The role of context in the

presentation of grammar
Walter Petrovitz

Although the need for contextualization in ESL grammar instruction has

long been recognized, a great deal of traditional teaching methodology in
this area still persists. Standard texts, which are adequate for certain
grammatical rules, have often misrepresented other rules, usually at the
expense of semantic factors crucial for correct application. While the
misrepresented rule is sufficient for the student to provide correct
responses in carefully contrived exercises, it often fails in real-language
situations. The argument is made here that no single approach is
satisfactory for teaching all grammatical rules; rules must first be
distinguished on the basis of certain linguistic criteria before pedagogical
strategies can be considered.

Introduction No materials used in ESL instruction have evidenced as much

conservatism as those used in the teaching of grammar. The model of
the traditional textbook, in which every rule is presented by means of a
general explanation followed by an exercise consisting of a series of non-
contextualized sentences, is still found to a greater or lesser degree in
most grammar materials. Some recent approaches have attempted to
supplement or replace the traditional approach with models of correct
usage and exercises which provide a greater degree of contextualization,
While this development is welcome it presents certain difficulties since it
fails to distinguish among types of grammatical rules. First, contextua-
lization is more important for some grammatical items than for others:
discourse factors seem much more crucial for tense usage, for example,
than for irregular plurals. Second, many of the more traditional exercises
do seem to be useful in highlighting certain grammatical points.

Types of I would like to suggest that there are linguistic principles which help to
grammatical determine the manner in which grammar is presented. An important and
information overlooked consideration is the kind of grammatical information upon
which the operation of a particular rule relies. Based on the differences
among grammatical components familiar to linguists, these types of
information can be distinguished as lexical, syntactic, or semantic. (Since
pronunciation is usually taught separately, the phonological component
will not be discussed here.) I am, by the way, drawing the divisions
rather broadly. Thus morphological rules, depending on the type, will
fall into either the lexical or the syntactic component, and the term
semantic as used here will include pragmatics and discourse factors.
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 The following are a few examples of how rules may differ according to
the kind of information they use. Lexical information provides the basis
for rules in which the operation is crucially dependent upon the
properties of individual words. Non-productive inflectional morphology,
verb complementation, and collocations involve rules of this sort. Rules
relying chiefly on syntactic information depend on the presence of
elements of a particular structural description. Once the requisite
conditions are met, the rule operates without exception. These rules
include yes/no question formation, the placement of complementizers,
and subject-verb agreement. Rules depending on semantic information
are distinguished by the fact that it is often impossible to decide on their
applicability in a given sentence apart from considerations of meaning,
context, and knowledge of the world and the ways in which language is
used. The selection of verb tenses, article usage, and the determination
of pronominal reference are examples of rules of this last type. It should
be noted that a distinction is maintained above between form and use,
different types of grammatical information being employed for each.
While it may at first seem that these distinctions are obvious, I will
suggest that a lack of differentiation among these rule types can result in
misleading teaching strategies, which cause students to formulate
incorrect hypotheses concerning the ways in which grammatical rules
operate.

Problems with The main shortcoming of traditional grammar materials is a lack of

grammar context, and in recent years the need to correct this has been recognized.
exercises One unfortunate tendency is that certain buzz-words, such as
communication, use, and context, have been used to promote
certain materials which, while employing a more discourse-oriented
approach, have repeated many of the errors of the past. Let us consider
how two very common exercises, found both in traditional materials and
those claiming to be more progressive, misrepresent grammatical
information.

The use of cues The error of mistaking one kind of grammatical rule for another is
nowhere more evident than in the treatment given to verb tenses. While
there are occasionally explanations which are wrong or misleading, the
problem more often lies in the examples and exercises. In the common
verb tense exercise, the student is provided with an uninflected verb and
is asked to supply the correct form in a given sentence. The following are
typical examples:
1 a. The Chancellor constantly (receive) suggestions for simplifying
the tax system. These on occasion (be) quite sensible. (Graver
1986: 77)
b. John and I went for a walk. I had difficulty keeping up with him
because he (walk) so fast. (Murphy 1994: 33)
The expected responses are the simple present in la and the past
continuous in lb, and these are, of course, responses a native speaker
might spontaneously give. These answers are elicited by cueing, i.e.,
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 providing a certain expression or grammatical form in each sentence as a
cue for the desired response.

