2. BACK-SHIFTING
The Frequency of Remoteness in ESL Courses
Rasheed Al Rayah Sanhoury
rassanhoury@gmail.com

3. BACK-SHIFTING
What is Backshifting?
“Was there something you needed to see me about?”
 Encyclopedic Dictionary of Applied Linguistics: A Handbook for Language Teaching.
 Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English.
 Oxford English Dictionary.
 Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics, 3ed Edition.
(indirect speech).
 Oxford English Grammar. (indirect speech).
 Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. (indirect speech).
 Explaining English Grammar, George Yule. (indirect speech).

4. BACK-SHIFTING
PAST TENSE PRESENT TENSE
 Unreal  Real
 Passive Voice  Active Voice
 Indirect Speech  Direct Speech
 Polite  Direct (could be polite)
 Then  Now
 Formal  Informal
 Distance  Immediate

6. TEACHER-LEARNER INTERACTION
 'Teacher, AC, off!'
 'Excuse me' (Pointing to the door and holding
his/her nose)
 'TEACHER (Yelling), X, sick, sick emm, ill!'
 Teacher- Mister – Doctor – Miss (often to male
teachers) …etc
 'May I be excused, please?‘
Learn - er Teach - er

7. ACCURACY OR FLUENCY, THAT'S THE QUESTION!!!
Accuracy Fluency
Focus on Forms Focus on Meaning
The extent to which a learner's use of a The capacity to be communicative in real-
second language confirms to the rules of life conditions.
the language.
A relatively easy concept to define and A much more elusive concept to define
measure. and measure.
 Krashen: 'an exaggerated concern for accuracy when we monitor our output can impede
spontaneous speech.
 It is unrealistic to withhold fluency practice until the learner is ready, nor is an accurate
first approach reflects the way people learn languages naturally.
 Research into the order of acquisition of grammar structures, suggests that accuracy
may be "late-acquired".
 Balance the demands of real-time processing with the need to be reasonably accurate.

8. BACK-SHIFTING
Kernel Lessons Intermediate by R O'Neill, R Kingsbury, T Yeadon, R. Scott,
August 14, 1972,Addison Wesley Longman ELT Division
The world's best-selling adult English course - a perfectly-balanced
syllabus with a strong grammar focus, and full support at all six levels.
With its proven , Headway is the course you can always
trust. The strong grammar focus, clear vocabulary syllabus and
integrated skills work give you lessons that really work in class.
Schmidt & Frota “ Form is useful to the teachers but, is it useful to the
students?”
A functional syllabus is a syllabus based around a list of language
functions such as: asking for information; making requests; greeting
people; making, accepting & refusing invitations.
► The purely functional syllabus was relatively short-lived.

9. SYLLABUS
 An item-by-item description of course contents.
 To design a syllabus, two sets of decisions have to be made: selecting and grading.
What factors influence syllabus design?
 Usefulness. Assessed in relation to learners' needs (needs analysis).
 Frequency.
 Difficulty of form.
 Difficulty of meaning.
 Teachability.
 Tradition.

10. THE FUNCTIONAL SYLLABUS
(MEANING-BASED, rather than FORM-BASED)
Based around a list of language functions:
 asking for information
 making requests
 greeting people
 accepting and refusing invitations, …etc,
Each function could be realized by more than one Functional Exponents – ie, making
requests - include Can you …? Could you …? Would you mind …-ing?
Language functions were ordered according to the kinds of grammar structures typically
associated with them.
► (FUNCTINAL: Narrating), and (NOTIONAL: Past-ness) - blurred.
► Nothing more than an elaborated list of expressions to remember. A phrasebook.

11. FOCUS ON FORM OR FOCUS ON FORMS?
‘Language learning will take care of itself' or, will it? - Allwright
 Learning should grow out of the performance of communicative tasks (TBL) rather
than putting the learning (of previously selected language forms) first and simply
follow them.
 Focus on form: Occurs when students direct their conscious attention to some
feature of the language, and, can happen at any stage of the lesson.
 Focus on forms: Is when teachers and students follow prescriptive course contents,
just because they happen to be there.

12. FOCUS ON FORM OR FOCUS ON FORMS?
Rod Ellis: 'an incidental focus-on-form approach is of special value because it affords an
opportunity for extensive treatment of grammatical problems (in contrast to the intensive
treatment afforded by a focus-on-forms approach)'.
Sandra Fotos: 'Research … suggests that task performance can significantly increase
learner awareness of the target structure and improve accuracy in its use, as well as
providing opportunities for meaning focused comprehension and production of the target
language‘.
Michael Long: referred to focus on forms as 'Neanderthal‘.
Guy Cook: 'What is needed … is a recognition of the complexity of language learning: that
it is sometimes play and sometimes for real, sometimes form-focused and sometimes
meaning-focused, sometimes fiction and sometimes fact‘.
Ron Sheen: ‘an underlying assumption of a focus on form approach is that all classroom
activities need to be based on communicative tasks, and that any treatment of grammar
should arise from difficulties in communicating any desired meaning‘.
Gerald Kelly: '… to be relevant to the student at a particular time in order for there to be
conscious intake and before the student can use it consistently‘.

