Educational Linguistics: a State of the Art
Submitted by:
Ana Luísa Costa
Abstract:
Our SIG was created in 2011 and adopted the "Educational Linguistics" label in 2013. Entering the second decade of activity, in this symposium, we aim to open the debate on our epistemological boundaries and bridges.
Celebrating thirty years in the field, in the Handbook of Educational Linguistics, Hult (2010) roots the emergency of Educational Linguistics in the controversies of applied linguistics. The route to independence from linguistics, as an autonomous body of knowledge, may be illustrated by Spolsky's words: "We seek then not apply linguistics, but to derive from its many branches and from other fields that study language, the knowledge that will help in developing the language capacity of others" (Spolsky, 1999, p.2).
However, the Educational Linguistics DNA is printed with a transdisciplinary nature inside and outside Linguistics. Language learning in educational contexts also requires a grounding in social/educational sciences, such as sociology, psychology, or pedagogy. Camps & Milian (1999) present a sharp view of this complex crossroads while defining the space for language didactics, which, in many ways, applies to the Educational Linguistics epistemological identity.
One of the continuous threats of this "wide range of disciplinary climates" (Hult, 2010, p. 21) is the lack of conceptual clarity, as Fontich (2016) states regarding the debate on L1 grammar instruction for writing. What defines us as a field of knowledge? What explains the lively interest that joins us in our informal and formal meetings?
References
Fontich, X. (2016). L1 Grammar instruction and writing: metalinguistic activity as a teaching and research focus. Language and Linguistic Compass. 10/5, pp. 238-254.
Hult, F. M. (2010). The History and Development of Educational Linguistics (pp. 10-24). In Spolsky, B. & Hult, F. M. (eds.). The handbook of educational linguistics. Wiley-Blackwell.
Milian, M., & Camps, A. (1990). l'espai de la Didàctica de la LLengua i la Literatura. Interaula (Vic, Barcelona), 0(10), 22-24.
Spolsky, B. (1999). Introduction to the field (pp. 1-6). In Spolsky, B. (ed.) Concise Encyclopedia of Educational Linguistics. Elsevier.
- Joana Batalha & Kristine Kabel
After decades with discussions about whether grammar instruction was beneficial or not in the L1 classroom, the question today is rather how to teach grammar in ways that are meaningful in itself and / or supportive for students’ literacies. In this paper, we present and discuss two empirical studies from Denmark and Portugal, respectively, that sought to explore ways of developing new approaches to L1 grammar education.
The Danish study was designed as a qualitative didactic experiment, in which six teachers across first and foreign classrooms in Denmark developed mini grammar teaching units based on three principles for an explicit and functional-oriented approach. The principles were developed on the ground of a larger focused ethnographic study in Denmark (Kabel et al., 2022) followed by sub-studies exploring the use of these principles in the mini grammar teaching units. Data (field notes, photos, teacher interviews) in this paper is from one Danish L1 classroom (grade 6, age 12), in which focus was on the use of sentence openers in texts from World Press Photos and students’ subsequent writing of photo descriptions.
The Portuguese study was conducted in primary education (grades 1 and 2, age 6-7) and results from an on-going program on preventive intervention for the learning of reading and writing, the PIPALE. Framed by the Portuguese curricular guidelines, the main aim of the program is to develop students’ linguistic awareness (Duarte, 2008) , i.e. their ability to reflect upon language, particularly at the phonological and the syntactic levels, and to support them using this ability to improve literacy skills. The method of the program, which includes a component of classroom assessment and intervention, and a component of teacher training and coaching, will be presented. We will also present and discuss students’ progress on linguistic awareness after one year within the program (Batalha et al., 2021).
In the paper, we will present the two studies with a focus on two different approaches to L1 grammar education, based on data from the classroom settings in the two national contexts. We will discuss possibilities and challenges seen from teacher and student perspective, and point at future directions for educational linguistics.
Keywords: L1 grammar education, primary school, qualitative and quantitative designs, Denmark, Portugal.
References:
Batalha, Joana, Maria Lobo, Antónia Estrela & Bruna Bragança (2021). Avaliação da linguagem oral e escrita no pré-escolar e nos primeiros anos de escolaridade. Revista da Associação Portuguesa de Linguística, (8), 40-53. https://doi.org/10.26334/2183-9077/rapln8ano2021a4
Duarte, I. (2008). O conhecimento da língua: desenvolver a consciência linguística. DGIDC-ME.
Kabel, K., Christensen, M. V., & Brok, L. S. (2022). A focused ethnographic study on grammar teaching practices across language subjects in schools. Language, Culture and Curriculum, 35(1), 51-66. https://doi.org/10.1080/07908318.2021.1918144
- Peter-Arno JM Coppen & Reinold Funke & Kaisu Rättyä
Part of the ARLE SIG EduLing virtual event on Friday, February 5, 2021, entitled Research on L1 grammar in schooling: Mediation at the heart of learning grammar, was a Round Table discussion between Kaisu Rättyä, Reinold Funke and Peter-Arno Coppen. The three speakers were asked to prepare a presentation on the following topics:
1. (Coppen) Grammar in its own sake vs. grammar for writing: the Dutch perspective.
2. (Rättyä) Grammar content in teacher education: the Finnish perspective.
3. (Funke) What grammar content should be taught: the German perspective.
A Round Table is not intended to offer a platform for the presentation of research results. Rather, it serves the purpose of communication about topics of shared interest. By doing so, it will reveal areas of consent as well as areas of dissent. This is true with respect to the case given too. Each presentation mirrors the respective author’s views.
Therefore, in this paper the three speakers first update their three presentations separately (sometimes adapting the topic slightly to match current developments) and reflect on them afterwards in an integrated discussion on its implications on the current state of affairs in L1 grammar in schooling.
- Jimmy H.M. van Rijt
Students’ writing skills are typically underdeveloped at various stages of education. Recent research suggests that very basic writing skills, such as the ability to build clear and correct sentences, are a major problem in secondary school students’ writing. To remedy this problem, it has been suggested that students should be taught more grammar. This is an intuitive, yet controversial solution: evidence shows that traditional school grammar is not beneficial to writing development, because: (1) it is based on superficial tricks and rules of thumb, and therefore does not contribute to grammatical understanding; (2) it is decontextualized. An alternative approach, called contextualized grammar teaching, is based on Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). This type of grammar teaching does contribute to writing ability, as it solves the contextualization problem by linking grammar to texts. This type of grammar teaching, however, is quite challenging for teachers because they mostly lack the underlying knowledge of SFL; it is also hard to implement in many educational contexts. Recently, another, more easily implemented type of grammar teaching emerged: metaconceptual grammar teaching (MCG). Apart from being more easily implemented, MCG has been shown to have a positive impact on students’ grammatical understanding. Because of this, MCG might also contribute to writing, both on its own and (possibly more so) when combined with contextualized grammar teaching. The project-in-progress presented here examines the impact of an MCG-intervention on writing ability and presents some preliminary results, while also giving an overview of the remaining stages of the research project, in which Lesson Study is used to explore whether MCG can be combined with contextualized grammar to secure greater gains in writing. The final stage of the project encompasses an intervention study in which MCG and contextualized grammar teaching will be combined.
Keywords: grammar, writing, grammatical understanding, intervention study, lesson study