If students are repeatedly exposed to models of this type, they may

develop the impression that the use of a particular verb tense is
dependent not upon the intended meaning of the speaker, but rather
upon a purely formal co-occurrence relationship between certain verb
tenses and certain expressions or grammatical forms. Thus tense usage is
perceived as a system of rules dependent on lexical or syntactic
parameters, rather than on semantic considerations. Were this true,
learning tense usage could be reduced to memorizing lists of
expressions, each with its corresponding tense (1a), or mechanically
applying tense-harmony rules (1b). In the course of hypothesis testing,
students understandably come to this conclusion since the sentences
presented are taken out of context, and instructions lead them to believe
that the range of choice given will provide a form which is invariably
correct. Other tenses could, of course, be demanded by particular
contexts, For example, the simple past could be used in (1a) if a former
situation is being referred to; the simple present could be used in (1b) if
John is by nature a fast walker.

Thus, while it is possible for students to do well in exercises in which the

expected verb form is cued for each sentence, this does not indicate that
they have mastered tense usage. Such activities can further handicap
students in that they come to believe that the imagined co-occurrence
restrictions are uniquely defined. They may therefore judge many
acceptable sentences as incorrect.

Transformation Exercises in which sentences undergo grammatical transformation are

exercises another common feature of many grammar materials. The formation of
the passive is often practised in this manner. The problem in this case is
that the passive is represented merely as a structural variant of the active
with no independent meaning or use. While the result is structurally
correct, certain discourse-related considerations are not taken into
account. The example below is typical of such exercises:
2 a. The chambermaid hasnt cleaned my room. (Jones 1985: 59)
b. My room hasnt been cleaned by the chambermaid.

Since new or important information tends to be put at the end of an

English sentence, the inclusion of an agent in a passive sentence suggests
that the agent is especially significant for the discourse or is the focus of
contrast. While assuming normal intonation, 2a simply comments on the
condition of the room; 2b is more open to the interpretation that the
room was cleaned, but by someone other than the chambermaid.

Exercises used to elicit restrictive relative clauses illustrate a similar

problem. Consider the following sentence-combining exercise:
3 a. I saw the man. He closed the door. (Azar 1989: 239)
b. I saw the man who closed the door.
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 Again, while the result is structurally correct, it leaves an incorrect
impression of the grammar, in this case that the meaning of the sentence
containing the relative clause is equivalent to the combined meanings of
the two sentences it was supposedly derived from. In the first sentence in
3a, however, the use of the definite article would be appropriate only if
the man in question were familiar or unique in the context, for example,
if he had been mentioned before or if he were in a room which otherwise
contained only women. In 3b, on the other hand, the definite article is
used because the noun it modifies obtains its unique reference through
the restrictive relative clause. Such sentence-combining exercises thus
fail to provide, as Zamel (1980) argues, an appreciation of the general
rhetorical features of writing.

The loss of semantic The misrepresentations in the examples above all involve an under-
parameters valuation of the semantic dimension of a given rule, a very common type
of error. Those linguistic elements which are dependent on parameters
such as meaning, discourse, and pragmatics are conceptually difficult and
require a considerable degree of familiarity with the language. There is a
great deal of cross-linguistic variation with regard to the ways in which
grammatical systems employ these features, and explanations which
satisfy a native speaker might not be meaningful to a language learner,
as argued in Hinkel(1992). The temptation for the teacher is to provide
rules and examples which involve simple concepts, since such formula-
tions do not demand a sophisticated understanding of the nuances of the
target language. The student, of course, appreciates these simplified
rules as they are much more concrete, and easier to internalize.

Fixing the damage A difficulty often arises with students at intermediate levels who have
already formed incorrect hypotheses about grammatical rules. In such
cases, specific measures might be taken to rectify this. To counter the
effects of cueing, for example, an exercise can be constructed containing
a miscue, i.e., a form which seems to call for a particular response, the
use of which is countermanded by the broader context. In sentences such
as the following, students frequently supply the simple present:
4 a. In her last job, she often (criticize) the companys policies.
b They (give) me an award. Its on the desk.

