16 Materials for the Teaching of Grammar Jeff Stranks Preamble It is self-evident that the development of grammatical competence has an important role in second or foreign language learning. However, despite the advent of the so-called Communicative Approach over recent years, and despite the daily evidence offered by learners that the difficulties they encounter in using another language to encode their own meanings are largely to do with lexis and (in the spoken mode) with phonology, the dominance of grammar in teaching materials remains high, to the point of obsession. Furthermore, examination of materials for grammar in coursebooks and supplementary materials reveals that concern with grammatical form continues to take precedence over meaning considerations. As long ago as 1990, Widdowson argued that restricting attention to grammatical form is insufficient: Learners need to realize the functions of the device [i.e. grammar] as a way of mediating between words and contexts, as a powerful resource for the purposeful achievement of meaning. A communicative approach, properly conceived, does not involve the rejection of grammar. On the contrary, it involves a recognition of its central mediating role in the use and learning of language. (Widdowson, 1990, p. 98) If one looks at the majority of practice material offered to learners — single sentence practice, random lexicalization, transformation exercises, wordy and inaccurate ‘rules’, etc. ~it is hard not to conclude that the realizations and recognitions to which Widdowson refers, as to when and where the grammar practised might actuallybe employed, are mostly left to the learners themselves to come to. Examples of this would be the common practice of teaching and practising ‘short forms’ such as Yes | am / No I'm not as responses to open-ended questions ~ to be discussed in more detail later in this chapter — and that of asking learners to transform sentences in active voice into passive voice (or vice versa). Of the latter, an example is the approach taken by Acevedo and Gower (1996, p. 23), where learners are told that the Passive is used when ‘The agent is the new, important information. In English, new information often comes at or towards the end of the sentence’ (a laudable if somewhat limited attempt to refer to the Given-New Principle), information which is then ignored when learners are subsequently asked to identify the subjects and objects in eight sentences, and then to ‘rewrite the sentences in the passive voice [including] the agent only where necessary’. When it comes down to it, it is form that matters. Much of the present position of grammar today with EFL is due to the inherent conservatism of ministries of education and the major publishing houses, but also to the fact that the ‘buyer’ of materials is not the learners, rather the people who make decisions concerning syllabus and/or book adoptions, where the attitude is essentially one of ‘better the devil you know than the devil you don’t’ — the grammar of many publications is comfortingly familiar and allows teacher training in particular to prepare teachers for its implementation. The current situation with regard to grammar in the profession is subject, of course, to much criticism, and in particular there is criticism of the way in which the grammar of the language is taught through focusing on a sequence of individual and discrete grammatical items, which Thornbury (2000) refers to as the delivery of ‘grammar Mcnuggets’. Long and Robinson (1998) and others argue that there is too much focus on individual language forms (FonFs) and propose a focus on form (FonF) - in other words, an approach which asks learners to notice language forms as they occur in the data learners are exposed to, and to consider how the form(s) are used to establish particular meanings. This broad approach is also part of Task-Based Learning (TBL) - a book notable for an innovative approach to using texts for examination of language data and focusing on form is Willis (1996). (See also Ellis (2008) for a discussion of TBL and Willis and Willis (2007) for practical TBL activities.) The endeavour to break up the grammar of a language into discrete chunks for pedagogic purposes brings many difficulties with it, not least among which are decontextualized practice, examples given to and elicited from learners which are randomly lexicalized (as both Widdowson (1990) and Lewis (1993) have pointed out) and the endeavour to involve learners in production activities which are as controlled as possible to avoid learners attempting to use language which they haven't ‘learned’ yet. Nonetheless, the reality for most writers of grammar materials is exactly that. Classroom teachers producing their own materials for use with their own students perhaps have the greatest chance of innovating, and certainly have the best opportunity to take into account the learners themselves (in particular, the extent to which an aspect of Englishgrammar does or does not pose problems for them given their L1); but once material is for publication (into