We’ll examine "Teaching Grammatical Patterns" by Robert Lado (Chapter 10 "From Sentences to Patterns")

Robert Lado thinks that even children who have never studied the rules grammar make use of the grammar of the language. This is seen in the mistakes they make. When a child says, He goed, he is forming a "regular" preterite on the pattern: showed, weighed, served: "goed. "His error reveals the fact that he has been applying the pattern even though he is not able to describe it.

    Patterns and Sentences

A grammatical pattern is an arrangement of parts having linguistic significance beyond the sum of its parts. The parts of a pattern are expressed by words or classes of words so that different sentences often express the same pattern. All the sentences of a language arc cast in its patterns.

    John telephoned, The boy studied.

We understood are different sentences expressing the same statement pattern in English.

A pattern is not a sentence, however. Sentences express patterns. Each sentence illustrates a pattern. To memorize a sentence does not imply that a pattern has been memorized. There can be countless sentences, each unique, yet all constructed on the same pattern.

    Patterns and Grammar

Children learn the grammatical patterns of their language before they study grammar in school. When a child saysgoed instead of went or knowed instead of knew, he is applying the regular preterite pattern on the analogy, open: opened = go: goed

Patterns arc learned in childhood. Adults no longer have to learn new patterns; they learn new words that are used in old patterns. That the old patterns are alive is shown by putting unknown words and phrases into them. And what is the role of the native language in learning the patterns of a foreign language?

    Native Language Factor

The most important factor determining ease and difficulty in learning the patterns of a foreign language is their similarity to or difference from the patterns of the native language. When the pattern in the target language is parallel to one in the native language, the student merely learns new words which he puts into what amounts to an extended use of his native pattern. Since his word learning capacity is not lost, he makes rapid progress. When, however, the native language pattern does not parallel that of the target language, the student tends to revert to his native language patterns through habit.

    Grading the Patterns

There is no single grading scale for teaching the patterns of a foreign language. Any systematic cumulative progression, taking into account the structures that are difficult, would be satisfactory from a linguistic point of view.

    Pattern-practice

Approach The mimicry-memorization exercise tends to give the same amounts of practice to easy as well as difficult problems. It also concentrates unduly on the memorization of specific sentences, and not enough on the manipulation of the patterns of sentences in a variety of content situations. For those patterns that arc functionally parallel to the native language, very little work needs to be done, and very little or no explanation is necessary. On the other hand, for those patterns that are not parallel in the two languages, more specific understanding of the grammatical structure points at issue is neededwhile the sentences are learned and not before or after. And more practice with the pattern is necessary before it is learned, that is, used without attention to its structure.

    Basic sentences

The memorization of sample sentences that contain the grammatical problems to he mastered is common to both pattern practice and mimicry-memorization. For this practice there is ample justification in linguistics and in psychology. The utterances have to become readily available if the student is to use them in the rapid sequence of conversation.

    Teaching the patterns

A sentence can be learned as a single unstructured unit like a word, but this is only the beginning. The student must acquire the habit of constructing sentences in the patterns of the target language. For this he must be able to put words almost automatically into a pattern without changing it, or to change it by making the necessary adjustments.

Teaching a. problem pattern begins with teaching the specific structure points where a formal change in the pattern is crucial and where the student is not able to manipulate the required changes. The steps in teaching problem patterns are (1)attention pointer, usually a single sentence calling the students' attention to the point at issue; (2)examples, usually minimally contrastive examples showing a pair of sentences that differ only on the point or points being made; (3) repetition by the class and presentation of additional examples of the same contrast; (4) comments or generalization elicited inductively from the students and confirmed by the teacher; (5) practice, with attention on the problem being taught. These steps an intended to clarify the crucial point of contrast at the time when sentences are being learned. They should take only a small portion of the class time—no more than 15 per cent.

Robert Lado accents that many teachers make the mistake of trying to explain everything at length while the class listens passively. Long explanations without active practice arc a waste of time, and even with practice they are inefficient. Most of the class should be devoted to practice. The following are brief descriptions of some of the more effective types of exercises.

    The more effective types of exercises according to R. Lado:
    Listening

It is understood that the student does not invent the target language. He must listen to good models. Random listening helps, but selective listening following instructions is more effective. Listening is assumed to he most effective when it is in preparation for speaking.

    Listening can be combined with other activities.

Oral repetitionIn this practice the student repeats the pattern sentences provided orally by the model. This is the most basic and important of all exercises. It begins with the presentation of the very first sentence of the pattern, the basic sentence, and continues through all other examples of the pattern taught for speaking.

Oral substitutionOnce the student can speak the basic sentence by repetition, oral substitution becomes the most useful and powerful drill available to practice the pattern. It is fast, flexible, and versatile, and it approximates conversational use of the language. Several variations are described for the reader: simple substitution, substitution in variable position, substitution that forces a change, substitution requiring a change, and multiple substitution.

