Second Language Learning and Language Teaching

5 Do the learners you know conform to the stages of the processability model?
6 If you should only teach what a student is ready to receive, how do you estab-
lish what the student is actually ready for?
7 SLA research thinks that the order of acquisition is a very important aspect of
learning. How important do you think that order of presentation is to language
teaching?
question is whether these activities have anything to do with ‘form’; calling them
‘focus on meaning’ would be as suitable, given that grammatical form is there to
serve meaning. Nor does it answer the question of which type of grammar is appro-
priate for language teaching. Much teaching simply uses structural or traditional
grammar without realizing that there are alternative approaches, or indeed that
such approaches are not taken seriously as grammar today.

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8 Are there occasions when it would be right to start by teaching the students
the most difficult or most complex aspect of grammar rather than the easiest
or simplest?
9 What aspects of grammar that you have acquired consciously do you think are
useful?
10 What ways of making other aspects of language conscious are there, for exam-
ple, pronunciation, intonation or speech functions? Would this be a good
idea?
Further reading
A good overview of grammatical morphemes research is in Goldschneider and
DeKeyser (2001). An introduction to principles and parameters grammar can be
found in Cook and Newson (2007) Chomsky’s Universal Grammar: An Introduction.
Various viewpoints on grammar and language teaching are summarized in Odlin
(1994) Pedagogical Grammar. Otherwise the reader is referred to the books and arti-
cles cited in the text. The processability model is in Pienemann (1998) Language
Processing and Second-language Development: Processability Theory. A good collection
on focus on form is Doughty and Williams (eds) (1998) Focus on Form in Classroom
Second Language Acquisition. The most accessible of Chomsky’s own recent writings
on Universal Grammar is probably Chomsky (2000) The Architecture of Language.