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Unit 3 – Approaches in Teaching Grammar

3.0 Intended Learning Outcomes

At the end of this unit, you will be able to:

a. Discuss the different approaches in teaching grammar.

b. Demonstrate at least one (1) approach in teaching grammar.

3.1 Introduction
The teaching of grammar has always been controversial, especially under the influence
of the communicative approach. Some researchers feel that the grammar of the language does
not necessarily help learners to use the language. However, others argue that grammar should
be taught, because without some understanding of grammar students would not be able to
communicate efficiently in English. The suggestion being made, then, is that teachers must
somehow teach the grammar of the language, for this is central to language use.
Grammar teaching has been a problem for many ESL teachers who do not take into
consideration the importance of strategies for grammar teaching. Researchers state that the use
of various language learning strategies can be helpful in teaching grammar more effectively.
Strategies are behaviors or actions which learners use to make the language learning more
successful, self-directed, and enjoyable. Research further indicates that by adapting their
strategies, teachers can help make grammar more accessible to students. Hence, in this module,
you will be learning the different strategies and activities that are beneficial in teaching
grammar to your future students. It is hoped that you will be able to apply this in your own
language classroom in the near future.

3.2 Topics

The Deductive Approach – Rule Driven Learning

A deductive approach starts with the presentation of a rule and is followed by examples in
which the rule is applied. The grammar rule is presented and the learner engages with it through
the study and manipulation of examples.

Advantages of a deductive approach:

 It gets straight to the point, and can therefore be time-saving. Many rules — especially rules
of form — can be more simply and quickly explained than elicited from examples. This will
allow more time for practice and application.
 It respects the intelligence and maturity of many - especially adult -students, and
acknowledges the role of cognitive processes in language acquisition.
 It confirms many students' expectations about classroom learning, particularly for those
learners who have an analytical learning style.
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 It allows the teacher to deal with language points as they come up, rather than having to
anticipate them and prepare for them in advance.

Disadvantages of a deductive approach:

 Starting the lesson with a grammar presentation may be off-putting for some students,
especially younger ones. They may not have sufficient metalanguage (i.e. language used to
talk about language such as grammar terminology). Or they may not be able to understand
the concepts involved.
 Grammar explanation encourages a teacher-fronted, transmission-style classroom; teacher
explanation is often at the expense of student involvement and interaction.
 Explanation is seldom as memorable as other forms of presentation, such as demonstration.
 Such an approach encourages the belief that learning a language is simply a case of knowing
the rules.

What is a rule?
In the Longman Activity Dictionary “rule” is defined as:
 a principle or order which guides behavior, says how things are to be done etc.,
(prescriptive rule)
 the usual way that something happens (descriptive rule). Descriptive rules are primarily
concerned with generalizations about what speakers of the language actually do say than
what they should do.

Pedagogic rules – they make sense to learners and provide them with the means and
confidence to generate language with a reasonable chance of success. Pedagogic rules can be spit
up into: rules of form and rules of use.

Examples of prescriptive rules:

 Do not use different to and never use different than. Always use different from.
 Never use the passive when you can use the active.
 Use shall for the first person and will for second and third persons.

Examples of descriptive rules:

 You do not normally use the with proper nouns referring to people.
 We use used to with the infinitive (used to do, used to smoke etc.) to say that something
regularly happened in the past, but no longer happens.

Example for rule of form:

 To form the past simple of regular verbs, add –ed to the infinitive.

Example of a rule of use:

 The simple past tense is used to indicate past actions or states.

Example: (from Walker and Elsworth Grammar practice for Intermediate Students,
Longman, 1986)
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Many of the pros and cons of a rule-driven approach hinge on the quality of the actual rule
explanation. This in turn depends on how user-friendly the rule is. What makes a rule a good rule?
Michael Swan, author of teachers' and students' grammars, offers the following criteria:

• Truth: Rules should be true. While truthfulness may need to be compromised in the
interests of clarity and simplicity, the rule must bear some resemblance to the reality it is
describing. It is surprising how many incorrect explanations you find in TEFL books. A
good example is the distinction usually made between some and any, which goes
something like:

Use some+plural countable/uncountable noun in affirmative sentences.

