Málfríður - 15.05.1993, Blaðsíða 23

on this: “True creativity means
free action within the framework
of a system of rules.“ This is not
incompatible with communicat-
ive methodology, but it allows
the reinstatement of the learning
of grammar and vocabulary on
occasion outside a purely com-
municative framework; this is
something which most teachers
know anyway.
English teachers are into
grammar
The most interesting thing
about the other main lecture
was the fact that it had been se-
lected for this conference at all.
It was given by a theoretical
grammarian, Professor Henri
Adamczewski of the Sorbonne
Nouvelle in Paris, and was entit-
led The Decipherment of English
Grammar. His ideas seemed to
be in the European functionalist
grammatical tradition and he
had some rude things to say
about purely descriptive gram-
mars (e.g. the huge Quirk et al.
Comprehensive Grammar of the
English Language) which fail to
look for wider explanations of
the processes behind languages.
I thought it was interesting as a
sign of the shifting focus in En-
glish teaching these days that a
theoretical grammarian should
be chosen to give one of the
major lectures at this confer-
ence. The importance and cen-
trality of grammar (knowledge of
it and of how to teach it) to the
teaching of language is being
given a lot of thought by many in
the language teaching field.
Grammar is back (if it has really
ever left), though it does not
have to mean boring and ineffec-
tive teaching methods.
“Let‘s correct our
compositions“ - the talk
everyone went to
The talks one chooses to go
to inevitably reflect one’s own
interests, preoccupations and
problems. I attended two talks
on teaching intermediate to
upper level students. The first
was called “Let’s Correct our
Compositions” and, not surpris-
ingly, drew a large audience of
teachers who wanted to know
how to cut down on marking —
in my experience getting stu-
dents to do their own marking
involves more work not less for
the teacher. Marian Sarofim teac-
hes at the American University
in Cairo and has developed a
system for involving her stu-
dents (intermediate — upper in-
termediate) in the correction of
their own essays. It is interesting
that what drove her to look for a
new approach was a class of
very weak students who had al-
ready failed the course once and
who had to take it again — she
could not face a repeat and nor
could they. She based her cour-
se on two basic assumptions:

1 Students tend to forget what
you tell them but remember
what they tell you.
2 Students have an almost in-
tuitive ability to recognize
good writing.
She also took into account a
number of perennial problems
faced by students and teachers
of essay writing:
Teachers:
are not adequately prepared
do not have clear enough
objectives
set unrealistic goals.
Students:
do not know what is wanted
find teacher comments vague
and unhelpful.
Her course ran as follows:
Lesson
1 — students write a 30 min-
ute essay
2 — teacher selects 4 to 5 es-
says and photocopies them
— students rank order the
essays according to what
they perceive as the best
and worst
— students tabulate results
3 — students discuss the
weak and strong points of
the essays
— comments are written
down
— teacher makes master list
of all comments
— copies of the master list
distributed to students
4 — students group and classi-
fy comments
— additions made to catego-
ries
— create basis for manual
on good writing
5-8 — students grade other es-
says according to the ma-
nual
Marian Sarofim made the foll-
owing claims for this approach:
1 It prompted serious thought
among students about the
composition process
2 students became more sensi-
tive to writing and more cri-
tical
3 students learnt to proof-read
effectively
4 students became more self-
confident
5 students became more self-
sufficient as writers and thin-
kers
6 students learnt to work to-
gether
7 students felt responsible
and therefore tried harder.
The twelve-page manual on
good writing produced by the
students ranges from general
rules on essay structure to de-
tailed spelling and grammar
rules with of course those errors
that students make most frequ-
ently getting most emphasis. I
think it is clear from the above
that this is definitely not a labour
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