition:

Grammar is partly the study of what forms (or structures) are possible in a

language. Traditionally, grammar has been concerned almost exclusively with

analysis at the level of the sentence. Thus a grammar is a description of the rules

that govern how a language’s sentences are formed. (Thornbury, 2004:1)

Now we know that the rules of grammar are explicit. It does not only explain

how the utterances are formed, but also provides a tool to generate some possible

structures that have never been used before, which might be useful for people who

prefer to use the language in a creative way. However, since that might persuade only

the more ambitious learners, we may also refer to Komorowska (1980), who highlights

another aspect of grammar:

Commonly, the term grammar is used not only to describe a more or less

complete portrayal of a language system or, to put it differently, more or less

precise set of rules for creating sentences of a given language. It is also used to

establish a required level of correctness of the created sentences1.

(Komorowska, 1980:15)

Grammar correctness – that is what students and teachers seem to be most

concerned about. There is no doubt that a foreign language native speaker might

understand a learner of his language even if his grammar correctness is rather low, but

in artificial situations such as lessons or exams, correctness is very often a binary value,

so a certain level of accuracy simply has to be reached is one wants to be successful.

Finally, there is the ‘finesse’ aspect of grammar:

1 Translated from Polish by the author of the thesis. All the following translations were also made by theauthor of the thesis.

- 5 -

At its heart, then, grammar consists of two fundamental ingredients – syntax and

morphology – and together they help us to identify grammatical forms which

serve to enhance and sharpen the expression of meaning. (Batstone, 1994:4)

Batstone (1994) underlines an important fact here – people, when

communicating, want to be understood in a way that they intended and lack of grammar

accuracy can obstruct this objective, especially when communicating more complex and

abstract ideas. Perhaps grammar mistakes do not bring as much amusement as the

lexical or even phonetic ones, but it is safe to believe that most people would prefer to

avoid any possible linguistic faux pas.

As it can be seen from the above definitions, grammar is not an unimportant set

of rules that can be ignored without consequences. It is a very complex phenomenon

and even though learners may find it a difficult thing to master, the time devoted to that

is certainly not wasted. Making students realize it, however, is only the first step in

teaching grammar, and the following activities can take many different forms, based on

a selected approach and method. Those issues are going to be discussed in the following

subchapter.

- 6 -

1.2. Attitudes towards teaching grammar

Teachers of English as a foreign language know the importance of grammar and

the level of its intertwinement with both the receptive and productive language skills.

Unfortunately, as it was said in the previous section, in the course of their work, they

are often faced with the questions of students, who try to undermine the necessity of

learning the rules of language use. In their perception, language consists of words and

things such as conditionals or passive voice are just annoying obstacles that teacher puts

in their way during the lessons. And even if they perceive the indispensability of

grammar, they often express their annoyance at the fact that in most cases there are

exceptions to the rules that they are provided with.

Interestingly enough, there were and there still are scholars who would agree

with the above view on grammar. Even the communicative approach, so popular

nowadays, has its more radical face that gives very little attention to grammar. What is

more, such attitude is not that modern. Actually, one of the oldest teaching methods, the

Direct Method, does not include any drills or other grammatical exercises. On the other

hand, another traditional method, the Grammar-Translation Method, would probably

become a source of nightmares for a learner that prefers to concentrate on

communication.

This variety of attitudes is not surprising. In the history of language teaching,

and especially in the 20th century, there were many debates on the topic whether and

how grammar should be taught and various ideas that emerged from those discussions

are present in the teaching methods that came into being. In the following subsections

some of those ideas will be presented along with the theories concerning various aspects

of grammar, especially in relation to teaching.

1.2.1. Grammar in conventional teaching methods

Conventional teaching methods, often called ‘traditional’ were developed mainly

before 1950s and the emergence of what we call the unconventional teaching methods.

These methods are usually more teacher-centred and put emphasis on the transmitted

knowledge rather than the atmosphere in which it is conducted. They did not become

obsolete, however, and they are still applied, partially or wholly, in language education.

Komorowska (2002) lists and describes four conventional teaching methods, varying in

- 7 -

their treatment of grammar, some placing it in the centre of attention and some

neglecting it quite severely. Those methods are: Direct Method, Grammar-Translation

method, Audiolingual Method and Cognitive Method.

According to Komorowska (2002), Direct Method is based on the authentic

contact between the teacher and the learner. In this method there is no systematic

learning of grammar, no selection and organization of what is being taught and the

errors are rarely corrected. However, Thornbury (2004) claims that there is actually a

syllabus of grammar structures being used in Direct Method, although he admits that no

explicit grammar teaching takes place. Additionally, since L1 is not used in the process,

there is no possibility of making any comparison between L1 and the target language.

We can also say that this method relies on inductive learning, since there are no rules

presented by the teacher and the learner must figure them out of the TL input that he is

subjected to.

Contrary to the Direct Method, Grammar-Translation method, as its name

suggests, puts grammar in the centre of attention. Analysis of the grammatical forms, as

well as comments and explanations referring to them, are just as important as the

knowledge of lexis. On the other hand, the communicative aspect of the language is

severely downplayed, as the exercises are focused mostly on learning the grammar rules

and translating the authentic or simplified written passages.

Thirdly, we have the Audiolingual Method, which relies on forming language

habits in the learner’s mind through mechanical drills and excessive repetition.

Interestingly enough, no grammar explanations are provided, and even though L1 is

noticed, it play only the role of a source of negative transfer – any comparison of target

language with learner’s native language is neglected and learners are actually

discouraged from trying to analyze and compare TL and L1 on their own.

Finally, there is the Cognitive Method, criticizing the idea that language can be

learned through mechanical repetition and proposing the view that language relies on

creativity and the ability to learn languages is inborn, which was an idea stated by

Chomsky in the late 1950s, as mentioned by Thornbury (2004). Therefore the aim of

this method is to supply learner with linguistic competence, enabling him to produce

and understand the unlimited number of correct sentences in the target language by

using a limited number of rules. Learners are expected to grasp those rules out of the

naturally used language and while they do that, errors are allowed and expected and if

any serious problems arise, there are always grammar explanations at disposal.

- 8 -

Although traditional methods are seldom used in their pure form, they are still

being used, albeit in slightly modified versions, and various techniques basing on them

are used in the nowadays predominant Communicative Language Teaching. In contrast,

unconventional methods, which will be briefly presented in the following subsection,

have not gained a major popularity.

1.2.2. Grammar in unconventional teaching methods

Unconventional teaching methods differ from the traditional ones mostly in the

fact, that they shift the emphasis from the teacher to the learner and his needs. They also

concentrate more on the atmosphere in which the knowledge is transmitted, taking into

account factors such as learner’s emotions, interests and preferences, attempting to

make the learning process as comfortable for the learner as possible. As it was

mentioned previously, they are not as popular as traditional methods or CLT.

Nevertheless, they are sometimes employed in language teaching schools and their

elements enrich CLT and the conventional methods. Out of the several most important

methods belonging to that group, only Total Physical Response method is directly

concerned with grammar, as its syllabus is organized around particular grammar

structures, as noted by Komorowska (2002). As for the rest, they put more focus on

communication or the proper conditions for learning and grammar competence is more

of a byproduct of the whole teaching process, a lot like in the case of first language

acquisition.

1.2.3. Grammar in Communicative Language Teaching

Having considered the conventional and unconventional methods, we can move

to Communicative Language Teaching. Even though all those methods lost the battle

for domination with the communicative approach, which is the basis for Communicative

Language Teaching, it must be said that it was strongly influenced by them and it might

even be said that it is an amalgamate of their elements. As Komorowska (2002:27)

underlines, this is the reason for it being placed outside the conventional-unconventional

spectrum and being classified as “approach” rather than “method”.

As for the role of grammar in the Communicative Language Teaching, it has

been changing in the course of time, fluctuating between the two opposite ends of CLT,

- 9 -

which Thornbury (2004:22) calls “Shallow-end CLT” and “Deep-end CLT”, with the

former actually retaining grammar as the main component in its syllabus and the latter

“rejecting both grammar-based syllabuses and grammar instruction”. However,

presently there is no doubt that grammar cannot be totally excluded from the teaching

process, since even if the focus is placed on the ability to communicate, some grammar

forms must be learned to achieve a certain level of accuracy – not perfect, but sufficient

to avoid communication breakdowns. Nonetheless, L1 usage in CLT is avoided and the

frequency of grammar explanations is seriously reduced. The overall image of grammar

in CLT is presented by Doman (2005), who makes a following statement:

CLT does not deal with grammar directly. Rather, it disguises grammar rules in

functional labels. In the CLT method, students receive grammar practice

indirectly as they learn how to use everyday language (…). The textbooks of

today leave room for the teacher to decide how much grammatical instruction to

provide or not. (Doman, 2005:25)

It seems, therefore, that CLT has taken a more moderate stance. It focuses on

communication while not neglecting grammar, and at the same time it makes it possible

to hide the actual fact of teaching grammar for those discouraged by it and it also makes

space for introduction of new grammar structures, using as much instruction and

explanation as the teacher decides fitting. Additionally, since new grammar material is

presented along with exercises and context that require its use, it makes it easier to

convince all the grammar-sceptical learners that it this knowledge is necessary for

successful communication.

1.2.4. Grammar as product, process and skill

A very useful approach was presented by Batstone (1994), who differentiated

three approaches to teaching grammar: as a process, as a product and as a skill, where

the first two are on the opposite sides of a continuum and the third provides means of

transition from the initial first one to the desired second one.

- 10 -

TEACHING GRAMMAR

AS PRODUCT

TEACHING GRAMMAR

AS PROCESS

TEACHING GRAMMAR

AS SKILL

helps learners to notice and

to structure by focusing on

specified forms and

meanings

gives learners practice in

the skills of language use,

allowing them to

proceduralize their

knowledge

carefully guides learners to

utilize grammar for their

own communication

Figure 1: three approaches to teaching grammar (Batstone, 1994:53)

When teaching grammar as a product, teacher has a static perspective of

grammar, divided up in a certain way, and concentrates on the components of the

language system. Having all the grammatical analyzed might be helpful for the learners,

as it develops their knowledge of the grammatical system and meanings that it is able to

carry. It also helps learners notice those components when they are used by others in the

written and spoken target language, a feature that is also emphasized by Thornbury

(2004)

Teaching grammar as a process concentrates on efficient use of grammar in

communication. It helps learners by proceduralizing their knowledge of the rules

governing the language, since studying and practicing a given structure does not

necessarily lead to the ability to use it in real-time communication. This stage

concentrates therefore on developing fluency. However, Komorowska (2002) underlines

that there needs to be a parallel development of fluency and accuracy. Such attitude is

shared by Thornbury (2004), who underlines that maintaining accuracy helps to avoid

errors that lead to ambiguities and confusion of the interlocutor or the reader.

Finally, teaching grammar as a skill fills “a kind of critical gap between a

product and a process approach” (Batstone, 1994:52). Its purpose is to lead the learners

from the controlled use of grammar as a product, which puts emphasis on a grammatical

form, to productive use of grammar as a process, which focuses on meaning and self-

expression.

Those three stages are probably familiar to every teacher, although the transition

between the stages may not be clearly visible. Often situations looks more as if all the

- 11 -

three stages were introduced quickly one by one and then developed at the same time,

but with the focus gradually being shifted from theory and repetition to communication.

It is most probably because learners simply tend to forget some facts and need to be

reminded about the rules, as well as due to the fact that in classroom situation learners

grasp the rules and proceduralize them at various pace.

- 12 -

1.3. Formal grammar vs. pedagogical grammar

While in the previous sections the question of grammar concerned every stage of

the lesson, this one will be focused on the distinction that is important mainly in case of

grammar explanations that we provide the learners with, namely – the distinction

between the explicit and precise grammar rules and the rules presented to the learners.

When we compare the rules that the linguists provide us with and those provided

to the learners by their teachers, we can notice some significant differences between

them. The most obvious of them is their explicitness, the simplest manifestation of

which is the size of grammar books for ‘average’ learners in comparison to works such

as Quirk’s “Comprehensive Grammar Of English”, dedicated to advanced learners

interested even in the minute details. Batstone (1994) makes a distinction between

formal grammar and idealized grammar, and compares it to the situation of air travel,

when regularities and patterns can be seen from a very high altitude, then some detail

and irregularity emerges at middle altitude and finally at the ground level everything

can be seen in all detail. In this continuum, the perspective from high altitude

corresponds to idealized grammar, while the ground level is a metaphor of the formal

grammar. According to this idea, pedagogical grammar would be a kind of idealized

grammar, since rules provided by the former must be to some extent simplified,

depending on the learner’s level of proficiency. However, the choice of this extent

might become problematic, which is clearly described by Westney (1994):

(…) we encounter the well-known challenge of avoiding oversimplified ‘basic’

rules that inevitably prove inadequate, if not actually false, in subsequent

learning and have to be radically changed, hazards amply illustrated by Close

(1981:18-24). An explicit contrast between ‘rules of thumb’, in the sense of

informal pedagogical formulations of limited validity and scope, and ‘rules of

grammar’, in the sense of linguistically sound, highly abstract generalizations,

is made by Berman (1979). Berman argues the need for both types in

pedagogical grammar, with the former gradually leading to the latter.

(Westney, 1994:77)

- 13 -

Such cautious attitude towards simplifying rules is supported by Batstone (1994), who

underlines that when we examine particular sentences closer, we may come across

structures that are governed by rules within rules, or that cannot be subjected to any

generalization at all.

Once we exemplify grammar through actual instances we discover that grammar

does not exist on its own. It is interdependent with lexis, and in many cases

grammatical regularity and acceptability are constrained and conditioned by

words. Thus, in morphology, the past morpheme -ed applies only where the verb

in question happens to be ‘regular’. (Batstone, 1994:8)

On the other hand, he admits that there some rules of grammar may be strict and

not allowing any exceptions, referring to the case of sequence of the modal auxiliaries

in the English verb phrase. He also agrees that idealizing grammar is a necessary step in

language learning. Nevertheless, on the whole he objects to perceiving grammar as a set

of absolute rules. He claims that learners who expect that might find it difficult to

handle exceptions and their persistence in idealizing grammar might lead to common

developmental errors resulting from oversimplification.

In an attempt to help teachers solve the problems considered above, Westney

lists three types of problematic areas that must be taken into account when making

generalizations:

1. Establishing the nature and extent of a generalization: choosing what to include

in the generalization. I.e. we can provide only the generalized rule, or we can

present it together with the descriptive grammar rule and/or examples.

2. Finding an appropriate formulation for a generalization: choosing the

appropriate concepts to present the generalized rule, so that the learners can

understand it clearly.

3. Finding a safe generalization: deciding whether providing a generalization is

actually possible, since, as Westney states: “the evidence available may simply

not support any safe generalization” (Westney, 1994:80)

All things considered, teachers always have the possibility of referring to the

formerly prepared pedagogical grammar rules, which are provided in the coursebooks or

grammar books that they use in their classrooms. They must bear in mind, however, that

- 14 -

sometimes even those carefully prepared rules might be perceived as either too complex

or too general by the learners. If such situation happens, the teacher must adjust the

extent of generalization in the explanation on his own.

The distinction between formal and pedagogical/idealized grammar is especially

important in the first stage of teaching grammar that is presentation. An important

choice must be made at that point, since it will facilitate or obstruct the following stages

and decide about the success of the whole teaching process. This crucial stage, as well

as those following it, is discussed in the following section.

- 15 -

1.4. Stages of teaching grammar

Obviously, if the teacher chooses a method that includes more than just marginal

interest in grammar, his task is to find the best way of teaching it to his students, both by

proper structuring of the lesson and the optimal choice of techniques.

Teaching grammar must be organized in a way that makes is possible for the

learners to observe the new rule in the language, understand it and, through increasingly

meaningful practice, achieve the ability to use it freely in their speech. In

Communicative Language Teaching, which, as it was already mentioned, is the most

widespread approach to language teaching, the lessons are usually divided in three

stages. Interestingly enough, there are also three main approaches to how those stages

should be treated.