    Transformation
    Speech practice and etc.

The idea of learning the pattern rather than just sentences is clearly stated by C. C. Fries. Carles Fries and Robert Lado wrote what “We offer them [patterns] with confidence in their extraordinary effectiveness. They represent a new theory of language learning, the idea that to learn a new language one must established orally the patterns of the language as subconscious habits. ”*1 C. C. Fries thinks that one must practice the patterns of the language until he can use them little or no effort.

    The Psychological characteristics of grammar skills.

To develop one’s speech means to acquire essential patterns of speech, and grammar patterns in particular. Children must use these items automatically during speech-practice. The automatic use of grammar items in our speech (oral and written) supposes mastering some particular skills– the skills of using grammar items to express one’s own thoughts, in other words to make up your sentences. We must get so-called reproductive or active grammar skills. A skill is treated as an automatic part of awareness. Automatization of the action is the main feature of a skill.

The nature of automatization is characterized by that psychological structure of the action which adopts to the conditions of performing the action owing frequent experience. The action becomes more frequent, correct and accurate and the number of the operations is shortened while forming the skill the character of awareness of the action is changing, i. e. fullness of understanding is paid to the conditions and quality of performing to the control over it and regulation.

To form some skills is necessary to know that the process of the forming skills has some steps:

    Only some definite elements of the action are automatic.

The automatization occurs under more difficult conditions, when the child can’t concentrate his attention on one element of the action. The whole structure of the action is improved and the automatization of its separate components is completed.

    What features do the productive grammar skills have?

During our speech the reproductive grammar skills are formed together with lexics and intonation, they must express the speakers intentions. The actions in the structural setting of the lexics must be learnt. The characteristic feature of the reproductive grammar skills is their flexibility. It doesn`t depend on the level of automatization, i. e. on perfection of skill here mean the original action: both the structure of sentence, and forms of the words are reproduced by the speaker using different lexical material. If the child reproduces sentences and different words, which have been learnt by him as “a ready-made thing” he can say that there is no grammar skill. Learning the ready-made forms, word combinations and sentences occurs in the same way as learning lexics.

The grammar skill is based on the general conclusion. The grammar action can and must occur only in the definite lexical limits, on the definite lexical material. If the pupil can make up his sentence frequently, accurately and correctly from the grammatical point of view, he has got the grammar skill. Teaching grammar at school using the theoretical knowledge brought some critical and led to confusion. All the grammatical rules were considered to be evil and there were some steps to avoid using them at school. But when we learn grammatical items in models we use substitution and such a type of training gets rid of grammar or “neutralize” it. By he way, teaching the skills to make up sentences by analogy is a step on the way of forming grammar skills. It isn’t the lexical approach to grammar and it isn’t neutralization of grammar, but using basic sentences in order to use exercises by analogy and to reduce number of grammar rules when forming the reproductive grammar skills.

To form the reproductive grammar skills we must follow such steps: Selection the model of sentence.

    Selection the form of the word and образование словоформ.

Selection the auxiliary words-preposition, articles, and etc. and their combination with principle words.

The main difficulty of the reproductive (active) grammar skills is to correspond the purposes of the statement, communicative approach (a questionиan answer and so on), words, meanings, expressed by the grammatical patterns. In that case we use basic sentences, in order to answer the definite situation.

The main factor of the forming of the reproductive grammar skill is that pupils need to learn the lexic of the language. They need to learn the meanings of the words and how they are used. We must be sure that our pupils are aware of the vocabulary they need at their level and they can use the words in order to form their own sentence. Each sentence contains a grammar structure. The mastering the grammar skill lets pupils save time and strength, energy, which can give opportunity to create. Learning a number of sentences containing the same grammatical structure and a lot of words containing the same grammatical form isn’t rational.

But the generalization of the grammar item can relieve the work of the mental activity and let the teacher speed up the work and the children realize creative activities.

The process of creation is connected with the mastering of some speech stereotypes the grammatical substrat is hidden in basic sentences. Grammar is presented as itself. Such a presentation of grammar has its advantage: the grammar patterns of the basic sentences are connected with each other. But this approach gives pupils the opportunity to realize the grammar item better. The teaching must be based on grammar explanations and grammar rules. Grammar rules are to be understood as a special way of expressing communicative activity. The reproductive grammar skills suppose to master the grammar actions which are necessary for expressing thoughts in oral and written forms. The automatic perception of the text supposes the reader to identify the grammar form according to the formal features 9 words, word combinations, sentences) which must be combined with the definite meaning. One must learn the rules in order to identify different grammatical forms. Pupils should get to know their features, the ways of expressing them in the language. We teach children to read and aud by means of grammar. It reveals the relation between words in the sentence. Grammar is of great important when one teaches reading and auding.

Страницы: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7