2. Applying DDL Approach in Teaching Grammar Interactively Said Ahmad Zohairy

Tabuk University, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA)

INTRODUCTION

It is obvious that, corpus linguistics nowadays is one of the most expanding

it provides a means for the empirical analysis of language and in so doing

Abstract

Recent research showed that, a corpus-based analysis can investigate almost any

language patterns such as lexical, structural, lexico-grammatical. Also, it could be

deep enough to figure out very specific issues (e.g. male versus female usage of tag

questions). Therefore, corpora; collections of electronic language texts for linguistic

analysis, is expected to revolutionize language teaching. According to Barlow (2002),

there are three areas in which corpus linguistics can be applied to teaching: a)

syllabus design b) materials development c) classroom activities. Therefore, this

study targeted Saudi-college students who used to be taught English grammar using

the classical Grammar-translation method. The researcher used corpora to design

classroom activities to teach grammar interactively using the Data Driven Learning

approach (DDL). These activities consist of hands on student-conducted language

analysis in which the students use corpora to construct generalizations and note

language patterns and observe language behavior. This paper introduces teachers to

a number of procedures that enhance their abilities to use DDL approach. In spite of

DDL limitations, data analysis recommends applying DDL approach in teaching

grammar to give students a chance to notice and build up grammar rules to enhance

autonomous learning.

computerized texts (corpus) compiled from various language resources

(written or spoken) helped to deepen researchers understanding of language

air 2004: p1). Some researchers

might think that CL new in language analysis. Pearce (2012) argued that

corpus linguistics (CL) has a longer history than we might imagine, though. It

was only from the 1960s when applied linguists started using these huge

collections of computerized texts to study various language phenomena.

Then, more attention was paid to CL. Since then, the applications of corpus

an increasing number of materials and

resources for use in language teaching and learning now boast that they are

- - -

informed approaches directly connected to classroom practices and learning,

is called

the chance to explore language for better understanding of its use. At the

same time, the teacher role became a research facilitator rather than a source

of information. In addition, this approach tends to use authentic language

samples rather than pre-fabricated ones.

The DDL approach is used in this study within the context of grammar

instruction given the controversial nature of teaching grammar. There has

always been a heated debate among language instructors about whether

implicit or explicit instruction of grammar should be used.

On the one hand, teaching grammar explicitly focuses on grammatical

forms while paying little attention to their discourse context. On the other

hand, teaching grammar implicitly focuses on meaning rather than form and

allows students to explore language rather than giving them a set of model

examples to repeat and imitate. Experience showed that teaching grammar

explicitly is difficult and boring for many students; DDL approach introduces

grammar as a theory of language structure rather than a description of

that have for so long been the stock-in-trade of textbooks and grammars as

grammar implicitly. Using such an approach in teaching grammatical patterns

investigate how certain linguistic phenomena is used by native speakers

rather than acting as passive receivers who receive grammar rules as an

abstract.

LITERATURE REVIEW

What is DDL and why?

Data Driven Learning refers to a teaching approach that involves using a large

amount of authentic language data to investigate and figure out a certain

language pattern(s) and understand its use and meaning. This approach was

presented by Tim Jones. His early pioneer work (1998, 1991) of using corpora

in classrooms encouraged the use of DDL approach in teaching different

language skills and systems including grammar (Braun, 2007, p. 307).Thus

DDL approach is succinctly defined by Odlin (1994, pp. 319-

approach to language teaching that gives central importance to developing

autonomy and highlighted their roles as explorers rather than just receivers.

In a similar study in Taiwan, Tian (2005) examined 98 university

students to investigate the effectiveness of DDL in three different instructional

contexts; grammar was one of them. His findings stated that DDL seemed to

points. Reviewing this study was helpful to answer the question of which

levels can be taught using DDL approach? Tian divided his participants into

two groups according to their proficiency level (high and low); he argued that

both groups improved significantly after being taught using DDL approach

(Tian; 2005. P. 365).Moreover, other studies such as (Stevens 1991; Cobb

1997; Gaskell and Cobb 2004; Yoon and Hirvela 2004) supported the idea

that learners benefit from corpus consultation in learning vocabulary and

grammar, and in improving writing skills, as well. In addition, Chambers

(2005) argued that DDL approach mirrors many theories of second language

. Experience shows that

ize language, analyze data

and draw conclusions independently. As a result, applying DDL approach in

Furthermore, DDL approach creates an atmosphere of fun and adventure for

students. Th

self-esteem and motivation.