Use any+plural countable/uncountable noun in negative sentences and questions.

It still fails to explain:

Take any one you want.
I didn't like some of his books.

An explanation based on the difference in meaning between some and any might eliminate
many of these problems.

• Limitation: Rules should show clearly what the limits are on the use of a given form. For
example, to say simply that we use will to talk about the future is of little use to the
learner since it does not show how will is different from other ways of talking about the
future (e.g. going to).

• Clarity: Rules should be clear. Lack of clarity is often caused by ambiguity or obscure
terminology.
For example: 'Use will for spontaneous decisions; use going to for premeditated
decisions.' To which a student responded, 'All my decisions are premeditated'.

• Simplicity: Rules should be simple. Lack of simplicity is caused by overburdening the rule
with subcategories and sub-sub-categories in order to cover all possible instances and
account for all possible exceptions. There is a limit to the amount of exceptions a learner
can remember.

• Familiarity: An explanation should try to make use of concepts already familiar to the
learner. Few learners have specialized knowledge of grammar, although they may well
be familiar with some basic terminology used to describe the grammar of their own
language (e.g. conditional, infinitive, gerund). Most learners have a concept of tense
(past, present, future), but will be less at home with concepts such as deontic and epistemic
modality, for example.

• Relevance: A rule should answer only those questions that the student needs answered.
These questions may vary according to the mother tongue of the learner. For example,
Arabic speakers, who do not have an equivalent to the present perfect, may need a
different treatment of this form than, say, French speakers who have a similar structure
to the English present perfect, but who use it slightly differently.
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A lot depends on the teacher’s presentation of the rule. An effective rule presentation will
include the following features:

 It will be illustrated by an example.

 It will be short.
 Students’ understanding will be checked.
 Students will have an opportunity to personalize the rule.

The Inductive Approach – The Rule-Discovery Path

What are the advantages of encouraging learners to work rules out for themselves?
 Rules learners discover for themselves are more likely to fit their existing mental
structures than rules they have been presented with. These, in turn, will make the rules
more meaningful, memorable, and serviceable.
 The mental effort involved ensures a greater degree of cognitive depth which, again,
ensures greater memorability.
 Students are more actively involved in the learning process, rather than being simply
passive recipients: they are, therefore, likely to be more attentive and more motivated.
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 It is an approach which favors pattern-recognition and problem-solving abilities which

suggests that it is particularly suitable for learners who like this kind of challenge.
 If the problem-solving is done collaboratively, and in the target language, learners get
the opportunity for extra language practice.
 Working things out for themselves prepares students for greater self-reliance and is,
therefore, conducive to learner autonomy.

The disadvantages of an inductive approach include:

 The time and energy spent in working out rules may mislead students into believing
that rules are the objective of language learning, rather than a means.
 The time taken to work out a rule may be at the expense of time spent in putting the
rule to some sort of productive practice.
 Students may hypothesize the wrong rule, or their version of the rule may be either too
broad or too narrow in its application: this is especially a danger where there is no overt
testing of their hypotheses, either through practice examples, or by eliciting an explicit
statement of the rule.
 It can place heavy demands on teachers in planning a lesson. They need to select and
organize the data carefully so as to guide learners to an accurate formulation of the rule,
while also ensuring the data is intelligible.
 However carefully organized the data is, many language areas such as aspect and
modality resist easy rule formulation.
 An inductive approach frustrates students who, by dint of their personal learning style
or their past learning experience (or both), would prefer simply to be told the rule.