whatever market), pressures to conform to current norms will frequently require the writer to work within the ‘grammer Mcnugget’ framework. This chapter, then, while not condoning this reality, will try to establish some criteria for the creation of grammar materials and suggest some guidelines and thoughts for grammar materials which work within the traditional grammar areas. Some criteria The writer of materials for the teaching and learning of grammar has a number of considerations to take into account. These include: athe age and level of the learners who will be using the materials; b the extent to which any adopted methodology meets the expectations of a) learners, b) teachers, c) the educational culture within which the learners and teachers work; ¢ the extent to which any contexts and co-texts which are employed in order to present the grammar area(s) will be of interest to learners; the nature of the grammatical areas to be dealt with, in terms of their form, their inherent meaning implications (it any), and how they are used in normally occurring spoken and / or written discourse; e the extent to which any language offered to the leamers for them to examine the grammar used represents realistic use of the language, and the extent to which activities for learners to produce language containing the target grammar will result in meaningful utterances, and ones which bear at least some resemblance to utterances which the learners would be likely to want to produce in their own, non-classroom discourse; any difficulties that learners can be expected to encounter when learning these areas of grammar, especially with regard to any similarities or differences in form, function, and form / function relationship, between the target language and their mother tongue The first three listed here are of course of great importance for anyone working with or designing materials for classtoom use. This chapter restricts itself to considering the last three, since the extent to which grammar materials accurately reflect the language and the learners’ linguistic needs, and to which they encourage and allow learners to produce language which is of relevance to them, are factors whose absence may result in material which is interesting but of low pedagogic value.Grammar practice as language practice With regard to criteria ‘d’ and ‘e’, one might immediately consider the continuing tendency of materials to avoid normal ellipsis in practice activities which are intended (presumably) to teach language that can be used conversationally, for example in Ur and Ribé (2000, p. 4) learners are presented with exchanges such as: ‘What's your name?’ / ‘My name's Debora’, ‘How old are you?’ / ‘I'm fourteen’, ‘When's your birthday?" / ‘My birthday’s in September’ (etc.). What is clear in such writing is. that writers (and/or editors) retain the view that the exemplification of grammatical form(s) is more important than the presentation of naturally occurring language. A further example is an area included in virtually all grammar materials and which is referred to as ‘short answers’: Yes | am / No he isn't / No they haven't etc. This is normally treated as a stand-alone area - Yes/No questions can simply be answered in this way, and learners are given practice exercises which involve simply question and response. Invariably, no reference is made, or indication given to learners, as to when such responses may or may not be appropriate — the function or pragmatic effect of utterances such as Yes / do is ignored. Whitney (1998, p. 136) includes the following practice of past simple: learners are asked to ask and answer with a partner, are given the prompt ‘play ~ football - yesterday’ and the example ‘Did you play football yesterday?’ ‘Yes, | did / No | didn’t’, and then asked to produce further exchanges with prompts such as ‘study ~ a lot — at the weekend’ and ‘watch - TV - yesterday’. (It is not hard to find similar exercises in more recent publications: see for example Garton-Sprenger and Prowse (2005, p. 35).) Getting learners to produce only these ‘short answers’ is presumably based on the belief that they do not have the linguistic armoury to say more; however, their use as encouraged in such exercises could often, in conversational settings, result in learners coming across as brusque, if not downright rude. Such utterances tend not to be used as responses to questions at all, but rather with some emphasis to correct or disagree with another speaker's statement or claim, and would normally be followed up with a correction or further comment. Therefore these misnamed ‘short answers’ need to be taught and practised (a) in contexts such as disagreeing or correcting, and (b) with appropriate follow-up to the ‘short answer’, giving exchanges such as: A: "You're late!" B: ‘No I'm not. It’s only eight-thirty! or A: ‘Neil Young's American! B: ‘No he isn't, he’s Canadian! (etc.). The materials writer wishing to get learners to produce ‘short answers’ would need to develop possible conversational exchanges which begin with statements that learners can