Explicit versus implicit grammar teaching

Experience showed that the idea of introducing grammar to Saudi-Pre-

Intermediate students as a device of producing structure is heavily criticized.

Furthermore, students find it boring and confusing, especially after they finish

the elementary level. Therefore, teaching grammar explicitly to adults

(university pre-intermediate students) seems ineffective. According to the

problems such as:

Students usually fail to understand grammar points presented through

grammar notices in grammars and course books.

They cannot use grammar items away from the context of the lesson.

They get less motivated due to lack of variations and limited number of

examples.

Grammar charts do not always include enough authentic examples which

are necessary to enable students to communicate naturally.

Negative transfer and overgeneralization are highly expected as Saudi

students tend to depend on their first language grammar to understand

English language grammar.

Project rational

Johns stated that the core of DDL approach is that students act as language

detectives as they keep discovering rules and grammar patterns for

themselves (1997, p.101). However, many researchers tend to re

description of DDL targeted learners as well motivated, sophisticated and with

experience of research methods (Johns 1986, p.161). This notion directed the

Boulton claiming

levels of language ability, and it has been argued that DDL is not appropriate

reported using DDL for lower level studen

-level international students.

Consequently, the researcher aims to introduce an alternative teaching

result, DDL approach is chosen as a grammar teaching approach because it

allows students to elicit grammar rules from authentic texts and encourages

teaching routine to the implicit teaching routine helps both teachers and

students as argued by Sinclair (2004) that teachers become coordinators or

facilitators and students become researchers who observe and interpret

language patterns (p.16).

Therefore, this project aims to answer the following questions:

1- Does the use of DDL approach improve pre-

understanding of grammar?

2- Does the use of DDL for teaching grammar motivate pre-intermediate

Saudi students?

Pre-

As per university placement test, participants of this study are a group of pre-

intermediate Saudi students studying general English in a university-

preparatory-year program. Students attend a four-hour class of English on

daily basis; at least two out of these four hours are dedicated to grammar

transfer is high and obvious as students were taught English at high school

using the grammar translation method. Therefore, they rely on their L1

grammar rules to understand L2 grammar rules. However, they show a lot of

interest in studying grammar as they accept it as the main route to language

competency, and this attitude is due to the way these students were taught

English during elementary and high school. The main aim of this program is to

qualify students to study their majors after finishing this one-year program.

According to my experience in Saudi Arabia, the grammar translation

method is widely used by teachers. This method aims to provide students with

detailed analysis of English grammar rules as accuracy is strongly

emphasized. Therefore, teachers tend to teach grammar explicitly through

using grammar charts which are not reflecting enough authenticity.

Consequently, students were exposed to a large number of grammar rules to

memorize in order to be able to answer MCQs in their final exams. This type

of test-oriented-teaching is very popular among intermediate and high school

teachers. Therefore, students come to the university with expectations of

studying grammar in the same way; they face a lot of problems coping with

the advanced level of grammar taught at this stage.

In the English Language Center, Taibah University, Madinah, KSA, the

-informed course by

Michel McCarthy. It draws on extensive analysis of the Cambridge

International Corpus (Cambridge University press, 2012). In spite of being a

corpus-informed, it focuses mainly on frequency while teaching grammar is

traditionally presented in grammar charts. Although, the book always presents

conversations or reading passages that explain the use of any grammar item

before introducing the grammar chart, such a traditional format of these

grammar charts encourages the domination of grammar translation method

which works sometimes; especially with young learners and children.

Experience showed that, Saudi students learn more and smoothly when they

-it-

autonomous learning helps Saudi students to develop especially university

students. Consequently, the researcher decided on applying the DDL

approach which offers some corpus applications; these applications can be

done by both teachers and learners as argued by Chambers (2005) that an

My experience in the Middle East shows that, following the grammar

trans

development. The students used to face difficulties understanding the

ose students were taught grammar explicitly

for more than six years before they were enrolled in this university-

preparatory-year program. Providing them with grammar charts did not help

them understand this certain grammar note, though. Therefore, this paper

focuses on using DDL to introduce the following grammar items as a sample

while hypothesizing that it could be used in teaching grammar in general.

