Discontinuous grammar as a foreign language

[Abstract] In order to achieve deep natural language understanding, syntactic constituent parsing is a vital step, highly demanded by many artificial intelligence systems to process both text and speech. One of the most recent proposals is the use of standard sequence-to-sequence models to perform constituent parsing as a machine translation task, instead of applying task-specific parsers. While they show a competitive performance, these text-to-parse transducers are still lagging behind classic techniques in terms of accuracy, coverage and speed. To close the gap, we here extend the framework of sequence-to-sequence models for constituent parsing, not only by providing a more powerful neural architecture for improving their performance, but also by enlarging their coverage to handle the most complex syntactic phenomena: discontinuous structures. To that end, we design several novel linearizations that can fully produce discontinuities and, for the first time, we test a sequence-to-sequence model on the main discontinuous benchmarks, obtaining competitive results on par with task-specific discontinuous constituent parsers and achieving state-of-the-art scores on the (discontinuous) English Penn Treebank.Xunta de Galicia; ED431G 2019/01Xunta de Galicia; ED431C 2020/11We acknowledge the European Research Council (ERC), which has funded this research under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (FASTPARSE, grant agreement No 714150) and the Horizon Europe research and innovation programme (SALSA, grant agreement No 101100615), ERDF/ MICINN-AEI (SCANNER-UDC, PID2020-113230RB-C21), Xunta de Galicia (ED431C 2020/11), and Centro de Investigación de Galicia ‘‘CITIC”, funded by Xunta de Galicia and the European Union (ERDF - Galicia 2014–2020 Program), by grant ED431G 2019/01. Funding for open access charge: Universidade da Coruña/CISUG

The Experience of Albanian School in Improving the Teaching of Foreign Language Grammar

The aim of this article is to bring the experience of Albanian schools in renewing the teaching of foreign language grammar. Grammar occupies a significant place in the process of foreign language teaching and learning at all teaching levels in the Albanian schools. It has been long since it constitutes the focus of seminars organized by the department of education of the region and the institutions of both high and higher education. Grammar has been considered as the main linguistic component in foreign language classes. Grammar exercises practiced in there are multifarious. Teaching grammar is based on the grammar material informed by grammar French language textbooks and teachers’ ability to integrate grammar as a significant component of foreign language teaching with other components as the lexis, phonetics and so on, in order that it could better serve communication in a foreign language. Through examples and questionnaires, this article brings out the experience of Albanian teachers concerning the teaching of French grammar.Keywords: activities, grammar teaching, method, questionnaire, renovation

Grammatikvermittlung in neueren kroatischen DaF-Lehrwerken

The first part of the article deals with the presentation of grammar from the linguistic point of view. It gives the results of the analysis of the presentation of grammar in textbooks for German as a foreign language written by Croatian authors (in textbooks for elementary school, grammar school; for German as the first and the second foreign language). The analysis is carried out under the following criteria: explicit or implicit presentation of grammar, theoretical grammatical foundations, usage of metalinguistic terms, the language used for explanations. The second part of the article presents the analysis of grammar teaching in selected textbooks under didactical and methodical aspects (usage in texts, types of exercises and assignments). The results of the analysis are evaluated in terms of the supposed appropriateness and contemporary views regarding the grammar teaching in teaching foreign languages. What we are also interested in is the question whether and to what extent the requirements of the common international competencies description for the exam certificate have modified or changed the significance of grammar teaching in Croatian textbooks for German as a foreign language

Error Analysis in the Teaching of English

The main purpose of this article is to discuss the importance of error analysis in the teaching of English as a foreign language. Although errors are bad things in learning English as a foreign language%2C error analysis is advantageous for both learners and teachers. For learners%2C error analysis is needed to show them in what aspect in grammar which is difficult for them%2C where as for teachers%2C it is required to evaluate themselves whether they are successful or not in teaching English.%0D%0AIn this article%2C the writer presented some English sentences containing grammatical errors. These grammatical errors were analyzed based on the theories presented by the linguists. This analysis aimed at showing the students the causes and kinds of the grammatical errors. By this way%2C the students are expected to increase their knowledge on the English grammar. Abstract in Bahasa Indonesia : errors%2C+mistake%2C+over+orrer%2C+covert+error%2C+interference%2C+overgeneralization%2C+grammar%2C+interlingual%2C+intralingual%2C+idiosyncrasies

Situating Grammar Instruction in the World Language Classroom: Four Content-Enriched Strategies

The role of grammar instruction in promoting communicative competence continues to be a controversial issue for the world language classroom teacher. Second language acquisition research suggests that critical to sustained progress in language use is a focus on form, which we define as attention to linguistic form in the context of performing a communicative task. We therefore offer here four content-enriched strategies for situating grammar in a communicative context: textual enhancement, input flood, structured input, and dictogloss. We present these tasks and activities within the framework of the Standards for Foreign Language Learning in the 21st Century (SFLL, 2006) to illustrate how a standards-based approach that integrates form-focused instruction with content increases student achievement in the target language

