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Document : 1423
Title    : How do we teach Knowledge about Language?
Author(s): Andrew Philp

Copyright holder(s): University of Glasgow: re-use of Crown Copyright
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Text

There are a number of types of teaching strategy which have been useful in
teaching KAL and these are best interrelated in a constant process of
cross-referencing and reinforcement.  These types of strategy are outlined
below.  It is not possible in this paper to give an adequate picture of the
scope of these activities, but the materials in the database, together with
"The Primary Grammar Book" by R. Bain & M. Bridgewood and "The Grammar
Book" by E. and R. Bain, will provide a much wider range of strategies. In
this Paper, Modern Languages teachers may find Sections 3, 4 and 5
particularly relevant to their work with second language learners.

1. Direct Teaching.

Traditionally, in both English and Modern Languages, grammatical features
were taught directly and the pupils’ ability to identify the features was
practised in follow-up exercises.  Research in English has proved
conclusively, however, that this kind of activity did not transfer to an
increased ability to use those features in writing.  Now, most English
teachers either introduce the features, followed by some direct involvement
in text or, conversely, move from discussion of, or involvement in, text to
direct teaching of points arising. In Modern Languages, similarly, the
function or notion is the starting point with the grammar point arising
naturally from context.

2. Focusing on Authors’ Texts.

(a) Talking about texts This familiar activity involves the teacher
exploring with pupils what the text appears to mean for them and how the
author’s use of language features has created effects which contribute to
that meaning.  For example, in the "Whispers in the Graveyard" passage in
Booklet A 5-14, grammatical features which might arise in discussion are:
• the use of 1st person and present tense to give immediacy to the story
• the use of fairly straightforward clause patterns (mainly
Subject-Verb-Object, or Subject-Verb-Adverbial), contrasted with the denser
noun phrases which evoke the sights the boy observes in the graveyard (e.g.
‘a carving of a leopard with a shuttle in its mouth’)
• the occasional use of verbless sentences (e.g. ‘Every one of them’,
‘A weaver’, ‘Not yet’), which creates a sense of the boy musing
about what he sees, and also helps to convey an emphatic tone.

Talking about texts can also involve the introduction of ‘model’ genre
texts and discussion of their features, such as the use of commands and of
temporal linking words in instructions, or, in information reports, the use
of the present tense, and linking verbs with ‘is’ or ‘has’ (e.g.
‘The dromedary has one hump; other types of camel have two’).  This
example also shows how information reports refer to general subjects, i.e.
all dromedaries in general rather than one dromedary in particular. Similar
techniques could be applied at a later stage in Modern Languages.

(b) Comparing texts  One useful way of enabling pupils to see how specific
language features operate in texts is to compare two different texts which
have some features in common.  For example, "Whispers in the Graveyard"
could be compared with the opening of "The Diddakoi" by Rumer Godden, the
story of a part-gypsy girl and her struggles for acceptance by adults and
children in a small town.  In it, there are uses of past, present and
future verb forms for the children’s chants at Kizzy, the adults’
threats or comments and the narrative, which is past-tense and 3rd person. 
This contrasts in the former text with the dyslexic boy, Solomon’s, own
view (mainly 1st person and present tense) of his surroundings and the
influence of his father on his life.

(c) Presenting texts Asking pupils to prepare a reading or dramatic
performance can lead them to focus upon specific grammatical features and
their relevance for meanings in the text.

3. Focusing on Pupils’ Writing.

(a) Joint Construction of Texts   This process of the teacher co-operating
with a class to create a text on OHP or chalkboard obviously leads to a
focus on which language features are appropriate in their jointly
constructed text, and in the process, what to call those features.
(b) Discussing Writing   (Teacher with individuals, groups or whole class.)
 An awareness of how grammatical features operate in texts enables teachers
to help pupils focus clearly on the strengths and limitations of their
writing, and an appropriate terminology sharpens this process of
discussion. Teachers can use examples of previous pupil writing from other
classes for consideration of, say, weaknesses in sentence cohesion and the
use of possible alternative connections.  This avoids the embarrassment
caused by using the work of pupils in the class.  Modern Languages teachers
might usefully use authentic writing done by young foreign pupils and
discuss areas of weakness, e.g. perfect tense verbs with être.

