Reference: Celce-Murcia

1. (In-Depth Study of Technical Articles in Second and Foreign with a Special Focus
on the Teaching of English Language Skills)

2. A Three-Dimensional Grammar Framework.
FORM
MEANING
USE
DIANE LARSEN-FREEMAN

3. In Teaching Grammar...
Larsen-Freeman challenges conventional views of
grammar. Instead of simply analyzing grammatical
form, she includes grammatical meaning and use it as
well. Then building on what is known about the way
grammar is learned, she offers ways to teach grammar
consistent with contemporary theory and the need to
“focus form” within the meaning-based or
communicative approach.

4. Grammatical Structures
•Not only have (morphosyntactic) form, they are
also used to express meaning (semantics) in
context-appropriate use (pragmatics).
•In order to guide us in constructing an approach
to teaching grammar that strives to meet this
definition, it would be helpful to have a frame of
reference- A Three Dimensional Grammar
Framework.

5. Form/
Structure
Use/
Pragmatics
Meaning/
Semantics
Morphosyntactic and
lexical patterns
Phonemic/
graphemic patterns
Lexical Meaning
Grammatical
Meaning
Social Context
Linguistic Discourse Context
Presuppositions about
Context

6. A Three Dimensional Framework
Representations:
•Wedges of pie- dimensions not hierarchically arranged
as many traditional characterizations of linguistic
strata depict.
• Arrows- connecting arrows from one wedge of the pie
with another illustrate the interconnectedness of the
three dimensions; thus change in one wedge will have
repercussions for the other two.

7. How is it
formed?
When/ why
is it used?
What does
it mean?
A teacher of grammar
might begin by asking
the questions posed in
the three wedges (for
the sake of simplicity,
labeled form, meaning
and use) for any given
grammar point.

8. s’ vs. ‘s
/z/ /s/ /əz /
‘s vs Possessive determiner
‘s vs of the
‘s vs noun compound
Possession
Description
amount
Relationship
Part/ whole
Origin/ agent

9. Form of Possessive
s’ vs. ‘s
/z/ /s/ / z /ə
This way of forming possessives in English
requires inflecting regular singular nouns and
irregular plural nouns not ending in s with ‘s or by
adding an apostrophe after the s’ ending of regular
plural nouns and singular nouns ending in
sound /s/. This form of possessive has three
allomorphs: /z/, /s/, /əz/ which are phonetically
conditioned; /z/ is used when it occurs after voiced
consonants and vowels, /s/ following voiceless
consonants, and /əz/ occurs after sibilants.

10. Meaning of Possessive
Besides possession, the possessive or
genitive form can indicate description (a debtor’s
prison), amount (a month’s holiday), relationship
(Jack’s wife), part/ whole (my brother’s hand), and
origin/ agent (Shakespeare’s tragedies).
Also, although all languages have a way of
signaling possession, they do not all regard the
same items as possessable. For example,
Spanish speakers refer to a body part using the
definite article instead of a possessive form. ESL/
FSL students will have to learn the semantic scope
of the possessive form in English.
• Possession
• Description
• Amount
• Relationship
• Part/ whole
• Origin/ agent

11. Use of Possessive
‘s vs Possessive determiner
‘s vs of the
‘s vs noun compound
Filling in this wedge requires that we ask when the ‘s
used to express possession as opposed to other structures
that can be used to convey this same meaning. For example,
possession in English can be expressed in other ways – with
possessive determiner (e.g. his, her, and their) or with the
periphrastic of the form (e.g. the legs of the table)

12. THE DIMENSIONS FRAMEWORK
The framework does however, help to
organize the facts. Furthermore by doing
this, teachers can more easily identify
where the learning challenge (s) will lie for
their students.
Identifying the challenging
dimension(s) is a key step which should
be taken prior to any pedagogical
treatment.