either disagree with (because they know them to be untrue), or else to which they can give a contrary opinion. Exercises might be developed along the following lines A: Nicole Kidman's a really good actress. | think she's American. B She's Australian. (Learners would be expected to produce ‘No she isn’t’ in the gap).Practice exercises which develop a theme such as this will, of course, be more complex for the materials writer to produce and for the learner to engage with - however, not to do so easily results in grammar practice which is not language practice. Reported speech - an examination There are many traditional areas of grammar which appear in virtually any grammer syllabus or list of contents and which do not need to be dealt with as separate areas, and certainly not dealt with discretely. One example, to be looked at in some detail here, is ‘reported speech’. Willis (1990), among others, has argued that it is unnecessary to treat this as an area of language with its own separate existence and set of rules. (One might also argue that for conversational language use, it is a relatively unimportant feature of language to teach, since ‘Direct speech reporting (where the speaker gives an apparently verbatim report of what someone said) is an important and recurrent feature of conversation’ (Biber et al., 1999, p. 118), a position which in fact acts as the starting point for a section on direct and indirect speech in Carter et al. (2000, p. 40)). If we look at whet a speaker needs to do in order to produce an utterance in ‘reported speech, we will find things such as: a the ability to select a verb which reflects how the ‘reporter’ views the original speech act (e.g. say, tell, explain, suggest, admit, ask, etc.); b_ knowledge of the implications of the verb selection for the following structure (e.g. he asked me if... or he asked me to. ..); € the ability to refer to periods of time at a deictic distance (e.g. the day before / the following day / three weeks later as opposed to yesterday / tomorrow / in three weeks’ time etc.), and also to make other deictic references at a remove (e.g. the house as opposed to this house etc.); d_ when the verb selected for reporting is followed by a ‘that . . ' verb phrase, the ability to select an appropriate tense form for the verb in the ‘that’ clause. The first three of these need not — and, arguably, should not ~ be left until the area of reported speech crops up in the syllabus. Learners need to know what the verbs used to refer to different speech acts mean and how to employ them. The verbs have differing grammatical implications: some (inform / tell / persuade etc.) require an indirect personal object; others (suggest / admit / say) take either a noun object or a ‘that! clause (ete. etc.). But these features are of the verbs themselves, not of reported speech, and need to be taught as the verbs occur during a course. Equally, the time phrases, demonstrative pronouns etc. have no exclusive linkage with ‘reported speech, and can be taught and practised with narratives and so forth.Many of the so-called features of ‘reported speech’ can, then, be seen as quite separate and taught as such. And so an approach can be developed which provides learners with a great deal of the linguistic armoury they need in order to report speech, without teaching them ‘reported speech’ as such at all The fourth point, however - that of selecting the appropriate verb tense form — is perhaps more complex. The verb ‘select’ is used here consciously - speakers select the tense rather than transform from one to another, and although such selection is not at a very conscious level, native speakers of English will be aware of the effects of differing choices in for example He said he's coming or He said he was coming. In a way very similar to the selection of time phrases (e.g. a reporter of a speech act which referred to ‘tomorrow’ may employ either the phrase ‘the following day’, or similar, or else maintain the word ‘tomorrow’, depending on the circumstances of the time of reporting), the selection of a verb tense form will reflect either the speaker's knowledge of the prevailing time references, or else his/her interpretation of the situation. To illustrate: if someone approaches me as | am writing this and says ‘John’s arriving tomorrow’, and | report this later today, | may report it as °X said John’s arriving tomorrow’. Naturally, if | report this tomorrow, | will no longer refer to ‘tomorrow’, but to ‘today’. However, no matter when the reporting takes place, up to the point of John's arrival or my receipt of other information, | may select to use the form ‘was arriving’ if | so wish. To do so would indicate either (a) ‘but | now know that this is no longer the case’, or (b) ‘it may or may not be the case ~ | am not willing to vouch for the truthfulness of what | am reporting’. It may be necessary for learners of English to become aware (if they are not already) that these options are open to them. Atthis point, what has been said about ‘reported speech’ is liable to incur objections from