The Role of Grammar: Grammar as Monitor Use
The Role of Grammar:Grammar as Monitor UseReport by:NICOLE MERUH L. VELASStates that Learning has only one function, and that is as a Monitor or Editor and that learning comes into play only to make changes in the form of our utterance, after it had been produced by the acquired system.MONITOR HYPOTHESISThe fundamental claim of Monitor Theory is that conscious learning is available to the performer only as a Monitor. In general, utterances are initiated by the acquired system our fluency in production is based on what we have picked up through active communication. Our formal knowledge of the second language, our conscious learning, may be used to alter the output of the acquired system, sometimes before and sometimes after the utterance is produced. We make these changes to improve accuracy, and the use of the Monitor often has this effect.MONITOR HYPOTHESISACQUIRED SYSTEMUTTERANCELEARNED SYSTEMMonitor Over-userKinds of MONITOR USERMonitor Optimal UserMonitor Under-userPeople who attempt to Monitor all the time, performers who are constantly checking their output with their conscious knowledge of the second language. Performers who have not learned, or if they have learned, prefer not to use their conscious knowledge, even when conditions allow it.Performers who use the Monitor when it is appropriate and when it does not interfere with communication.According to the Monitor Model for performance, conscious learning acts as an editor, as a Monitor, correcting the errors, or rather what the performer perceives to be errors, in the output of the acquired system. This can happen before the sentence is spoken, or written, or after.The Role of Grammar, or Putting Grammar in its PlaceConscious knowledge of the rules is therefore not responsible for our fluency, it does not initiate utterances.A. Learning does not become AcquisitionThe Role of Grammar, or Putting Grammar in its PlaceCognitive-code school of thought:
Once the student has a proper degree of cognitive control over the structure of a language, facility will develop automatically with the use of the language in meaningful situations (Carroll, 1966, p. 102)Internalization- The process od converting learned rules into acquired rules.1. Sometimes there is acquisition without learning that is, some individuals have considerabklecompetence in a second language but do not know very many conscious rules. The argument that conscious learning does not become unconscious acquisition is based on three claims: 2. There are casesw where learning never becomes acquisition that is, a person can know the rule and continue breaking it.3. No one knows anywhere near all the rules.A. Learning does not become AcquisitionLanguage acquisition happens when the acquirer understands input containing a structure that the acquirer is due to acquire, a structure at his or her i + 1.There is no necessity for previous conscious knowledge of a rule.The Role of Grammar, or Putting Grammar in its PlaceEvelyn Hatchs students, Cindy Stafford and Ginger Covitt, interviewed one such second language performer, V, an ESL student at UCLA, who exhibited considerable competence in English, but who admitted that he had conscious control of very few, if any, rules.Interviewer: (When you write a composition) do you think of grammar rules? Do you think Should I have used the present tense here or would the present continuous be better
V: I dont refer to the books an all that, you know. I just refer it to this, uh, my judgment and sensing if Im writing it right or wrong. Because I really dont know.. What where exactly how.. The grammatical rules work out. Acquisition where learning never occurredP, a fairly typical successful Monitor user was studied by Krashen and Pon (1975). P was a native speaker of Chinese in her 40s, who had begun to learn English sometime in her 20s when she came to the United States.
Krashen and Pon studied Ps casual, everyday language production. Observers, native speakers of English (usually Ps son), simply recorded her errors from utterances she produced in normal family living or in friendly conversational situations. Immediately after an utterance containing an error was recorded, it was presented to the subject. The data was gathered over a 3-week period and about 80 errors were tabulated.Learning that never seems to become Acquisition(occurs when the performer has learned a rule, but has not acquired it)P thus illustrates the general characteristics of the successful Monitor user noted above. She is able to communicate well in both Monitor free and edited situations, applying the Monitor when it is appropriate to focus on form. Her performance is variable, in that she makes some errors in unmonitored speech, while her written output is quite close to the native speakers norm. In a sense, she is able to achieve the illusion of the native speakers syntactic level of performance bt efficient, accurate monitoring.Explanation:While learning may often precede acquisition, it need not, and in fact may not even help directly. Rather, we acquire along a fairly predictable natural order, and this occurs when we receive comprehensible input. Occasionally, we learn certain rules before we acquire them, and this gives us the illusion that the learning actually caused the acquisition.