13. THE
CHALLENGE
•All three dimensions have to be mastered by
the learner (although not necessarily
consciously)
•Important information by recognizing where
students need to be reinforced.
•It is not only the form of the structures what
creates conflict in students and the most

14. As teachers, we do hope to have students able
to gramatical structures accurately, meaningfully
and appropriately. In other words, grammar teaching
is not much knowledge transmission as it is skill
development.
Thinking of grammar as a skill to be mastered, rather
than a set of rules to be memorized, we will be
helping ESL/ EFL students go a long way toward the
goal of being able to accurately convey meaning in
the manner they deem appropriate.
(Larsen-Freeman, 1997; 2001)
“GRAMMARING”

15. THE LEARNING
PROCESSInsights from (SLA) reasearch on how students naturally develop their ability to
interpret and produce grammatical utterances:
1)Learners do not learn structures one at a time. It is a matter of accumulating
structural entities (Ruthrford 1987)
2)Even when learners appear to have mastered a particular structure , it is not
uncommon to find backsliding occurring with the introduction of the new
forms to learner’s interlanguage.
3)Second language learners rely on the knowledge and the experience they
have.
4)Different learning process are responsible for different aspects of language.
(Gagne and Medsker 1996)
*Being aware of the different language processes contributed to SLA
suggests a need for teaching process to respect differences.

16. WHAT DOES TEACHING
GRAMMAR MEAN?
“It means enabling language students to use
linguistic forms accurately, meaningfully,
and appropriately”

17. THE TEACHING PROCESS /
APPROACHES
• In keeping with language form approaches, traditional
grammar teaching has employed a structural syllabus and
lessons composed of three phases or the PPP Approach:
Presentation, Practice, Production (Communication)
• These days, most teachers embrace a more
communicatively approach, communicative activity such as
Task or Content Based Approach

18. THE TEACHING PROCESS /
APPROACHES
• The grammar that is taught is not scheduled in advance as
it is with structural syllabus/ PPP approach, but rather
supports students in their completion of communicative
task or their making sense of particular area.
• In addition, or alternately, teachers respond to grammar
errors that students commit when engaged in
communication.
• As such, it reverses the normal sequence (Skehan 1998b)
putting communication first rather than selecting and
presenting a grammar structure in advance of its use in
context.

19. APPROACHES ON
HOW TO ADDRESS
GRAMMARThe bringing to students’ attention, or promoting the “noticing” of
some feature of gramatical structure.
Recasting/ Reformulate
Example (Error on form, teacher recast the student’s
production accurately)
Student: This is Juan notebook.
Teacher: Oh. This is Juan’s notebook.
(perceiving the error to be the form of the possessive)

20. APPROACHES ON
HOW TO ADDRESS
GRAMMAR
• Recasting/ Reformulate
Example (Error on meaning, teacher recast what the
student has said in a meaningful way)
Student: I need to look into the word in the dictionary.
Teacher: You need to look up the Word in the dictionary.
(perceiving the phrasal verb ‘look up’ to be better form for
what the student means to say)

21. APPROACHES ON
HOW TO ADDRESS
GRAMMAR
• Recasting/ Reformulate
Example (Error on use, the teacher would recast what the
student has said in a more appropriate manner)
Student: I arise at six in the morning.
Teacher: OK. You get up at six in the morning.
(perceiving that phrasal verb would be more appropriate to
convey the student’s intended meaning)

22. APPROACHES ON
HOW TO ADDRESS
GRAMMAR
• Enhancing Input or Input Flooding (Sharwood Smith, 1993)
Might be an especially effective way in to focus students’
attention on grammar structures that operate at the discourse
level of language, such as articles or verb tenses.
By boldfacing all the normally insalient articles in a given
passage, for instance, the students’ attention could be drawn to
them. Even simply choosing texts in which a particular structure
or structural contrast is especially frequent would enhance its
saliency and thus might promote noticing , a practice sometimes
called input flooding.

23. APPROACHES ON
HOW TO ADDRESS
GRAMMAR• Consciousness-raising Task (Fotos and Ellis, 1991)
The students’ job is to induce a grammatical generalization from
the data they have been given.
Example:
They gave a gold watch to him.
They gave him a gold watch.
*Indirect object alternation can and cannot be successfully
applied. It is difficult in English and therefore is an ideal
candidate for this sort of explicit rule articulation.