Research findings into the relative benefits of deductive and inductive methods have been
inconclusive. Short term gains for deductive learning have been found, and there is some evidence
to suggest that some kinds of language items are better 'given' than 'discovered'. Moreover, when
surveyed, most learners tend to prefer deductive presentations of grammar. Nevertheless, once
exposed to inductive approaches, there is often less resistance as the learners see the benefits of
solving language problems themselves.
Finally, the autonomy argument is not easily dismissed: the capacity to discern patterns and
regularities in naturally occurring input would seem to be an invaluable tool for self-directed
learning, and one, therefore, that might usefully be developed in the classroom.
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The minimal pair approach is designed to overcome the lack of economy of the generative
situation. By getting straight to the point, the minimal pairs presentation combines the best features
of an explanation-driven approach and a discovery approach. It is also relatively easy to plan and
to set up. In terms of efficacy, it relies heavily on the choice of sample sentences. More problematic
still is the lack of context, which can sometimes lead students to the wrong conclusions, or, more
frustratingly, to no conclusion at all.

Functional-Notional Approach
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History

In 1972, the British linguist D.A. Wilkins published a document that proposed a radical shift
away from using the traditional concepts of grammar and vocabulary to describe language to an
analysis of the communicative meanings that learners would need in order to express themselves
and to understand effectively. This initial document was followed by his 1976 work Notional
Syllabuses, which showed how language could be categorized on the basis of notions such as
quantity, location and time, and functions such as making requests, making offers, and apologizing.
Wilkins’ work was used by the Council of Europe in drawing up a communicative language
syllabus, which specified the communicative functions a learner would need in order to
communicate effectively at a given level of competence. At the end of the 1970s, the first course-
books to be based on functional syllabuses began to appear.
Typically, they would be organized on the basis of individual functions and the exponents
needed to express these functions. For example, many course-books would begin with the function
of ‘introducing oneself’, perhaps followed by the function of ‘making requests’, with typical
exponents being ‘Can I ….?’, "Could you ….?’, "Is it alright if I ….?’ and so on. These would often
be practiced in the form of communicative exercises involving pair work, group work, and role
plays. It is interesting to compare this approach with a grammatical syllabus.
In a typical grammatical syllabus, structures using the word ‘would’ tend to appear in later
stages of the syllabus, as they are held to be relatively complex (e.g. "If I knew the answer, I would
tell you"), whereas in a functional syllabus ‘would’ often appears at a very early stage due to its
communicative significance in exponents such as ‘Would you like ….?’, which is extremely common
and of great communicative value even to beginners. The need to apply a grammatical name or
category to the structure is not considered important within the framework of a purely functional
syllabus.
This method of language teaching is categorized along with others under the rubric of a
communicative approach. The method stresses a means of organizing a language syllabus. The
emphasis is on breaking down the global concept of language into units of analysis in terms of
communicative situations in which they are used.

Explanation of specific terms:

 Notions are meaning elements that may be expressed through nouns, pronouns, verbs,
prepositions, conjunctions, adjectives or adverbs.
 A notion is a concept, or idea: it may be quite specific, in which case it is virtually the same
as vocabulary (dog, house, for example); or it may be very general – time, size, emotion,
movement – in which case it often overlaps with the concept of “topics”.
 A notion may be “time past”; this may include past tenses, phrases like a month ago, in 1990,
last week, and utterances using temporal clauses beginning with when….., before…., after….
and so on;
 A function is some kind of communicative act: it is the use of language to achieve a purpose,
usually involving interaction at least between two people. Examples would be suggesting,
promising, apologizing, greeting, inviting.
 “Inviting” may include phrases like “Would you like to….? I suggest…., How about…?
Please…
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Exercise 1 (10 points)

 A situation may affect variations of language such as the use of dialects, the formality or
informality of the language and the mode of expression. Situation includes the following
elements:
A. The persons taking part in the speech act
B. The place where the conversation occurs
C. The time the speech act is taking place
D. The topic or activity that is being discussed
 Exponents are the language utterances or statements that stem from the function, the
situation and the topic.
 Code is the shared language of a community of speakers.
 Code-switching is a change or switch in code during the speech act, which many theorists
believe is purposeful behavior to convey bonding, language prestige or other elements of
interpersonal relations between the speakers.