An example of fairly effective cohesion in the writing of a personal
recount is seen in the ‘Our Day at the Farm’ text in the Sample Texts
in the database, written by a P5 girl. Using cohesive linkers, she creates
a clear time sequence for the story (‘the first thing’, ‘after
that’, ‘next’).  The cohesive effect is also achieved by the use of
pronouns which build clear chains of reference throughout the text
(‘we’, ‘us’, ‘our’; ‘the turkey’/‘it’, ‘its’;
‘the hens’/‘they’; ‘the horses’/‘their’; ‘a
pony’/‘it’; ‘Mrs Brown’/‘she’).  We could use this as an
exemplar in discussing effective cohesion with other pupils, particularly
those whose tendency is just to list events or experiences in an incoherent
way.

(c) Pupil Collaboration on Writing  Planning or redrafting a piece of
writing in collaboration with another pupil focuses the pupils’ attention
on language features and also how to refer to them, and leads them to use
those terms and concepts meaningfully for themselves.  In the following
extract from  transcripts of two pairs of P5 pupils operating as
‘response partners’ on a piece about William Wallace, there is a clear
focus upon relevant features of punctuation and grammar, although they do
not actually use the terms ‘past tense ending’ or ‘adverbial clause
of reason’ (‘because’ clause).

Paul: I think you should change this bit … “the feast was for the
soldiers who battled, murdered the English”.
Mark: You’re reading it wrong though.  “The feast was for the soldiers
who battled the English and murdered the English.”  Actually, I know what
I should do to get that, “who battled the English” and then you put
three dots, and that is like a pause.  So let’s see how it sounds now …
[reads new version]
Paul: That is much better.
Mark: Right, back on to it.
Paul: Do you think you could make any pauses in mine?
Mark: I’m not sure … I don’t think so.  Yours isn’t that way.
Paul: [reads story] … “nobody dares speak”
Mark: Nobody dared speak …
....................................................
Linzi: Let me see yours … “he was hung”?  I don’t understand what
you have written.  You need a full stop there.  Who it was, you’ll need
to write.  Right that is okay so far.  You could put: “He was getting
hung because” … and then write the situation.

(d) Drafting/redrafting (according to teacher’s specifications) Both
English and Modern Languages teachers employ similar techniques here.  The
teacher, in discussing possible changes to his writing with a pupil, may
direct the pupil, for example, to change some of the verbs so that the
tenses are consistent, or to provide more detail through the use of
adjectives, adverbs or more extensive noun phrases.  Thus the pupil is
having to identify these features and use them appropriately.  Jim Crinson
in his ‘Step by Step Grammar’ suggests having the pupils try to write a
story according to a prescribed set of connectives, so as to practise their
use and become more aware of their application.  Similarly, "The Primary
Grammar Book" suggests giving pupils in groups one of a number of settings
(in a shop, on a bus, at home etc.).  They would then brainstorm the
different verbs, adjectives and adverbs that would be used in that setting
and then compare them, to consider why there are different words for
different settings.  The pupils then go on to write a description of their
setting using as many of their words as they can.