24. APPROACHES ON
HOW TO ADDRESS
GRAMMAR
• Consciousness-raising Task (Fotos and Ellis, 1991)
Caroll and Swain (1993) suggests that when the
rules are not clear-cut, detailed instruction with
explicit metalinguistic feedback may be the
most helpful response to student errors

25. APPROACHES ON
HOW TO ADDRESS
GRAMMAR
• The Garden Path Strategy (Tomasello and Herron, 1988-89)
This means giving students information about structure without
giving them the full picture , thus making it seem easier than it is.
(leading them down the garden path)
Example:
past tense is formed with –ed, this would be leading to students
down to the garden path as there are many irregular verbs in
English where this rule will not work to produce past tense.

26. APPROACHES ON
HOW TO ADDRESS
GRAMMAR
• Input Processing (Van Patten, 1996)
Rather than working on a rule learning and rule application,
input processing activities push learners to attend to
properties of language during activities where the structure
is being used meaningfully.
For instance, when students are asked to carry out demands
that teacher issue, they are working on matching the
imperative form to its use in a meaningful way.

27. OUTPUT
PRODUCTIO
N
Swain (1985)
It pushes students to move beyond semantic
processing to syntactic processing.
COMMUNICATIVE
TASK
The added value:
Using the communicative task to promote noticing is
that the students are encouraged to use the target
structures, thereby generating “output” that attracts
feedback from teacher or another student.

28. OUTPUT
PRODUCTION
• Hypothesis -Testing Process
When students attempt to produce structures they get to test their
hypotheses on how structure is formed or what it means or when it is
used. Following these attempts they can receive feedback on their
hypotheses and modify them as necessary.

29. OUTPUT
PRODUCTION
• Collaborative Dialogue
(Donato, 1994) Learners can provide support for each other,
spurred development of learners’ interlanguage.
(Swain and Lapkin, 1998) Corroborates the value of an interactive
dialoguae as both a cognitive tool and a means of
communication which can promote gramatical development

30. OUTPUT
PRODUCTION
• ‘Grammaring’
e.g. Helping students be able to use gramar skillfully, a goal that
rrequires significant practice.
• Meaningless mechanical drilling no longer useful
• Students not engaged: Inert Knowledge
• Motivation can be enhanced if we give students meaningful
contexts.
• From declarative to procedural knowledge: meaningful practice

31. EXAMPLES OF
OUTPUT ACTIVITIES
REINFORCING FORM
• Twenty Questions
• Game on Possessives
• Information-Gap Activities
• Sentence Unscrambling

32. EXAMPLES OF
OUTPUT ACTIVITIES
REINFORCING MEANING
• Realia and pictures (Four Pics One Word)
• TPR Activities
• Concentration Games
• Operations

33. EXAMPLES OF
OUTPUT ACTIVITIES
REINFORCING USE
•Role plays
•Dilemmas

34. Avoid drilling.
20 Questions.
Role playing.
Simulation.
Activities
involving
flashcards
or pictures.

35. THE IMPORTANCE OF
FEEDBACK
•Zero Teacher Intervention
•Collecting Mistakes
•Classifying errors according to the Pie Chart

36. VIDEO PRESENTATIONS
• Teaching Grammar Communicatively
• Teaching Grammar In Action

37. To Grammar Instruction
This approach is designed to help
learners develop both fluency and
accuracy

38. Cognitive Approach
Is cross-disciplinary, with contributions from
psychology, philosophy, psycholinguistics,
neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and cognitive
anthropology, but the shared focus of research is
the working of the mind.

39. The Need for Cognitive Approach
The usefulness of cognitive approach to grammar
instruction in ESL/ EFL becomes clear when we
consider the problems with purely communicative
approaches.
These tend to be based on theories which
distinguish between language acquisition- an
unconscious process similar to the way children learn
their first language- and language learning, or formal
instruction on rules, forms, and vocabulary.

