What prevents students from fluent speaking?

The “knowledge” of grammar can be an obstacle hindering speaking fluency. This statement might sound like a strange paradox since teaching grammar is normally an integral part of the foreign language teaching. I noticed this phenomena during my long teaching practice. Currently, while mentoring teachers, I understand that the teacher’s ability to see the issue can be essential for the success of foreign language teaching.

In this short article I would like to differentiate the two roles of grammar in foreign language teaching: grammar as a product and grammar as a means of language learning.

First I put two examples from my recent one-to-one lessons to illustrate the issue.

1. The student was speculating about the picture of a sad girl at the birthday party. The question was: Why is she sad? The student (A2 level) wanted to express the idea that the girl is sad because she didn’t get any birthday present. She was struggling with the sentence formation and thinking aloud: “Aaa, the party was last week. I should use the past tense…. the one with did….” And then she started translating her idea into past simple English sentence word by word. From pedagogic point of view it shows that her explicit grammatical knowledge was perfect. However it hasn’t been transformed into the skill to use the structure automatically without thinking yet. The auxiliary “did” was not associated with the past event. Only with the grammatical structure of past simple tense.
2. Another example is with an adult student (A2 level) who learnt semantic categories for the use of prepositions of time (e.g. in + parts of the day, years, months, at + time etc.). He wanted to use the expression “in the evening” but all of a sudden he stopped talking to consider the correct preposition. He was thinking aloud: “On” comes with days and dates, “in” comes with parts of the days, it will be “in the evening”. The student knew semantic categories for the prepositions but couldn’t use them automatically without thinking. It prevented him from speaking fluently. Linguistic knowledge in such state cannot cater for better speaking ability.

We might speculate what is the remain of grammar-translation method here. Grammar-translation method was widely used in the past and (unfortunetaly) its features are still used by teachers even today. Its disadvantage is that the language is treated mostly at the sentence level and there is very little consideration of spoken language (Harmer, 2012). Other methods (e.g. direct method) reacted to its restrictions by focusing more on the meaning of the grammatical structure. All in all, if the main focus is on grammatical structure, explanations and forms, it becomes the product of the student’s learning. As a result they can say a definition of the past simple, for example, but don’t use it to describe the past event. It is necessary to focus on the meaning of grammar forms and structures, to practice them in communicative situations and contexts, to build the associations. The process of language teaching shouldn’t be restricted to grammar explanation and presentation.

The two examples above demonstrate the pedagogical diagnostic process. The way students solve the linguistic problem or – to put it simply – the way they struggle with speaking shows the lack of communication skill. Knowledge of grammar might be perfect. But once the student cannot use it – it is useless. The teacher who notices this issue should adjust the next steps and take an action. Language training methods could activate the language knowledge and build the communication skills. Then the knowledge of grammar becomes the means of learning and communication. Not the product. Practical tips for teachers to help students develop automatic language skills will be the topic of my next post.

Resources:

Harmer, J.: 2012, The Practice of English Language Teaching, 4th edition, Pearson.