Reddit reviews Sociocultural Theory and Second Language Learning (Oxford Applied Linguistics)
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Hi, I'm an ESL teacher, too, and I'm working on a degree in Second Language Acquisition at Sophia University in Tokyo. You and I probably agree on way more things than we disagree on, so I think we've just gotten off on the wrong foot.
>Not sure where you got the idea that grammar = whatever sounds right to me
The basis of syntax is the "native speaker judgment". Really, it's the only objective measure of whether something is grammatical or not, because grammar only exists as a system in the heads of speakers of the language. Until we can scan brains at a fine enough level to actually read out the grammar of languages, we'll have to rely on the rather clunky method of asking native speakers and combining the results. I humbly submit that as a graduate student in linguistics with a few publications under my belt, my native speaker judgments are at least as valid as the next person's.
>"What sounds right" differs from person to person, region to region, and culture to culture
Yes indeed! This indicates that those people have different grammars. When my aunt from Georgia says, "I'm finna carry my mom to Piggly Wiggly's", she's speaking grammatically in her dialect. Her dialect has different grammar from mine, as a speaker from the Pacific Northwest, but it's grammatical in her dialect. One of the key assumptions of syntax, since back when Chomsky started generative syntax many decades ago, is that native speakers are by definition speaking grammatically within their own idiolect. In syntax, my aunt's dialect would be called a "stigmatized variety", because other speakers often judge it as "uneducated" or "incorrect".
>Giving people rules helps them to understand WHY something is the way it is, so that when they see a new sentence or grammar form, or try to make their own, they can interpret/construct it using these rules.
Unfortunately, our brains don't process rules quickly enough to use them productively. Michael T. Ullman has a very insightful model for this, called the Declarative/Procedural Model. Essentially, we have a system of declarative memory, seated in the parietal lobe, which includes things like state capitals, vocabulary, and where we left our keys. It's slowish, but practically limitless storage, and adults are very good at it. The sex hormones we get flooded with at puberty activate it. Procedural memory, seated in the basal ganglia, includes things like pronunciation, riding a bicycle, or playing a guitar. It's fast, largely unconscious, and kids are much better at it than adults. The sex hormones we get at puberty deactivate it. When native speakers of a language talk, fMRI scans show a lot of activity in the basal ganglia, and much less in the parietal lobe. Lower proficiency non-native speakers show much more activity in the parietal lobe, but as proficiency increases, they 'proceduralize' their skills, and show more activity in the basal ganglia. A key point, though, is that there is no known mechanism for converting the one kind of knowledge into another. Essentially, learners are learning the skill twice.
>If you actually reject formal grammar rules, how exactly would you go about teaching English to someone?
That's really two questions in one. I reject pedagogical grammar rules, because they're inaccurate. Certainly I don't reject the concept of grammar, because of course there are utterances that are acceptable in English and utterances that are not. "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously" is a perfectly cromulent sentence in English, in terms of grammar, although it doesn't mean anything. "Colorless sleep green furiously ideas" is very clearly unacceptable grammatically, something that any native speaker of the language would pick up immediately.
When I go about teaching people English, I use an amalgam of approaches, chiefly Systemic Theoretical Instruction (uses lots of diagrams and cheat sheets, then guides students in internalizing the content), Focus on Form (lots of communicative practice with about 10~20% of the class focused on grammar, vocabulary, or some other formal aspect of the language) and a Process Syllabus (developing the course along with the students, focusing on what they want to learn and are ready to learn). When I want to teach students some aspect of grammar, I will generally give them a handout with a flowchart or other diagram that explains how to use it, then I'll have them try to apply it to a few written exercises. I sandwich that into the middle of a lesson involving more practice English use, such as practicing ordering at a restaurant or writing a blog, drawn from what the students tell me they're interested in and want to work on. If a learner wants to work on formal or academic English, then that's a specific variety of speech that they'll need to learn. The principle is the same, however: given a lot of practice and a little focus on form, they'll eventually internalize the grammar.
But notice the ways that this approach differs from a traditional, "transmission pedagogy" point of view. In a traditional classroom, I start from the point of view that the teacher has accurate knowledge, the students have no knowledge, and the buckets in their head must be filled with the garden hose of a teacher's lecture. In Systemic Theoretical Instruction, I start from the point of view that students have knowledge, and I offer support (called "scaffolding") to help them change and upgrade their existing skills. The students are active, and rather than memorizing rules per se*, they're learning to apply a process that they can then internalize and make automatic. This agrees with the findings in SLA research on how learners build and adjust their developing language, which we call the "interlanguage". Rather than seeing their language as "broken" English, it's more productive to view it as a developing system including elements of their native language, English they've learned, and novel elements they've developed themselves.
If you're interested in reading more about this point of view, I recommend the following:
I good general overview of SLA aimed at teachers and learners.
A more technical approach to SLA aimed at researchers.
A collection of articles by big names in the field of SLA.
A very nice overview of the Vygotskyan theory of learning as applied to SLA.
*Let me know if you need access to that--no one should have to pay to get access to journal articles.