42. HOM
E

44. VACATION

46. TRAVEL

49. Teaching VocabularyTeaching Vocabulary
EXPLICIT LEARNING
IMPLICIT LEARNING
Issues on Effective Vocabulary Learning:

50. Explicit Vocabulary Learning
• Students engage in activities that focus attention on
vocabulary.
• Sokmen (1997) highlights several key principles of explicit
learning that can help guide teachers in deciding basic
questions of what to teach and how to teach.
• This principles include the goal of building a large recognition
vocabulary, integrating new words with old, providing a
number of encounters with word, promoting a deep variety
techniques, and encouraging independent learning
strategies.

51. Implicit Vocabulary Learning
• Incidental Vocabulary Learning that occurs when the mind is focused
elsewhere , such as on understanding a text or using language for
communicative purposes.

52. What to Teach?
• Researchers advocate that learners should initially be taught a large
productive vocabulary of at least 2,000 high frequency word.
• Meara (1995), argues earlier against vocabulary control approaches in
which students wre taught only a basic vocabulary of several
hundred words. And read restricted sorts of text such as language
textbooks and graded readers. According to him students should very
large vocabulary first to acquire a language.

53. Teaching Techniques and Activities
• Learning words in word association lists
• Focusing on highlighted words on text
• Playing Vocabulary games
• Computer programs that include sounds of the words as well as
illustrative pictures provide opportunity for practice with a variety of
contexts, both written and spoken
• Semantic Mapping helps bring consciousness relationships among
words in text and helps deepen understanding by creating associative
networks for words.

54. Vocabulary Learning Strategies
• Guessing Word Meaning from Context
This strategy is a key vocabulary learning skill for dealing with low
frequency vocabulary, particularly in reading authentic texts.
• Mnemonic Devices (Key Method)
Helps to link a word form and its meaning and to consolidate this
linkage memory
• Vocabulary notebook
A memory aid in independent learning.
e.g. Keeping a tally on frequency of new words seen and heard

55. Vocabulary Learning Strategies
• Guessing Word Meaning from Context
This strategy is a key vocabulary learning skill for dealing with low
frequency vocabulary, particularly in reading authentic texts.
• Mnemonic Devices (Key Method)
Helps to link a word form and its meaning and to consolidate this
linkage memory
• Vocabulary notebook
A memory aid in independent learning.
e.g. Keeping a tally on frequency of new words seen and heard

56. COLLOCATIONS
Patterns consists of pairs or groups of words that co-occur with
very high frequency and are important in vocabulary learning.
“the meaning of the word has a great deal to do with the words
with which is commonly associates” (Nattinger, 1988)
Example: “spoiled” butter as rancid butter
“spoiled” milk as sour milk
*but not as “rancid milk” or “sour butter”

57. Gap-Filling Activity
job work labor occupation
position task employment
1. That job requires hard physical ________.
2. In today’s _________ market, computer skills are important.
3. I’ll meet you for dinner after ______ today.
4. You need to concentrate on the _______ at hand.
5. What line of ________ are you in?

58. IDIOMS
• Idioms are multiword units that are completely fixed.
• Distinguished as having a unitary meaning that cannot be derived
from the meanings of the component parts.
Example:
to shed a crocodile tear (to be in sincere)
to have a cold feet (to lack courage)
to tighten one’s belt (to be econimica)

59. • How to Teach Vocabulary
• Tips and Steps in Teaching Vocabulary
• 4 Pics 1 Word Template

60. CONCLUSION:
Lexical competence is a central part of
communicative competence, and teaching vocabulary
a central part of teaching language. While some
questions remain concerning how to teach and what to
teach, considerable progress has been made
concerning the issues of explicit versus implicit
learning, which strategies to teach, and which and how
many lexical items to include in ini.tial instruction

61. Reference:
CELCE-MURCIA, Marianne. TEACHING ENGLISH AS A
SECOND OR FOREIGN LANGUAGE. 3RD
Edition. 2006
by Heinle and Heinle, Thompson Learning Asia