Rachel Coldewey Linguistics 531 Grammar Text Review

Author Jay Maurers Focus on Grammar 5, An Integrated Skills Approach is a an advanced-level core ESL/EFL grammar text that claims to present grammar in context, provide several focused and communicative activities, and recycle information so students see new and old grammar structures multiple times in different contexts. Unfortunately I only had the opportunity to become familiar with the 5th (and last) book in the series so I did not have a chance to compare how much recycling Focus on Grammar actually does with material presented in previous books. However, the book does seem to present the target structures in context, provide several very focused activities to practice the structure, provide some communication activities, and recycle material from previous chapters. Judging from the themes in each unit and the pictures and discussion prompts provided in activities, this text seems to be aimed at young adult or adult learners. Many topics are presented that might typically appeal to young adults such as: shopping, movies, traveling. Other topics are presented that might appeal more to adults such as marriage, health, and child-rearing. The book is colorful, uses real pictures or tries to present realialooking examples (like letters or news articles), and has an overall organized layout. The layout of the chapters is particularly very structured and organized. The book is organized into nine parts, which are broad target structure categories. Each part is then further broken down into smaller units which are more specific target structures. For example, this book covers nine parts: tense, modals and auxiliaries, nouns, adjective clauses, passive voice, gerunds and infinitives, adverbs, noun clauses, and conditionals and the subjunctive. Within the part 2: modals and other auxiliaries, it is further broken down into 3 units: be and auxiliaries in additions, tags, and short answers;

modals to express degrees of necessity; and modals to express degrees of certainty. At the end of each part there is a writing focus section and a review test. The sequencing seems to begin with less complicated grammar points such as tense in the first chapter and become increasingly complex until ending with the last chapter on the subjunctive. The idea is to master each section before moving on to the next more challenging chapter. While I think it would probably be necessary to cover the first few chapters in sequence (tense, modals, nouns), an instructor could probably jump around thereafter depending on the needs of students. The book claims to use an approach consisting of grammar in context, grammar presentation, focused practice, and communication practice. Using this approach, I think the book does a nice job of integrating reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills, as well as solo, pair, and group activities into each unit. Grammar is first presented, in context, in a reading excerpt that sets off the theme for the rest of the unit. Each reading excerpt is followed by a few reading comprehension questions that aim to point out the target structure of the unit. This is followed by an explicit target structure explanation presented in charts with examples and a list of grammar notes and examples. The explanations are clear, but at this point in the text I think there would have to be significant teacher input for further explanation of the target structure and several more examples to model for students (which I will explain when I review unit 4 in more detail). After the grammar is explicitly explained through charts and notes, there are several focused practice activities. Within the practice activities, I was actually somewhat surprised to see how many drill activities there were versus how many real communication activities there were. Much of the focused practice in each unit relies on drills such as fill-in-the-blank, true/false, ordering, or editing (circling between two choices in an underlined section of the text). Of the ten activities for unit 1 of part 1 of the book, only three are communicative and of those three

activities is a listening exercise, a small-group discussion, and a writing activity-which really means only one of the ten activities is asking students to speak using the target structure. Each unit does vary of course, some have a few more activities where students are asked to get into pairs or groups and do information gap activities or discuss something, but the activities in each unit are always overwhelmingly drill activities. That said, I think it would take significant teacher input to come up with activities that would provide students with more opportunities for students to communicate in the TL using the new target structure in a more meaningful way. Having more communicative and open-ended activities might also help the book appeal to a wider range of learning styles. In depth unit: In Part 2 of the book, modals and other auxiliaries are covered, and Unit 4 covers be and auxiliaries in additions, tags, and short answers. This unit exemplifies the characteristics of the overall evaluation of the book that I gave above. It begins with presenting the grammar in context, follows it with a grammar presentation, and ends with 10 focused practice activities that involve listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Directions for activities and examples are clear and organized, most activities have some kind of picture or realia-looking component to keep things interesting, and the whole unit sticks to one (arguably) interesting theme. One thing that surprised me about this unit (and the book as a whole) is how few communicative activities there are, especially for the last book in the series at the advanced level. I make more specific comments about each activity and some suggestions on how to modify them below. Unit 4 begins with a few pre-reading questions related to the reading excerpt entitled Does it Matter When You Were Born? The pre-reading questions are somewhat open-ended (e.g. In your view, can people change their character, or is it basically determined at birth?) meaning, they could be simply answered by yes or no or they could be expanded upon by a student and be a good opportunity to have some fluent-talk time in the