Functional Categories of Language

Mary Finocchiaro (1983) has placed the functional categories under five headings as noted
below:
 Personal
Clarifying or arranging one’s ideas; expressing one’s thoughts or feelings: love, joy,
pleasure, happiness, surprise, likes, satisfaction, dislikes, disappointment, distress, pain,
anger, anguish, fear, anxiety, sorrow, frustration, annoyance at missed opportunities,
moral, intellectual and social concerns; and the everyday feelings of hunger, thirst,
fatigue, sleepiness, cold, or warmth

 Interpersonal
Enabling us to establish and maintain desirable social and working relationships:
 greetings and leave takings
 introducing people to others
 identifying oneself to others
 expressing joy at another’s success
 expressing concern for other people’s welfare
 extending and accepting invitations
 refusing invitations politely or making alternative arrangements
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 making appointments for meetings

 breaking appointments politely and arranging another mutually convenient time
 apologizing
 excusing oneself and accepting excuses for not meeting commitments
 indicating agreement or disagreement
 interrupting another speaker politely
 changing an embarrassing subject
 receiving visitors and paying visits to others
 offering food or drinks and accepting or declining politely
 sharing wishes, hopes, desires, problems
 making promises and committing oneself to some action
 complimenting someone
 making excuses
 expressing and acknowledging gratitude

 Directive
 Attempting to influence the actions of others; accepting or refusing direction:
 making suggestions in which the speaker is included
 making requests; making suggestions
 refusing to accept a suggestion or a request but offering an alternative
 persuading someone to change his point of view
 requesting and granting permission
 asking for help and responding to a plea for help
 forbidding someone to do something; issuing a command
 giving and responding to instructions
 warning someone
 discouraging someone from pursuing a course of action
 establishing guidelines and deadlines for the completion of actions
 asking for directions or instructions

 Referential
 talking or reporting about things, actions, events, or people in the environment in the
past or in the future; talking about language (what is termed the metalinguistic
function: talking or
 reporting about things, actions, events, or people in the environment in the past or in
the future
 identifying items or people in the classroom, the school the home, the community
 asking for a description of someone or something
 defining something or a language item or asking for a definition
 paraphrasing, summarizing, or translating (L1 to L2 or vice versa)
 explaining or asking for explanations of how something works
 comparing or contrasting things
 discussing possibilities, probabilities, or capabilities of doing something
 requesting or reporting facts about events or actions
 evaluating the results of an action or event
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 Imaginative
 Discussions involving elements of creativity and artistic expression discussing a
poem, a story, a piece of music, a play, a painting, a film, a TV program, etc.
 expanding ideas suggested by other or by a piece of literature or reading material
 creating rhymes, poetry, stories or plays
 recombining familiar dialogs or passages creatively
 suggesting original beginnings or endings to dialogs or stories
 solving problems or mysteries

Exercise 2 (20 points)

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Teaching Grammar in Situational Contexts - Using a Generative Situation

The Generative Situation is a situation which the teacher sets up in the lesson in order to
“generate” several example sentences of a structure.
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Advantages:

A situational context permits presentation of a wide range of language items. The situation
serves as a means of contextualizing the language and this helps clarify its meaning. At the same
time, the generated examples provide the learners with data for induction of the rules of form.
Students can be involved in the development of the presentation as well as in solving the
grammar 'problem': this makes it less dry than a traditional grammar explanation. Moreover, the
situation, if well chosen, is likely to be more memorable than a simple explanation. All these factors
suggest that this approach rates high in terms of efficacy.

Disadvantages:

If students are in the wrong mindset, they are unlikely to do the kind of cognitive work
involved in the induction of grammar rules. This kind of presentation also takes more time than an
explanation. Time spent on presenting language is inevitably time spent at the expense of language
practice, and it is arguable that what most students need is not the presentation of rules, but
opportunities to practice them.
Thus, the generative situation loses points in terms of its economy. And it also requires a
resourceful teacher who not only is able to conjure up situations that generate several structurally
identical sentences, but who has also the means (and the time) to prepare the necessary visual aids.