First possibility is the PPP, meaning Presentation, Practice and Production,

which is probably the most widespread one, possibly because it is “an easy one to use

and adapt” (Thornbury, 2004) and follows the logical order of progression from theory

to practice, as well as simply fulfilling most learners’ expectations in the topic of

language lessons. In the first stage, the new knowledge is presented to the learners using

their existing knowledge, context and meaningful repetition. Second stage concentrates

on familiarizing the learner with the new ideas and attaining the proper accuracy. This

stage moves into the direction of communication, which is in the focus of the third

stage, Production.

ESA, the second method, meaning: Engage, Study and Activate is quite

different. It was proposed by Harmer (2001). Its first stage, even though it might appear

quite similar in practice, has totally different aim, that is, not to present the new

knowledge to the learner, but motivate him. It is the second stage, study, that focuses on

the knowledge. And the third one is quite similar to PPP’s Production, except that it

does not concentrate on producing the new structures, but communicating using all the

knowledge of the language, including the newly acquired elements.

Finally, there is also the EEE method, Exploration, Explanation and Expression,

an idea of Sysoyev (1999). In contrast to the above methods, especially PPP, this one

puts much emphasis on the inductive learning, mainly in the first stage, when the

students are presented with the language material, i.e. some sentences, out of which they

have to extract the rule and the pattern. Their findings are then clarified and compared

with the actual rule in the second stage by the teacher, thus giving the learner a sense of

- 16 -

security in possessing precise reference material. Afterwards, they move to Expression,

when they can use the newly discovered rules in a meaningful communication.

As we can see, even though the number of stages remains the same, there are

various ideas for their content, some of them overlapping, some excluding particular

elements, and some introducing totally new ones. The above methods, however, are

referring mostly to the lesson organization in general, although they can be used for

teaching grammar in detachment and actually they often are. There are, nevertheless,

some approaches that are devoted solely to grammar, and the division of grammar

learning into stages is often much more varied there, although they can be usually

related somehow to the three models mentioned above.

Let us take a closer look at one of such approaches, presented by Penny Ur

(1993), who differentiates four stages of teaching any given structure. These four stages

are:

a) Presentation

b) Isolation and explanation

c) Practice

d) Test

It is quite obvious that we could easily adjust this division to the three-staged approach.

Presentation naturally corresponds to the first stage of PPP, isolation and explanation

can either be attributed to the first stage as well, or if we prefer the EEE division, it will

correspond to the second stage. However, practice according to Ur (1993) is

encompassing both the second and third stage of PPP, as it includes both drills and

communicative activities. Testing might be the most problematic question here, since

formally it is just the same exercises used for practice and production but with evaluated

performance. The only difference here seems to be the purpose and perception of the

activity – whether it is seen as means of absorbing the new knowledge or evaluating to

what extent it has been absorbed.

Having said that, we can proceed to the comparison of various viewpoints

concerning how every stage of teaching grammar should be organized and what

techniques should be used, according to different situations in the classroom. For the

purpose of this paper it was decided that the following subsection will be based on the

three-stage PPP division, due to several reasons. First of all, PPP seems to be the

division most widely used in language classroom. Secondly, its stages correspond best

with the terminology used by the authors concerned with the organization of teaching

- 17 -

grammar. And finally, the two remaining divisions either touch upon subjects which are

not in the centre of attention of this paper, as in the case of motivation in ESA, or they

are limited in the areas that will be covered in it, as in the case of EEE being devoted to

inductive teaching while downplaying the deductive aspect.

1.4.1. Presentation

As it was said before, in PPP the stage of presentation concentrates on

introducing new knowledge and letting students recognize and understand the meaning

that it carries, but not necessarily offering any clear explanation. Here we assume that

presentation is everything that comes before the actual practice, including explanation.

It has been already noted, that this stage incorporates the first two stages

proposed by Ur (1993), that is, [1] Presentation and [2] Isolation and explanation. As for

the role of the presentation, she states that:

The aim of the presentation is to get the learners to perceive the structure – its

form and meaning – in both speech and writing and take it into short-term

memory. (Ur, 1993:7)

This stage, as the author notes, is associated more with the context than the form. The

former is in the centre of attention during the isolation and explanation. Again, quoting

Ur (1993):

At this stage we move away temporarily from the context, and focus,

temporarily, on the grammatical items themselves: what they sound and look

like, what they mean, how they function – in short, what rules govern them. The

Objective is that the learners should understand these various aspects of the

structure. (Ur, 1993:7)

- 18 -

The presentation stage exists also in the approach of Komorowska (2002) and it

actually corresponds almost directly to what is being covered in this subsection.

According to her, the proper presentation should include following elements:

§ using the new structure in a proper context, that makes it understandable for the

learner,

§ checking if the structure was understood properly,

§ repetition of the structure by the learners,

§ writing the structure on the blackboard,

§ clarification of the structure and underlining its relevant features (i.e. the -ed

ending in English Past Simple tense),

§ reading the structure

§ writing the new structure in the notebooks in a possibly characteristic context,

i.e. in a proper mini-dialogue

This plan is quite explicit in its form. However, Komorowska (2002) underlines, that it

is based on the deductive teaching of grammar, while there is also a possibility of using

the inductive teaching, where learner seeks the new forms in the text, then figures out its

meaning from the context and tries to formulate his own explanation, which then is

either accepted by the teacher or corrected, if a need arises.

Still, some approaches advocate additional elements used at this stage of

teaching grammar. As an example of such stance, Thornbury (2004) supports the use of

the advance organizer, that is, information presented at the very beginning of the lesson,

before the actual learning, which the learner can use for systematization and

understanding of the new knowledge.

In order to discuss how to choose proper techniques for conducting presentation,

we may begin with a reference to Komorowska (2002:125-126), who proposes a list of

the seven most important decisions that have to be made in order to present the new

material in a correct way:

1. Which grammatical structure are we going to teach?

2. What meanings of this structure are we going to teach?

3. Which forms do we want to teach?

4. What situations are we going to use to present and explain the given structure?

- 19 -

5. How are we going to introduce the new structure?

6. Which teaching aids and materials are we going to need in order to teach the

given structure?

7. Which vocabulary must the learners know in order to understand and practice

the new structure?

As for the selection of the structures, it all depends on the context in which the

teaching takes place. If teaching takes place in a very formal context, i.e. at school, the

selection will be based mainly on the syllabus and the coursebook. In a less formal

context, i.e. in some language teaching schools or in private teaching, selection will be

based mostly on the learner’s needs and the chosen coursebook.

Another two questions concern the amount of the material that is going to be

introduced. It should be administered according to the possibilities of the learners as

well as their level. Referring to the examples provided by Komorowska (2002), if we

teach Present Continuous tense to beginners, we are interested in its meaning expressing

doing something in the moment of speaking, not its more intricate usage such as when

we want to express annoyance. And, as for the amount, when we teach past forms of

verbs to beginners we should introduce either only the regular forms or 5 or 6 irregular.

The rest of the questions concern various aspects of explanations. Situation that

we use must agree with those that the given structure is meant to describe. An extreme

example of a wrong use of the situation would be saying “She plays guitar” to describe

what a given person is doing at the moment, which would require Present Continuous

tense and definitely not Present Simple.

To the question of how to introduce the new structure Komorowska answers

with several techniques that might be used: conversation with the learners, a short scene

or manual demonstration. Another problem – which teaching aids and materials are to

be used - depends on their availability, their appropriateness for the presentation of a

given structure and the age of the learners.

Finally, the question of vocabulary used in the presentation. In short, we should

not use voacabulary that the learners are not acquainted with, since that would lead to

them having to concentrate both on the new vocabulary and the new structure

simultaneously, which might greatly impede the learning process.

- 20 -

Those seven decisions that Komorowska (2002) places in front of the language

teacher cover many of the features of presenting new grammar material. But what is

sometimes also needed after presenting new grammar is a certain degree of explanation.

As stated by Ur (1993), the length of the explanation and the way in which it is

conducted may vary according to the type of classes, the difficulty of the structure and

the learning style of the learners. The influence of such factors is accounted for by Stern

(1993), referring to Celce-Murcia, who provided a whole set of learner’s characteristics

and proficiency objectives that influence the importance of form-centered teaching:

Importance of a focus on form

Learner factors Less important Moderately important More important

Learning style Holistic Mixed Analytic

Age Children Adolescents Adults

Proficiency level Beginning Intermediate Advanced

Educational

background

Pre-literate

No formal

education

Semi-literate

Some formal

education

Literate

Well-educated

Figure 2: Learner factors which influence a focus on grammatical form in language teaching

(Stern, 1993:129, adapted from Celce-Murcia, 1985)

What we can notice from the above table is the fact that some of those factors

actually influence the selection of learners into the classroom, while some of them are

simply considered individual differences. It actually does not happen that a learning

style plays a role in such selection and therefore teachers have to cope with their variety

among students. Usually it is the age and proficiency level that count the most and the

educational background is not considered important, except for consequences resulting

already from the age factor.

- 21 -

Importance of a focus on form

Learner factors Less important Moderately

important

More important

Learning style Holistic Mixed Analytic

Skill Listening,

Reading

Speaking Writing

Register Informal Consultative Formal

Need/use Survival Vocational Professional

Figure 3: Proficiency objectives which influence a focus on grammatical form in language teaching

(Stern, 1993:133, adapted from Celce-Murcia, 1985)

Although the objectives presented in figure 3 are undoubtedly important, again it

is rare that they play a role in the selection of learners. However, contrary to the factors

from figure 2, level of formality can be adjusted to particular exercises that focus on a

specific objective, since modern syllabuses and coursebooks are balanced in terms of

skill development and formality of the communicative situations.

Evidently, a teacher will not provide learners in the primary school with

explanation consisting of complex metalinguistic terms. On the other hand, more mature

and highly proficient learners may require a very formal and abstract explanation. There

are undoubtedly many other factors influencing the efficiency of an explanation, such as

the amount of L1 being used, which depends on the level of the learner’s L2

metalanguage, since he may require abstract explanations, but lack words needed to

express them. Some other factors may even concern extralinguistic influence such as the

teacher’s charisma or his voice’s tone.

1.4.2. Practice

After conducting a proper presentation of a new structure, the time comes to

make the learner acquainted with it, as well as provide him with enough training to

achieve the accuracy needed to move on to another stage – production. According to

Thornbury (2004), practice activities have three objectives – first is the precision of

- 22 -

using the language system, second is the automisation of it and third is restructuring, by

which he means integrating new information into the previously acquired knowledge.

As said by Ur (1993), practice enables learner to “understand and produce

examples of it [material] with gradually lessening teacher support”. This view is

supported by Komorowska (2002), who claims that the main rule of L2 practice is

starting with almost totally mechanical exercises, then providing the learners with

exercises guided by the teacher and following the constant pattern and finally arriving at

more open-ended tasks and almost-natural situations, with teacher playing a less

important role.

There are many guidelines given by the scholars investigating the practice of

foreign language. Thornbury (2004) differentiates them according to the objectives that

the practice has. An exercise focusing on accuracy should pay attention to form and

encourage the learners to be accurate, include the familiar language, give enough

thinking time and provide feedback referring to their progress. An exercise focusing on

fluency should underline meaning, be authentic and have some communicative purpose,

divide the language into smaller, memorisable chunks and include proper amount of

repetition. Finally, an exercise focusing on restructuring should initiate problematising,

push the learners beyond their current level and provide enough security to make

learners feel safe when taking risks.

Similarly, Komorowska (2002) attempts to formulate seven rules of conducting

grammar exercises: [1] they must have their subjects and titles, [2] they must have a

clear purpose and instruction, [3] they should enable repetition of a given pattern in

natural situations, [4] they should be well-paced, varied and short – so that they do not

become boring, [5] learners should be active and motivated during practice, [6] the

more individuality and personalization during the practice, the better efficiency of

learning grammar, [7] learners must be informed whether the exercise aims at fluency or

accuracy.

Another set of guidelines is provided by Ur (1993) and it is divided into three

sets of factors: those concerning the structures of the task, those that contribute to

learner’s interest and those that influence learner’s motivation. Many of those factors

overlap with those previously mentioned, for example: clear objective, active language

use, open-endedness, and personalization. However, a lot more emphasis is put on the

precise activities done during practice.

- 23 -

As for the techniques themselves, their number is only limited by the teacher’s

creativity. However, very often used during foreign language lessons the somewhat

controversial drills are being used, such as slot-fillers, multiple-choice exercises,

matching (Ur, 1993), substitution, transformation and integration (Komorowska, 2002).

On the other hand, their controversy disappears if we accept the need of the teacher to

slowly release control over his learners’ exercises.

We must bear in mind, however, that although such guidelines are quite precise,

they will never result in particularly similar outcomes, due to various individual

differences of the learners. What is a clear instruction for an adult might be

incomprehensible for a young learner and, conversely, what is interesting for a young

learner might be seen as useless or boring by adults or even adolescents. Teachers must,

therefore, be creative and flexible, conscious of the fact that what is good for one does

not have to be good for the others and vice versa, but also bearing in mind that they

cannot satisfy everyone and must find optimal solutions when faced with varied groups

of learners.

After being subjected to the sufficient amount of exercise in context, as well as

communicative activities, learners can enter another stage, which is Production.

1.4.3. Production

In the production stage learners arrive to the point where they need to develop

their fluency, while trying to retain as much accuracy achieved in the practice stage as

possible. The increasing contextualization and communicative purpose of the Practice

stage exercises leads them to the use of authentic materials and real-time

communication that tries to mimic the authentic talk of native speakers.

The organization of the production is similar to that of practice, with the

difference in the starting point. When the production stage starts, the learner achieved a

proper amount of accuracy and needs to develop a communicative level of fluency.

Therefore production exercises will move towards greater authenticity, as well as

towards requiring more and more accuracy in the fluent communication.

As said by Thornbury (2004), communicative tasks must possess the features of

real- life communication, that is: purposefulness, reciprocity, mutual intelligibility and

unpredictability. Therefore techniques used to exercise production very often include

pair work and group work, when learners communicate with on another. Komorowska

- 24 -

(2002) lists also fun activities, being useful as a transition phase between the pre-

communication and communication exercises. Ur (1993) also provides some ideas for

communicative activities, such as brainstorming - where a single impulse may initiate a

great amount of responses, chain exercise - where students ask similar questions to one

another, fluid pairs – where students exchange information on the basis of a prescribed

dialogue, semi-controlled small group transactions – where learners are encouraged to

use certain patterns, but they control the content, and finally, free discussion – the least

controlled exercise, where learners have an opportunity to conduct an authentic

conversation in the foreign language.

As in the case of Practice stage, here we must also remember about the learners’

differences when choosing the activities and their topics, since some of them might

simply stay silent and avoid communication not due to the fact that they are not able to

produce a given structure, but simply because the activity does not appeal to them or

they have nothing to say on a particular topic.

Even though it might seem that the production stage reaches some kind of

“ending” in language learning process, this process is actually never-ending. All the

presented stages overlap in a way, since while one issue may be at Presentation stage,

another one may already be at Production. It is simply impossible to teach one structure

on a proficient level and then move on to another, forgetting the previous one. First of

all, it might lead to students simply forgetting the received knowledge, and secondly,

new structures are often built on existing foundations, i.e. we must know Present Simple

and Future Simple tenses to learn The First Conditional in English. Thus, the previous

knowledge will be repeated, in a more or less formal way, with more and more issues

reaching the Production stage and making the learner a skillful user of the foreign

language.

- 25 -

1.5. Recapitulation

This brief inquiry into the matter of teaching grammar, next to presenting the

various and ever-changing attitudes towards this issue, definitely highlights one

important matter – if a teacher decides to put some more emphasis on grammar in the

classroom, he must make many decisions and face various problems that can appear.

First it must be decided ‘how much’ grammar should appear during the lesson, then to

what extent it has to be formal and how to present the new structures to the learners.

And later there comes the need to select and arrange the practice and production

activities. All in all, teaching grammar is a demanding task, but when conducted in a

reasonable and fine-tuned way, it can provide a great boost to learners’ accuracy of

language use, as well as providing them with a sense of understanding of the underlying

mechanics of what they are learning.

While grammar is the answer to the question “what is going to be studied?”,

another question that needs answering is “how is it going to be studied?” Therefore,

having discussed teaching grammar, I would like to proceed to the next chapter, devoted

to the issue of reflective teaching, which will hopefully answer the second question

stated above.

