Focusing on Form in a Dialogic Context … – Part 1

Over the past several weeks, we’ve taken a look at three of six High-Leverage Teaching Practices: Facilitating Target Language Comprehensibility, Building a Classroom Discourse Community, and Guiding Learners to Interpret and Discuss Authentic Texts. Two of those practices were further broken down into two smaller grain size practices.

All six High-Leverage Teaching Practices are contained in Enacting the Work of Language Instruction by Eileen W. Glisan and Richard Donato.

The three remaining HLTPs are Focusing on Form in a Dialogic Context Through PACE, Focusing on Cultural Products, Practices, Perspectives in a Dialogic Context, and Providing Oral Corrective Feedback to Improve Learner Performance. I will take a look at each of these practices in a separate post over the next couple of weeks.

Today we start with “Focus on Form …”

This is an area of discussion and great disagreement. The first sentence of the chapter tells us that it deals with “one widely researched, theorized, and debated aspect of language teaching and learning – teaching grammatical structures, or what will be referred town this chapter as, focus on form.” (2017, p. 89; emphasis in original.)

At the outset, I confess that this chapter was in many ways the most difficult for me. I will explain how and why it was difficult as we look at the High-Leverage Teaching Practice.

In addition, I use a shortened form of the name because, as Glisan and Donato themselves state, PACE is simply the approach that they used and not an essential part of the HLTP.

The authors begin each chapter with a quote that targets the key concept behind the discussion. At the beginning of Chapter 4, we read, “To know grammar means, therefore, the ability to use language forms for real communicative purposes and not just to display knowledge of rules for sentence formation, verb paradigms, and exceptions to linguistic rules …”

This quote both pleases and bothers me.

On the one hand, it clearly states that knowing grammar is not simply being able to conjugate verbs, know “rules of grammar” and their exceptions, and put words together in a particular order. On the other hand, it leaves open the interpretation that displaying knowledge of these things is necessary, though not sufficient.

The statement stands in sharp contrast to Bill VanPatten’s position in his new book While We’re on the Topic that the mental representation we create in our mind/brain looks nothing like these rules and paradigms. VanPatten states that “What’s on page 32 of the textbook is not what winds up in your head” because “Language, as mental representation, is too abstract and complex to teach and learn explicitly.” (2017, pp. 20 and 31)

This is not to say that there is no place in instruction for explicit grammar. It is simply a very circumscribed and limited place, not the centerpiece of our instruction.

Grammar instruction has a circumscribed and limited place; it is not the centerpiece of instruction

Glisan and Donato further indicate that the High-Leverage Teaching Practice is not the common lesson designed around teaching a particular point of grammar but “lessons that draw attention to form in meaningful cultural texts and contexts, for larger communicative purposes, and for expressing and interpreting social and cultural meaning in various modes of communication.” (2017, p. 89)

This takes us to the second part of the name of the practice: in a Dialogic Context.

But first, an aside.

I question the following statement:

“If human communication is at the core of foreign language learning, learning how to assist students to investigate, explain, and reflect on forms of language that constitute this communication is essential.”

If, as noted above, language is too abstract and complex to be taught and learned explicitly, then the conclusion does not follow from the premise. I believe that Glisan and Donato have committed a non sequitur.

Let’s change the statement slightly and see how that works out.

Teaching grammar, or focusing on form, is much like the isolated skills approach to teaching reading. Recently, this approach has received a great deal of emphasis. The argument is that students must learn how to read, e.g. gaining skill in sounding out and learning rules of phonology, before they can attend to meaning, i.e. understanding what they read. Does this sound similar to an argument you have heard for teaching grammar?

Why not then say, “Since the fundamental purpose of reading is finding meaning, learning how to assist students to investigate, explain, and reflect on phonemes of the reading is essential”? That doesn’t sound quite as compelling, does it?