4. Investigations.

These are perhaps the most worthwhile of all strategies for the development
of language awareness as they lead the pupils, within specific tasks, to
discover aspects of language patterning for themselves, thereby fostering
their confidence in language matters and deepening their insight into how
language works.
(a) Collecting and categorising  Pupils collect examples of a language
feature to which they have been introduced and list them.  They may then go
on to categorise them according to some set of categories suggested by the
teacher or, alternatively, create a set of categories for themselves.
• A class might be asked to collect connectives (‘if’, ‘before’,
‘when’, ‘although’ / si, avant, où) in a number of texts which
they have been using recently and categorise them into sets (e.g.
‘because’ connectives: ‘because’, ‘as’, ‘since’, ‘for’
/ parce que, car, puisque).  They can create a wall chart for these and
look out for them being used in explanatory or persuasive writing.
• Crinson’s class explored three types of text, a factual explanation,
a pupil’s imaginative story based on the experiences of a character in a
novel, and a report on a football match  which speculated on the team’s
prospects.  The pupils were asked to collect as many examples of verbs as
they could find, and classify them according to tense under the headings of
Past, Present, Future, None, Not Sure.  The pupils found it fairly easy to
allocate verb forms to past, present or future, and tended to put passives
under ‘none’ and modals (‘can go’, ‘must go’, etc.) under
‘not sure’.  They were then asked to comment on which kinds of tenses
were found in which text.  Crinson uses this kind of introduction to tense
as a theoretical foundation to enable the pupils to avoid subsequent
confusion in their own use of tenses. 
• The class can be reminded that the verb ‘to be’ has various forms,
three for the present and two for the past, and they are then asked to
examine a number of texts and try to discover the different forms,
recording them and making a display poster about them. In Modern Languages,
teachers might contrast the use in French of the verb ‘avoir’ in
expressions that use ‘to be’ in English, e.g. avoir soif /faim / dix
ans. In Spanish, the distinction between the two verbs ‘to be’, ser and
estar, is discussed and compared.
• Middle primary classes can collect examples of adjectives associated
with particular words (e.g. ‘dog’, ‘flame’) or the names of
characters from stories, and the ensuing lists can be used in large
adjective trees, flowers or rockets for display around the room.
• With a class novel, a P7 or S1 class who have been exploring noun
phrases could collect as many noun phrases containing four or more words as
they can find and classify them according to whether they have
pre-modifiers only (word before the headword), post-modifiers only (phrases
after the headword), or both pre-modifiers and post-modifiers, and whether
there are two headwords (e.g. ‘the carvings and designs on the
stones’).  The pupils could then consider how to group these different
patterns according to the subject matter they describe, and whether they
could improve upon them.
(b) Transformations
These are activities in which pupils are asked to change the form of a
given text or set of language materials in some way.
• The pupils can be given a set of lists of words with different colours
for each list.  These lists are in fact ranges of adjectives, nouns, verbs
and ‘other words’, mainly grammatical words – ‘a’, ‘the’,
two’, ‘together’, ‘upon’, etc. – and they are compatible in
that meaningful sentences can be made up from them.  The pupils can first
be asked to make the longest and shortest sentences possible from the list
of words, and then to make up different sentences which might be found in,
say, an advertisement, a story, a recipe, a poem or a reference book.  This
activity allows the pupils to focus on how parts of speech are actually
used in sentences and how this depends on the constraints of different
types of texts.
• Pupils can be asked to take boring sentences and to extend and enliven
them through transformation, according to set questions.  For example, the
two sentences, ‘The children went down to the beach.  They went back home
at teatime’ could be expanded and made more interesting in response to
the questions ‘Who? / Qui?’, ‘How? / Comment?’, ‘Where? /
Où?’, ‘Why? (What for?) / Pour quoi?’. 
• Similarly, a class could be asked to take a sentence marked off for
phrases, written on separate cards, and change the order, looking at what
is and is not possible.  The sentence (marked for phrase boundaries) might
be of the following kind: ‘The old lady/had lived/in the top storey
flat/with three dogs/seven cats and ten goldfish/for the past ten
years’.
• A class could consider whether there were too many subordinate clauses
(and connectives) in a text they were reading and whether they were
justified.  The pupils might take a copy of that text, or a piece of pupil
writing, and in groups re-write it, so as to overdo the use of subordinate
clauses, or alternatively overdo the use of short sentences, with very few
subordinate clauses, or they could try to achieve just the right balance. 
Groups and teacher could then discuss the effects created.
• Teacher and pupils can profitably discuss how sentences might be joined
together by means of linking devices, in order to improve a piece of
writing. (This might be one written by a former pupil or be an extract from
the class novel converted into mainly one-clause sentences.)  Using an OHT
of the piece of writing covered with a blank OHT slide, the teacher can
have the pupils create different versions, drawing upon a range of devices
for sentence-joining, and then discuss with them which changes seem to be
the most effective. Finally – in the case of the novel extract – they
can compare their versions with the original text.  Alternatively, pupils
can collaborate to create their version in pairs or groups at the
computer.
• Whole texts can be transformed by pupils in order to focus closely on
the kinds of language feature which are to be expected in each type of
text, or to practise the use of a particular feature.  For example, the
"Whispers in the Graveyard" passage could be transformed into a past tense
3rd person narrative.  Also, to develop genre awareness, pupils could
convert the story of a pet, with description and past tense narrative
features, into an informative description (Report) suitable for an entry in
a children’s animal encyclopaedia. In Modern Languages, older pupils can
take traditional tales and write these in a different tense.
(c) Substitution, Deletion and Prediction
• This activity has been frequently used to good effect in the materials
for the North Lanarkshire Council Project, Another Look at Reading.  Pupils
can be given copies of a text with certain adjectives, adverbs or verbs
deleted, or they can blank out their own examples with sticky paper, for
other pupils to use.  The point of this activity is not just to identify
these parts of speech but rather to focus on how these choices could add to
the overall effect created in the passage, or how choosing different
examples of the same part of speech would create a different effect.  