Example: Teaching should have done using a generative situation

Step 1:
By means of a picture on the board (a drawing, photo, or picture cut from a magazine), the
teacher introduces a character she calls Andy. She draws a rough map of Australia, placing
next to it a picture of a four-wheel drive vehicle. She elicits ideas as to how these pictures are
connected, establishing the situation that Andy has decided to drive across the Australian
desert from the east to the west. She elicits the sort of preparations a person would need to
make for such a journey. Students suggest, for example, that Andy would need a map, a spare
wheel, lots of water, a travelling companion, food, a first aid kit, and so on. The teacher selects
some of these ideas, and writes them in a column on the board, and one or two ideas of her
own:

To do this kind of journey, you should:

take a map
take water
not travel alone
advise the police
not travel in the wet season

Step 2:
The teacher then explains that Andy made no preparations. He didn't take a map, he did not
take water, he travelled alone, etc. She asks the students to imagine what happened. Using
their ideas as well as her own, she constructs the following story:

Andy set off, got lost, got very thirsty, set off in search of help (leaving his vehicle behind), got
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trapped by sudden flood waters, etc. The police set out in search of him but couldn't find him
because he had abandoned his vehicle and left no note. The teacher checks these facts by asking
one or two students to recount them.

Step 3:

The teacher asks the class: Well, what do you think of Andy?, eliciting answers like He was stupid.
Teacher: Why?
At this point, students may venture sentences, like He must take a map.
Having thus established the idea of disapproval of past actions, the teacher models the
sentence: He should have taken a map, repeating it two or three times. The students repeat the
sentence in unison and then individually.
The teacher reminds the students of the concept of disapproval by asking Did he take a map?
(No). Was that a good idea? (No) So ...?
The students respond: He should have taken a map.
She, then, repeats this process using the example of travelling alone, eliciting, modelling,
drilling, and concept-checking the sentence: He shouldn't have travelled alone.
Further prompting elicits example sentences, such as:
He should've taken water. He shouldn't have left his car.
At strategic points, the teacher recaps the sentences that have been generated, using the words
on the board as prompts. So far, nothing has been written on the board.

Step 4:
The teacher then clears the board and writes up the following table:

He should have taken water.

shouldn’t have traveled alone.

She asks students, working in pairs, to add further sentences about the situation to the table.
Individual students read sentences aloud from the table.

Step 5:
The teacher then asks students to imagine the dialogue when the police finally find Andy. She
writes the following exchange on the board:

Police: You should have taken a map.

Andy: I know I should. I didn’t think.

Students, working in pairs, continue writing the dialogue along the same lines, and then
practice it aloud, taking it in turns to be the police officer and Andy.
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Teaching Grammar through Texts

If learners are to achieve a functional command of a second language, they will need to be
able to understand and produce not just isolated sentences, but whole texts in that language.
Language is context-sensitive; which is to say that an utterance becomes fully intelligible only when
it is placed in its context.
Coursebook texts tend to be specially tailored for ease of understanding and so as to display
specific features of grammar. This often gives them a slightly unreal air, as in this example:

Authentic texts or classroom texts?

Advocates of authentic texts argue that not only are such specially written EFL texts uninteresting
- and therefore unmotivating - but they misrepresent the way the language is used in real-life contexts. On
the other hand, the problems associated with authentic texts cannot be wished away, either, as any teacher
who has attempted to use a dense newspaper article with low level students will have discovered. The linguistic
load of unfamiliar vocabulary and syntactic complexity can make such texts impenetrable, and ultimately very
demotivating.
A compromise position is to take authentic texts, and to simplify them in ways which retain
their genuine flavor. This is the approach generally adopted by coursebook writers nowadays.
Another alternative is to write classroom texts, but to make them more engaging than the example
quoted above. In fact, with only the slightest change, the text about Mr. West could be made
somewhat more attention-grabbing:
This is Mr. West. He has a bag in his left hand. Where is he standing? He is standing at the door of
his house. What is Mr. West going to do? He is going to put his hand into his pocket. He is going to take a
gun out of his pocket. He is going to point the gun at...

The implications of this context-sensitive view of language on grammar teaching are that:
• Grammar is best taught and practiced in context.
• This means using whole texts as contexts for grammar teaching.