- 26 -

CHAPTER II: Reflective teaching.

2.1. The definition of reflective teaching

The process of reflection is a thing that most people are familiar with – we

contemplate our past ideas, actions and approaches as well as those of others. However,

whether this leads us to some meaningful conclusions depends on many factors, which

will be considered later. Richards gives a following definition of critical reflection:

Reflection or “critical reflection” refers to an activity or process in which an

experience is recalled, considered, and evaluated, usually in relation to a

broader purpose. It is a response to past experience and involves conscious

recall and examination of the experience as a basis for evaluation and decision-

making and as a source for planning and action. (Richards, 1991)

In comparison to the ‘everyday’ reflection, thus, critical reflection is an

organized process that actually needed some reason to appear. It involves looking on

our past actions with a critical eye and planning the forthcoming ones, which will also

become subjected to critical reflection.

It is exactly the same situation with the reflective teaching, which is simply a

reflection made upon the process of teaching, analyzing it in as many relevant aspects as

possible. Richards and Lockhart (1999) notice that “in every lesson and in every

classroom, events occur which the teacher can use to develop a deeper understanding of

teaching”. We might actually say that every teacher uses reflective teaching to some

extent, simply because every teacher needs to cope with the problems that arise in the

classroom. Even in a spontaneous and unsystematic form reflective teaching results in

certain professional development, therefore it is not surprising that it has been suggested

as an official approach to teacher development. Bartlett (1993) notes that reflective

teaching has been implemented as such next to approaches such as teacher-as-

researcher, action research, clinical supervision and the critical pedagogy perspective.

Additionally, according to Nunan and Lamb (1996), reflective teaching has been

presented in contrast to the effective instruction, that is, relying on a pre-learned theory

- 27 -

and its application in the classroom. They also claim that reflective teaching, which

assumes that professional growth is a lifetime process, is more adjusted to the constantly

evolving conceptions of language and learning. A similar stance is taken by Richards,

who makes a following statement:

Teachers entering the profession may find their initial teaching efforts stressful,

but with experience they acquire a repertoire of teaching strategies that they

draw on throughout their teaching. (Richards, 1991)

It is probably the experience of every teacher that the first lessons require a lot of

preparation activities, the stress is present, sometimes even overwhelming, and every

departure from the original plan additionally increases it. Fortunately, when teachers

find their actions successful, they tend to use them automatically, which lets them

concentrate on other issues and reduces the amount of time devoted to the preparations.

Reflective teaching is actually promoted by BBC and British Council on their

website devoted to teaching English (www.teachingenglish.org.uk). In an article about

this approach, Tice supports the statements presented above, claiming the following:

By collecting information about what goes on in our classroom, and by

analysing and evaluating this information, we identify and explore our own

practices and underlying beliefs. This may then lead to changes and

improvements in our teaching. Reflective teaching is therefore a means of

professional development which begins in our classroom. (Tice, 2004)

The above statement mentions professional development and that is also what

reflective teaching is useful for. Obviously, every private reflection on the teaching

process is useful and has a part in teacher’s development, but when used deliberately as

a means of professional development, it might be more useful to teachers in training

than relying on the strictly theoretical knowledge. This topic will be more broadly

explored in one of the following subchapters.

Even though the presented views suggest that reflective teaching is something

that every teacher should employ to at least some extent, it does not mean that it

- 28 -

requires no skills in order to be performed properly. Nunan and Lamb (1996) express

their views on that matter, dividing the required skills and knowledge into three

subcategories, each referring to one of the “key curriculum areas”, namely: planning,

implementation and evaluation.

Curriculum area Knowledge/skillsPlanning Sensitive to a range of learner needs (objective and subjective )

and able to use these as a basis for selecting and organizinggoals, objectives, content, and learning experiences of languageprogramsKnowledge of the nature of language and language learning andability to utilize this knowledge in selecting and organizinggoals, objectives, content and learning experiences of languageprograms

Implementation Technical competence in instruction and classroom managementAbility to analyze and critique their own classroom behavior andthe behavior of their learners

Evaluation Ability to assess learners in terms of a program’s goals andobjectivesAbility to encourage learners to self-monitor and self-assessAbility to evaluate the effectiveness of teaching

Figure 4: Knowledge and skills required for reflective language teaching (Nunan&Lamb, 1996:121)

It turns out, then, that not everyone is able to conduct reflective teaching in a

successful manner. The range of required skills presented in the above table is quite

wide and demands a lot of analytical approach on the part of the teacher, as well as a

sufficiently distanced attitude, making it possible for the teacher to see past his/her own

emotions and beliefs.

When it comes to the structure of the reflection process, Richards claims it to be

a three-stage process, regardless of the approach that is used. Those three stages are:

- 29 -

Stage 1 The event itself

The starting point is an actual teaching episode, such as a lesson or other

instructional event. While the focus of critical reflection is usually the teacher’s

own teaching, self-reflection can also be stimulated by observation of another

person’s teaching.

Stage 2 Recollection of the event

The next stage in reflective examination of an experience is an account of what

happened, without explanation or evaluation. Several different procedures are

available during the recollection phase, including written descriptions of an

event, a video or audio recording of an event, or the use of check lists or coding

systems to capture details of the event.

Stage 3 Review and response to the event

Following a focus on objective description of the event, the participant returns

to the event and reviews it. The event is now processed at a deeper level, and

questions are asked about the experience. (Richards, 1991)

In other words, the teacher must first experience the event, either his/her or

someone else’s lesson, then describe it in as much detail as possible and finally turn to

critical review of what has happened and start drawing conclusions. This sequence of

events is rather natural. However it must be conducted in a well-organized way to yield

creative outcomes.

It seems clear that although more than a quarter century has passed since the

earliest works on the topic of reflective teaching, written by Van Manen, Cruikshank

and Zeichner, it is still a widely discussed topic and a useful tool for teacher’s personal

development. Its purposes are going to be discussed in more detail in the following

subchapter.

- 30 -

2.2. The purpose of reflective teaching

The first and foremost purpose of reflective teaching is teacher development. It

must be born in mind, however, that it does not concern only teachers-in-training.

Referring once more to Nunan and Lamb (1996), it is undeniable that teacher’s

professional development is a lifetime process. Therefore reflective teaching should be

concerned by every teacher, even a very experienced one. The model of professional

development will be discussed in the next subchapter.

Another purpose of reflective teaching can be seen if we relate it to action

research. Interestingly enough, the process of reflection is present in both those

approaches. Bailey explains the difference between them as follows:

What action research contributes that is different from reflective teaching is the

systematic implementation of planned actions as a result of observation and

reflection on the data (…) In addition, most models of action research depict an

iterative, spiraling sequence of planning, acting, observing, reflecting, and

replanning, which necessarily involves a certain longitudinality. In contrast, a

reflective teacher can contemplate, at one point in time, the difference between

two lessons enacted from the same lesson plan, for instance, without necessarily

systematically implementing and investigating a potentially lengthy series of

interventions, which would be required in order to label such efforts as action

research. (Bailey, 1997)

As it can be seen from this explanation, reflective teaching is essentially easier to

execute than action research and it does not require as much time on the part of the

teacher. The latter factor is probably essential in what Wallace (2000) notices as the

“indifference and downright hostility” towards action research. Reflective teaching,

therefore, provides alternative means for teacher’s development without burdening him

or her with the requirements of “traditional” research, which Wallace (2000) calls

“unreasonable”. This seems to be in accord with Bailey (2000) stating that “reflective

teaching may be a highly productive but intensely private means of conducting one's

ongoing professional life”. On the other hand, reflective teaching can be an alternative

- 31 -

to the more demanding action research as well as it can be a preparation and warm-up

for it. In the end, being accustomed to critical reflection is very valuable for any teacher

who would like to conduct some action research.

The last purpose of reflective teaching that will be presented here might be less

obvious, but still it has some impact on the teaching process. It is often said that teacher

should also set an example for his students. Therefore, as stated by Nunan and Lamb

(1996), “it would certainly be inconsistent got non-reflective teachers to encourage

reflectivity in learners”. It is very probable that students will notice the attitude of the

teacher towards his work and his learners, and reflective teaching is undoubtedly in

favor of them.

On the whole, the most important purposes of reflective teaching are teacher

training, their further professional development and preparation for the action research.

However, its value as means of introducing a ‘reflective atmosphere’ to the classroom

may also be useful, especially when working with more mature learners, willing to take

the critical and analytical approach towards their own learning.

- 32 -

2.3. Reflective model of teacher’s professional development

The reflective model of professional development is a practical implementation

of the reflective teaching theory. One of such models, consisting of three main stages:

pre-training, professional education/development and goal (professional competence)

was presented by Wallace:

Figure 5: Reflective practice model of professional education/development (Wallace, 1991:49)

In this model, the first stage represents the knowledge possessed by the trainee

before entering any professional training – with his or her expectations, attitudes and

some possible basic experience in the matter. The second stage includes the interrelating

received knowledge (facts and theories) and experiential knowledge (practical

experience) which enters the reflective cycle, that is, the process of putting the

knowledge to use, reflecting on it, possibly implementing some changes and then

practicing it again. And finally, there is the goal: professional competence, which is

actually never reached since, as it was stated before, teacher’s development is a lifetime

process.

The reflective cycle in Wallace’s model is relatively simple. However, a more

complex version of it, including 5 stages, is presented by Bartlett:

- 33 -

Figure 6: The elements of a cycle for the process of reflective teaching (Bartlett, 1993, adapted from

McTaggert and Kemmis, 1983; Smyth 1987)

In this version of the reflective cycle, mapping is gathering evidence about our

teaching, informing concentrates on our intentions, contesting tries to find the reasons

for our current idea of teaching, appraising is the search for alternatives and, finally,

acting as practicing our new, rearranged knowledge.

The model presented by Bartlett (1993) is definitely more detailed and provides

greater insight into the process of reflection than the simplified idea of Wallace (1991).

On the other hand, the more complex cycle will be applicable only to the structured

reflective process, since the unstructured one might not include all of the stages

presented on it.

- 34 -

2.4. Self-observation techniques in reflective teaching

Having considered the question of reflective teaching in general, we can now

proceed to the techniques used in order to provide some structured data for reflection,

with the emphasis put on those that do not involve any third person in the reflection,

since that is going to be the case in the research section of this thesis.

Wallace (1991) distinguishes 5 types of “media” that can be used for this

purpose. First one is personal recall, that is, trying to remember the course of the action

and reflecting on it. Another type is the documented recall, using written report of the

lesson, notes, diaries, etc. Then there is audio – recording of the lesson, and respectively

– video. The final medium is the transcript, which is the most troublesome of all the

listed media and very often it requires the use of recording equipment in the first place

anyway.

Richards (1991) provides six procedures, out of which only four fulfill the

previously mentioned criteria, namely: teaching journals – a written response to the

teaching events, self reports – a structured list describing the occurrence of procedures

used by the teacher during the lessons, and audio and video recordings.

As for the audio and video recordings, Wallace (2000) comments that even

though they provide a relatively easy way of gathering data and at the same time very

detailed, as in the case of video recording, there are some problems - mainly their

intrusiveness, making the learners feel uneasy, as well as problematic access to the

fragments of the lesson that are of interest to the observer. Richards (1991) is more

optimistic when it comes to the problem of audio/video recorder’s intrusiveness and

assumes that the learners will eventually get used to their presence. He notes, however,

that the video recording equipment is not always available for use.

Personal recall, although it is the simplest and least expensive way of self-

observation, is also the faultiest, since it is easy to forget some smaller, but important

details or fill the missing information with mere suppositions.

Finally, we have the written reports, which fall into several sub-categories:

transcripts, journals and reports.

When it comes to transcripts, it has been already said that they require the use of

some recording equipment so the negative intrusive aspect also applies here.

- 35 -

Additionally, as Wallace (2000) noticed, transcribing the whole lesson may consume a

lot of time. On the other hand, it provides us with a relatively convenient access to the

information we need.

Richards (1991) claims that self-reports let teachers make regular assessment of

how they fulfill their ideas in practice and how they are working in the classroom. It is

supposed to be especially efficient when teachers concentrate only “on specific skills in

a particular classroom context”.

As for the journals, they are supposed to include all the meaningful events

happening during the lesson, including also the comments and reflections of the teacher.

This provides the data for the teacher to analyze his own development.

The choice of the observation technique may depend on many factors. One of

them is the amount of time that teacher wishes to devote to his reflective activities. If it

is rather limited, the analysis of audio and video recording may be out of question, not

to mention transcripts, since even if they would be done by some appropriate third

party, the finding of it might become another problem. Reports, journals and notes seem

to be more useful in such situation, since teacher can concentrate on particular problems

that are of his interest and does not have to search through the whole recording to find

the crucial moments. And if the time is really scarce, there is always the minimum

version – personal recall. Another criterion is the classroom situation. Sometimes it

might be impossible to write notes during the lesson, since teacher may have to devote

all the attention to the learners. Additionally, techniques involving the use of recording

media, next to their intrusiveness, might encourage some younger and less disciplined

learners to misbehave. On the other hand, this can be only a temporary problem, lasting

until the learners get used to the situation and ignore the recording equipment’s

presence. Finally, there is a question of reliability of the selected technique, especially if

the data is to be analyzed by a group of researchers or when the situation requires some

solid proof, not the potentially subjective account of one teacher. Then it might be best

to select one of the recording techniques, providing raw material for analysis.

- 36 -

2.5. Recapitulation

Reflective teaching seems to be a useful and flexible tool that every teacher can

adjust to his own needs and abilities. Even in its least demanding form it can help in

solving the persistent classroom problems. Its potential is far greater, however, as it can

facilitate the teacher’s professional development and serve as a first step into the action

research. Obviously, more benefits require more time, more preparation and more

skillfulness on the part of the teacher, but it is a profitable investment.

After discussing the two key issues of this thesis, I would like to proceed to the

study itself, which will put the theoretical aspects of those issues into practical use in

order to establish the optimal solutions for the investigated problem.

- 37 -

CHAPTER III: Self-observation study

3.1. Description of the self-observation study

The main aim of the study was to examine various ways of introducing selected

syntactic structures to the Polish learners of English and establish the optimal ones,

based on the analysis of the data collected in the teacher’s diary, which was kept by the

author of this thesis. As it was stated in the first chapter, teaching grammar leaves

teacher with a lot of decisions to be made, both on the macro and micro level of the

teaching process. Therefore any effort devoted to finding the optimal decisions is of

utmost importance to the development of the effective teaching. What is more, this

study is concerned first and foremost with the teacher, not the students. It happens very

often that the research in this matter concentrates on the learners and finding optimal

conditions for their learning process, which teachers should supposedly provide with

any means necessary. Meanwhile, many teachers would probably be interested in how

to maintain a decent level of teaching at the minimal effort possible – which can at least

increase teacher’s convenience, but it can also leave them more time to develop their

skills or give more attention to some particular problems. Nevertheless, even if we

concentrate on teacher’s point of view, we cannot forget about the learner, since their

perspectives are not independent of each other and therefore the influence of students’

feedback on the teacher also plays a part in this study.

Additionally, this study has also provided an occasion to exercise the reflective

teaching abilities and thus helped the author become aware about the choices he made

during the lessons. The issue of reflective teaching was examined more closely in the

previous chapter and there is no doubt, that developing skills in that matter is useful, if

not for action research, then for teacher’s professional development alone. Hopefully,

the experience gained thanks to this study will be fruitful in the professional future

practice of the author of this paper and it will provide some useful insights for anyone

interested in that matter.

In order to establish the optimal solutions concerning the introduction of new

syntactic structures, I was keeping a teacher’s diary for three months, during which I

noted the course of 30 lessons and commented on some factors relevant to fulfilling the

aim of the study.

