Pace: a story-Based Approach for Dialogic Inquiry about Form

C: CO-CONSTRUCT—Explanation as Conversation and Dialogic Inquiry Learners and teachers should be co-constructors of grammatical explanations. Co-construction involves collaborative talk between the teacher and the students to reflect on, hypothesize about, and create understandings about the form, meaning, and function of the new structure in question. This phase occurs after joint focus of attention on the target form and its meaning is achieved. During this phase, the teacher assists learners in developing a concept of the target structure and enables them to compare and contrast the structure with what they already know. This phase directly addresses the Comparisons Goal Area, and at a time when language comparisons are appropriate and can be discussed in a meaningful context. During a conversation about form and meaning, learners are guided to hypothesize, make predictions, and come to generalizations about the target form. To hypothesize, predict, and generalize requires making observations about language, using various types of reasoning, and analyzing how language forms (the parts) contribute to creating the story (the whole). One way to launch a dialogic grammar explanation in which grammatical knowledge is co-constructed is to ask questions. Co-constructing an explanation requires teacher questions that are well-chosen, clear, and direct. Questions are powerful tools in the hands of teachers who can adjust their questioning “in flight” to meet the emergent understandings of their learners. For example, asking learners questions such as, “What words do you hear or see repeated in the text, and what could they mean?” “What pattern do you see in this group of words, and what does one pattern of words mean compared to another?” and “How do certain words change as their meanings change?” is a way to help learners draw insights about form from the story. These assisting questions help learners discover regular grammatical patterns, sound systems, word order, unique cultural meanings of words, and grammatical functions. Additionally, questions cannot be predicted in advance and need to be contingent upon learner contributions. Learners also need to know that they can ask the teacher and each other questions, for the explanation is to be truly dialogic and co-constructed.
As learners hypothesize and generalize about the target form, teachers build upon and extend learners’ knowledge without overwhelming them with superfluous grammatical detail. Hypothesis testing can also be conducted, with teachers leading learners in trying out their new knowledge by applying their generalizations to new situations. Recall that for language development to occur, students need to be able to use their knowledge productively in a variety of contexts that share similarities with the original context in which the knowledge was first encountered and learned. Teachers also need to be aware that the help they provide is graduated and may range from brief hints about the target form to explicit information, if needed. Another way to begin co-constructing understanding of grammatical forms and their relationship to the story is to provide pairs or small groups of students with well-organized language samples from the story and ask them to make observations about the meaning, form, and use of the sample language. Specific questions can be posed to guide students’ observations. After the brief discussion, groups report back on their observations to make their thinking public. Their spontaneous observations can then become the raw material for a co-constructed grammar conversation during which the teacher mediates student thinking by pointing out similarities and differences in explanations and by underscoring understandings and identifying misunderstandings. In this way, the teacher assists students to refine and elaborate their initial observations and move toward a systematic explanation and a generalization. It is important to note that, unlike guided induction techniques, which rely primarily on teacher questioning, a dialogic co-constructed explanation is not an inquisition; instead, dialogic explanations recognize that learners may not be able to perceive the formal properties of language on the basis of the teacher’s questions alone. Just as in conversation in everyday life, one individual does not interrogate another in a barrage of questions. What is obvious to the teacher is often a mystery to the novice. A dialogic and co-constructed explanation needs to be as participatory for the teacher as it is for the learners; that is, teachers need: (1) to be flexible, and assess and assist student understandings at one moment through skillful questions; and (2) to provide them with information when necessary at other moments when they struggle or are challenged to perceive the concept under investigation. For example, English-speaking students may not perceive that the concept of present progressive aspect in Spanish (used for only situations that co-occur with the speaking) is different from English (used when speaking about co-occurring actions and for actions that are generally perceived as events occurring in extended present time). It is at times like this where conceptual differences in the way that languages construe reality may not be obvious to the students, and therefore, teachers must be conversation partners and offer their own observations. Teaching is responsive assistance and cannot be reduced to a series of actions (such as questions) to be performed in the same way in every instructional circumstance. They go on to state that direct instruction, when necessary, can be as much a part of responsive assistance as other forms of assistance such as questioning, summarizing student contributions, and prompting for elaboration. Moreover, some grammatical concepts are complex and not obvious, and students may not be able to generalize them from input or questioning alone. This type of flexibility is what a teacher must control when leading a dialogic discussion about form so the discussion does not degenerate into an interrogation on the one hand or a teacher-fronted explanation on the other. The use of English for co-construction of grammatical knowledge may be necessary, depending on the level of the class and the structure under investigation. Indeed,
it is hard to imagine that beginning language students can analyze language and arrive at generalizations in the target language. It is common to observe, however, that when students reflect on language form, they do so in their native language. However, if the grammatical conversation can be simplified—and this simplification would be largely determined on the grammatical concept being discussed and the level of the class—then the use of the target language should not be avoided. We need to keep in mind, however, that focusing attention (e.g., “Look at the following sentences” “What do you notice about these words?”) and asking questions about form (e.g., “In the story, is this a statement or a question?” “Is the action in the present or past?” “Does the word describe a girl or a boy?”) do not require complex language. As students progress, the teacher should be attentive to changes in students’ language and observational abilities and determine if the co-construction can take place in the target language.
In summary, a dialogic grammar explanation that is co-constructed involves both
teacher and students in discussion about the concept underlying the grammatical form previously focused on in the Attention phase of the PACE lesson. The purpose of the dialog is neither to engage in a didactic presentation of the form by the teacher (deductive approach) nor require the students to discover the grammatical concept on their own (inductive approach). Rather, teachers elicit students’ observations, assess their understandings and misunderstandings, and respond with their own observations or assist with questions to move student thinking forward. Finally, teachers need to understand grammar in a new manner to help students observe the meaning-making potential of the forms they are learning. This means that simply thinking that the students’ ability to explicitly recite a textbook grammar rule is equal to knowing how to use this
rule is misguided. Rather, teachers need to move students to understand how grammar functions in spoken and written texts, such as stories, so they understand why certain grammatical choices were made over others and how grammar is a discursive resource that provides them with choices for the expression of their own communicative intentions. To conclude this section, the following example of a conversation about the concept of form and meaning between a teacher and her first-year French class illustrates how the teacher skillfully manages the conversation about comparative forms of adjectives in French. In this dialogic encounter, the teacher moves students from a superficial observation about word placement to a conceptual understanding that links the formation of adjectives with their functional significance. Dialoguing about Grammar: A Co-Constructed Grammar Lesson . The teacher has just presented the authentic French folktale of a curious boy who asks what parts of nature are stronger than other parts (e.g., Is the mountain stronger than the wind?). The following day, the teacher reviews the contents of the story, provides a printed text of the story, and distributes the text to the class. The teacher’s goal for one part of this class is to call attention to the form of the French comparative (plus 1 adj 1 que), its meaning (superiority of one item over another), and its use (describe and compare two things where one is greater than the other). Then the teacher assists students to engage in self-explanation of this form through a conversation about the comparative as it is used in the story. Note the instructional moves and the critical thinking that takes place about language form, meaning, and use.