grammarians such as Swan (2001, p. 182), who inveighs against what he terms the ‘I have seen the light’ approach to areas of grammar, and which he describes as follows: We normally teach such-and-such a grammatical topic (the present perfect, articles, prepositions, or whatever) by giving a large number of superficial ‘rules of thumb’. These don't really get to the heart of the matter, and they give the impression that the relevant grammatical area is bitty and arbitrary. In fact, however, there are deeper underlying patterns which guide native speakers’ instinctive choices. If we can tease out these patterns and convey them to our students, everything will fal into place, and the relevant structures will cease to be problematic The preceding argument about ‘reported speech certainly claims that traditional approaches do not get to the heart of the matter, and treat it as ‘bitty and arbitrary’ However, this does not necessarily mean, as Swan implies, that no problems will remain. Teaching is required, as suggested above. What is debatable is what the teaching should work on. Speakers of Brazilian Portuguese, for example, if allowed to follow their instincts in tense selection, will rarely make errors other than of form. (As‘Swan himself suggests elsewhere (1994, p. 53), quoting an old American proverb: ‘If it ain't broke, don't fix it) Speakers of other languages, however, may need practice to help them with certain aspects of tense selection. But of what kind? Receptive grammar activities Much grammar practice in the area of reported speech is of the kind which requires leamers to take a given utterance in direct speech and ‘transform’ it into reported speech, and to do so by ‘shifting’ the verb tense. It is hard to imagine that this bears any resemblance to what happens in actual language production - and real-time, online language production is what learners want and need to be able to work with. Brazil (1996, p. 239) points out that: Sentence grammars, deriving as they do from an abstraction away from potential use, pose questions about the organization of language that seem to have little to do with those engaging the attention of people who are involved in communicating with others And one might add that transformation grammar exercises (whether for ‘reported speech’, ‘the passive’ or whatever other grammar area) require language learners to make decisions and produce language in a way which is quite divorced from the decisions and production that online communication will require. ‘What alternatives are there to transformation exercises? Lewis (1993, p. 154) points @ possible way forward with a call for an emphasis on grammar as a receptive skill Awareness raising’ is a term which has recently acquired currency in language teaching terminology. The unifying feature behind all these commentators is the assertion that it is the students’ ability to observe accurately, and perceive similarity and difference within target language data which is most likely to aid the acquisition of the grammatical system. Within this theoretical framework, grammar as a receptive skill has an important role to play. This is echoed in many ways by Ellis, who argues for what he terms ‘interpretative grammar tasks’ which ‘.. . focus learners’ attention on a targeted structure in the input and |. . .] enable them to identify and comprehend the meaning{s) of this structure. This approach emphasizes input processing for comprehension rather than output processing for production . . ‘ (Ellis, 1995, p. 88). The notion of ‘grammar as a receptive skill’ is not a new one - exercises have been produced and published over the years which require learners to work with aspects of grammar without actually producing utterances which employ the grammar under consideration. Arguments can and have, however, been made for a conscious adoptionof receptive grammar on a theoretical basis, as for example by Batstone (1996, p. 273) who argues: Learners may need time to make sense of new language before they are asked to make sense with it. [This is an argument] for receptive tasks to be clearly distinct from productive tasks, and for the former to precede the latter. Following this train of thought, and with the goal of helping learners see what choices are available (or not) with regard to tense selection in reported speech, one might design a receptive grammar activity which encourages learners to look at examples of utterances containing reported speech and to find criteria for categorizing them. Such an exercise could take the following form: Read the following utterances. They all contain ‘reported speech’. Put them into two categories. Group 1: Sentences 1,.. Group 2: Sentences 3,. 1 ‘I talked to James last week — he said he wasn't going to Sao Paulo after all. So we went for a beer on Saturday’ 2 ‘Alan called - he said he couldn't ring you last week because he had to go to Paris unexpectedly. Can you get in touch with him?" 3 ‘I talked to Paul yesterday —he said he isn’t working for the bank any more. Did you know?" 4 ‘Sara called me this morning ~ she said she isn’t coming to the meeting tomorrow, but she'll e-mail you the information, OK? 5 ‘When | talked to Sara yesterday, she said she was sending the information by e-mail. | don't know why it hasn't arrived yet! 6 ‘There's a Mr Johnson outside who wants to see you. He said it's urgent! 