An Introduction to Applied Linguistics

Sandy bought Margaret a gift. 
Sandy bought a gift for Margaret. 
Sandy bought it for her. 
*Sandy bought her it.
Also included in the promoting noticing category would be Van Patten’s (1996, 
2006) input-processing tasks, in which students are guided to pay attention to 
particular aspects of the target language, especially those aspects that differ between 
the L1 and the L2, rather than working on explicit rule learning and application.
Although not all would agree, we feel that teachers cannot be satisfied with 
merely promoting their students’ noticing. Since language use is a skill, overt 
productive practice is also needed (DeKeyser, 2007). It is important to point out, 
however, that in order for optimal transfer to take place, the practice must be 
meaningful, what Larsen-Freeman (1995) has called ‘grammaring’. Grammaring 
may be accomplished by asking students to engage in a communicative task where 
it is necessary to use certain structures to complete it (Loschky and Bley-Vroman, 
1993). An example might be where students have to read maps in order to give 
directions to someone. By so doing, they naturally would receive meaningful 
practice in using prepositions and imperatives.
Depending on the learning challenge, that is, the grammatical dimension with 
which students are struggling, the nature of the productive practice activity will 

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30 An Introduction to Applied Linguistics
differ. If the students need to work on form, for instance, meaningful repetition is 
useful. For example, students might be asked to talk about their family members’ 
or friends’ daily routines, in which they will have ample opportunity to use the 
third person singular form of verbs. Meaningful repetition would also be useful for 
helping students learn the form of lexical phrases or other prefabricated structures. 
If the students’ learning challenge is meaning, they will need to practise bonding 
form and meaning together, such as practice associating certain phrasal verbs 
with physical actions (Stand up, Turn on the light, Sit down, etc.). If the challenge is 
use, students will need to make a choice. For example, asking students to role-play 
a situation that calls for advice to be given to a supervisor versus to a friend invites 
those students to select the appropriate form of modal or other structure with 
which to offer such advice. To practise use of discourse grammar, students might 
be asked to choose between use of the active or passive voice after a given prompt.
Feedback is also seen to be a necessary part of grammar instruction. Feedback 
mechanisms span the spectrum from direct correction by the teacher to recasts, in 
which the teacher reformulates correctly what the learner has just said erroneously, 
to giving students the space to correct themselves (Aljaafreh and Lantolf, 1994; 
Lyster and Ranta, 1997). In a total turnaround from the view that learner errors 
are to be prevented, some applied linguists have even suggested that students 
should be encouraged to make errors by being ‘led down the garden path’. For 
example, students might be given a rule without being told that it has exceptions. 
It is assumed that when students do overgeneralize the rule and commit an error, 
the negative feedback they receive will be more successful in their acquiring the 
exceptions than if they were given a list of exceptions in advance (Tomasello and 
Herron, 1989). Of course, all of this is in vain if learner noticing and uptake do 
not occur after the feedback. This has been the concern with recasts. Although 
teachers’ recasts are ubiquitous, they have the inherent problem of learners’ 
not necessarily noticing that they are being corrected. It has been suggested 
more recently that prompts may be more effective in this regard than recasts. 
In addition, Lyster (2004) observes that prompts, such as a teacher repeating a 
learner’s error verbatim with rising intonation, withholds approval and allows the 
learner to self-repair.
Earlier we made the point that learners do not master grammatical structures 
one after another like beads on a string. Indeed, the learning of grammar, as 
with the learning of many aspects of language, is a much more organic process 
(Rutherford, 1987; Larsen-Freeman, 2003). This suggests that a traditional 
grammatical syllabus that sequences structures one after another may result in 
a mis-match between learnability and teachability (Pienemann, 1984). For this 
reason, many have recommended the use of a ‘spiral syllabus’, where particular 
structures are recycled from time to time during a course (Ellis, 1993). A helpful 
guideline in the construction of such a spiral syllabus might be to focus on a 
different dimension of a grammar structure each time it is revisited. An alternative 
some have recommended is not to adopt a grammatical syllabus at all, reckoning 
that the grammar that students need to learn will become apparent as they work 
on meaningful content. In this way, grammar teaching becomes more responsive 
than proactive. This last line of thinking is perhaps best exemplified in the 
prescription that a ‘focus on form’ should only occur as needed; students should 
otherwise spend their time engaged in meaningful tasks and in learning content 
(Long, 1991). When it appears that students are ready to learn, their attention can 
be drawn to linguistic form. One problem with this approach is that an opportunity 

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31
Grammar
to teach a particular structure may not present itself because it occurs infrequently 
or because students know that they have difficulty with the structure, and so 
they avoid it. Perhaps the best compromise is to employ a grammar checklist – to 
ensure that students have worked on particular forms by the end of a course – but 
leaving the sequence indeterminate so that students can work on structures as 
they emerge naturally from classroom tasks and content (Larsen-Freeman, 2003). 
When they do not emerge, teachers can create supplementary tasks and activities 
to ensure that they receive attention when the teacher has determined that the 
students are ready to learn them. In this way, the risk of focusing on forms in 
isolation is minimized (Long, 1991).
Not all grammar teaching needs to be reactive, however. For instance, it is 
recommended to teachers of English language learners that they teach structures 
that learners will need in order to make sense of the decontextualized academic 
language they must handle in their schooling. In an academic context, therefore, 
it is important for lessons for English language learners to have both content 
objectives and linguistic objectives (Pica, 2002; Schleppegrell, Achugar, and 
Oteíza, 2004).
Indeed, to leave the grammar to chance overlooks an important function of a 
‘focus on form’ which is to ‘fill in the gaps in the input’ (Spada and Lightbown, 
1993). That is, teachers need to work with students on structures that do not 
normally arise in the course of every day classroom discourse or even content-
based or task-based instruction. More recently, Spada and Lightbown (2008) have 
made the case for both isolated and integrated form-focused instruction. Isolated 
grammar instruction does not mean instruction removed from a programme 
that is primarily communicative in orientation. Rather, it is one where grammar 
activities are separated from communicative or content-based interaction. The 
authors suggest that the two types of instruction have different purposes and that 
isolated instruction, in particular, is useful when the L1 has a strong influence 
on the forms that learners are producing in the L2, when certain grammatical 
features are not particularly salient so that they escape learners’ attention and 
when certain forms are not naturally frequently-occurring in the classroom.
One should also not forget that teachers do not only teach language; they teach 
learners. It should not be surprising to learn, therefore, that students and teachers 
have different aptitudes and attitudes toward grammar (Larsen-Freeman, 2009), 
which no doubt affect the way it is taught and learned.
Conclusion
Views of grammar have changed over the years. With the awareness that formulaic 
language is as prevalent as it is, it is clearly the case that we should be thinking 
more in terms of lexicogrammar, rather than thinking solely of morphology and 
syntax. Similarly, owing to contributions from SLA research, we can appreciate the 
fact that the acquisition of lexicogrammar is not likely to be accounted for by one 
type of learning process. Finally, due to the multifaceted nature of grammar and 
the learning processes, we must recognize that the teaching of grammar itself is 
complex and multidimensional and may require a variety of teaching approaches. 
What should not be expected is a simple, proximal, causal link between what is 
taught and what is learned. This is not surprising though, given the non-linear 
nature of the learning process, and it does not reduce in the least the need for 
grammar instruction.

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32 An Introduction to Applied Linguistics
Further Reading
Celce-Murcia, M., Larsen-Freeman, D. (1999) The Grammar Book: An ESL/EFL