Drama Grammatik: Dramapädagogische Ansätze für den Grammatikunterricht Deutsch als Fremdsprache

This dissertation introduces and evaluates dramagrammar, a new concept for the teaching and learning of foreign language grammar. Grammar, traditionally taught in a predominantly cognitive, abstract mode, often fails to capture the minds of foreign language learners, who are then unable to integrate this grammatical knowledge into their use of the foreign language in a meaningful way. The consequences of this approach are manifested at university level in German departments in England and Ireland, where the outcomes are unconvincing at best, abysmal at worst. Language teaching research suggests that interaction plays an important role in foreign language acquisition. Recent studies also stress the significance of grammatical knowledge in the learning process. Dramagrammar combines both interactive negotiation of meaning and explicit grammar instruction in a holistic approach, taking up the concept of drama in foreign language education and applying it to the teaching and learning of grammar. Techniques from dramatic art forms allow grammar to be experienced not only cognitively but also in social, emotional, and bodily-kinaesthetic ways. Dramagrammar lessons confront the learner with fictitious situations in which grammar is experienced 'hands-on'. Learners have to use grammatical structures in a variety of contexts, reflect upon their use, and then enlarge and enrich the dramatic situations with their newly acquired or more finely nuanced knowledge. The initial hypothesis of this dissertation is that the drammagrammar approach is beneficial to the acquisition of foreign language grammar. This hypothesis is corroborated by research findings from language teaching pedagogy and drama in education. It is further confirmed by empirical data gained from specifically designed dramagrammar modules that have been put into practice in German departments at the University of Leicester (England), the University Colleges Cork and Dublin (Ireland), the University of Bologna (Italy), as well as the Goethe-Institute Bratislava (Slovenia). The data suggests that drammagrammar has positive effects on both understanding of and attitudes towards grammar

EFL grammar teaching applying the Just-in-Time Teaching methodology: An exploratory study

Most students and practitioners commonly see grammar teaching and learning as both tedious and unattractive experiences. In this sense, more innovative ways of presenting foreign language grammar are needed. One such novel approach is Just-in-Time Teaching (JiTT), which has proven to be beneficial in a wide array of disciplines, including language learning. The present exploratory study aims to examine how JiTT contributes to success rates in English grammar learning at two proficiency levels, and to analyse how participants perceive this methodological approach. Sixty-four English as a foreign language students, divided into beginners and intermediate learners, were exposed to five JiTT grammar lessons throughout an academic semester. Participants’ answers on JiTT quizzes and satisfaction questionnaires were recorded and compared to their performance on a final exam based on the same five grammar points presented through JiTT. Statistical analyses revealed that JiTT had little impact on learners’ success rates in grammar learning, although a higher impact was observed in intermediate learners, in comparison to beginners. However, both groups of participants showed positive attitudes towards the intervention. Results are discussed in the light of how teaching English grammar through JiTT contributes to success rates. The potential of JiTT as a good methodology to be used in foreign language teaching is also addressed

Teacher Beliefs About Focus on Form: Differences and Similarities Among Native and L2 Spanish Speakers

Although there has been research conducted around the beliefs of English as a foreign language teachers in regards to grammar, this research has not been extended to Spanish as a foreign language teachers. This study seeks to fill this gap in literature by identifying differences between native speakers (NS) and speakers of Spanish as a second language (L2) who are teachers of Spanish as a foreign language. Specifically, it aimed to investigate their differing beliefs toward grammar instruction. In this quantitative research study, participants were asked to complete a questionnaire, which included statements about grammar instruction in the classroom. Participants were asked to choose their level of agreement on a 6-point Likert scale ranging from “strongly agree” to ”strongly disagree”. Additionally, participants ranked the effectiveness of various teaching strategies on a scale from “very effective” to “not at all effective”. Analysis is based on 59 Spanish as a foreign language teachers who completed the questionnaire, with 45 L2 and 9 NS participants. Results indicated that L2s and NSs differed in their beliefs toward the way learners learn Spanish and the importance of grammar in learning Spanish. Participants also agreed upon various points, specifically those pertaining to the teaching of grammar and lack of effectiveness in error correction in oral and written works. The analysis indicates a relationship between the way teachers first learn the language and their beliefs toward grammar instruction in their classrooms. These findings suggest a need for examining the way that teacher beliefs affect their teaching practices

Die Grammatik und Fremdsprachenunterricht

The role of Grammar in foreign language teaching Grammar and foreign language teaching is a broad subject. Foreign language teaching is about presenting patterns, i.e. explaining and correcting them. The term grammar is used in modern linguistics for different subject areas, e.g. grammar as knowledge or as a teaching of the morphological and syntactic regularities of a natural language. The aim of grammar in foreign language teaching in general is to promote the students’ language proficiency, especially language skills. This article examines the extent to which grammar conveys the regularities of the foreign language to the learners in an internal system of regularities