7 ‘I saw Joan this morning ~ she doesn’t look well, she said she hasn't eaten for a week! 8 ‘I phoned the electrician, but he said he couldn't come until the following week. So | fixed it myself. Seems to be working OK!" Sentences 1, 2, 5 and 8 all illustrate a speaker's use of past forms in reporting speech, while 3, 4, 6 and 7 illustrate the use of present tense forms (including, in the case of 7, present perfect). However, unless learners are particularly astute, and/or their first language operates in very similar ways, such an exercise will only alert them to thefact that some reported speech operates with past tense, and others with present. For them to begin to perceive why this is so, a further exercise will most likely be required — again, on a receptive level, and possibly along the following lines: Look at the italicized parts of these conversations. Which things do the speakers Kare still true? And which things do they think aren't true (any more)? 1A: ‘Lasked the new guy, Rolf, where he's from — he said he's German’ B: ‘German? Alan told me he was Swiss! 2 A: ‘John's just phoned he said he's coming at 11.00! B: “That's strange - when I rang him yesterday he said he was comingat 10.00! 3 A: ‘Joan said she's going to France for her holidays. B: ‘Oh really? She's always changing her mind. Two weeks ago she said she was going to Italy’ 4 A: ‘lean't believe you're ordering sushi! You told me you didn’t like Japanese food!” B: ‘No I didn’t ~ | said J don’t mind it now and again, ‘An exercise such as this, of course, engages learners in a cognitive activity which will not suit all of them. It is certainly not easy. It requires the teacher, as well, to be aware of such things as the use of past tense not only as a device for temporal distancing, but also for psychological distancing (Lewis, 1986) and the use of present tenses for temporal and psychological proximity, in order to help learners perceive this. This may well be unmanageable for many teachers, who perhaps prefer the security of ‘rules’; however, ‘rules’ such as ‘put the verb in the direct speech one step back in time’ are inaccurate, and the welter of information with which learners are usually bombarded and expected to deel with are arguably more demanding and no less suitable than what the above exercise expects them to do. (Leaming the distinctions between aspects of the grammatical system is fundamental to extended grammar learning and control - distinctions between active and passive voice, or the use of ‘will’ or ‘going to’, are other examples of this.) Quoting Willis (1990, p. 115), talking about noun phrases but making a comment which is applicable to many other grammar areas: most of these exercises are consciousness raising activities. The complexity and unpredictability of [this language] are such that we can offer no prescriptions. All we can do is outline the elements, and encourage learners to examine their experience of the language. It is, however, most important that we do this.But what about practice which requires leamers to produce language? A major difficulty with eliciting reported speech from learners is that of establishing deictic references for the learners, a problem which most transformation exercises solve by ignoring. Rather than asking learners to produce utterances involving reported speech, however, ‘one might well ask them first to make selections, as for example in the following exercise (Stranks, 2001, p. 28) Choose the most appropriate verb forms. 1_linvited Jim to the party tonight. He said he (wants / wanted) to come. 2 John's going to live in New York next year. It's odd, because last year he told me he (is going / was going) to stay in London 3 Don't worry, Mum. Dad said he (J/'d) pick me up from school this afternoon. 4 | don't know why Jim didn’t come to the party. Yesterday he said he (wants / wanted) to come (etc.) This exercise poses problems since several examples allow more than one possible choice. Many people involved in ELT — and that includes learners ~ have considerable difficulty accepting exercises which do not have clearly demarcated right and wrong answers. Unfortunately, however, language — and that includes grammar —is frequently Not a matter of correct oF incorrect, possible or not possible. The exercise above moves away from the ‘rightwrong’ syndrome and thus will be unacceptable to many users (especially teachers); however, asking learners to consider which is more likely or appropriate allows them to perceive that choices are available, and that there are subtle meaning differences between the choices. Productive exercises, as mentioned before, are often highly controlled. But where choiceis possible, such controlis very difficult to achieve, and arguably counterproductive anyway. Alternatives in the area