For instance, at Level C the substitution of other words in gaps for the
original adjectives or verbs might focus on the impression of the character
being conveyed (e.g. ‘cocky’, ‘swaggered’), or pupils might predict
how such a character would behave at that point in the story, and choose
substitutions accordingly.  At Level D, pupils are encouraged in the North
Lanarkshire materials to experiment with the mood or atmosphere of the text
by substituting different adjectives and adverbs so as to create a
different mood.

• Cloze procedure could in fact be used in many ways to reinforce
understanding of parts of speech through the choice of words to suit a
particular style and using grammatical awareness to work out the choice of
appropriate parts of speech.  The sense of appropriate style which can
emerge from cloze procedure activities also extends to those instances
where the author – very often the poet – uses unusual choices of words,
unexpected collocations, to create a particular perception.  The pupils
will not usually be able to choose the same word as the author but the
activity will clearly focus attention on the particular effects achieved by
the author as a result of this word choice.
• Substitution can also be profitable when used with the part of speech
which is itself a substitution, the pronoun.  A piece of writing in which a
number of sentences all begin monotonously with ‘he’ or ‘she’ can
be re-written by groups of pupils, so that in at least some of the
sentences a more explicit – and more interesting – noun phrase is used.
 (Incidentally, it is worth remembering that pronouns in fact stand for
noun phrases, and not nouns, as is often claimed.)

• Younger primary children could use substitution to focus on the noun
phrases in an activity such as the following:
Children are presented with three sentences with gaps to be filled with
nouns or noun phrases:

For my Christmas dinner last year I got ….
For my dinner today I am probably having ….
When we go to McDonald’s next time I would like to get ….

Answers are collected and then categorised into those with adjectives or
numbers before the noun (‘two tasty cheeseburgers’); those with several
nouns in a list (‘sausage, egg and chips’); and those with phrases
added after the noun (‘a strawberry ice cream with chocolate sauce’). 
This activity can easily be varied by focusing on names for toys or clothes
or something else that the children might want. In Modern Languages this
could usefully be done with likes and dislikes: j’aime, je n’aime pas,
me gusta(n), no me gusta(n).

5. Language Games.

Language games in any language are a very useful way of creating an
enjoyable context for groups or the whole class, in which aspects of
language patterning can be focused on and subsequent discussion can lead to
beneficial language insights.  There is now a very wide range of games
available in the many grammatical activity books being published, and only
a small selection can be given here and in Paper 17.  Some Modern Language
versions of these are given in Booklet A, and many additional Language
Games can be found in Lydia Biriotti’s "Grammar is Fun" (see
bibliography).

