When you read an engaging story, it grabs hold of you and transforms your reality. In that transformation, a teachable moment arises that helps us puzzle through to our next stage of awareness. The story of how I came to understand grammar acquisition by second language (L2) learners is such a journey.
Acquiring an L2 is not an easy feat. Even with a relentless pursuit of the clear expression of our thoughts in another language, grammar mistakes and errors are our constant companions. A grammar mistake refers to missteps or other forms of omissions that someone makes due to a lack of attention. On the other hand, a grammar error shows that the learner requires further instruction to understand and utilize the item correctly. In the classroom, it is common practice for teachers to correct both mistakes and errors as a default reaction to a perceived learning need. However, the efficacy of correcting learners’ errors continues to be a subject of an ongoing debate, with some participants suggesting that errors should not be corrected.
Author: Brain Admin
How Can We Make Grammar Brain Friendly?
One of our major endeavors in regard to grammar is to help our learners understand it as quickly as possible, and we can only do that when we change the way we deliver it, creating a more relaxed, curiosity arousing, association provoking, interactive process. In other words, we should strive to make talking about grammar enjoyable for both the educator and learner.
The advances made over the last 30 years in neuroscience and our fundamental comprehension of how the brain functions, learns, and reacts can now assist the way that grammar is delivered, creating the necessary bridge from theory to the practical application of neuroscientific principles, transforming traditional grammar instruction through what could be called brain-friendly coaching conversations. This involves not only applying principles from neuroscience, but also changing our delivery style through the use of professional coaching skills.
Understanding English Grammar Through Visual and Experiential Models
What if we taught grammar based on the principles of the physical world from which it originates? What if we put aside the traditional approach of teaching form, explaining meaning, and having students commit this information to memory? What if we went back to physical principles, and metaphors based on them, that can be experienced and understood by all learners?
I can’t help wondering if the traditional approach to grammar teaching, based on form, usage, and memorization is actually helpful in terms of what is happening in the heads of expert speakers when they communicate.
Did you Notice…? The Role of Noticing in the Development of Grammar
There is one main principle that governs language growth. It regulates the development of “external language” as a shared social system as well as the development of “internal language” that the individual uses as a means of thought and available output for communication. The principle is so fundamental—like the Law of Gravity—that we seldom notice it. This is the principle of contrast: “A new form emerges in a linguistic system only if it provides a significant contrast with a form that’s already in the system.
Grammar as a Predictive Tool: Chains that Make Communication Possible
Grammar as a Predictive Tool: Chains that Make Communication Possible By: Stephen M. Ryan Share on facebook Share on twitter Share on linkedin Grammar. Not really something to gladden the
Grammar: The Conundrum We Love and Hate
As many of our contributors point out, they have had a difficult relationship with English grammar. Don’t we all? Grammar is mysterious. It has a simple definition: “the set of rules governing the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in a natural language” [source]. And yet, for most of us, especially native speakers, it is the dark matter of the English teaching universe. It is hard to understand, hard to teach, and impossible to teach with certainty. We have all had that moment when, just after you smugly explain one of the few rules you have confidence in, a student says something that shakes your Jenga tower. “So, you see, Rafael, when you say you are going to a place, you have to put to and an article between the to go verb and the place, as in I’m going to a concert.” Rafael: “Then why do you say going to school?” Down the blocks fall.
Call for Contributions: Ideas & Articles
Become a Think Tank star! Here are some of the future issue topics we are thinking about. Would you, or anyone you know, like to write about any of these? Or is there another topic you’d like to recommend? Do you have any suggestions for lead-in, or just plain interesting, videos? How about writing a book review? Or sending us a story about your experiences? Contact us.
English in a Time of Corona – A Semester with COVID
At first COVID19 was news that my already saturated brain just learned to tune out. Japan was used to its fair share of calamities, so I assumed the coronavirus would simply blow over with the collective bubble power of gaman (bearing it out). I exercised the kind of exceptionalist thinking sometimes common in this country. But then there were fewer jokes and more people started talking in somber tones. Slowly the sense of security disappeared as I heard more stories and anecdotes from people I knew. Finally, in April, a state of emergency was declared. The bubble had popped and the coronavirus was here to stay.
Maximising the Self by Minimising Surprise
The idea that we remember past experiences in order to predict future ones can be traced back as least as far as Tolman (1948). His research, with various other scholars, conducted at a time when behaviourism was the dominant theory in psychology, led him to propose that learning by association did not result in conditioned stimulus-response, but rather that animals (including humans) developed expectancies based on prior experience. He coined the term “cognitive map” to describe the higher-order representations that were formed during learning. For example, in one experiment, summarised in Tolman (1948), rats trained to run down one arm of a maze for food, were more likely to run down an arm in a similar direction when the original arm was blocked, showing that they had not only learned to associate the arm with the food reward, but had formed a cognitive map of the orientation of the maze. This cognitive map represented the task at a level of abstraction, allowing the rats to generalise from prior learning and transfer that knowledge to new stimuli. More recent research suggests that animals and humans form cognitive maps of a variety of tasks and events, not just spatial maps, enabling them to make predictions that optimise reward in new situations (Behrens et al., 2018).
Building a Better Generative Model
Graded readers and other forms of controlled linguistic input have been widely accepted tools to facilitate language learning; however, this controlled input is only part of the equation. Language learners also need clear and accurate internal models of correct linguistic forms to allow them to parse the language they encounter. This seems obvious enough, and I do not believe anyone would consider it a controversial statement. However, if asked why this is true, I’m not sure that many could offer a theory to support their gut feelings. Once again, we turn to the theory of predictive processing to answer this question.