of ‘reported speech’ would include asking learners to think of memorable things that were actually said to them at some point in the recent or distant past; asking them to report those speech acts; and doing whatever correction or modification proves necessary. (Doughty and Varela (1998) report on a piece of research which suggests that the correction of grammatical errors performed during communication can prove more effective in the acquisition of language forms than controlled practice, although their research did not use the kind of language practice task outlined here.) Grammar and meaning One might (also) argue that grammar materials should try to illuminate for learners some of the meaning implications of areas of grammar, where they exist. With regard again to reported speech, one might look at activities such as one in Gerngross et al(2006, p. 245) where three drawings are to be matched with reported utterances The drawings show: (1) a woman on a stretcher arriving at a hospital and the person accompanying her talking to @ nurse; (2) the same woman visible in bed behind a hospital curtain while the companion speaks to a doctor; and (3) the same woman {now sadly deceased) in a casket while two people talk about her. The utterances are a) ‘She said she hasn't been feeling well’; b) ‘She said she hadn't been feeling well’; c) She says she hasn't been feeling well (Answer: 1¢ / 2a / 3b). This encourages learners to pay attention to the tense of both the ‘reporting verb’ and the verb in the reported clause. One or two questions, though, seem to arise: 1 While the similarity of lexical content is nigh 100 per cent — intentionally, in order to allow exclusive focus on verb forms — does it result in confusion for learners? 2 The activity is taken from a teachers’ resource book. Would it work ina coursebook? And would publishing editors include it in a coursebook for learners? (The writer's experience suggests they might not, with arguments about space and teacher capabilities being put forward.) 3 Where to go next? The material cited suggests getting learners to see ‘if they can explain the choice of tense’. And suddenly the illustrative becomes the analytical, and arguably the academic/intellectual. Where the material goes a bit later is into learners remembering and telling moments when someone misled them or lied to them or tricked them - which would suggest a high probability of the occurrence of a reported speech act in the telling, but of course not of grammatical accuracy in such reporting Grammer materials sometimes fail learners when they give highly contrived examples of the language point in question. To exemplify aspects of ‘reported speech’, Jones (1998, p. 122) has a solitary man reading a book and saying to nobody: ‘I don’t like this book I'm reading now’. This is followed by a woman reporting to another: ‘He told me he didn’t like that book he was reading then’. Itis unclear why the phrases I’m reading now, that book and then would be used by the ‘speakers’ in these examples, and they do not ring true in the least. However, grammar materials can let learners down in other ways as well. When practice activities or exercises are given to learners to practise a particular aspect of grammar, it would appear to be desirable that the utterances produced in doing the exercise be ones that a) are feasible language, and b) bear some resemblance to language that the leamers themselves might wish to utter. One does not need to look very far to find grammar practice activities in which the learners doing the exercise will produce language which is at best unlikely. A random selection from various published coursebooks follows: @ Scientists make a lot of clever inventions. (practising ‘a lot of’) © Athletes must train very hard to be champions. (practising ‘must’ as modal for obligation)@ Has John heard her latest record? (practising present perfect simple) @ James and Emma can speak French. (practising ‘can’ as modal of ability) There are also very often instances of utterances which simply state the obvious, sentences of the ‘An elephant is bigger than an ant’ variety. The last of the sentences listed above, in particular, illustrates the common tendency not only to lexicalize randomly, but also to encourage learners to use collocations which are in fact rare (‘can’ is much more frequent for possibility than for ability, and, inconvenient though this may be for materials writers, tends not to be used when talking about things like speaking a language, driving a car or riding horses). The first of the above actually includes a collocation (‘make inventions’) which to this native speaker seems to be one which would simply not occur. It is, admittedly, not necessarily easy to write exercises where the language produced is consistently relevant to the learners (especially when so many learners around the world in fact have little or no desire to use English at all, certainly not in the short term), is within their linguistic capabilities and is faithful to actual language use. However, the professional materials