TL. Depending on the students, this could be a student-directed, long, communicative discussion that could compensate for the lack of communication activities later in the unit. Conversely, it could be a superficial yes/no answer elicited from students by a teacher before reading the excerpt. The reading excerpt is an interesting article on birth order that presents all of the target structures (be, auxiliaries in additions, tags, and short answers) in context. It also recycles much of the tense material from the previous three units (present, future, past and progressive), which would support the books claim that it presents target structures many times in many contexts. After the reading excerpt there are three after you read multiple choice questions that aim to point out the target structures. This is followed by a grammar presentation which as previously explained, consists of charts and notes explaining the target structure. While I appreciate that the book is trying to isolate this structure in these charts and notes in order to highlight it, I wonder if it is useful to take them out of context like this, or if it would be better to highlight them in a dialogue or pull specific examples from the reading excerpt from the beginning of the unit. The grammar presentation charts are followed by grammar notes, which further explain some points on the target structures. Both of these sections in each unit are very clear and well organized. While I think some notes on the target structure are useful, the book provides two examples to demonstrate the note on tag questions (few examples provided is consistent throughout the book) and I think there would need to be significant teacher input here to model more examples. After the presentation of the structures comes the focused practice section. This section provides 10 activities: 6 drill activities and 4 communicative activities. Activity 1 is a drill activity that asks the student to circle a verb and draw an arrow to the preceding phrase it refers to. This activity is likely trying to get the student to notice the grammar

structure patterns without having to actually use them. Part b of activity 1 asks students to pull examples of sentences with auxiliaries from the reading excerpt and copy them down. Activity 2 asks students to match sentences in a list on the left with additions in a list on the right. Each of these are repetitive input activities that require little but noticing on the part of the student and it probably wouldnt be possible for a teacher to expand into a discussion or do anything other than simply correct the answers. Activity 3 asks students to fill in the blanks with verbs or verb phrases to show contrast in a written dialogue. Activity 4 asks students to write additions of similarity of contrast using given sentences and words in parenthesis. As with the previously mentioned activities in this unit, this is yet again another drill activity that gets students to notice the new structure and the word order in this case, but does not have them create anything of their own. A teacher might be able to adapt this activity by using the sentences from the book to model with the class, and then have them create 10 sentences of their own using the target structure to make the practice more meaningful. Activity 5 is a listening activity that has students listen to a dialogue and circle auxiliary verbs that show emphasis with preceding statements. This is another input activity to get students to notice the target structure; it does not have students practice on their own. To make this activity useful in the classroom I might have students do these practice sentences in activity 5 in order to notice the structure, but then create an original dialogue of their own to practice it. Activity 6 asks students to read a letter that has several additions and auxiliaries and edit the 10 mistakes in it. I would likely skip this activity altogether and have them practice editing additions and auxiliaries mistakes in real student writing (perhaps from activity 10, below). Activity 7 is the first activity in the communication section of the unit and it is a listening activity that has students listen to a radio talk show and check true/false questions about it. While listening comprehension is obviously a very important skill, I think the book could better develop an activity that might

be more listening and speaking focused so students have a chance to finally practice some productivity at this point in the unit. Activity 8 is a group discussion activity that provides students with an article to read and a prompt to discuss what they agree or disagree with. Part A of the activity gives the student some time to think about the article on his/her own, which I think is a really good idea. For one, I think giving students some time to prepare what they might want to say might lower their anxiety about speaking and using the new target structure, which could result in more participation once they are in a group discussion setting. For this part of the activity, I might modify it and also give students some time to prepare discussion questions for their peers about this article in order to prepare for Part B of the activity. Part B of the activity asks students to re-read the article after thinking about whether or not they agree/disagree and get into groups to discuss. This activity seems like it would be far more useful, meaningful, and productive than any of the previous drill activities previously described. Activity 9 asks students to look at a picture of two families and discuss, comparing an American family and an Asian family at the zoo. This pair activity is also much more communicative than activities 1-7, and I think also particularly good to practice the specific target structure of auxiliaries and additions. A modification that could make this a little better would be to perhaps give pairs two pictures with slight differences and have them compare the differences between the two pictures. For one, this would result in more negotiation of meaning and two-way information exchange. Secondly, I would feel more comfortable comparing two slightly different pictures of families than an American family (which in the books picture is a nuclear, white, family) and an Asian family which could be getting into perpetuating stereotypes. Activity 10 is a writing activity that provides students with a writing prompt and asks them to write four paragraphs explaining their view. I think this is a good activity to get students to produce the target structures in a more open-ended way than activities 1-

7. One modification (or addition) to this activity might be to have students work in pairs to peer-edit their writing samples and discuss any feedback they have for each other. Overall, as a core grammar book, I think Focus on Grammar is a good base for a language class. It does what it claims but it could be improved with more explanation and examples of target structures, and more communicative activities. A teacher could use this as a base to provide models, but then expand upon those models with communicative activities that give students the opportunity to create language using the target structures presented.