13. GRAMMAR, MEANING, AND IDEALIZATION
“There is a scale here which takes us from the dizzy heights of vast generalization
through to very particular examples.”
► 'The passive allows us to omit the agent, making the receiver or "undergoer" into
the subject' as in 'The wall was demolished.‘
► 'The windows haven’t been cleaned for months!‘.
 ‘They need cleaning, but I'm not going to clean them!'.

14. FREQUENCY
 The frequency of a word, or other language item, is the number of times the item occurs
in a text or a corpus.
 80% of any text is made up of the 2000 most frequent words in English. These are mostly
function words, i.e. the, of, in, and, etc.
 The Lexical Approach: The most frequent words and structures in a language express its
most frequent meanings.
 Usage-based acquisition: Acquisition is simply the result of exposure, over time, to
language data (or 'usage').
 The more or less fixed order of acquisition of grammar structures can be accounted for, at
least in part, by the relative frequency of these items of grammar and vocabulary might
be speeded up by using texts that have a high frequency of occurrences of the target
items. (input flood)
 Frequency does not always equate with usefulness - Travellers know that it is often quite
low frequency words, such as toothbrush, and bill, that are of more immediate utility.

15. FREQUENCY OF REMOTENESS

16. ORDER OF ACQUISITION
'Don’t teach grammar – it is a waste of time'
It is the order in which grammar items are thought to be
acquired, irrespective of the learner’s first language, their age,
or the order in which they are taught these items.
The order of acquisition of grammar items reflect the relative frequency of the items in
naturally-occurring input.
Implications:
► We shouldn’t expect it to emerge in the order we teach it.
► Teaching can’t change the route of acquisition, but it can speed up the rate of
acquisition.
Hypothesis:
 Hardwired (UG) - Chomsky:
 Frequency:
 Prominence:

17. ORDER OF ACQUISITION
-ing
Plural -s
Verb to be
Auxiliary be
Articles the/a/an
Irregular past
Regular past
Third person singular -s
Possessives –s

18. Headway (12) Units
Reward (24) Lessons
-ing
Plural –s
Verb to be
Auxiliary be
Articles the/a
Irregular past
Regular past
Third person singular –s
Possessives –s

19. THE BANGALOR PROJECT – TBL
A major shift in emphasis
Task-based learning (TBL) – also called task-based language teaching and task-based
instruction – the task is the basic unit for planning and teaching.
1970s - The Bangalor Project: N.S. Prabhu. Strongly rejected any focus on (grammatical)
forms, on the grounds that it might distract the learners from focusing on meaning.
'Strong' Version: 'You learn a language by using it'.
'Weak' Version : 'You learn a language in order to use it'.
Most proponents adopted a more relaxed attitude to incorporating a focus on form, the
question was, when and in what form this form focus should take place?
 Purists argue that it should emerge out of the task, and be dealt with after the task.
 Others argue that the feedback that learners get while on task is more effective than
post-task, through reformulation done by the teacher:
Learner: I am not agree.
Teacher: Oh, you don’t agree. Why not?
 Still others have accepted that a pre-task focus on form – ie, pre-teaching grammar
items that might be needed during the task – is justifiable as a way of 'priming'
learners.

20. Which Tasks?
 Is a classroom activity whose focus is on communicating meaning and where learners
make use of their own language resources to; reach consent, solve a problem, draft a
plan, design something, or persuade someone to do something.
 Practicing a pre-selected item of language, ie. Present perfect would not be a valid task
objective.
Criteria for Classifying and Identifying Tasks:
Open-ended: Is one where there is no predetermined solution, such as planning an
excursion, or debating.
Closed: Learners discover the solution, such as spot-the-differences.
According to the kinds of operation they involve: such as ranking, selecting, sorting,
comparing, surveying and problem-solving.
Other factors include:
 Linguistic factors
 Cognitive factors
 Performance factors

21. NOTICING
 Mind the gap.
 Would you mind.
 I don't mind.
Richard Schmidt: Used the term ‘noticing’ to describe a condition which is necessary if the
language a student is exposed to ‘input’ is to become language ‘intake’.
 Frequency
 Salience
Noticing primes the learner to notice new occurrences of a language feature and at the
same time contributes to a growing understanding of the use and meaning of the feature.
How can teachers help?
 Repeating words or structures.
 Writing them on the board.
 Drilling them (form, highlighting)
 Input flood (frequency).
 Notice the gap (Dictation)

22. CONSCIOUSNESS-RAISING (CR) – AWARENESS-RAISING
Cognitive learning theory which states that learners need to notice features of the input, if
these features are to become intake.
Why is the term favoured?
 Assigns active roles for learners in the learning process, and
 The presentation, in the PPP model, assumes immediate output from the learners.
What can teacher do?
 Enhance input to make certain items more salient.
 Ask learners to infer rules from examples (inductive learning).
 Ask them to compare their own output with that of more proficient users ('noticing
the gap').
 Problematize the input.
 Force output, to 'notice the holes' (i + 1).