Language learning, in the general sense, occurred when one first consciously grasped a rule, then practiced it again and again until it was automaticA third reason for doubting that acquisition required previous learning is the fact that even the best learners master only a small subset of the rules of a language.What is that noise from the other room? (John is playing the violin.)Whats John doing this summer? ( He is playing the violin for the local symphony.)Whats John doing tomorrow? (Hes playing the violin in the talent show.)Case Example:The first lesson of the session was focused on the present progressive tense. The objective was to inform the students that the present progressive had three meanings:A current, on-going action that would soon be completed.An action that began some time ago in the past and may or may not be taking pace at the moment, and would end sometime soon in the futureFuture tenseGrammar is a term synonymous with conscious learning. It has 2 possible role in the second language teaching program. First, it can be used with some profit as a Monitor. A second use for grammar is as subject matter, or for language appreciation (sometimes called linguistics). Neither role is essential, neither is the central part of the pedagogical program but both have functions.The Place of GrammarGrammar for Monitor Use:When the Monitor is used.The place for Monitor use is when the performer has time, as in writing and in prepared speech.The performer must be thinking about correctness or focused on form.The performer must know the rule.What can be monitored.(a) All the rules of EnglishWhat can be monitored.All the rules of EnglishSubset of English described by formal linguistsWhat can be monitored.All the rules of EnglishFormal Linguists knowledgeApplied Linguists knowledgeWhat can be monitored.All the rules of EnglishFormal Linguists knowledgeApplied Linguists knowledgeBest Teachers knowledgeWhat can be monitored.All the rules of EnglishFormal Linguists knowledgeApplied Linguists knowledgeBest Teachers knowledgeRules taughtWhat can be monitored.Rules actually learned by the best studentsRules used in performance(a) Incompetent Monitor UseSeliger (1979) reported a simple, yet interesting experiment which confirms the existence of Incompetent Monitor Users.
TASK:Subjects were shown pictures and asked to say what the object pictured was in English (e.g. Its a pen.).
SUBJECTS: 29 monolingual English speaking children, ages 3 to 10.811 bilingual children, ages 4 to 1015 adult ESL students at Queens College in New York
Seliger noted whether the subjects applied a/an rule and whether they correctly used an when the following noun began with a vowel.
INTERPRETATION:The study contrasts acquisition and learning. The subjects focus in the picture naming task was on supplying vocabulary. The task, then, encouraged the use of the acquired system; it was relatively unmonitored.
RESULTS:None of the bilingual children produced correct conscious rules for a/an.Among the adults, three of the four who knew the rule produced no instances on the picture test to show they understood how the rule was to be used.These subjects, in other words, had learned the a/an distinction but had not acquired it.
Two children and one adult performed well on the picture identification test but produced incorrect rules (e.g. You use an for something thats alive.(a) Incompetent Monitor UseThe adult who performed perfectly on the test may be classified as an incompetent Monitor user. This subject has acquired the a/an rule, but had not learned it correctly.
The subject had failed to learn what most teachers would consider to be an amazingly simple rule, yet he had apparently acquired it. This illustrates the independence of acquisition and learning, as well as just how limited learning can be for some performers.(b) Rule LearnabilityLearnability is related to linguistic simplicity, both formal and functional. The rules we can learn and carry around in our heads for use as a Monitor are not those that are earliest acquired, nor are they those that are important for communication. Rather, they are the simple rules, rules that are the easiest to describe and remember.(c) Some evidence(that easy rules are learnable by most people)1. P, the optimal Monitor user made many errors on such easy items such as the third person singular ending on regular verbs, the use of much and many with count and mass nouns, and the irregular past, among the errors.
2. Both Ue-Lin and Eva, Chinese speaking ESL students as UCLA, had problems with the late acquired third person singular /s/. Ue-Lin explained this omission as a careless mistake since she reported knowing the rule. Similarly, when Eva was shown sentences containing s deletion, she was able to identify the error and supply the s immediately. When asked to explain why she omitted the s, she replied, Probably just careless.(d) Consequences of teaching hard rulesFelix (1980) shows us what happens when students are asked to learn rules that are too difficult for them, rules that are not only difficult to learn but that are also not yet acquired. The students were asked to use them in unmonitored situations.
SUBJECTS:EFL class for 10-11 year old students in Germany
OBSERVATIONS:Teachers taught and demanded correct use of elliptic sentences (as in exchanges of the type: Is it a dog? Yes, it is.)Despite the fact that this type of question-answer dialogue was intensively drilled every day, Felix reports that correct elliptic sentences were only randomly supplied for a period of almost three months. (i.e. It is a dog? Yes, it isnt!)REFERENCE:
Stephen Krashen, Principles and Practices in Second Language Acquisition, University of Southern California
Stephen Krashen, Second Language Acquisition and Second Language Lerning, University of Southern California