- 38 -

The data written in the diary was collected during the lessons with individual

learners or in very small groups, consisting of two or three learners. The learners

belonged to different age and proficiency groups. There were six blocks of lessons, with

the participants placed according to the table below

# Number of learners Age of thelearners

Proficiency level of thelearners

Teachingenvironment

1 Three 9-12 Beginner classroom

2 One 28 Beginner home

3 One 40 Elementary home

4 Two 14-38 Elementary classroom

5 One 16 Pre-intermediate home

6 Two 26-29 Pre-intermediate home

Figure 7: Characteristics of groups taught during the self-observation study

During the classes with those groups and individuals, there had been many

syntactic phenomena of English language introduced, out of which eight structures were

chosen for the lessons which became the material for this study. Those eight structures

are:

1. Verb “to be” in Present Simple tense.

2. Verbs in Present Simple tense.

3. Adverbs of frequency in Present Simple tense.

4. The modal verb “can” in Present Simple tense.

5. Present Continuous tense.

6. Past Continuous tense.

7. Present Perfect tense.

8. Passive voice of the Present Simple tense.

Although the selection of the structures was limited by the number of the

grammar material presented during the lessons, it aimed at including both the structures

which are perceived as difficult by Polish learners and those perceived as easy.

- 39 -

Additionally, it included the structures of certain similarity, as well as those

significantly different from the others, which provided even more variety.

Each of the structures listed above was introduced to at least three of the groups,

according to their level of proficiency.

Having described the self-observation study and its aims, I would like to proceed

to the presentation of its results and analysis, which will lead to the formulation of the

optimal ways of introducing new syntactic structures to the learners of English in the

following chapter.

- 40 -

3.2. Data presentation and analysis

In this section of my MA thesis I would like to present the general tendencies

noticed during the course of the self-observation study, as well as some more detailed

information about particular situations happening during the lesson. Furthermore, I am

going to analyze those tendencies and situations in order to provide enough data to

establish optimal ways of introducing new syntactic structures to the Polish learners of

English.

The presented data will be divided into eight subsections, dealing with eight

issues that I considered important for teaching new syntactic structures and especially

focused my attention on them during the self-observation study.

In the first subsection I am going to present the data concerning the language

used during the observed lessons, that is, the use of L1 (Polish) and L2 (English), the

changes in balance between them and my response to the difficulties I encountered

The second subsection is devoted to the first stage of introducing the new

structure, when I was trying to organize students’ knowledge in a way that would foster

their understanding of the new structure and its use.

The third subsection is concerned with the complexity of the explanations – their

level of formality and the amount of metalanguage that they included.

In the fourth subsection I am exploring the issue of teacher control during the

explanations, including the balance between inductive and deductive teaching and

increasing students participation in the discovery and understanding of the rules

governing the introduced syntactic structures.

The fifth subsection deals with rule repetition frequency and explores the

contexts and situations in which this frequency has been adapted for the reason of better

memorization.

In the sixth subsection I consider the use of teaching aids and materials during

explanations, discuss their availability, present my perception of their usefulness and

problems with their use.

In the seventh subsection I concentrate on the coursebook and its usefulness in

terms of providing grammar explanations and reference, as well as the exercises for

practicing them.

- 41 -

Finally, the eighth subsection is concerned with the selection and sequencing of

grammar exercises, the usefulness of drills and problems encountered during

progression to the more communicative activities.

3.2.1 Use of L1 and L2

Although it is often stressed, that learners should be immersed in the target

language from the very beginning of its study, I found that idea to be quite hard to

accomplish during my lessons. Even on purely vocabulary-oriented lessons with

beginners it is quite hard not to speak in L1, especially when giving instructions. It is

not impossible, of course, but it can consume a significant amount of time which could

be spent more efficiently, since the profits of purely L2-centered environment might not

be significant enough. On the other hand, we cannot keep the learners in L1

environment for the whole time. My idea was to create a smooth transition from L1 to

L2, progressing according to the expansion of the students’ vocabulary and the

execution of that idea was quite differentiated among the six groups that I taught.

The biggest problems with this transition occurred in group #1, consisting of

young learners. First of all, for a long period of time they had problems with

understanding even the written instructions in the coursebook, so trying to provide them

with oral instructions only in English did not seem reasonable at all to me. Therefore,

when their knowledge of vocabulary was high enough, I decided to start providing them

with instructions and explanations in L2 and immediately translating them into L1.

They took twice as much time that way, but since this was supposed to be only a

transitional phase, I decided that it is proper to devote some time to it. However, when

after several lessons I decided to start giving instructions only in L2 (while still using

both languages for explanations), the learners were confused and still required

translation of what I said into L1. Therefore I employed a different strategy – I gave the

instructions in L2 and translated them with the learners. This strategy had several

drawbacks – first of all, it consumed a quite significant amount of lesson time and very

often the learners were guessing more than trying to understand the instruction.

Nevertheless I planned to continue doing that as long as they are not able to understand

the instructions in L2 on their own. I saw some progress during the following lessons,

but since my classes with this group finished soon afterwards, I could not finish my

plan.

- 42 -

The situation with the adult beginner from group #2 was, fortunately, a lot more

simple. I used the same strategy that I used initially with group #1, starting with using

only L1, then moving to using L1 and L2 and ending up with all the instructions and

most if not all of the explanations provided in L2. This time the transition was rather

smooth and at the point of introducing Present Continuous to the learner, I provided

most of the instructions and some of the explanations in L2, only occasionally having to

clarify some misunderstanding.

Similarly, with the adult learner on the elementary level from group #3 the

transition was also executed with no significant problems, with the main difference

being that I started from using both L1 and L2, without the stage of using only L1, as

the learner already had some knowledge of vocabulary.

On the other hand, the transition that occurred in group #4 was quite

spontaneous. During the first lessons with that group that were a part of this observation

study, I used only L1 for instructions and explanations, even though the students’

knowledge of vocabulary was good enough to introduce L2 in that context. I think this

was mostly due to the very relaxed atmosphere of those classes and many off-topic

conversations started by learners (and sometimes even by me), which were conducted in

L1. Nevertheless, during one of the lessons I decided to try providing the instructions in

L2 and students understood them perfectly. What is more, even if they were slightly

surprised by this change, they did not show it. On the next lessons I started to provide

explanations mostly in L2 as well and again I encountered no negative feedback, so

from that point on I kept using L2 and only occasionally referring to L1.

As for the two pre-intermediate groups, with group #6 I had been using L2 for a

longer period of time and, obviously, it did not change during the classes that were a

part of this study. However, with the adolescent learner from group #5 I was still using

L1 together with L2 during some of the classes, since he was not accustomed to the

situation of only L2 being used during the lesson and while he had little problem with

understanding the written instructions and most written explanations in L2, the oral ones

were often difficult to understand for him. Fortunately, his understanding of spoken

instructions and explanations in L2 was constantly improving during the course of the

study.

It must be noted, however, that even when I began using mostly L2 during the

lessons, I switched to L1 in situations when the explanations were either too difficult in

terms of lexis or when they could be more or less understood by the learners, but I

- 43 -

valued the clarity of the explanation and lesson time more than adhering strictly to the

L2 environment.

3.2.2 Presenting the new structure.

The first question that came to my mind when I was supposed to introduce a new

structure to the learners was whether this structure is actually introduced to them for the

first time, or perhaps they had some contact with it previously and they possess not only

their own ideas and hypotheses about it, but also those communicated to them by others,

usually previous teachers or the authors of the coursebooks, from which the learners

tried to learn English independently. Thus, I thought that it might be useful to ask the

learners about it. Initially, I was asking the learners in all the groups if they were taught

this structure previously. Most adults and all the adolescents were able to give me a

satisfactory answer. The biggest problem was with the young learners from group #1,

since they rarely knew the English or names of the tenses or their Polish translations.

Additionally, some adults had finished their education a longer while ago and they

simply did not remember what they did in their school years. Such approach to asking

the learners about their already acquired knowledge turned out to have one more

shortcoming. I assumed wrongly that the fact of knowing or not knowing the structure is

equal with, respectively, understanding and not understanding it. The truth proved itself

to be quite different, since the learners sometimes had a good understanding of the

structure’s use without declaring any previous knowledge of it or, conversely, they had

no idea about the correct use of the structure even though they were taught about it. I

decided to employ a different strategy and started to ask learners what they think is the

use of a given structure. That way I could account for their expectations and hypotheses

as well as for the previously acquired knowledge. Obviously, it was very often that I got

no answer, especially from the younger learners, but the situation was much clearer and

enabled me to build upon the learners’ existing knowledge and ideas where possible,

while only clarifying the issues about which the learners’ perceptions were faulty. I

employed this approach during all the following lessons in all the groups.

Obviously, it is not only the knowledge of the given structure that can be used as

foundation for the new information during the introduction. When introducing the new

structures, I often referred to the previously learned structures of English and sometimes

I made comparisons with Polish grammar. Such reference had the best effects with the

- 44 -

adult learners, who often got engaged in the presentation and wanted to clarify

everything that was not totally understood by them or to test their own hypotheses. On

the other hand, young learners were almost totally disinterested with the provided

reference and they wanted to move straight to the exercises, downplaying explanations

as well. This was rather annoying for me, especially since they were asking a lot of

questions when doing the exercises, and during several next lessons I refused to change

my attitude, trying to keep their attention on the introduction and explanations. This,

however, turned out to be counter-productive, since I was spending the lesson time on

the introduction to which they paid little attention, if any at all. Eventually I abandoned

the introduction stage, made the explanations as short as possible and proceeded to the

exercises, answering the questions of the learners when they appeared. The main

problem with that strategy was that very often I had to repeat my explanations to each of

the learners separately, since they were concentrating on the exercise and not on the

explanations. Nevertheless, during the course of the study I did not manage to devise a

more efficient strategy.

As for the adults and adolescents, I tried to make use of as much of their existing

knowledge as possible. For example, during the lessons with groups #3, #4, #5 and #6,

when I was introducing Past Continuous tense, I always explained to the learners that in

terms of form it is exactly the same as Present Continuous, except for the conjugation of

the verb “to be” which is conjugated in its past form, and not the present one, and that it

uses different adverbs of time, for obvious reasons. Most of them had no problems with

remembering the form of Past Continuous, so although I cannot be totally certain, I

believe that introducing the new material with such reference to previous knowledge

facilitated their understanding. Additionally, the whole introduction rarely took longer

than three minutes and required very little preparation on my part. The only obstruction

happened during the lesson with the learner from group #5. I am not sure whether he

misunderstood my explanations (although it was provided in both L1 and L2) or just

developed a confusing association in his mind, but he very often conjugated the “to be”

verb in Present Simple instead of the Past Simple, which resulted in forming sentences

in Present Continuous instead of Past Continuous. Nevertheless, this was a single case

and after a certain amount of drills he learned to use both those tenses in correct

contexts.

There were also situations when I referred to the similarities and differences

between the two languages. For example, when introducing Present Perfect tense in

- 45 -

groups #4, #5 and #6 I underlined that this tense is usually expressed in Polish through

Past Tense which, however, expresses also the meaning of English Past Simple. I

wanted to make learners conscious that what is expressed by one tense in Polish might

bed divided into two tenses in English, each appearing in a particular context. Such

reference seemed to interest mostly learners from groups #4 and #6, who expressed

linguistic curiosity during most of the lessons, whereas the learner from group #5

listened to it, but it did not seem to help him reach better accuracy in the use of newly

learned tenses. Contrastively, learners from group #4 and #6 performed much better

during the exercises and seemed to use the reference I provided to expand their own

knowledge of the phenomenon of language and use it to form their own hypotheses. I

make this assumption basing on the fact that their participation in the lesson increased

after several such lessons and the questions that they asked concerning the newly

introduced structures were becoming more and more complex.

Nevertheless, referring to the previously acquired knowledge was not the only

way in which I tried to facilitate learners understanding of the new syntactic structures. I

also tried to provide some less abstract means in order to fulfill this aim. Sometimes,

when introducing the use of a new structure, I tried to show its meaning by simply

acting it out its examples or describing the context in which it would be used. This was

extremely useful when I was comparing two tenses referring to the similar space of

time, such as Past Simple and Past Continuous. Conversely, it was not necessary to

provide a lot of context in order to describe the difference between Present Simple and

Past Simple, since all the explanation required at that point of the course was limited to

the difference between the present and the past, which is rather obvious for most people.

When it comes to acting out the meaning of examples of a particular structure, I

did it mostly in the classroom context. The main reason for this was the simple fact, that

in the classroom I was already standing and moving, so the transition from some verbal

introduction to the visual demonstration was smooth and natural, while during private

lessons I was usually seated at a table with the learner(s), so any action would require a

sort a disruption that I preferred to avoid. Additionally, I think I would not feel

comfortable enough interacting with the objects in the learner’s home, in contrast to the

classroom setting, which is my ‘territory’.

As an example of this technique’s use, I would like to refer to the lesson with

group #4 when I was introducing Present Perfect to the learners, who already knew

Present Simple, Present Continuous, Past Simple and Past Continuous. I used this

- 46 -

opportunity to revise the use of those tenses, showing a whole chain of comments

concerning the activity of opening the door using the listed tenses. This introductory

activity was based on the example of an ‘advance organizer’ presented by Marton

(1979). First I went to the door and slowly opened it, saying “I am opening the door”

during the activity, “I have opened the door” just after it and then I told the students to

imagine that an hour passed and I said “I opened the door an hour ago”. Then I asked

them about their definition of the contexts I used the three tenses in (the two of which

they were already supposed to know). Their idea was very close to the factual one and I

only had to clarify some matters after moving on to the explanation stage.

In situations when acting out the use of a particular structure would be

uncomfortable or simply difficult, I often preferred to give learners detailed description

of the contexts in which a particular structure would be used. I used this technique also

during explanations and when correcting their mistakes during exercises, but I assumed

it would be useful also at the very beginning of the lesson while presenting the new

structure. During the observation study I used this technique usually with slightly more

advanced learners, since the use of the structures presented to beginner rarely allowed

for ambiguities. However, it was already useful to some extent at the point of showing

the difference between Present Simple and Present Continuous when I was introducing

the latter to the learners from groups #2 and #3. At the beginning of the lesson I told

them that Present Continuous is used to describe actions done at the point of speaking as

well as plans for the future, in contrast to Present Simple which is usually used to speak

about things done in habitual manner. I explained that this is the reason they should not

say “I take out garbage” when they are doing it at the moment of speaking, since their

interlocutor might understand that this is their job or hobby. I also told them that, on the

other hand, saying “I am working in a bank” when asked about their job during a

conversation in the middle of the forest would probably not be understood as the

description of their current action, but nevertheless it would be much more proper if

they said “I work in a bank”.

Because of its humouristic aspect, this technique proved to be extremely

successful, since even after several lessons the learners remembered the ‘funny’

meaning that they should avoid. Additionally, it definitely helped to create a more

relaxed atmosphere during the classes and I must admit that I enjoyed the creation of

humouristic meaning and contrasting it with the proper one. What is more, it showed the

- 47 -

learners that even grammar has its entertaining aspect which can be explored during the

lessons and does not have to be dull and boring.

It is worth noting that the positive feedback to my aims at fostering the learners’

understanding of L2 and language in general encouraged me to further experimentation

in this matter and implementation of new techniques in the introduction of new

syntactic structures, whereas lack of response and indifference on part of the learners

was rather frustrating. Nevertheless, I am quite convinced that even if only one group

encouraged me to develop my techniques of introduction, I would still do it, since it was

very rewarding.

3.2.3 The complexity of the explanations

After providing the students with some introductory information, I always

moved on to the explanation stage, in which I described the formation of a particular

structure and presented what I perceived as a sensible amount of information about its

use. Obviously, I modified this amount according to the level and, to some extent, age

of the learners. Another issue that varied depending on those factors was the complexity

of the explanations that I provided and the extent of the use of metalanguage. It must be

noted that during the course of the study to tried to experiment in that matter to some

extent.

My initial assumption was that I would present only as much information about

the given structure as included in the coursebook. However, even though I expected the

learners to ask some questions going beyond that scope, I did not foresee the difficulty

that I would have with leaving some questions unanswered or only partially answered

when they appeared. Being a teacher-in-training, I was subjected to grammar at the

formal level for the last several years, and the urge of ‘going into details’ that I was

experiencing during teaching the students was in some way connected with that fact.

However, after several lessons I managed to keep this urge at bay and not meander into

digressions where unnecessary.

Nevertheless, I still had to deal with the appearing questions and this caused me

to go beyond my initial plan. Interestingly enough, this issue was actually nonexistent in

group #1 and group #5. In the former, the learners were almost never asking questions

about grammar, even though they asked a lot of questions concerning the vocabulary. In

- 48 -

the latter, the situation was even simpler, since the learner rarely asked any question at

all. Thus all the questions concerning grammar appeared in the adult groups.