-

-

- Neither/so do I.

- Neither/so am I.

- Neither/so have I.

METHODOLOGY

Study objetives

This paper aims to apply DDL approach to:

tool.

Use authentic material in teaching grammar rather than presenting

bare grammar rules.

Enable students to figure out grammar rules rather than acting as

passive receivers, in other words enhancing their autonomy.

Corpora

Addressing the above mentioned aims, students were trained to enter COCA

to explore differences in meaning and use of both . In

addition a number of corpus-

understanding and confirm their findings.

Procedures

-

based course book. In a discussion with students, the researcher recognized

that they were never introduced to corpus or its applications. The researcher

started a discussion about what corpus is, its content (highlighting

authenticity), and how pre-intermediate learners can benefit from using

corpus. With this group, the researcher used some examples from the course

and

. Such a discussion encourages students to

ask more questions about the use of these two adjectives and which nouns

collocate with them. In the textbook, there are very few examples and there

end of this discussion the researcher introduced corpus as a rich resource

that answers many questions about use and meaning of these two words. The

researcher provided students with two-concordance lists and guided their

findings to prepare two lists of nouns that collocate with every adjective (see

appendix 1). Their first experience was rich and encouraged students to know

more about CL. Although this experience was pretty much simplified and

controlled by the researcher, students were very happy to post their findings

in the classroom walls. The figure below illustrates these two lists while the

course book offered only one example for each adjective (figure 1):

Figure 1 The results of searching c

Baked:

beans, clay, cookies, chicken, potato, goods, bread, pancakes, turkey chest, apple,

eggs, fish

Roasted :

beef, lamb, chicken, pork, pepper, coffee, meat, corn, eggplant, garlic, tomato,

pepper,

Experience shows that it is not recommended to leave students explore

corpus without guidance. Sinclair (2004) argued that corpus is not a simple

sometime (usually the last ten minutes of every lesson) to train students on

using COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English) and BNC (British

National Corpus). Since classes in Taibah University do not have any internet

access, the researcher tends to prepare print out of the first few pages of both

corpora and provide students with copies to try creating accounts at home

(see appendix 2). After that, the researcher tends to answer some of their

questions about difficult vocabularies by showing them some concordance

lines and discuss it with them. At this stage, it is helpful to highlight

instead of tax figures). This way, students get a chance to realize the benefits

of using corpora and develop an interest towards their applications in

classrooms.

After exposing students to corpora and using concordance lines to

deepen their understanding of DDL importance, students were given simple

assignments to perform on COCA or BYU at home. Students findings were

very encouraging (see appendices3 and 4). These two activities help in

introducing learners to the concept of frequency which was illustrated in their

ee

figure 2) where they can easily figure out different parts of speech. A list of

daily activities verbs and their collocations were prepared by the students

(e.g. have, do and make). These daily activities verbs were chosen as they

are among the most common words in English language.

and shared in the class. The aim of the above mentioned points was to

introduce students to corpora applications (e.g. frequency) and encourage

their autonomy and motivation. Saudi students are fascinated by technology

and they have all the required facilities at home (e.g. computers and internet).

After spending some time in exploring vocabulary, students were asked

to use some concordance lines to fig

clarify meaning and form as follows:

Meaning questions

In order to explore the meaning of both words, the researcher prepared a print

of some concordance lines (see appendix 5) to help students answer the

following questions which address the meaning of both words. The researcher

started by the meaning as students can easily learn the form when they

understand the meaning.

Figure 2 A KWIC list/ Corpus-based activity

Look at the list below and try to figure out the color reference:

1. Which one of them expresses choice between two possibilities or more?

2.

Students read few lines (nominated by the researcher) and discuss

their answers to these questions. The researcher decides on lines that match

pervision, students were able to figure out

the difference in meaning. Then, they were asked to complete some notes to

verify their understanding (see figure 3).

Form questions

1.

2. What kind of structure follows neither? a sentence or an inverted word

order

3.

