Second Language Learning and Language Teaching

audio-visual method: this used visual images to show the meaning of spoken dia-
logues and believed in treating language as a whole rather than divided up into
different aspects; teaching relied on filmstrips and taped dialogues for repetition;
it emerged chiefly in France in the 1960s and 1970s
communicative teaching: this based language teaching on the functions that the
second language had for the student and on the meanings they wanted to express,
leading to teaching exercises that made the students communicate with each
other in various ways; from the mid-1970s onwards this became the most influen-
tial way of teaching around the globe, not just for English
direct method: essentially any method that relies on the second language
throughout
grammar-translation method: the traditional academic style of teaching which
placed heavy emphasis on grammar explanation and translation as a teaching
technique
task-based learning: this approach sees learning as arising from particular tasks
the students do in the classroom and has been seen increasingly as a logical devel-
opment from communicative language teaching
The details of many of these are discussed further in Chapter 13.
Glosses on language teaching methods 17

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2
Learning and teaching 
different types of grammar
A language has patterns and regularities which are used to convey meaning, some of
which make up its grammar. One important aspect of grammar in most languages
is the order of words: any speaker of English knows that ‘Mr Bean loves Teddy’ does
not have the same meaning as ‘Teddy loves Mr Bean’. Another aspect of grammar
consists of changes in the forms of words, more important in some languages than
others: ‘This bush flowered in May’ means something different from ‘These bushes
flower in May’ because of the differences between ‘This/these’, ‘bush/bushes’ and
‘flowered/flower’. The glossary on page 44 defines some grammatical terms.
Many linguists consider grammar to be the central part of the language in the
Lang
5
sense of the knowledge in an individual mind, around which other parts
such as pronunciation and vocabulary revolve. However important the other
components of language may be in themselves, they are connected to each other
through grammar. Chomsky calls it the ‘computational system’ that relates sound
and meaning, trivial in itself but impossible to manage without.
Originally the word ‘glamour’ came from the same root as ‘grammar’; the per-
son who knew grammar was glamorous and could cast mysterious spells. In the
fifteenth-century ballad ‘King Estmere’, it is said of two brothers, ‘And aye their
swordes soe sore can byte, Through help of gramarye.’ Grammar is indeed one of
the mysteries of human life.
Grammar is the most unique aspect of language. It has features that do not
occur in other mental processes and that are not apparently found in animal lan-
guages. According to linguists (though psychologists often disagree), grammar is
learnt in different ways from anything else that people learn.
In some ways, as grammar is highly systematic, its effects are usually fairly obvi-
ous and frequent in people’s speech or writing – one reason why so much SLA
research has concentrated on grammar. This chapter first looks at different types
of grammar and then selects some areas of grammatical research into L2 learning
to represent the main approaches.