The adverb in 4a and the tense of the second verb in 4b serve as miscues:
in order to produce an acceptable response, the student would have to
look past the misleading indicator in each case and consider the meaning
of the sentence as a whole and the context in which it might appear.
Exercises in which the same adverb is shown to occur with a variety of
tenses, or in which different tenses are used and the resulting changes in
meaning explained, are also useful.
While considerations of rule type are helpful in recognizing errors in
existing materials and guiding remediation, the analysis outlined above
would be of greatest value if it could suggest more appropriate strategies
for the presentation of grammar. The challenge is to match materials to
the type of information upon which a particular rule depends.
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Semantics Ideally the instructor should use a wide variety of classroom activities to
help provide illustrative contexts for the teaching of semantically based
rules - no easy task given the inadequacies of many grammar materials
in this regard. Practice books which accompany some of the materials
mentioned above have made up for certain deficiencies in the originals.
(See, for example, Hashemi and Murphy (1995) on verb tenses and Azar
(1992) on modal auxiliaries for good examples of contextualization.)
The brevity of exposition generally found in grammar materials also
poorly serves semantically-based rules, which require a more detailed
explanation and a greater number of examples to be fully compre-
hended. While such simplicity may be necessary at lower levels, the need
for greater elaboration is especially felt when learners begin to express
fairly complex and subtle meanings, precisely at the point when they
begin to pass beyond intensive ESL instruction and are expected to
work more independently. Advanced students should therefore make
use of appropriate reference grammars, such as Eastwood (1994) or
Thomson and Martinet (1986), much in the way that they use
dictionaries.
In addition to the use of specifically grammar-oriented materials, the
working of semantically-based rules could be pointed out and discussed
in reading or listening activities in which an extended context is present.
Such an approach is especially useful when the rules governing a
particular grammatical phenomenon are numerous and complex, as in
the case of article usage.

Syntax Rules relying primarily on structural features differ from those based on
semantic parameters in that they operate at sentence level. There are
two main goals with regard to teaching syntax. The first is grammatical
consciousness-raising to make students aware of syntactic structure, as
proposed in Rutherford and Sharwood Smith (1985). This is important
for both passive and active language skills since comprehension and the
ability to manipulate structures depend on a clear understanding of the
relations among the constituents of a sentence. The second is for
students to be able to spontaneously perform operations. It is precisely
in the case of the structure-dependent rules that habit formation is
important, and other considerations are lessened. Subject-auxiliary
inversion in questions, for example, is not crucial for communicative
purposes, intonation being sufficient to convey the intention of inquiry.
It is perhaps for this reason that uninverted questions so often become a
fossilized form in the speech of even very advanced learners, and it is
precisely this type of error which is most difficult to eradicate. Activities
which emphasize accuracy even at the early levels are therefore
necessary.
Traditional textbooks, with their extensive practice in manipulating
structures, are most effective in focusing on rules of this type. Although
recommending drills may seem like a step backward, it should be kept in
mind that this is intended only for some grammatical rules. Such
exercises will also be more interesting and useful if they are eventually
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 incorporated into activities with a communicative component. Fotos and
Ellis (1993), Omaggio Hadley (1993), and Terrell (1991) provide
examples of this.

The lexicon Rules relying on lexical features are in some ways the most difficult to
deal with. Although considerations of meaning and structure play a role
in determining the idiosyncratic patterns of a few lexical items (e.g. the
alternative principal parts of verbs such as hang and shine), such
patterns generally do not fall under any broad principles. The
acquisition of such rules depends on frequent exposure to the words
involved. Thus there must be a conscious attempt to present and bring
attention to aspects of certain lexical items again and again in every skill
area within a course of instruction. Demonstrating specific lexical
properties which are maintained across derived forms (see Rutherford
1987: 89-90), and the grouping of semantically related words while
comparing their syntactic properties (see Little 1994: 120), would both
be useful approaches.

Conclusion Even if the presentation of grammatical rules is simplified for

pedagogical purposes, it must accurately reflect what we know about
the grammar of the target language. As Berman (1979) argues, there is
no reason why a rule of thumb should not be a correct rule of grammar.
Consideration of the linguistic distinctions among rules allows the
instructor to avoid the errors frequently made in textbooks, and to use
contextualized materials and other strategies for the teaching of
grammar to their greatest advantage.
Received November 1996

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(3rd edn.) Oxford: Oxford University Press. Zamel, V. 1980. Re-evaluating sentence-combin-
Hashemi, L. and R. Murphy. 1995. English ing practice. TESOL Quarterly 14: 81-90.
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Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. The author
Hinkel, E. 1992. L2 tense and time reference. Walter Petrovitz is Assistant Professor of ESL at
TESOL Quarterly 26: 557-72. St. Johns University in New York City. He
Jones, L. 1985. Use of English. Cambridge: Cam- completed his doctoral work in theoretical linguis-
bridge University Press. tics at the City University of New York and has
Little, D. 1994. Words and their properties. taught courses in linguistics and ESL for a number
Perspectives on Pedagogical Grammar. T. of years. His current research interests involve the
Odlin (ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University role of context in the determination of grammati-
Press. cality judgments.

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