Figure 3 Exploring corpus to understand the meaning of grammar patterns (e.g. either/neither)

Complete the following statements:

1-

sometimes more than two.

a- -

2-

a- b-

Students read again the concordance lines (see appendix 5), and

answer the form questions. The researcher discusses their findings and help

students figure out the grammar rule tha

enhanced their engagement and motivation. In addition, using these DDL

.

visual and kinesthetic). In addition, the researcher was always monitoring their

work and guiding their findings in order to avoid overgeneralization. Since the

negative transfer is possible, the researcher was keen on clarifying the

common Saudi learner

structure does not require an inverted structure (see question 2 above).

responses to negative statements. As a result, the second question was

introduced at this stage. After that, students were asked to complete the

In pairs students were asked to complete the above activity and the

researcher monitors their performance. The Saudi pre-intermediate students

were challenged by the task, but it sparked their engagement. The researcher

helped slow learners to follow instructions. This activity built up on what

Figure 4 Corpus-based activities to explore use of grammar patterns

Read the following concordance lines (see appendix 6), then:

-

- Which verbs are more common after neither?

- Are the underlined structure proceeded by a negative or affirmative

statements?

- Which structure follows neither? a regular sentence or an inverted

structure?

students have learnt from the meaning section and they were able to find out

as responses to negative

statements (Also not).Students piled up their findings and discussed the final

shape of the grammar rule with their colleagues.

As a final stage, students were asked to put their findings together. The

researcher guided their findings to formulate the grammar rule that mirrors

their findings. Students were asked to compare their findings with the

grammar chart in their course book (Touchstone). Students were highly

motivated to compare their findings to the grammar charts in the book and

read more examples from the course book. The grammar chart also

DLL LIMITATIONS

Since there is no perfect approach or teaching method, a number of problems

were noticed during applying DDL approach inside classrooms. Firstly, the

huge amount of data the students need to be exposed to; the amount of

information presented needs to be carefully observed in order not to

demotivate students. The researcher tends to keep a balance between

reducing the amount of presented information and the negative effect of

the task not to the new vocabularies

presented in the concordance lines. Secondly, the difficulty of the

concordance material was another challenge. While the targeted grammar

words in the presented concordances were at the level of the students, the

vocabularies which collocated with them were often difficult. The researcher

was to choose between either simplifying the concordance material and

lessen its authenticity, or maintain the authenticity and risk demotivating some

students. The researcher chose to keep the material authentic, and some

students did as a result begin to be less motivated. Therefore, the researcher

had to exert more effort supporting and motivating these slow learners by

grading tasks or pairing them with better students who rose to the challenge,

and appeared to recognize the value of working with real English as opposed

some classes do not have internet. Therefore, researcher tends to prepare

snapshots and with time students begin to prepare some snapshots at home.

CONCLUSION

To sum up, this paper argues that while using the traditional teaching

methods which are relatively easy for teachers (e.g. grammar translation)

students are supposed to memorize rather than criticizing. On the other hand,

applying DDL helps students to feel more confident to formulate their own

especially kinesthetic. In addition, experience showed that motivation is a key

issue in teaching language, and some voices argued that using DDL might

demotivate learners. On the contrary, in spite of using a challenging material,

DDL has a positive effect on students and sparked their motivation as Saudi

students like challenges and enjoy using technology.

One of the biggest challenges was the suitability of DDL approach to

the pre-intermediate Saudi students, but it is suitable to the majority of pre-

intermediate learners. This matches the findings of Tian (2005) who used to

teach beginners using DDL approach. As a result, and in spite of the

mentioned limitations (3.4.), applying DDL approach enhances learning

showed that the more students are exposed to authentic material, the less

possibility of negative transfer as authenticity reduces negative transfer and

brings unnatural English to the minimum. Also, DDL approach helps to reduce

the gap of studying English in a country that do not speak English as a first

language such as Saudi Arabia where students are often exposed to

pedagogical pre-fabricated material rather than authentic material. Therefore,

students get motivated when they speak the language in a very similar way to

the native speakers.

Consequently, this paper recommends applying DDL approach in

teaching grammar to give students a chance to notice and build up grammar

rules as it enhances their autonomy and deepens their understanding of

grammar as a description of the actual language. Also, this paper raises the

need of corpus training for both teachers and students as changing students

and teachers into researchers and explorers will not be achieved without

proper training on using corpora in classrooms.

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