During one of the lessons with group #4, when I was introducing Past Simple,

one of the learners asked me whether this tense is only used simply to express

something that happened in the past. Thus I was faced with the dilemma to what extent

my answer should be simplified. If such question appeared during the lesson with young

learners, I would probably only confirm the learner’s idea and move on with the

explanations. However, since I was dealing with more analytical and abstract-thinking

age group of learners, I decided to lay some foundation for the future lessons. First of

all, I explained that Past Simple is not the only past tense in English and thus it cannot

handle all the expressions concerning the past, because otherwise there would be no

need for other past tenses. I told them that Past Simple deals with the past event that

happened at some particular point in the past, e.g. last week or on 20th of May 1990.

Additionally, I mentioned that Past Simple can be found also in the conditional

sentences, but I did not explain what those sentences are. Instead, I assured the learners

that those issues will be accounted for on the subsequent lessons. I believe that this way

I managed to prevent the learners from forming some false beliefs about L2 grammar

while providing them with a sense of continuity at the same time and not causing any

confusion that might result from presenting too much new knowledge at one time.

Judging from the aforementioned beliefs that this group presented during the

introduction of Present Perfect several lessons later, I think that my strategy was

successful.

I encountered a similar problem while teaching the adult beginner from group

#2. On the lesson introducing the verb “to be” in Past Simple, an expression in passive

voice was used for this purpose, namely “was/were born”. When I was providing him

with the translation of this expression, I realized that a lack of comment at that point

might lead to the formation of some false beliefs about language. Perhaps this was a bit

too paranoid of me, but nevertheless I decided to devote some lesson time to the

explanation of that structure and the difference that appears between L1 and L2 in its

case. First of all I explained that we are dealing with a structure called passive voice and

I provided the L1 counterpart of the term as well as some examples. Then I explained

that, similarly to L1, in L2 most of the sentences can be transformed from passive to

active voice and vice versa. I decided that this is enough information about passive

voice at this point of the course, so the only additional explanation was about the fact

- 49 -

that some fixed expressions can have different forms in L1 in L2, as in the case of

someone’s birth which is expressed in active voice in Polish and passive voice in

English. Finally, I assured the learner that we would deal with the issue of passive voice

on the upcoming lessons.

Generally, when I was providing additional information to the learners, such as

those about the syntactic structures that were not introduced yet, I did it in hope that

even if they would not be able to use this knowledge in their writing or speech, they

would learn to notice those structures in L2 and know that they carry a different

meaning than those they already know. In other words, I was making a sort of pre-

introduction during my explanations. I think it was positive for the students’ motivation,

since it helped them know whatto expect on the future lessons and increase their

curiosity, that would at least boost their interest during the actual introduction of the

mentioned structure and perhaps even encourage them to work individually after classes

more often.

When it comes to metalanguage used in the explanations, I originally planned to

use very little of it during the classes with young learners, while maintaining a moderate

amount of it during the classes with adults and adolescents. While this kind

differentiation seemed to work perfectly with the young learners and adolescents, I

encountered some problems while teaching adults who had finished their education a

longer while ago. Actually, they remembered only the basic metalingual terms such as

the categories of words, so I had to re-introduce some knowledge to them, mostly about

the sentence, its structure and constituents. Initially, I planned to devote a lesson to two

issues, that is, the definitions of main metalinguistic terms in Polish and the English

translations of those terms. In the end, however, I decided to define and translate the

terms when the need for them would appear in the explanations, thus introducing them

in context and not in isolation, which I believe made the memorizations of those terms

easier. I assume this strategy was a good choice, since the learners did not exhibit any

problems with understanding those terms on the following lessons and I could not

attribute any of the appearing errors to a misunderstanding of a metalinguistic term.

Situation with the adolescents was easier, since they were relatively acquainted

with the knowledge about parts of speech and of the sentence. Thus the main need was

only to provide them with L2 translation of the required metalinguistic terms. As in the

case of adult learners, I finally decided to do that when a given term appeared in the

- 50 -

explanations and, similarly, I could not notice any errors that could result from

misunderstandings.

Finally, when concerning young learners, it is actually difficult to say whether

the strategy I chose for them was successful or not, since, as I mentioned before, they

were rarely paying attention to my explanations and preferred to go straight to the

exercises. Nevertheless I doubt whether including more metalanguage in the course of

teaching them would have any positive results. I base my assumption on the fact that

even though I was very often emphasizing which word belongs to which category of

parts of speech, when asked to provide the examples of the words from given category

they chose words without paying any attention to which category it is.

3.2.4 Amount of teacher control during explanations

At the beginning of the course, I planned that I would start with holding as much

control as possible on the lessons and release it gradually, according to the increasing

language competence of the learners. However, I encountered two main difficulties.

First of all, to my own surprise, I noticed that I was somehow reluctant to loosen my

control over the lesson and involve students in the explanation process. It was definitely

a lot easier when I had a formerly prepared plan to give students some more freedom

during the lesson, since when I tried to do this spontaneously, I was not consistent and

after one act of encouragement I usually came back to the usual controlling routine.

Therefore, I decided to devote more time to planning my explanatory activities and this

proved to be a successful strategy. Although this was a bit demanding at first, I slowly

became accustomed to it and thus the preparation time it required decreased.

Nevertheless, when I tried to increase the amount of students’ participation in

explaining new syntactic structures, I noticed something that I found quite

demotivating. Often their reaction to such attempts was surprise and they seemed quite

uncomfortable when they were asked to, for example, figure out the rule of a particular

structure’s formation basing on the provided examples of it. In general, many of them

seemed more comfortable when their participation in the explanations was limited to

asking a clarifying question once in a while.

It must be noted, that I was especially reluctant to limit my control in group #1,

the one comprised of young learners, and group #5 - one adolescent learner. Reasons for

that reluctance were quite different in those two cases. I often had discipline problems

- 51 -

in group #1 and it was difficult to maintain the learners’ attention, so I assumed that any

less control could only make matters worse. Although I can imagine situations where

this assumption would prove faulty, they require some interest and motivation on the

part of the learner. Grammar, on the other hand, is often perceived as something boring

and troublesome even by adult learners, so the situation with young learners is usually

even worse. Additionally, whereas most adults and some adolescents are learning

languages because they want to, most young learners, as well as the rest of adolescents,

do this out of obligation and this does not support any independent action on their part.

This was also the case with group #5 learner. Although I did not have any

discipline problems with him, he did not make any effort to discover the rules on his

own until I started to lead him. As an example, on the lesson introducing the Present

Perfect tense when given a set of examples and encouraged to find a regularity which

would be a rule for the formation of this tense, he went silent observing the examples

and did not say a word until I started to ask him more detailed questions, eliciting the

information piece by piece and then having him recapitulate it as the whole rule.

Fortunately, the situation in the other groups was positively different. Despite

being seemingly unaccustomed to participation in the explanation process, they adapted

to it and, judging from their performance during exercises, it helped them memorize the

rules better. In group #4, I used inductive teaching in order to teach Present Continuous

tense. I presented 5 examples of sentences and asked the learners to find the rule

governing the formation of sentences in this tense. The learners performed very well,

providing a complete rule, which I only recapitulated. The learners from group #2 and

#3 were also initially surprised, but later on they started asking more and more

questions and often I had to mitigate their curiousity in order to avoid providing them

with too much information at one time. Finally, the learners from group #6 did not seem

surprised at all by my attempts to include them in the explanation process and they

actively took part in it.

Generally speaking, even if some of the motivated learners were initially

surprised by involving them in the explanation process, they gradually adapted to this

seemingly new situation. Obviously, their ideas were not always correct and often I had

to correct them in order to arrive at a well-formulated rule, but their demonstrated

visibly better performance at the memorization and proceduralization of the rules in the

discovery of which they participated.

- 52 -

3.2.5 Rule repetition frequency

The two main questions that I had to answer concerning rule repetition

frequency were “how often” and “when”. My aim was to help learners memorize the

rule without making an impression of annoying mechanical repetition. At first, when I

rarely involved learners in the explanation process, I was providing the rule before

explaining it, about two or three times during the explanations and finally after finishing

the explanations. However, I had an automatic reaction of increasing the frequency of

repetition during explanations if suspected that the learners have problems with

understanding it. Obviously, this was not solving the problem in any way and if there

were any effects of such frequent repetition, they were probably negative, such as the

annoyance of learners and mine too, especially when I realized that I repeat the rule

mindlessly. However, I managed to limit this reaction and instead of useless repetition

of the rule, I tried other method of explaining it to the learners. Needlessly to say, the

effects of this strategy were much better and the explanations were more efficient,

leaving more lesson time at my disposal.

Obviously, repetition of the rule had to be structured differently if I chose to

have the learners discover the rule themselves. In such situation I only recapitulated the

rule discovered by the learners or provided it in case when then failed to do so. I usually

repeated it twice at that point and I considered that as enough. Most learners never

asked for additional repetition, except for the young learners from group #1. However,

once more repeating what I mentioned in previous subsections, learners from this group

were rarely concentrated on my explanations and asked for them only after they started

doing exercises, which meant repeating the rule for every learner whenever he decided

that he does not know how to deal with a particular example.

On the whole, the amount of repetitions of the rule that I established after the

initial problems seem to function well, as most learners had little problem with

remembering them and they never complained about the frequency of the repetitions

being too high and annoying.

3.2.6 Use of teaching aids and materials

During the lesson taking place in the classroom, the main teaching aid that I used

was the whiteboard. Theoretically, I could rely on the descriptions present in the

coursebook, but the whiteboard provided me with more opportunities of showing how

- 53 -

the structure of the sentences changes, e.g. when making interrogative and negative

sentences out of declarative sentences or passive voice out of active voice. It also

enabled me to underline the crucial or changing elements of the sentence by using

various colours of markers or to provide the learners with the examples of the sentences

that they can use to find the governing rule on their own. When it comes to other

teaching aids, I only had a set of playing cards used to memorize the irregular English

verbs. However, I did not use them in any way while providing explanations, but only

during exercises.

Only two groups were taught in the classroom context, group #1 and group #4,

and I was using the blackboard quite differently on the lessons witch each of those

groups. Due to the fact that group #1 was comprised of young learners, I tried to use

more visual stimuli to keep their attention and interest, that is, more colours, more

arrows signalizing the change of word order and more underlining of crucial elements.

However, during the earlier observed lesson with that group I noticed that when I

finished working with the whiteboard, all the information that I presented on it was so

cramped that it looked chaotic and confusing. This problem was caused by the fact that I

wanted to keep all the information visible for the learners for the whole duration of the

explanation, so that they could understand all the differences and changes that I was

presenting. After reflecting on this, I decided to present the information in smaller

chunks.

The above idea was implemented during on of the subsequent lessons with group

#1. For example, on the lesson introducing Present Continuous, I started with revising

the conjugation of the verb “to be” in Present Simple tense. When I was assured that the

learners remember it, I cleared the whiteboard and provided them with the examples of

sentences in Present Continuous, using different colours for the subject, auxillary verb

and the “-ing” ending. I tried to ask them to find some regularity in the provided

examples, but like I noted before, this group was rather reluctant towards participation

in the discovery of rules, therefore I had to provide it myself and then I explained how it

contributed to the formation of the example sentences. Then I made a drill exercise for

the formation of declarative sentences and only then cleared the whiteboard again and

moved on to explain the interrogative and negative sentences, each type followed by a

appropriate drill exercise as well.

In group #4 I used the whiteboard in a slightly more limited extent. First of all,

the learners in this group were thinking more analytically and they had enough

- 54 -

metalinguistic knowledge for me to use the names of parts of speech and sentence. That

is why I abstained from using colourful markers, limiting myself to underlining and

drawing arrows that signalized changes in the word order. Additionally, their

coursebook had a well-developed grammar reference section and their knowledge of L2

at that point was developed enough to understand the information provided there on

their own. Thus I could use it instead of writing everything on the whiteboard.

During private lessons the availability of teaching aids was even scarcer, since I

had no whiteboard at disposal. However, I found a way to counter this shortcoming by

using A4-sized sheets of white paper and markers. The sheets were in front of the

learner(s) and I used them in the way similar to whiteboard, with the only difference

being that I could not wipe what I had written. On the other hand, learners could be

given those sheets in order to analyze them later on their own if they felt a need to do

so. Initially, I did not leave the sheets for them, but when the learners from group #6

asked me for that, I thought that they certainly would have more use of them than I

would and thus I employed this attitude with all the other private teaching groups.

The situation with teaching materials was slightly better, although my limited

experience and relatively low amount of resources gathered during teaching practice

was definitely an impediment. However, I used the Internet, some grammar books and

other coursebooks to provide more explicit explanations of the use of particular

structures as well as the exercises to practice it, since I was sometimes unsatisfied with

the amount of those elements in both coursebook and workbook. Another option was to

create the written explanations and exercises on my own. However, I was cautious

about making an exercise in which I might, for example, create an ambiguous context

that would allow multiple possibilities of answering where there should be only one, or

an explanation where I might miss an important point. What is more, creating of such

materials would consume a significant amount of my time, especially if I wanted to

make sure than they do not allow any ambiguity and do not miss anything important.

Therefore I preferred to rely on the materials present in the grammar books or other

coursebooks, which are prepared by professionals. Yet, this raised another problem,

since sometimes it was hard to find exercises for a given structure where the vocabulary

would be on the appropriate level and I had to devote more of my time to finding them.

- 55 -

3.2.7 Use of the coursebook

As I have mentioned in the previous subsection, the coursebook was not always

satisfactory when it comes to quality and quantity of the explanations and exercises.

Additionally, it rarely accounted for the special difficulties that Polish learners may

have while learning English. It was quite problematic for me, being still a teacher-in-

training, since I preferred to follow the coursebook in most respects and modify its

content quite rarely. Nevertheless, the coursebook was not able to account for all the

doubts and questions raised by the learners, especially due to the fact that the

explanations present there were only in L2 and very often the learners had problems

with understanding everything clearly.

As a result, during the lessons with beginning students, I often had to provide the

translation of the explanations presented in the coursebook and translate the guidelines

for the exercises. When I considered the explanations unsatisfactory, I often omitted

those in the coursebook and provided my own, although this very often kept me stressed

due to the possibility of omitting something important, especially during my first

attempts. Nevertheless, with more and more experience in this matter and no arising

problems, my self-confidence rose and I become more independent in my teaching.

Concerning the issue of accounting for the particular needs of Polish learners,

the coursebook left me entirely on my own. Again, I was initially afraid of providing

guidelines based on my own knowledge and experience, but since my first small steps

brought no negative consequences and some learners appreciated my guidelines and

found them useful, I started to give them on more regular basis.

Finally, when teaching the groups with learners capable of more than basic

communicative exchange, I often used the exercises as starter for such exchange. For

example, if the exercise in the coursebook included describing the clothes of the people

on the pictures, after its completion I asked the learners to tell me what they were

wearing on that day, what kind of clothes they like or whether they are planning to buy

some new clothes and if so – which? Basically, my actions were based on the

assumption, that it would be easier to encourage learners to communicate basing on an

exercise that they just did and thus thriving on the raised confidence resulting from that

fact. Additionally, learners did not have to search for vocabulary needed to express what

they were asked about, since they had just recently used it. And since the

communication activity was rather short, discouraging periods of silence were limited.

- 56 -

What is more, in groups with more than one learner if such situation appeared, I simply

asked the other learner(s) and only later came back to the previous learner, who thus had

more time to prepare their answer. And if it so happened that no learner could enter the

communication, I tried to help them as much as needed until the communication

eventually started.

3.2.8 Selection and sequencing of exercises

After conducting the presentation and explanations I moved on to the Practice

and Production stages of the lesson, although the latter one was usually very basic in its

form when dealing with beginning learners. Nevertheless, I had to choose and arrange

exercises in a way that would help learners memorize and proceduralize the new

knowledge.

Initially, I simply followed the order of exercises provided in the coursebook and

then moved on to the workbook, with the only modifications being omitting some of the

drills if I saw that learners had no problems with the use of the new structure. Generally,

the exercises in coursebooks and workbooks were ordered starting from uncreative

drills through contextualized drills and finally arriving at communicative activities with

decreasing amount of control. Nevertheless, even though such sequence of exercises is

the most logical one, it often has to be modified and adapted to the unpredictable

situations that may arise during the lesson.