(a) Noun Phrases and Verb Phrases
Young children can practise the possibilities in noun phrases and verb
phrases by playing the Elastic Sentence game (Open University Language
Development Course).  In this game the players take turns at expanding the
phrases in a sentence:
Our dog  chews  a bone
Our big dog  is chewing  a juicy bone
Our big friendly dog  has been chewing  a lovely juicy bone

At each turn the teacher indicates which element is to be altered. Any
pupil can challenge a ‘bad’ sentence such as ‘My dog didn’t chewing
a bone’.  (The teacher can decide if double verbs are permissible, e.g.
loves chewing, wanted to chew.)

(b) Subject and Predicate
Various games will enable pupils to practise their command and awareness of
complete sentences by exploiting their ability to combine grammatically the
elements known as ‘Subjects’ and ‘Predicates’.
• The teacher can give pupils a list of one-clause sentences associated
with their topic, or the pupils can write out a set of their own.  These
written sentences are cut up into subjects and predicates and distributed
at random to a group of pupils who then take turns to combine them as new
sentences.  The new sentences may not make sense but they must be
grammatical, i.e. having a valid subject and predicate combined.  This game
can be played as a form of Rummy or Whist.  In Rummy-type, pupils exchange
cards on each turn and try to build up as many grammatical sentences as
they can.  The pupil with least on each round is out.  In Whist-type, one
player plays a subject and another tries to take a trick with a predicate
or vice-versa.  

• Pupils can also focus on making more normal grammatical sentences in
‘You’ll have to make a statement.’  In this game, players make up
grammatical and meaningful statements, with one providing a Subject (dealt
from a pack of ‘safe’ subjects prepared on cards beforehand) and the
player on his or her right, within say 10 seconds, providing a valid
Predicate to make a grammatical sentence.

(c) Clause Structure
There is also a series of games which create contexts in which pupils can
practise their command of clause structure.

• Various similar activities allow pupils to create ‘crazy sentences’
by permutating the elements of clause structure.  For example we could
create a booklet made from a set of sentences written vertically on
different pages and stapled together.  These are then cut through
horizontally so that various permutations can be created.  These may be
fairly meaningful, awkward or just outlandish, such as ‘Our Dobermann,
Prince, played a long woolly jumper with great style’.  Apart from the
entertainment value, this kind of activity makes explicit for us the normal
order of elements in a statement sentence.

(d) Conjunctions
Various games also focus upon the potential of connectives to extend
sentences:

• In ‘Everlasting Sentences’ pupils in turn add a phrase or clause to
a sentence, which extends the sentence grammatically.  If they cannot do so
they ‘lose a life’ and the game proceeds as the players try to avoid
completing the sentence.  The winner is the last player ‘still alive’.
• In ‘Why Don’t You Join Us?’, the pupils in groups have two sets
of cards, one for one-clause sentences and one for conjunctions which could
extend those sentences.  One sentence card is turned over, and one
conjunction card, and everyone has to make the one-clause sentence into a
two-clause (or more) sentence.  The player with the most interesting or
amusing sentence in each round gets to change the cards for the next one.
• Wray and Medwell’s ‘Clause Consequences Game’ (for P6/7 in
English and older pupils in Modern Languages) creates the same kind of
nonsensical but grammatical formations as some of the subject-predicate
games.  In it the pupils are given a grid marked Participant (Who was
taking part in the action?), Process (What was happening?), Circumstance of
Place (Where was it happening?), Circumstance of Time (When did it take
place?). Each pupil writes a suitable word or phrase in each column of the
grid and passes it on unseen to the next pupil to write another word or
phrase in the next column, so that all the columns for the parts of the
clause are completed.  The final recipient has to read everything and
combine the elements into a clause.  The resulting ‘silly sentences’
can then be discussed as to what makes them funny or silly.

6. Language Projects.

Language projects or investigations involve pupils in investigating an
aspect of language in use, such as relationships between spoken and written
language; uses of dialect (or languages, in the case of those who speak
several); how young children acquire language; the range of uses of
languages throughout  a day in a school, a hospital, an airport etc.;
aspects of how language changes.  

