Questões de Concursos Língua Inglesa

Read the following text to answer the question.

By Leo Selivan

In this article, informed by the Lexical Approach, I reflect on grammar instruction in the classroom […]. I consider the problems with ‘traditional’ grammar teaching before arguing that what we actually need is more grammar input as well as showing how lexis can provide necessary ‘crutches’ for the learner.

Lexis = vocabulary + grammar

The shift in ELT from grammar to lexis mirrors a similar change in the attitude of linguists. In the past linguists were preoccupied with the grammar of language; however the advances in corpus linguistics have pushed lexis to the forefront. The term ‘lexis’, which was traditionally used by linguists, is a common word these days and frequently used even in textbooks.

Why use a technical term borrowed from the realm of linguistics instead of the word ‘vocabulary’? Quite simply because vocabulary is typically seen as individual words (often presented in lists) whereas lexis is a somewhat wider concept and consists of collocations, chunks and formulaic expressions. It also includes certain patterns that were traditionally associated with the grammar of a language, e.g. If I were you…, I haven’t seen you for ages etc.

Recognising certain grammar structures as lexical items means that they can be introduced much earlier, without structural analysis or elaboration. Indeed, since the concept of notions and functions made its way into language teaching, particularly as Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) gained prominence, some structures associated with grammar started to be taught lexically (or functionally). I’d like to is not taught as ‹the conditional› but as a chunk expressing desire. Similarly many other ‹traditional› grammar items can be introduced lexically relatively early on.

Less grammar or more grammar?

You are, no doubt, all familiar with students who on one hand seem to know the ‘rules’ of grammar but still fail to produce grammatically correct sentences when speaking or, on the other, sound unnatural and foreign-like even when their sentences are grammatically correct. Michael Lewis, who might be considered the founder of the Lexical Approach, once claimed that there was no direct relationship between the knowledge of grammar and speaking. In contrast, the knowledge of formulaic language has been shown by research to have a significant bearing on the natural language production.

Furthermore, certain grammar rules are practically impossible to learn. Dave Willis cites the grammar of orientation (which includes the notoriously difficult present perfect and the uses of certain modal verbs) as particularly resistant to teaching. The only way to grasp their meaning is through continuous exposure and use.

Finally, even the most authoritative English grammars never claim to provide a comprehensive description of all the grammar, hence the word ‘introduction’ often used in their titles (for instance, Huddleston & Pullum’s A Student’s Introduction to English Grammar or Halliday’s An Introduction to Functional Grammar).

If grammarians do not even attempt to address all areas of grammar, how can we, practitioners, cover all the aspects of grammar in our teaching, especially if all we seem to focus on is a limited selection of discrete items, comprised mostly of tenses and a handful of modal verbs? It would seem that we need to expose our students to a lot of naturally occurring language and frequently draw their attention to various grammar points as they arise.

For example, while teaching the expression fall asleep / be asleep you can ask your students:

• Don’t make any noise – she’s fallen asleep.

• Don’t make any noise – she’s asleep.

What does’s stand for in each of these cases (is or has)?

One of the fathers of the Communicative Language Teaching Henry Widdowson advocated using lexical items as a starting point and then ‘showing how they need to be grammatically modified to be communicatively effective’ (1990:95). For example, when exploring a text with your students, you may come across a sentence like this:

• They’ve been married for seven years.

You can ask your students: When did they get married? How should you change the sentence if the couple you are talking about is no longer married?

The above demonstrates how the teacher should be constantly on the ball and take every opportunity to draw students’ attention to grammar. Such short but frequent ‘grammar spots’ will help to slowly raise students’ awareness and build their understanding of the English grammar system.

[…]

Conclusion

So is there room for grammar instruction in the classroom? Certainly yes. But the grammar practice should always start with the exploitation of lexical items. Exposing students to a lot of natural and contextualised examples will offer a lexical way into the grammar of the language.

To sum up, grammar should play some role in language teaching but should not occupy a big part of class time. Instead grammar should be delivered in small but frequent portions. Students should be encouraged to collect a lot of examples of a particular structure before being invited to analyse it. Hence, analysis should be preceded by synthesis.

Lastly, language practitioners should bear in mind that grammar acquisition is an incremental process which requires frequent focus and refocus on the items already studied.

Available at: https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/professionaldevelopment/teachers/knowing-subject/articles/grammar-vs-lexisor-grammar-through. Accessed on: April 29, 2024.

