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Sharwood Smith (1993) notes that whether or not to use grammatical
terminology is still an empirical question. However, once again, general
prescriptions are probably not in order because there are aspects of certain
languages, e.g., in French, sometimes the masculine and feminine forms are
homophones (bleu, masculine for blue, and bleue its feminine counterpart), such
that the concept of gender and the way it is marked would seem to be needed to
help learners understand why there are two forms in writing.
Swain and Lapkin (1998) track students’ use of metalanguage in
collaborative dialogues. For example, they report on an episode where two
learners of French discuss the verb sortir and whether it does or does not take the
reflexive form. The researchers assert that such “language-related episodes,”
where learners work together to use grammatical metalanguage and the reasoning
of others to expand their knowledge of the language, helps learners at the same
time to regulate their own cognitive functioning.
Syllabus Design
While developmental sequences may indeed be impervious to instruction,
it is likely the case that instruction accelerates the overall rate of acquisition.
Lightbown suggests that grammar instruction in advance of learners’
readiness may prime their subsequent noticing (Lightbown, 1998).
Terrell offers a role for grammar instruction in providing students with
advance organizers (1991).
Acknowledging the constraints that developmental sequences may pose,
but mindful of the accelerated learning that comes with grammatical
instruction, Larsen-Freeman (2003) recommends that teachers adopt a
“grammar checklist” rather than a sequence. In this way, teachers have an
unordered set of grammar structures they need to teach, but they can do so
locally in a way that attends to their students’ readiness to learn. It also
means that grammar structures can be worked on as they arise in content
or during communicative activities, thus the contextualization that is
facilitative of learning the grammar is already present. Finally, using a
Teaching and Assessment of Grammar 15