I much prefer the following statement about reading, “Since the fundamental purpose of reading is finding meaning, it makes no sense to remove meaning from reading instruction. Reading for meaning needs to be at the center of instruction from the very start.” (Bruell, Debbie Stone. “Are Schools Turning Students OFF Reading?“)

A similar statement about language acquisition would be, “Since human communication is at the core of foreign language instruction, it makes no sense to remove communication from language instruction. Communication – the expression, interpretation, and negotiation of meaning – needs to be at the center of instruction from the very start.”

The expression, interpretation, and negotiation of meaning need to be at the center of language instruction from the start

This takes us back to the idea of “… in a Dialogic Context”.

Communication – the expression, interpretation, and negotiation of meaning in a context for a purpose – is of necessity dialogic. That is, there must be at least two people interacting in order for communication to occur. It can be an author or orator and a reader or hearer; it can be two friends talking or texting; it can be a film or play in front of an audience – but there will always be some sort of “conversation” or dialogue going on if communication is to occur.

Glisan and Donato set up the dialogic process differently, however, viewing it as part of language as social process.

To argue their position, the authors discuss research and theory.

In the section “Research and Theory Supporting the Practice”, it becomes obvious that Glisan and Donato subscribe to some form of the Output Hypothesis, referencing Merrill Swain’s work Three Functions of Output in Second Language Learning. They note that a recurring question among teachers is “How can I best teach grammar to my students?” But they do not address the fact that grammar is embedded in language, so teaching language for communication is teaching grammar. Glisan and Donato further refer to “noticing the gap” – a key part of the Output Hypothesis – as part of effective focus on form. They also maintain that learners’ “attention shifts to the formal aspects of language to help them convey their ideas” as part of this process.

All of this shows that Glisan and Donato base their discussion of Focus on Form on the Output Hypothesis.

Only when one accepts the Output Hypothesis does it make sense to Focus on Form. However, many researchers do not accept this hypothesis and have written about its shortcomings. This is one of the reasons that this particular chapter in the book is difficult for me.

Only when one accepts the Output Hypothesis does it make sense to Focus on Form

One researcher who does not accept the Output Hypothesis is Dr Stephen Krashen. His article “Comprehensible Output” outlines his objections. At the same time, this is not to say that it is never beneficial to point out some formal aspect of the language to learners; we simply do not focus on form (or forms). (Krashen has never maintained that explicit grammar instruction has zero value; he does maintain that it has no value for acquisition – VanPatten’s “Mental Representation” – of a language. Grammar instruction has a circumscribed and limited value for things other than acquisition.)

There follows a section of “Two Research Perspectives on Focus on Form”, in which the authors discuss deductive and inductive language teaching and find them both inadequate. While I believe part of their argument is flawed, I do agree that the deductive method is inadequate. For those who may be unfamiliar with the term, deductive instruction “involves teacher-fronted explanations of language rules followed by student application of these rules in mechanical and eventually communicative activities, often only if time allows.” (2017, p. 90) In other words, “deductive instruction” is simply another way of saying “explicit grammar instruction”. It is neither effective for acquisition nor rigorous – but it is often onerous.

Inductive instruction, on the other hand, “involves the teacher providing multiple examples of the use of a form, or what is called in the literature ‘input flooding’ …, from which learners are expected to arrive at some generalization or rule. (2017, p. 90) The authors identify Bill VanPattens “Processing Instruction” as a form of inductive instruction.

I am not convinced that the identification is correct. Or perhaps VanPatten’s position has evolved. In his most recent writings, VanPatten places communication at the core of everything that occurs in the classroom context. If the purpose of inductive instruction is, as Glisan and Donato indicate, to teach grammar inductively through “input flooding”, then is it communication? I think not. As VanPatten states, “If practicing language is the reason for doing something, then that event or activity cannot be communicative.” (2017, p. 13) Communication has a purpose other than “learning the language”.

Having shown the inadequacy of deductive and inductive grammar instruction, Glisan and Donato propose a third alternative: language as social process.

I believe the authors fail to acknowledge that there is another possibility, but that discussion will have to wait until next week.