The situation that happened most often was that the learners did not achieve the

proper amount of proceduralization of a particular structure and moved on to more

meaningful tasks, where they had to concentrate on communication as well, and

committed a very high amount of errors in the use of this structure. Interestingly

enough, such situation happened very often during the introduction of interrogative and

negative sentences in Present Simple tense. Learners from all the three groups that had

those structures introduced to them during the observed lessons had great difficulty in

remembering about adding the auxiliary verb “do” and ‘moving’ the “-s” ending in 3rd

person singular interrogative sentences from the main verb to the auxiliary verb.

Actually, they even had problems with remembering about the “-s” ending in the 3rd

person declarative sentences. The main problem was that both in the coursebook and

workbook this commonly problematic issue was given as much practice opportunities as

the conjugation of “to be” verb or Present Continuous, which turned out to be quite easy

- 57 -

for most of the learners. Obviously, the situation could be different for native speakers

of language other than Polish. When this problem appeared for the first time, while I

was teaching group #1, I was a bit confused and did not know what to do. Seeing that

learners make constantly the same mistakes after finishing the drill exercises, I came

back to drilling the structure by means of spontaneously creating an exercise on the

blackboard and continuing to drill it until they finally managed to make mistakes rarely

enough. When I experienced the same problem with group #4, I simply moved to the

drilling exercises from the exercises book earlier (that is, before finishing the unit in the

coursebook). This, however, caused another distortion in my original plan, since I

usually use the drill exercise in the workbook as homework, in order to have learners

memorize and proceduralize the rule of forming a particular structure better. I devised a

short drill on the spot instead, but it was not satisfactory. Thus when I was introducing

the same structures to the learner from group #2, I had some additional exercises

prepared just in case and they turned out to be useful, as the same problem appeared

again. This time, however, I noticed learner’s difficulties while doing the drills from the

coursebook so I proceeded straight to the additional exercises and only later continued

to do other exercises from the coursebook.

Conversely, there were also situations when the most sensible solution was to

omit the drill exercise and continue to more meaningful ones. This happened especially

often in group #6 and sometimes in group #3. The ones from the former group were

handling new structures so well, that next to ceasing from giving them drills for

homework, I limited their number during the lessons. Naturally, situations when the

learners needed more practice happened as well, but quite rarely and they never needed

more exercises than those provided in the coursebook. The instance of the learner from

the latter group was similar, although in his case I only limited homework drills from

the workbook, while still doing most of those provided in the coursebook.

Logically, if I increased or limited the amount of drills, the amount of the

following more meaningful exercises also had to change. In case when the drills took

more time, I either chose slightly more meaningful exercises earlier or left the most

communicative ones for the next lesson or gave them as homework. The first strategy

turned out to be less successful, since in many cases the increased pace of progression

caused some difficulty for the learners. On the other hand, during the study I did not

observe any possible negative effects of the second strategy, since I usually

compensated for the lower amount of the more communicative exercises later, during

- 58 -

revision lessons. However, when the pace of progression was higher, due to the limited

use of drills, the situation was much easier. I could devote the additional time for

practice of more meaningful exercises or, in case of more advanced groups, devote

some time to discussion or conversation.

- 59 -

3.3. Recapitulation

In this charter I presented the aims of the self-observation study, which were

providing date for determining optimal ways of introducing selected syntactic structures

to Polish learners of English and, secondarily, exercising reflective teaching abilities. I

also provided the description of the study, including the method of data collection, the

overall structure of the groups that I conducted the lessons with and during which the

self-observation took place. I also listed the eight syntactic structures taught during

those lessons, which were selected for the purpose of the study. The next section of this

chapter was divided into eight subsections, according to the eight issues that were the

focus of my observation during the study. In those eight subsections I presented the

excerpts from the collected data and provided their analysis as well as some general

conclusions.

Having presented and analyzed the data in this chapter of this thesis, I was able

to establish several optimal ways of introducing selected syntactic structures to Polish

learners of English language. The results of this endeavor are presented in the following

chapter.

- 60 -

CHAPTER IV: Interpretation of study results andconclusions

4.1 Introduction

The last chapter of this thesis is devoted to establishing the optimal ways of

introducing selected syntactic structures to Polish learners of the English language

based on the analysis of the data presented in the previous chapter. Due to the fact that

this study was executed in a specific teaching environment, that is, during one-to-one

teaching and teaching in very small groups, as well as due to my limited experience as a

teacher and the lack of a enforced syllabus, I do not claim the findings of this study to

be optimal in every possible situation and they should be considered in terms of the

listed conditions. However, I believe that those finding may constitute a source of

possible teaching implications as well as to provide some insights valuable for the

further research in the field of grammar teaching techniques.

4.2 Optimal solutions

In this subchapter I will present the optimal solutions established through the

analysis of the data collected through the self-observation study. The solutions will be

divided into eight subsections according to the eight observation criteria that I

established for the needs of the study and according to which I have divided the data

and its analysis in the previous chapter.

4.2.1 Optimal use of L1 and L2

While it is often underlined that L2 learners should be immersed in it from the

very beginning of the course, I find it difficult to implement that principle in its entirety.

The crucial difficulty is that beginning learners had problems with understanding the

simplest instructions in L2, not to mention grammar explanations, and persistence in the

use of L2 alone might lead to their discouragement and retardation of their progress.

Unfortunately, it is hard to find any other solution than simply translating them to L1.

Paraphrasing the instructions in L2 at that point is not an efficient option, since the

students’ vocabulary is too limited. On the other hand, it is not advisable to provide the

- 61 -

explanations only in L1 for an extended period of time. Most learners have little contact

with L2 outside the classroom and even less possibilities of communication in it, so the

teacher must take advantage of every possibility to initiate it and the classroom, in spite

of it being always a slightly artificial environment, gives that possibility. Situation is

even better during private lessons, especially in one to one context, since

communication tends to be less formal then and thus more authentic.

Out of the two options that I employed during the observed classes, that is a

smooth transition or a sudden shift from L1 to L2, the optimal solution would be to

execute the former option, using the transitional phase during which both the languages

are used. Obviously, the pace of this transition and its starting point must be adjusted to

the students’ knowledge of vocabulary at a given moment in time, and teacher can

adjust it by simply monitoring students’ responses to the language used. It must be

noted, however, that the only sensible order of language being used then is to provide

the explanation in L2 and only after a while in L1. Otherwise it is highly probable that

the students’ will not pay attention to the explanation provided in L2 and will not

understand it when it is provided without the L1 counterpart.

Even though I find this solution optimal, it is not free of shortcomings. The main

factor that can be problematic during its application is the heterogeneity of the group,

which can decrease the pace of transition and make it harder to adjust the balance

between L1 and L2. What is more, it is evident that providing the instructions and

explanations in both languages doubles the time devoted to those activities.

Nevertheless, these problems are only temporary and disappear after students attain the

level of knowledge of L2 vocabulary which will allow to limit the use of L1 to

emergency situations.

Evidently, when starting to teach students whose L2 vocabulary is more

developed, the optimal solution for the teacher is to start with L2 right away or, in case

of lack of certainty, with L2 statement followed by its translation to L1 and then

deciding to what extent the use of L1 should be limited. However, every teacher must

bear in mind that even the slightly more proficient students were sometimes taught by

the teachers who downplayed the use of L2 during the lessons and may be simply not

accustomed to learning in L2 environment and those might need some transition period

as well.

Finally, when the teacher has to provide a lengthy but not crucial comment or

digression during the explanations, there is always an option of temporary switching

- 62 -

back to L1, even when dealing with more proficient learners, if the situation requires us

to save the time of the lesson. It may be also advisable in situations when the comment

includes a lot of new vocabulary in L2 and would need excessive on-the-spot

clarification.

4.2.2 Optimal ways of presenting the new structure

At the beginning of the lesson, when the new structure is presented, it is helpful

for the teacher to know the ideas and expectations of the students considering the

matter, be them previous learning experiences, wild guesses, associations in their minds

or analytical conclusions. During the course of the study I attempted several methods of

obtaining such knowledge finally arriving at the one that I would consider successful.

This optimal solution relies on simply asking the learners about their thoughts

concerning the newly introduced structure, whatever they might be. The first impression

might be that by using such method we will receive a chaotic mass of random responses

or, perhaps even worse, no response at all. However, it is more efficient than the other

possible options. If we ask the learners if they have learned the structure before, we may

easily receive their binary answers to that issue. The question is whether this actually

leaves the teacher with any real insight into the students’ knowledge. A positive answer

to this kind of question may mean nothing more than the learner was on the lesson when

a given structure was taught. It does not actually say whether he understood the rules of

forming and use of the structure. The seemingly obvious idea, then, would be to ask the

learner about what he knows about a given structure. This approach is far better, but still

has several shortcomings. The main one is that when asked what they ‘know’ about a

given structure, students try to remember the definitions that they have been taught or

that they tried to learn themselves and they rarely express their own ideas or

expectations about the structure which are also important and could become useful

during the explanations. Additionally, due to students’ apparent assumption that they

are asked about concrete definitions, they gave very few responses. The situation was

very different when I employed the optimal solution. When asked about their ideas and

expectations, the students responded quite frequently, sharing their perception of the

given issue with me. Moreover, the majority of their responses was not random, and

very often I only had to add some additional information to their ideas in order to make

them complete.

- 63 -

Still, some problems still occurred, although it must be noted that they were

present no matter which solution was chosen. All the employed methods were very

limited in their efficiency while dealing with young undisciplined learners. Some

problems were to be expected, such as their problems with expressing their ideas,

resulting from very basic metalinguistic knowledge. However, the main problem was

their lack of interest in grammar and the rules of language. They rarely paid attention

during the presentation of new structures as well as during grammar explanations. Thus,

if they provided any response at all, which was rare, it was quite random and it was hard

to use it in any way. In such cases I believe it is best to introduce the material as if it

was completely new to the learners.

As I have stated in the introduction, there might be situations that did not occur

during this study, which might prove some other shortcomings of the solutions I

consider optimal. My main doubts concern the efficiency of the above solution while

teaching bigger groups of learners, with the most important one resulting from the

possibility that the teacher may not be able then to account for every idea that his

learners might have and help them build more knowledge on its foundation.

Organizing the knowledge that the students already possess is only the first step

in the introduction, however. Before the teacher proceeds to the actual grammar

explanations, it is possible to provide students with some more introductory

information, especially concerning the use of the introduced structure. I based some of

those activities on the ideas presented by Marton (1979). The decision to use them was

based on my assumption that it might be useful and motivating for the learners to

provide them with the answer to the question: “Why do we need to know this

structure?” Consequently, I used two methods of doing that. First one was to act out a

situation when a given structure should be used and the second one was to describe it

verbally. The optimal use of those techniques depends on several factors. First one is the

environment in which the lesson takes place. The acting technique was less comfortable

to use on the private lessons, since I was usually seated next to the learners and it would

require a disruption in the course of the lesson. Additionally, I felt more natural doing

this in the classroom, which I consider a kind of my ‘territory’, while I think I would

feel uneasy doing this in learner’s private quarters. Additionally, when conducting the

lesson in the classroom I am usually standing, so the transition to physical

demonstration of the context is much smoother. As a consequence, I consider it optimal

to use the descriptive verbal method during private lessons and both those techniques in

- 64 -

the classroom context. It must be added, however, that even in classroom setting it was

not always possible to act out the use of particular tense and in such cases I had to limit

my presentation only to the descriptive method.

As for the age of the learners, both methods worked well with adults and

adolescents and while I expected the ‘acting’ method to be far better than the descriptive

one when dealing with young learners (since their way of thinking is less abstract and

analytic), in the end it is hard to say whether any of them was successful, due to the

reasons that I mentioned before, that is, the lack of interest and motivation on the part of

the learners, which were very difficult to overcome for me. As a result I cannot claim

that of those methods is optimal when teaching young learners, although I find it as such

in terms of the older age groups.

There is one more issue that needs to be raised in terms of the descriptive

method, which is related to the previous subchapter, namely the language in which such

description of the context should be presented. Even when the learners attained the

proficiency level that enabled them to understand the instruction and explanations

conveyed in L2, I often had to resort to L1 when describing the context, since the

examples I used often required more advanced vocabulary and were quite lengthy,

which would make the proper understanding of them problematic, were they given in

L2. Therefore it would limit the usefulness of such method for the teacher who prefer a

strictly L2 environment during their lessons.

4.2.3 Optimal complexity of the explanations

When providing learners with grammar explanations, every teacher has to make

a number of decisions concerning their quality and quantity. To what extent should the

explanations be simplified? How to satisfy learners’ curiosity and provide a digestible

amount of information at the same time? How much metalanguage should be used?

How to contrast L2 with L1 without risking an increased occurrence of negative

language transfer?

All those question must be answered in order to provide an optimal solution.

When it comes to the simplification level of the explanations it is not easy to

find balance. Practically, the teachers have two options. They can either simplify the

rule by generalizing it and later provide more and more details or tell the learners that

they only present one of many aspects of a given structure’s use. The former option has

- 65 -

one great shortcoming – by using eat the teacher constantly presents his students with

white lies, and every time that he expands the information, he must admit that the truth

is not like he said and it is actually much more complex. The latter option, on the other

hand, does not force teacher to lie. Instead of constant updating of rules governing the

use of a given syntactic structure, it simply adds more and more chunks to them, finally

arriving at the complete set of rules.

Nevertheless, presenting the information in chunks has a certain deficiency.

Namely, it may make it more difficult for the learners to communicate in L2. When

provided with a simplified rule, the students might use it in improper contexts, but even

if they lack accuracy, they can still be understood by their interlocutor. If they are

conscious that they were only presented with one aspect of the structure’s use, they

might be reluctant to use it in different contexts.

The efficiency of those two methods differs according to the age of the learners.

While the adults and adolescents have little problem accepting that they are taught

grammar in chunks and seem to prefer it to being provided with simplified

generalizations, the young learners seems to feel more comfortable with the latter

option, which is probably due to the fact that they are still more able of acquiring the

language rather than just learning it and their language undergoes similar processes as

those encountered during L1 acquisition, with simplification and overgeneralization

being the recurring phenomena. Thus I believe it is optimal to use the chunk-method

with the more analytical, older learners while simplifying the rules for young learners.

However, no matter if we are providing grammar explanations in chunks or by

updating them, we might encounter learners’ questions that will require us to present a

bigger chunk or less simplified rules than we initially planned. In such situations the

teacher must be aware and provide sensibly extended explanations, avoiding too many

digressions and providing only some general information while assuring the learner that

their questions will be answered in more detail during the subsequent lessons. Again, I

consider this an optimal solution, since on the one hand it is discouraging to ignore such

questions and provide no clarifying information at all, and on the other the teacher

cannot try to explain everything in detail and including every aspect, because that would

lead to an almost infinite chain of explanatory digressions, which learners would simply

be not able to remember.

Teachers must be also very careful when using additional materials during the

lessons, since they may sometimes include syntactic structures that the learners are still

- 66 -

not ready to be introduced to, and their presence would surely increase the number of

appearing questions, that having the teacher faced with the dilemma described in the

paragraph above.

Concerning the optimal use of metalanguage, the teachers have to be careful to

adjust its complexity to the metalinguistic knowledge of learners and if they consider

this knowledge not sufficient, they should expand it gradually during the lessons. The

group which is usually most accustomed to the use of the metalanguage are adolescents,

since they were being taught L1 grammar at school and they are learning other

languages there as well. The situation is different with adults, unless they are students

who learned some language recently or they are freshly after studies. Otherwise it is

quite common that their knowledge of metalanguage is quite limited, due to the gap in

time between the present and the time they were learning it, which causes them to forget

many details. Finally, the young learners are often before the stage when they are taught

the metalanguage and it might be left to the teacher to introduce its very basics, if

anything at all. Thus it is advisable to use and extend the knowledge of metalanguage

among the adolescents and adults, especially the more abstract thinking ones, while

using only basic or no metalinguistic terms when dealing with young learners, who

should be taught using a lot of visual aids and simple notions that they can easily

understand.