Advantages of using texts:

o They provide co-textual information, allowing learners to deduce the meaning of
unfamiliar grammatical items from the co-text.
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o If the texts are authentic they can show how the item is used in real communication.
o As well as grammar input, texts provide vocabulary input, skills practice, and exposure
to features of text organization.
o Their use in the classroom is good preparation for independent study.
o If the texts come from the students themselves, they may be more engaging and their
language features therefore more memorable.

Disadvantages
o The difficulty of the text, especially an authentic one, may mean that some of the above
advantages are lost.
o The alternative - to use simplified texts - may give a misleading impression as to how the
language item is naturally used, again defeating the purpose of using texts.
o Not all texts will be of equal interest to students.
o Students who want quick answers to simple questions may consider the use of texts to be
the 'scenic route' to language awareness, and would prefer a quicker, more direct route
instead.

No single method of grammar presentation is going to be appropriate for all grammar

items, nor for all learners, nor for all learning contexts. A lot will also depend on the kind of practice
opportunities that the teacher provides. In the next chapter we will look at a range of practice types.

Teaching Grammar through Stories

Everyone loves a story. Stories can be used for both eliciting and illustrating grammar
points. The former employs inductive reasoning, while the latter requires deductive thought, and
it is useful to include both approaches in lesson planning. In addition, a well-told story is the perfect
context for a structure-discourse match, but the technique can also be used effectively for a
structure-social factor match.
Storytelling is one of these extremely versatile techniques, and once you get the hang of it,
it can be a convenient and natural grammar teaching tool. You may even find that it is the technique
that holds students' attention best, as well as the one they enjoy most.
Grammar points can be contextualized in stories that are absorbing and just plain fun if
they are selected with the interest of the class in mind, are told with a high degree of energy, and
involve the students. Students can help create stories and impersonate characters in them.
Students will certainly appreciate and respond to your efforts to include them in the
storytelling process, but they will also enjoy learning about you through your stories.
Stories should last from one to five minutes, and the more exaggerated and bizarre they are,
the more likely students will remember the teaching points they illustrate.
Storytelling is traditional in almost all cultures. We can tap into that tradition for a very
portable resource and a convenient and flexible technique for teaching any phase of a grammar
lesson. A story provides a realistic context for presenting grammar points and holds and focuses
students’ attention in a way that no other technique can. Although some teachers are better at telling
stories than others, almost any of us can tell stories with energy and interest. Students naturally like
to listen to stories, and most are remembered long after the lesson is over.
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EVALUATION

Name: ________________________________ Professor: _____________________________

Year Level: ____________________________ Date: _________________________________

Directions: On separate sheets of paper, answer as asked. Thereafter, attach them and the other
sheets (where you have written your answers to the earlier exercises) to this page.

1. In your own understanding, determine and discuss the different approaches in teaching
grammar. (10 points each = 60 points)

2. While video-recording yourself, demonstrate at least one (1) English lesson employing
any of the previously discussed approaches in teaching grammar. Thereafter, submit your
video to your course’s SSU-LMS account. (30 points)

Demonstration Teaching Rubric

5 4 3 2
Criteria Distinguished Proficient Basic Unacceptable

Mastery of the Subject Matter

Organization of Lesson

Class Management

Methods and Techniques

Personality/Grooming

Promotion of desirable values and habits

Communication Skills

Use of Instructional Materials

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3.3 References
Crystal, D. (1997). English as a global language. Cambridge University.
Press.
Krashen, S. (1982). Principles and practice in second language acquisition. Englewood Cliffs,
Prentice-Hall.
Larsen-Freeman, D. (2001). Teaching grammar. In M. Celce-Murcia (ed.), Teaching English as a
second or foreign language (3rd edn. pp. 251–66). Retrieved from:
https://www.uibk.ac.at/anglistik/staff/freeman/course-documents/tesfl_-
_teaching_grammar.pdf
Larsen-Freeman, Diane. (2001). Teaching Language: From Grammar to Grammaring. Heinle &
Heinle.
Schmidt, R. (1990). The role of consciousness in second language learning. Applied Linguistics
11, 2, 129–58.

3.4 Acknowledgment

The images, tables, figures, and pieces of information contained in this learning packet
were taken from the references cited above.