23. REGISTER
The choice of linguistic form is not arbitrary.
Is the way that language use varies according to variations in the context.
Advocates of systematic functional linguistics - There is a systematic correlation between
the forms of language and features of the social context.
The choice is governed by a configuration of cultural and contextual factors.
I am having a wonderful
time here in Malaysia.
I wish you were here!
See you real soon
Key factors: RAS
 Fields of discourse: What's being talked or written about.
 Tenor: The relationship between the participants.
 Mode of discourse: Spoken or written.
► Because they share the same register, they will have meanings in common – which will
be realized by similar grammatical and lexical and morphological features.

24. FORMAL LANGUAGE
Appropriate in situations where there is social distance between speakers (or writer &
reader), or where the situation or topic requires a degree of seriousness. More common in
writing, and in some spoken contexts, i.e. giving speeches, etc.
Characteristics of formal language:
 Complex sentences, i.e., sentences with subordinate clauses
 Frequent use of the passive.
 Use of reported speech
 Use of past forms with present meaning, and past forms of modal verbs, (I was wondering if I
could …)
 Long and complex noun phrases
 Long words, often with Greek and Latin roots, such as inebriated (for drunk)
 ‘Your attention please. Passengers alighting at the station are advised to be aware of
the gap between the train and the platform’.
 ‘Please mind the gap’.
► Formal language should not be confused with politeness. While politeness is often
conveyed by formal language, it is not the case that informal language is necessarily
impolite. You can be informal and polite (as in ‘Mind the gap’), just as you can be formal
and rude.

25. POLITENESS
There is no culture that can be said to be more or less polite than another
Showing respect to differences in social ranks, and showing respect for other people's Face:
 The desire to be appreciated (positive face)
 The desire not to be imposed upon (negative face)
I want you to appreciate that I cooked dinner. But I don’t want you to ask me to do the dishes.
In order not to appear impolite, learners need two things:
 Learn the particular behaviours associated with potential FTAs in the target
language culture.
 Learn the ways that these behaviours are expressed through the language.

26. DEIXIS
Describes the way that language ‘points to’ spatial, temporal, and personal features of the
context.
The deictic centre is the speaker's location and deictic expressions distinguish between ‘near
the speaker’ and ‘away from the speaker’.
 Person deixis: (I, you, she).
 Spatial deixis: (near/far, as in here/there)
 Temporal deixis: (near/far, eg. now/then)
 (Reported speech): I have been here three days now. Becomes, he said he had been there
three days by then.
 (Verbs with directions built into them, such as come/go, bring/take): Guess who's
coming to dinner? - Take the money and run.

27. BACK-SHIFTING

28. BACK-SHIFTING
The Frequency of Remoteness in ESL Courses
THANK YOU VERY MUCH
Rasheed Al Rayah Sanhoury
rassanhoury@gmail.com

29. BACK-SHIFTING
References:
 Batstone, Rob. (2000). Grammar. Oxford: OUP.
 Biber, Conrad. & Leech. (2002). Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Pearson
Education Limited.
 Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary – 3ed Edition. Cambridge: CUP.
 Harmer, Jeremy. (2007). The Practice of English Language Teaching. 4th Edition. Pearson Education Limited.
 Larsen-Freeman, Diane. (2000). Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching. Oxford: OUP.
 Mathews, P. H. (1997 - 2005). Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics. OUP.
 Nettle, Mark & Hopkins, Diana. (2004). Developing Grammar in Context. CUP.
 Orton, J. (1976). ‘Entertaining Mr. Sloane’ from The Complete Plays, (Eyre and Muethuen) p. 138.
 Swan, Michael. (2005). Practical English Usage. 3ed Edition. Oxford: OUP.
 Thomas, Jenny. (1995). Meaning in Interaction – An Introduction to Pragmatics – Cambridge: CUP.
 Thornbury, Scott. (1997). About Language – Tasks for Teachers of English, Cambridge: CUP.
 Thornbury, Scott. (2006). An A-Z of ELT. Macmillan: Macmillan Books for Teachers.
 Thornbury, Scott. (2001). Uncovering Grammar - How to Help Grammar Emerge. MacMillan Books for
Teachers.
Internet Sources:
 http://elt.oup.com/catalogue/items/global/adult_courses/new_headway/?cc=global&selLanguage=en&mod
e=hub
 http://english-jack.blogspot.com/2009/04/backshift-and-remote-relationships.html