Village’s Amateur Archaeologists Find Lost Tudor Palace

1. When a group of amateur archaeologists set out to find the buried remains of a Tudor palace
2. in their Northamptonshire village five years ago, they knew the odds were against them. “Many
3. of us were brought up in the village, and you hear about this lost palace, and wonder whether
4. it’s a myth or real. So we just wanted to find it”, said Chris Close, the chair of the Collyweston
5. Historical and Preservation Society (Chaps) which made the discovery of the Palace of
6. Collyweston in a back garden this year. “But we’re a bunch of amateurs. We had no money, no
7. expertise, no plans, no artist impressions to go off, and nothing remaining of the palace. It was
8. naivety and just hard work that has led us to it”.
9. The site was found using geophysical surveys and ground-penetrating radar. Various
10. attempts had been made in the 1980s and 90s to find Collyweston Palace, the home of Henry
11. VII’s mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort. However, without the advantage of modern technology,
12. none had succeeded. The palace was famous during the 15th century and several historic events
13. took place there. The pre-wedding celebrations of Margaret Tudor to James IV of Scotland in
14. 1503 took place in the palace, and Henry VIII is recorded as holding court there on 16 and 17
15. October 1541. By the mid-17th century, it had fallen into disrepair, and until the Chaps dig
16. uncovered the palace walls in March, there was very little remaining evidence of its existence.
17. “A number of things have only really come to light as we’ve done this project”, said Close.
18. “As you do more and more research, and various different records start to become unearthed,
19. we realized Collyweston had privy councils being run from here, which is of massive national
20. importance”. Historians from the University of York helped verify the group’s findings and identify
21. the palace through some uncovered stone moldings, and will work with Chaps on more
22. excavations to further reveal the structure and conserve it for the future.
23. The Chaps team, which comprises more than 80 members ranging from teenagers to people
24. in their 70s and 80s, first set out their plan to find the palace in March 2018, using “local folktales
25. and hearsay” to help refine their search area. They carried out geophysical surveys and used
26. ground-penetrating radar (GPR) to help reveal the location of the palace walls, before securing
27. permission from homeowners to excavate in gardens. “We’ve done it all on an absolute
28. shoestring”, said Close. “We’ve basically done an £80,000-£90,000 project for roughly £13,000.
29. For us, being a little society, to have achieved this with no money, or expertise, or plans, I think
30. it’s something that the whole society should be proud of”.

(Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/dec/06/tudor-collyweston-palace-northamptonshire-found-in-garden-by-amateur-archeologists - text especially adapted for this test).

Read Text I and answer the fourteen questions that follow it

Text I The “literacy turn” in education: reexamining

what it means to be literate

In response to the phenomena of mass migration and the emergence of digital communications media that defined the last decade of the 20th century, the New London Group (NLG) called for a broader view of literacy and literacy teaching in its 1996 manifesto, A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures. The group argued that literacy pedagogy in education must (1) reflect the increasing cultural and linguistic diversity of the contemporary globalized world, and (2) account for the new kinds of texts and textual engagement that have emerged in the wake of new information and multimedia technologies. In order to better capture the plurality of discourses, languages, and media, they proposed the term ‘multiliteracies’.

Within the NLG’s pedagogy of multiliteracies, language and other modes of communication are viewed as dynamic resources for meaning making that undergo constant changes in the dynamics of language use as learners attempt to achieve their own purposes. Within this broader view of literacy and literacy teaching, learners are no longer “users as decoders of language” but rather “designers of meaning.” Meaning is not viewed as something that resides in texts; rather, deriving meaning is considered an active and dynamic process in which learners combine and creatively apply both linguistic and other semiotic resources (e.g., visual, gesture, sound, etc.) with an awareness of “the sets of conventions connected with semiotic activity [...] in a given social space” (NLG, 1996, p. 74).

Grounded within the view that learning develops in social, cultural, and material contexts as a result of collaborative interactions, NLG argued that instantiating literacy-based teaching in classrooms calls on the complex integration and interaction of four pedagogical components that are neither hierarchical nor linear and can at times overlap: situated practice, overt instruction, critical framing, and transformed practice. […]

Although the NLG’s pedagogy of multiliteracies was conceived as a “statement of general principle” (1996, p. 89) for schools, the group’s call for educators to recognize the diversity and social situatedness of literacy has had a lasting impact on foreign language (FL) teaching and learning. The reception of the group’s work along with that of other scholars from critical pedagogy appeared at a time when the field was becoming less solidly anchored in theories of L2 acquisition and more interested in the social practice of FL education itself. In the section that follows, we describe the current state of FL literacy studies as it has developed in recent years, before finally turning to some very recent emerging trends that we are likely to see develop going forward.

(Adapted from: https://www.colorado.edu/center/altec/sites/default/files/ attachedfiles/moving_toward_multiliteracies_in_foreign_language_teaching.pdf)