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

PACE: a Story-Based approach for Dialogic inquiry about Form and Meaning

Language teaching should never be driven by grammar instruction alone, nor should grammar instruction be literally interpreted to mean instruction on morphology (e.g., adjective or subject-verb agreement, rules for pluralizing nouns) followed by manipulation of forms in mechanical exercises. When the teacher or students focus on form, attention is drawn to the formal properties of the language, which include its sound system, word formation, syntax, discourse markers, and devices for relating one sentence to another, to name a few. Additionally, focus on form needs to include how grammatical forms function in texts. That is, to know only how to form a grammatical structure will never enable learners to know why certain structures are used and how they provide a resource for their own meaning making. Therefore, the issue is not whether a teacher should focus on form; instead, the issue is how, when, and where to focus on form in a lesson that will ultimately clarify this important design feature of foreign language instruction.

The PACE model presented below is a way for learners to develop concepts about
target language structures that include form and function and the appropriate application of grammar across a variety of contexts. Understanding grammar as a concept rather than a rule also challenges teachers to reflect upon their own grammatical understandings and learn new ways of viewing grammar as meaning-making resources that go beyond the “grammar rule” needed to complete successfully a particular textbook exercise. It requires teachers to mediate students’ understanding of how grammar provides them with tools for making meaningful choices about what they wish to express. For example, although language teachers are well aware of how comparative and superlative forms of adjectives are formed (e.g., place plus before the adjective in French followed by que), explaining the concept of why comparatives and superlatives are used and how their meanings differ is often rather difficult for teachers to articulate. Why a particular grammatical choice is made rather than selecting another form from a set of other grammatical possibilities is at the crux of what it means to know grammar.
Approaching grammar as a conceptual resource rather than application of a rule is
at the heart of what we mean by language development compared to language learning; To make the claim that students have developed language abilities means that students need to be able to go beyond using grammar in only restrictive textbook exercises. Language development means that students are in control (self-regulated in sociocultural terms) of the grammatical concept and can see how it can be used in contexts beyond the story, a specific exercise, or a task, such as in an Oral Proficiency Interview or in the various kinds of tasks required in an Integrated Performance Assessment. Indeed, without conceptual understanding of language, students are quite limited in how they could perform on these assessments since the task at hand requires using language as a tool for meaning-making rather than as rule-based procedures to apply to a contrived and predictable mechanical exercise. Pursuing the goal of teaching for conceptual understanding of grammar that leads to language development is a tall order for teachers. Our textbooks often do not present grammar in ways that uncover the underlying concepts that explain grammatical choices. Our own training as FL teachers may not have prepared us to understand thoroughly why language works in particular ways in certain circumstances. What this means is that when we approach grammar instruction in the framework of the PACE model, we may also have to re-assess our own understandings of grammatical constructions, consult
information sources to inform ourselves of various ways of conceptualizing the grammar objectives of our lessons,3 and admit that as highly proficient speakers of the languages we teach, we are not categorically experts in understanding the concepts (compared to the textbook rules) that underlie the grammar choices we make across the modes of communication.