writer in particular is surely bound to attempt to do so, at the very least by maintaining normal features of collocation and lexical aspect To this end, there is less and less need for the materials writer to rely on intuition (or what has simply been encountered in materials previously published). The existence and availability of language corpora, together with concordancing programmes, make it possible to check out what language users actually do, rather than what we think or hope they do. A reference work such as the Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written Language (Biber et al., 1999), based on a corpus of over 40 million words, also provides illuminating statistical evidence as to how language is used (showing, for example, that willis, somewhat surprisingly, more frequently used than going to, and that the modals will, would, can and could are far more common than other members of that group) There are also commentaries on such things as register, style and collocation, making this kind of work a virtually indispensable tool for writers who wish their grammar materials to reflect actual language use. Grammar and technology Since the original publication of this chapter in 2003, we have seen the growth of technology-based ELT and a surge in materials that are online, or on CD-ROM / DVD- ROM. And no doubt further technological developments are on their way. Has this resulted in any radical development in the way grammar materials are designed? While by no means being able to claim knowledge of everything that is out there, this writer would suggest that the technology has not brought much change. Online materials, in particular, appear simply to move what was/is on the page of grammar books into html, with the ‘advantage’ of immediate answer checking and the accompanimentof colourful visuals and/or gamelike effects (e.g. a basketball gets dunked for three points if you answer a question correctly). A search for example for ‘passive online exercises’ yields results which are stunningly disappointing in terms of content. And yet the existence of such technology surely brings the possibility of materials which do things that printed materials cannot - for instance, show movement rather than draw it or describe it in words, and have the materials creator ‘talk’ to the learner. Attempts have certainly been made: in Puchta et al. (2012), the CD-ROM activities show teenage leamers how present continuous and present simple differ conceptually, specifically using animation to indicate that something ‘is happening at the moment of speaking’. The activity also takes the approach of trying to lead learners up the garden path — in other words, ‘deliberately to induce an error and then show its effect’ (Thornbury, 2011, unnumbered), since learners are offered occasional choices where both are wrong, and a cartoon commentator lets learners know that a trick has been played on them (learners can also show that they have seen it's a trick by clicking an appropriate button). The overall intention is to generate (or at least allow the possibility of) an ‘ah ha’ moment for learners as they see what a grammatical choice actually entails. For better or worse, some technology-based materials attempt to help learners notice grammar and understand the importance of grammatical choices - as indeed paper based materials ideally do. In sum, it is this writer's view that materials for the teaching of grammar seem to be somewhat resilient to change, even when technology brings some possibilities, and grammar is still treated mainly as a system virtually isolated from other aspects of language and language use. Grammar may be necessary — perhaps a necessary evil to some - but materials ideally should see it as part of language, not a separate feature to be learned for its own sake. The grammar materials writer needs to try to put into the hands of both teachers and learners materials which reflect what Widdowson (1990, p. 98) called grammar's ‘central mediating role in the use and learning of language’. Notes 1 References are made in this chapter to various published materials, in order to offer concrete exemplification of points being made. Similar exemplification could have been made choosing examples from other materials. Although certain activities/exercises are criticized, it is not my intention to suggest that the materials cited do not in toto have pedagogical value. 2 These verbs are often referred to as ‘reporting verbs’ and of course are often used to report speech acts. However, they are also used to refer to speech acts in the present and future, in which case they are not ‘reporting’ anything, and so the label is misleading. There is also the issue of verbs such as ‘say’, ‘tell’ and ‘ask’ being used with continuous aspect on occasions (e.g. John was saying that the shows been cancelled) - grammar materials basically ignore this, along with the increasingly frequent use of ‘go’ as a reporting verb in conversational settings.References Acevedo, A. and Gower, M. 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