Such activities allow pupils to use the kinds of language concepts
discussed above, but also to embrace the assumption that they already know
a great deal about language and that, with some organisation, they are
enabled to find out more.  These language projects also enable pupils to
relate the language of school to broader issues concerning language in
society and in the development of human beings.  Useful information about
language projects can be found in Bain: "Reflections: Talking About
Language" and in Bain, Fitzgerald and Taylor: "Looking into Language:
Classroom Approaches to Knowledge about Language".  It may be useful here
to provide some suggestions for language projects set within the context of
investigating Scotland’s languages and their cultural implications:
• creating thematic or topic-based word banks, possibly on computer, on
‘Weather’ or ‘Transport’, ‘Homes’, ‘Games and Pastimes’ or
‘Beasties’
• developing a Scots phrase book for tourists to use in social situations
(in the street, at a restaurant, or at sporting occasions)
• practising and then audio-taping readings of short texts by Scottish
writers in poetry and prose
• developing bi-lingual or tri-lingual signs in Scots, English and Gaelic
for the school environment
• taking part in a dialect survey of uses (and changes in use) of words
in their local area, by different generations of speakers
• exploring the meanings and history of local place names and landmarks
in order to create a classroom frieze or an article for the local
newspaper.

Any of these activities would provide a valid context for using the
Knowledge About Language terminology of 5-14, as well as involving the
children in practical and focused work in language.  Knowing more about
language in many cases will mean getting to know more about what has too
often been a hidden part of the curriculum, but yet is a marvellous
resource for fostering confidence and self-awareness among all our pupils,
in all their languages.


Bibliography

Bain, Elspeth & Richard Bain. 1996. "The Grammar Book".  NATE.
Bain, Richard & Marion Bridgewood. 1998. "The Primary Grammar Book: Finding
Patterns – Making Sense".  NATE. 
Biriotti, Lydia. 2000. "Grammar Is Fun".  CILT. 
Wray, David & Jane Medwell. 1998. "Teaching English in Primary School – a
Handbook of Teaching Strategies and Key Ideas in Literacy".  Letts.


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Information about document and author:

Text
Text audience
Adults (18+): Specialists: Audience size: 1000+

Text details
Method of composition: Handwritten
Year of composition: 1998
Word count: 4340
General description: One of a series of position papers on current educational developments in relation to language education

Text medium
Book: Other: CD Rom of teacher materials (LILT)

Text publication details
Part of larger text: Contained in: CD Rom: LILT Materials
Editor: J McGonigal / C Kay
Part of a longer series of texts: Name of series: Position Papers: CD Rom: LILT Materials

Text setting
Education: 
Text type
Prose: nonfiction: Report: 

Author
Author details
Author id: 60
Forenames: Andrew
Surname: Philp
Gender: Male
Decade of birth: 1930
Educational attainment: University
Age left school: 17
Upbringing/religious beliefs: Catholicism
Occupation: Retired Lecturer in Education
Place of birth: Londonderry
Region of birth: Co. Londonderry
Country of birth: Northern Ireland
Place of residence: Airdrie
Region of residence: Lanark
Residence CSD dialect area: Lnk
Country of residence: Scotland
Father's occupation: Tool Fitter
Father's place of birth: Auchterarder
Father's region of birth: E & SE Perthshire
Father's birthplace CSD dialect area: Per
Father's country of birth: Scotland
Mother's occupation: Seamstress in shirt factory
Mother's place of birth: Ture
Mother's region of birth: Co. Donegal
Mother's country of birth: Ireland

Languages:
Language: English
Speak: Yes
Read: Yes
Write: Yes
Understand: Yes
Circumstances: At work, at home
Language: Gaelic; Scottish Gaelic
Speak: Yes
Read: Yes
Write: Yes
Understand: Yes
Circumstances: Evening classes and immersion
Language: Italian
Speak: Yes
Read: Yes
Write: No
Understand: No
Circumstances: Elementary
Language: Japanese
Speak: Yes
Read: No
Write: No
Understand: Yes
Circumstances: Very elementary
Language: Scots
Speak: Yes
Read: Yes
Write: Yes
Understand: Yes
Circumstances: Elementary - intermediate
Language: Urdu
Speak: Yes
Read: No
Write: No
Understand: Yes
Circumstances: Elementary