Finally, the last question deals with the contrasting of L1 and L2 (and even other

languages, if applicable) in order to help the learners understand the particular grammar

issues. I found this a very useful tool, which makes many new syntactic structures easier

to understand for the learners and often provides an interesting material for the more

curious among them. On the other hand we must be careful not to make an impression

on the learners that L1 is not really different to L2 (although there might be cases when

it is true, it is certainly not in case of Polish and English), which might lead them to

present an increased level of negative language transfer. Differences should be stressed

as much as the similarities, encouraging learners to treat only the particular phenomena

as similar or different, not the whole languages.

- 67 -

4.2.4 Optimal amount of teacher control

There is no doubt that the learners should foster independence in their learners,

allowing them to expand their knowledge about language on their own outside the

classroom. However, most learners, and especially the beginning ones, expect quite a

serious amount of teacher control during the lessons, either because of their previous

learning experiences and individual preference or simply due to the fact that their

knowledge is too limited to work on their own and they need extensive supervision at

least during the first stages of learning the language. It is the teachers’ responsibility

then to develop the independence of their learners and gradually increase the amount of

control given to them.

Obviously, it is not only learners who are usually accustomed to the more

authoritarian style of teaching, but the teachers as well, and some of them might

experience difficulties when trying to share some responsibility with their learners. It is

advisable for them to plan the actions that increase the learners’ independence in detail,

because their spontaneous actions will likely tend to be in accordance to their own

preference. Evidently, it requires some effort and on the part of the teacher, but I believe

it is worth the time devoted to it.

What is more, teachers should not be discouraged if their initial attempts have

little effect on the learners and they express very little independence, even when given

the occasion to do so. They must remember that the learners may need to accustom to

the new situation of the shared responsibility. If their responses are rare and limited,

teacher should encourage the learners and try to lead their thinking in a way that would

enable them to arrive at some conclusions of their own.

However, if the teacher deals with an undisciplined and unmotivated group of

learners, the optimal solution would be to discipline and motivate before sharing the

responsibility, because otherwise it may lead to a situation when the loosened control

over the lesson on the part of the teacher will lead to disorganization and downright

chaos. It may also happen that the teacher will have to deal with learners who may not

cause any discipline problems, but they will be very reluctant participate in the lesson,

either due to lack of motivation or simply preferring to be led rather than advised. In

such cases I consider the optimal solution to maintain the high level of teacher control

during the lessons, while at the same time providing the learners with tools that they can

but do not have to use for independent learning.

- 68 -

In case of motivated learners, however, promoting learner independence is the

best possible solution. It additionally increases that motivation, encouraging them to

perceive the language and its rules as an interesting object of their own discoveries and

leaves them with the appetite for knowledge.

4.2.5 Optimal rule repetition frequency

The repetition of the rule during grammar explanations should not be random

and unstructured, since when done properly, it can facilitate the learner’s ability to

remember the rule and help him understand it. We must bear in mind, however, that the

rule repetition should be structured differently according to whether we used deductive

or inductive teaching during the lesson. In addition to that, we must remember that the

excessive amount of repetitions can be boring and even annoying for the learners, while

it rarely provides any positive effects. And if the teacher decides to repeat the rule more

often, he should not do it in the same way, but paraphrase it, which might be especially

efficient in case explanations in L2, making them easier to understand for the learners if

they have some initial problems with that.

During the observed lessons I managed to establish what I regard as an optimal

amount of repetitions for deductive and inductive teaching. When employing deductive

teaching it is best to start with providing the rule, then repeat it two or three times when

providing explanations and examples, stressing different elements of the rule on the

way, and finish the process with the recapitulation of the rule. When using inductive

teaching, the rule is discovered with the teacher’s help by the learners, therefore it is

best to recapitulate it at the end of the process, possibly once or twice.

What I also noticed during the self-observation study, is that I automatically

increased the frequency of repetitions when I saw that the learners have trouble with

understanding it. It was counter-productive, however, as the simple repetition of the rule

would not help the learners understand it in any way and, according to what I have

stated before, it could have been annoying. Fortunately, I managed to cope with that

habit and instead I simply asked the learners which part of the rule is problematic for

them and, consequently, explained it to them in another way, which usually solved the

problem and turned out to be the optimal way.

- 69 -

4.2.6 Optimal use of teaching aids and materials

During the self-observation study I had a rather limited access to teaching aids

and for the purposes of grammar explanations I was actually using the whiteboard in the

classroom and sheets of paper which I used in the similar fashion during private lessons.

My access to teaching materials was definitely better, although as a beginning teacher I

do not have many such resources at hand and I often had to devote my time to finding or

creating them.

Nevertheless, even with a relatively small access to resources I tried to use the

existing ones to the fullest. The whiteboard, even though it is one of the most basic

teaching aids, proved to be very helpful. However, it took me some time to develop an

optimal of using it. Initially, I was making the mistake of providing too much

information on the whiteboard at one time, which definitely decreased the clarity of

what was presented there and learners were sometimes complaining about this.

Eventually, I decided to present only the basic information for the whole time, while

providing the details in chunks, referring them to the basic idea that was constantly

present on the whiteboard. This strategy proved to be successful and since then I have

had no learners’ complaints referring to that issue.

The whiteboard gives the possibility of using colourful markers, which turned

out to be especially useful when dealing with young learners. Initially, I was using only

one colour during the lessons with both young and older learners. While adults and

adolescents had usually little problem with following the explanations that I wrote on

the blackboard, I was getting a lot of questions from the young learners, mostly in

situations when I contrasted the structure of the two tenses or declarative, interrogative

and negative sentences in a given tense. The problem of the learners was that they had

problems with seeing all the changes existing between the example sentences clearly.

Thus I decided to use the colourful markers, which underlined the differences between

the elements of the sentence and the changes in the structure of the sentence. I noted a

decrease in frequency of those problems after employing this strategy, which proved to

be optimal here. Obviously, I had also an option of using underlining or arrows for the

same purpose, but I decided that it would make the information present on the

blackboard slightly messy, so I used those signs only occasionally, to additionally

emphasize some more important changes.

- 70 -

As I have mentioned before, I had no access to blackboard during private

lessons, so I had to devise a replacement for it and the easiest and most effective option

was to use white sheets of paper in a similar way to whiteboard. There obvious

difference was that I could not wipe off what I have once written. On the other hand, the

sheets of paper with all the information present on them could be given to the learner as

a reference material, which I started to do regularly after I was asked by one of the

learners whether he could take those sheets if I were not planning to use them.

Having considered teaching aids, I would like to proceed to the issue of teaching

materials. As I have stated before, I often had to find teaching materials and sometimes

even create them myself. Both of these activities required my time, but the latter was

especially time-consuming, since I had to be careful not to create ambiguous contexts

and not to use too difficult vocabulary. Therefore after several such efforts I decided

that it is best for me to temporarily limit my material-creating activities to making some

simple structural drills and gradually attempt to create more sophisticated exercises as I

gain experience in that matter.

Regarding the choice of teaching materials made by others, my concerns were

similar to those that I had when creating teaching materials by myself. The problem that

I encountered most often was the too difficult vocabulary present in the exercises, which

would create a situation when the students do not understand the sentences they operate

one, which might be annoying even during the simple structural drills, not to mention

the exercises that deal with the use of a particular structure. Very often the optimal

solution was to simply use the material from other coursebooks or pedagogical grammar

books, since it was problematic to find appropriate resources on the Internet, especially

for beginners.

4.2.7 Optimal use of the coursebook

It is often that teachers, especially beginning ones, rely on the coursebook to

quite a wide extent. However, the grammar explanations present in the coursebooks are

not always satisfactory, especially since they are rarely customized according to

learners’ L1 and that leaves the responsibility of providing such reference on the

teacher. I think the optimal solution would be to follow the grammar syllabus offered by

the coursebook, while providing additional customized information, supported by

teaching materials if possible. While this requires some effort on the part of the teacher,

- 71 -

it is also a good occasion for him to practice his explanatory skills and exercise his own

knowledge of the language, thus increasing his independence. However, if the teacher

decides to rely on his own knowledge of grammar, he must constantly observe and

reflect on the errors that the learners make and control whether they could be attributed

to imperfections in the self-devised explanations.

Another problem that the teacher may stumble upon while using the coursebook,

characteristic to teaching beginners, is that the coursebooks for beginners are often

written only in L2, which makes it initially impossible or at least very difficult for the

learners to understand the instructions and explanations provided in the them. Definitely

such approach to coursebook writing is connected with the principle of immersion in L2

from the very beginning of the course, but the practice is that learners often get

discouraged by it and it is the role of the teacher to help them cope with that difficulty. I

believe the optimal way of dealing with this problem is similar to the one described in

the subchapter devoted to the optimal use of L1 and L2 during the lesson. Namely, the

teacher should start with providing the Polish translation of the explanations and

instructions and gradually limit them, according to the rising proficiency of the learners.

The coursebook is usually a source of exercises as well, but it might happen that

their range is not satisfactory as well, i.e. in terms of the number of communicative

exercises. Nevertheless, the exercises in the coursebook can be used as a foundation for

a more meaningful and communicative activity, instead of using other sources. Such use

of those exercises has the advantage of the fact that the learners are already familiar

with the vocabulary and the topic of the exercise and it might be easier for them to

communicate their ideas.

4.2.8 Optimal selection and sequencing of the exercises

It has been generally established that the exercises using a newly introduced

structure should progress from simple drills that help the learners become familiarized

with it and then move on to the increasingly meaningful exercises which practice the

context in which the structure is used and, in the long run, end in communicative

activities in which the learners imitate real-life situations and express their own opinion

and ideas. During the course of the study I followed this order and in this respect my

observations are not in any way innovative, since such sequence turned out to be the

most efficient and reasonable one.

- 72 -

However, what often needed to be optimalized was the amount of exercises at a

particular level of progress, since some structures were easy to learn and proceduralize,

but the context of their use was problematic for the learners to understand, while in the

case of other structures the situation was opposite. The amount of exercises for both

those matter was rather fixed in the coursebooks and workbooks, so if there was a need

to put more emphasis on one of those aspects and after completing all the available

exercises the learners still had problems with it, I had to devise exercises on the spot,

since I rarely had any additional materials with me. Fortunately, such situations were

not too frequent and usually I had to omit some exercises, especially drills, rather than

experience their shortage.

Evidently, the possible omission of exercises enabled me to devote more lesson

time to the more meaningful exercises and communicative tasks and had no negative

consequences. On the other hand, if the practice of drills had to be extended, it was

more difficult to arrive at the more meaningful tasks on the same lesson. In such

situations I usually told the learners to prepare for some more communicative task at

home, and I conducted it on the next lesson, thus saving some lesson time and giving

the learners an opportunity to familiarize themselves more with the new structure after

the classes. Another option was to omit some of the following less meaningful exercises

in order to complete the lesson and although I employed this strategy and rarely

encountered problems, I think it is slightly risky as the more meaningful exercises may

sometimes turn out to be too difficult for the learners.

Generally, I believe that the optimal solution for selection and sequencing the

exercises is simply to follow their order in the coursebook and workbook and be flexible

when the learners have little or, conversely, many problems with them. It is also

advisable to have some additional exercises prepared in case those in the books are not

sufficient.

- 73 -

4.3 Recapitulation

As it can be observed from the presented findings of the study, it is hard, if not

impossible, to establish optimal solutions for presenting new syntactic structures due to

many factors that influence the teaching and learning process, both internal, such as the

teacher’s personality, beliefs and teaching style, and external, such as the number, age

and proficiency level of the learners, their previous learning experience and other

factors, such as the context in which the lesson is conducted. In general, I think that

there are two key factors to the success in optimalizing one’s teaching process. One is

self-reflection exercised during the practice of reflective teaching, which allows the

teacher to see his advantages and disadvantages and provide a critical but constructive

self-evaluation. The second factor is flexibility, which allows the teacher to adapt

himself to the constantly changing conditions in the classroom and experiment with

various techniques and methods, trying to achieve the one in which both him and his

learners will become successful.

- 74 -

Appendix

OBSERVATION # 4Learners’ age: adult Learner’s level: pre-intermediateSyntactic structure being introduced: Past Continuous tense

Course of thelesson

Investigatedproblems Comments

Purpose of theintroduction

I decided to make an introduction contrastingPresent Simple with Past Continuous to underlinethe differences in meaning between those tenses,especially because I wanted to introduce all thecontexts in which those tenses are used separatelyand together. Judging from the low number ofmistakes in the exercises employing the newcontexts (done during the lesson) the introductionwas helpful to the students.

The language usedin the introduction

I used almost only L2 in the introduction, revertingto L1 only in case when I was not sure whetherstudents understood my explanations. I also revertedto grammar of L1 to show similarities anddifferences between the languages. This proved tobe a good strategy, since it helped the studentsovercome the difficulties that they had inunderstanding the use of those tenses.

A brief introductionwas made in L2about the differencein meaning betweenPast Simple and PastContinuous

The length of theintroduction

The introduction took about seven minutes. It waslonger than I expected since I had to repeat some ofthe statements and make additional explanations. Inthe end, it used too much of the lesson’s time, but atleast it had a positive influence.

The use of teachingaids and materials

No teaching aids were used and I decided to relyonly on coursebook and the additional notes ordiagrams that I could write on-the-spot in thelearners’ notebook. In classroom context I woulddefinitely use the whiteboard but I have no suchopportunity during private lessons. Thisshortcoming might be countered, however, with theuse of a portable PC. Unfortunately, buying one formyself is an expensive action and the learners arerarely equipped with one.

The use of thecoursebook

I used the Grammar Reference section of thecoursebook as a means of presenting the structure ofpositive, negative and interrogative sentences inPast Cont. as well as the short answers in that tense.During the explanation, I was using the copy of thebook in front of the two learners and thus it didn’treally differ from what I would do in the classroomwhere I have the whiteboard. I believe it providedsimilar positive influence, thus making it possible todo without any additional teaching aids.

The structure of thePast Continuoustense was presentedto the learners, usingthe informationprovided in thecoursebook Then Iproceeded to explainthe contexts inwhich PastContinuous is used.

The complexity ofthe explanations

I compared Past Continuous to its Present Tensecounterpart, showing that it is only the conjugationof the “to be” verb that changes, since it is done isthe past form instead of the present. Learners foundit quite easy to comprehend that way, since the onlymain new requirement at the structural level was toremember about that different conjugation and they

- 75 -

thus they seemed more confident in using it.As for the use of P.C., I started with providing thebasic distinction between P.S. and P.C., with theformer describing a more point-like action and thelatter describing an action happening during aperiod of time. The learners were already previouslyacquainted with that distinction and they understoodit, so I decided to provide the more accurate details,such as the completion of a task being expressedusually by P.S., and the sentences in which the twotenses are contrasted. I decided to stop at that point,since I thought that those are the most frequent andimportant uses of that tense and the other oneswould be mentioned only after a necessity for itcame during future lessons. Additionally, thecontrastive use of P.S. and P.C. posed a bit of adifficulty for the learners, so any additionalknowledge would probably have been even moredifficult to digest. I think the number of the newcontexts that were introduced was big enough toexpand the learners’ knowledge appropriately whilenot to big to cause too much chaos in theirperception of the use of Past Continuous (and PastSimple).

The language usedin the explanations

Almost all the explanations were provided in L2,except for some background stories which I used toillustrate the contexts in which Past Continuouswould be used rather than Past Simple and the otherway round. Initially I tried to tell them in L2, buteventually I decided to provide them in L1 in orderto speed things up and avoid anymisunderstandings, which were actually happening.

Repetition of therule

While most of the explanations posed no problemfor the learners and I didn’t have to repeat themmore than twice, the contrastive use of P.S. and P.C.turned out to be a bit problematic and I had to repeatit three times and then additionally draw sentenceswith the diagrams and use them for clarification.

The amount ofteacher control

The whole explanation process was controlled byme and I left no initiative to the learners. Thiswasn’t as much of a conscious choice, as aspontaneous way of speeding things up, since Iassumed that the past exposure to the knowledgeabout that tense leaves no place for any real“discovering”. Thus I decided to concentrate on thenew contexts of P.C. use and there I left more timefor any questions that would arise. The wholeprocess was still mostly in my control, though.However, I am not sure if I could have done it moreeffectively if I left more control in learners’ hands.

Students were askedto do some practiceexercises, both forthe form and use ofthe Past Continuous.

The use of thecoursebook

All the exercises were taken from the coursebookand accompanying workbook, which provide quite avariety of them. It definitely saved a lot of my time,and the exercises concerned with the use of P.C.provided more context than I could think of in ashort span of time. Thus it was both time-saving andreliability-increasing to depend on the coursebook.

- 76 -

The use of teachingaids and materials

I used no additional aids. Just the coursebook andthe workbook.

Selection ofexercises

I chose one pure drill for a warm-up, and then,seeing that learners have no problems with the form,I decided to move on to the more creative exercises,concentrating on the appropriate use of P.C. At firstthe students made quite a lot of errors, but supportedwith the knowledge of why their choices wereerroneous, they managed to arrive at a satisfactoryamount of accuracy.

The use of thecoursebook

The was no appropriate production exerciseprovided by the coursebook at that point, so Idecided to devise a simple yet communicative onemyself.

The use of teachingaids and materials

No aids or materials were used.

Students wereencouraged toparticipate in someproduction activities

Selection ofexercises

I told the learners to describe me their previous day.They could do it in pair, providing additionalinformation or comments on the way. The mainproblem was that one of the learners was morefluent and talkative than the other, who on the otherhand seemed to place a bit more emphasis on theaccuracy of his utterances (which might be thereason of his decreased amount of speech).Nevertheless, I think it gave an opportunity for oneto learn from the other, cooperating incommunicating ideas to me.

OBSERVATION # 9Learners’ age: adult Learner’s level: elementarySyntactic structure being introduced: can/can’t

Course of the lesson Investigatedproblems Comments

Purpose of theintroduction

Next to presenting “can” as an important element ofeveryday English, I wanted to relate “can” to someknowledge already possessed by the learners,therefore I mentioned the category of “modal verbs”in English and described their behaviour in thesentences as similar to that of the “to be” verb interms of forming questions and negatives, as well aspossessing a special conjugation. Judging from thelow number of mistakes that the learners made duringthe lesson, it is probable that this strategy wasefficient.

The language usedin the introduction

The explanation was provided in L1, as the learnerswere not comfortable enough with my use of L2during the lessons and I preferred to avoid anypossible misunderstandings.

A brief introductionwas made in L1 aboutthe verb “can” and theconsequences of itbeing a modal verb, aswell as about thesimilarities anddifferences of “can”and “to be”.

The length of theintroduction

The introduction took about 2 minutes. It was enoughto recall the behaviour of “to be” verb” and relate it tobehaviour of “can”, providing all the similarities anddifferences. I was asked some clarifying questions bythe learners but in most cases I simply approved theirconclusions.

- 77 -

The use of teachingaids and materials

I used the whiteboard to present and contrast thesentences using “to be” can “can” verb using variouscolours to highlight the main parts of the sentencesand their shifting positions.

The use of thecoursebook

The coursebook provided only the information aboutthe structure and meaning of the sentences using“can”, so I decided not to refer to it and instead usedonly my own explanations on the blackboard, whichallowed me to include the reference to the knowledgealready possessed by the learners, that is, about the“to be” verb.

The complexity ofthe explanations

The explanations were quite simple, since the issuediscusses on that lesson was rather uncomplicated.The students understood everything perfectly and Ibelieve that any complication of the matter would becounter-productive.

The language usedin the explanations

I provided all the explanations in L1 in order to avoidany misunderstanding that would require furtherclarifications and extend this phase of the lesson toomuch.

Repetition of therule

I repeated the rule twice, although learners seemed tounderstand it quite well after the first time.

I presented thebehaviour of positive,interrogative andnegative sentenceswith “can” and “to be”verb

The amount ofteacher control

I controlled the whole explanation process. I decidedthat the matter is too simple to suggest the learnersthat there is a “catch” that they must discover.Additionally, presenting everything to them spedthings up a lot.

The use of thecoursebook

All the exercises were taken from the coursebook andworkbook. They contained various types of exercisesand no external source of those was needed.

The use of teachingaids and materials

I used no additional aids. Just the coursebook and theworkbook.Students were asked to

do some practiceexercises. Selection of

exercisesI started with purely drill-oriented exercises and themmoved on to exercises contrasting the two meaningsof “can” (permission and ability) and ended atexercises in which the learners were to describe otherpeople’s abilities as well as their own.

The use of thecoursebook

I selected only one, rather simple exercise from thecoursebook for production purposes.

The use of teachingaids and materials

No aids or materials were used.

Students wereencouraged toparticipate in someproduction activities

Selection ofexercises

The exercise was supposed to have learners askquestions to each other about the various things thatthey can or cannot do, so it was a morecommunication-oriented variation of one of the finalpractice exercises. Learners were also encouraged toprovide additional comments, not just the questionsand answers, but they rarely did that.

- 78 -

OBSERVATION # 26Learners’ age: adolescent Learner’s level: pre-intermediateSyntactic structure being introduced: Present Perfect

Course of the lesson Investigatedproblems Comments

Purpose of theintroduction

While both the structure and use of Present Perfecttend to be problematic for the learners, the latterseems to be especially difficult. This is why I decidedto emphasize this matter in the introduction. What ismore, this enabled me to revise the use of thepreviously introduced tenses.

The language usedin the introduction

The introduction was provided in L2 and a part of itwas also translated to L1, since I saw that the learnerhad problems with understanding several sentences.

An introduction wasmade about the use ofPresent Perfect tenseand its place in relationto Present Continuousand Past Simple. Icontrasted the use ofthose tenses bydescription of theaction of opening thebook. “I am openingthe book”, “I haveopened the book” and“I opened the bookhalf a minute ago”.

The length of theintroduction

The introduction took about 3 minutes. Most of thattime was devoted to a more detailed presentation ofthe context in which Present Perfect is used,contrasted with Present Continuous and Past Simple.Acting this context out was not enough and I had toprovide additional information for the learner to makehim understand it properly.

The use of teachingaids and materials

I used a sheet of paper on which I wrote theexemplary sentences of all three types, underliningthe changes in word order between those types. Thesheet was given to the learner after the lesson.

The use of thecoursebook

The coursebook provided some more exemplarysentences and the abstract structure of the PresentPerfect tense.

The complexity ofthe explanations

The explanations were only using some basicmetalanguage and were to a large extent visual,thanks to the use of sheet of paper. As for the use ofP.P., I provided only the basic context in which it isused, including speaking about recently completedactions and thing that have been done for some periodof time until the moment of speaking. I decided thatthis is enough at this point.

The language usedin the explanations

I provided all the explanations in L2 and fortunatelythis time I didn’t have to translate them to L1 as thelearner understood everything.

Repetition of therule

I repeated the rule of P.P. formation about 5 times. Inthe beginning, three times when working withexemplary sentences and one more time at the end.The learner seemed to understand the explanationsand his good performance in the drill exercisessuggests he actually did. As for the use of P.P., it hasbeen already mentioned in the introduction, so Iprovided the rule twice. One before giving some moreexamples and one afterwards.

I presented thebehaviour of positive,interrogative andnegative sentences inPresent Simple Tense.I also provided themost general rule ofP.P.’s use.

The amount ofteacher control

The whole explanation process was controlled by meand I preferred to stick to deductive teaching, as thelearner was rather reluctant to participate in the lesson

The use of thecoursebook

All the exercises were taken from the coursebook andworkbook, except for one which I made myself.

Students were asked todo some practiceexercises.

The use of teachingaids and materials

I used mostly the coursebook and the workbook, but Ialso employed a sheet of paper on which I made anexercise spontaneously.

- 79 -

Selection ofexercises

The exercises were mostly uncreative drills,exercising the formation of Present Perfect and thePast Participle forms of regular and irregular verbs.Additionally, I devised a short exercise that I wroteon a sheet of paper while the learner was doing thedrills, which exercised the use of Present Perfect incontrast with Present Simple. The learner had toknow which tense to use basing on the phrasesdealing with time, present in the sentences (such as“for 5 years”, “since 1995”, “already”, “in 1981”,“two days ago”, etc.). However, I made a mistake ofnot telling the learner which of those phrases arecharacteristic for Present Perfect before and I had todo it whenever he made a mistake.

The use of thecoursebook

None. Only one exercise was done and it wasspontaneously devised by me.

The use of teachingaids and materials

No aids or materials were used.

Students wereencouraged toparticipate in someproduction activities

Selection ofexercises

Only one exercise was done at this point and I createdit on the spot. The learner was supposed to tell meabout some things that he had done for some time,such as “I have played computer games since 1998”.Although this was a rather controlled exercise, thelearner communicated the facts, so I believe this wasa good start for meaningful activities with the use ofPresent Perfect tense.

- 80 -

Bibliography

· Bartlett, L. 1990. ‘Teacher development through reflective teaching’. In J. C.

Richards & D. Nunan (Eds.). Second language teacher education: 202-214.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

· Batstone, R. 1994. Grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

· Bailey, K. M. 1997. ‘Reflective teaching: situating our stories.’ Asian Journal

of English Language Teaching 7:1-19

· Doman, E. 2005. ‘Grammar consciousness raising. Six steps to language

learning.’ Modern English Teacher 15/1:24-32.

· Harmer, J. 2001. How to Teach English. Edinburg: Longman Publishing

Group.

· Komorowska, H. 1980. Nauczanie gramatyki języka obcego a interferencja.

Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Szkolne i Pedagogiczne.

· Komorowska, H. 2002. Metodyka nauczania języków obcych. Warszawa:

Fraszka Edukacyjna.

· Larsen-Freeman, D. 1986. Techniques and principles in language teaching.

Oxford: Oxford University Press.

· Marton, W. 1979. Optymalizacja nauczania języków obcych w szkole: teoria

i praktyka. Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Szkolne i Pedagogiczne.

· Nunan, D. 1992. Research methods in language learning. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.

· Nunan, D. / Lamb, C. 1996. The self-directed teacher: managing the

learning process. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

- 81 -

· Richards, J. C. 1991. ‘Towards Reflective Teaching.’ The Teacher Trainer

5/3:4-8

· Richards, J. C. / Nunan, D. (ed.) 1993. Second language teacher

education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

· Richards, J. C. / Lockhart, C. 1999. Reflective teaching in second

language classrooms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

· Seliger, H. W. / Shohamy, E. 1990. Second language research methods.

Oxford: Oxford University Press.

· Stern, H. H. 1993. Issues and options in language teaching. Oxford: Oxford

University Press.

· Thornbury, S. 2004. How to teach grammar. Harlow: Pearson Education

Limited.

· Ur, P. 1993. Grammar practice activities: a practical guide for teachers.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

· Wallace, M. J. 1991. Training foreign language teachers: a reflective

approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University.

· Westney, P. 1994. ‘Rules and Pedagogical Grammar’. In T. Odlin (Ed.)

1994. Perspectives on pedagogical grammar: 72-95. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.

· Widdowson, H. G. 1991. Aspects of language teaching. Oxford: Oxford

University Press.

- 82 -

Webgraphy

· Sysoyev, P. V. 1999. ‘Integrative L2 Grammar Teaching: Exploration,

Explanation and Expression.’ The Internet TESL Journal. Retrieved on

12.03.2008. <http://iteslj.org/Articles/Sysoyev-Integrative.html>

· Tice, J. 2004. ‘Reflective teaching: Exploring our own classroom practice.’

British Council teaching English. Retrieved on 26.02.2008.

<http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/methodology/reflection.shtml>

- 83 -

Summary

The purpose of this thesis is to establish optimal ways of introducing selected

syntactic structures of English language by means of teacher’s self-observation and self-

analysis.

The thesis consists of a theoretical and practical part. The two chapters of the

theoretical part provide a review of the literature concerning the topics relevant to the

study: teaching grammar and reflective teaching.

The first chapter presents theoretical aspects of teaching grammar, exploring its

importance, various attitudes towards this issue present in different teaching methods,

the difference between formal and pedagogical grammar and the question of how

teaching grammar should be organized.

The second chapter is devoted to the idea of reflective teaching. It discusses its

purpose and importance in the context of teacher’s professional development and

presents some of the most popular self-observation techniques and describes their

strengths and weaknesses.

The latter two, which comprise the practical part of the thesis, are dedicated to

the self-observation study, its description, analysis of the observed situations and

finding the optimal solutions.

The third chapter starts with describing the self-observation study, the

environment in which it was executed and the selection of introduced syntactic

structures of English language. Then it proceeds to presentation and analysis of the

observations made during the study. The observations are divided into eight sections,

according to the observation criteria employed in the study.

Finally, the fourth chapter is devoted to establishment of the optimal ways of

introducing the syntactic structures by reviewing the techniques employed by the author

of this paper during the study and choosing the ones that proved most efficient.

- 84 -

Streszczenie

Celem niniejszej pracy jest określenie optymalnych sposobów wprowadzania

wybranych struktur syntaktycznych języka angielskiego za pomocą auto-obserwacji i

auto-analizy.

Praca ta składa się z części teoretycznej i praktycznej. Dwa rozdziały składające

się na część teoretyczną prezentują przegląd literatury zajmującej się kwestiami dla tej

pracy kluczowymi: nauczaniem gramatyki i nauczaniem refleksyjnym.

Pierwszy rozdział przedstawia teoretyczne aspekty nauczania gramatyki, jej

istotności oraz zróżnicowanie poglądów na ten temat obecnych w różnych metodach

nauczania, różnice między gramatyką formalną i pedagogiczną oraz koncepcje tego jak

nauczanie gramatyki powinno być zorganizowane.

Drugi rozdział poświęcony jest koncepcji nauczania refleksyjnego. Rozważa też

jego cele i istotność dla rozwoju zawodowego nauczyciela. Przedstawia też

najpopularniejsze techniki auto-obserwacyjne i opisuje ich wady i zalety.

Kolejne dwa rozdziały, które składają się na część praktyczną pracy, poświęcone

są badaniu auto-obserwacyjnemu, jego opisowi, analizie zaobserwowanych sytuacji i

określeniu optymalnych rozwiązań.

Trzeci rozdział zaczyna się od opisu badania i środowiska, w jakim zostało

przeprowadzone oraz przedstawienia wybranych na jego użytek struktur syntaktycznych

języka angielskiego. Następnie dokonana zostaje w nim analiza danych zebranych

podczas badania. Dane te przedstawione są w ośmiu sekcjach, zgodnie z ośmioma

kryteriami obserwacji, które zastosowano w badaniu.

Rozdział czwarty, ostatni, poświęcony jest ustaleniu optymalnych sposobów

wprowadzania struktur syntaktycznych za pomocą przeglądu technik stosowanych przez

autora niniejszej pracy podczas badania i wybraniu tych, które okazały się

najskuteczniejsze.

- 85 -

Imię i nazwisko autorapracy/rozprawy

Robert Gleń

Imię i nazwisko promotorapracy/rozprawy

prof. dr hab. Maria Wysocka

Wydział/Jednostkaniebędąca wydziałem

Wydział filologiczny

Kierunek studiów/dziedzinanauki

Filologia angielska

Specjalność/dyscyplinanaukowa

Metodyka nauczania języków obcych

Tytuł pracy Optymalne sposoby wprowadzania wybranych struktursyntaktycznych języka angielskiego w nauczaniu

polskich uczniów. Auto-obserwacja.

Niniejszym oświadczam, że zachowując moje prawa autorskie, udzielamUniwersytetowiŚląskiemu nieodpłatnej licencji niewyłącznej do korzystania z ww. pracy bezograniczeń czasowych, w następującym zakresie:

- rozpowszechniania pracy poprzez publiczne udostępnianie pracy w wersjidrukowanej i elektronicznej, w taki sposób, aby każdy mógł mieć do niej dostępw miejscu, w którym praca jest przechowywana tj.: w Archiwum UniwersytetuŚląskiego lub w Bibliotece Uniwersytetu Śląskiego,

- rozpowszechniania pracy poprzez publiczne udostępnianie pracy w wersjielektronicznej w sieci Internet w domenie us.edu.pl oraz w innych serwisachinternetowych, tworzonych z udziałem Uniwersytetu Śląskiego.

--------------------------------------------/podpis/