What is Grammar for Pre-service English Teachers? Entrance and Exit Level Beliefs

The present research aims to explore metaphors used by pre-service English teachers as evidence for their thinking about “grammar”. A cohort of 47 pre-service English teachers partook in the study. The metaphors were elicited both at the beginning and the end of four-year pre-service education and this interval paved the way for examining the potential change in participants’ beliefs over time. The metaphors were first clustered into two considering their suggested definition for grammar as grammar as a phenomenon and grammar as a school subject. Grammar as a phenomenon was further grouped into three sub-categories as rule (discrete rules, control mechanism, guideline for rules), system (system of smaller units, central construct of a larger system), and function (medium for meaning). The results suggest that pre-service teachers’ beliefs changed over time. By the end of pre-service education, rule metaphors decreased distinctively while system and function metaphors increased. It is revealed that pre-service English teachers adopted a more system-oriented perspective about grammar at the exit level

Accuracy order in L2 grammatical morphemes: Corpus evidence from different proficiency levels of Turkish learners of English

The present study empirically scrutinizes the fixed natural order of grammatical morphemes relying on a manual analysis of an EFL learner corpus. Specifically, we test whether the accuracy order of L2 grammatical morphemes in the case of L1 Turkish speakers of English deviates from Krashen’s (1977) natural order and whether proficiency levels play a role in the order of acquisition of these morphemes. With this in mind, we focus on the (in)accuracy of nine English grammatical morphemes with 2883 cases manually tagged by the UAM Corpus Tool in the written exam scripts of Turkish learners of English. The results based on target-like use scores provide evidence for deviation from what is widely believed to be a set order of acquisition of these grammatical morphemes by second language learners. In light of such findings, we challenge the view that the internally driven processes of mastering grammatical morphemes in English for interlanguage users are largely independent of their L1. Regardless of L2 grammar proficiency in our data, the observed accuracy of some morphemes ranked low in comparison with the so-called natural order. These grammatical morphemes were almost exclusively non-existent features in participants’ mother tongue (e.g., third person singular –s, articles and the irregular past tense forms), thus suggesting the influence of L1 in this respect

Can You See What Is Missing? Printed Corpus-Based Teaching Materials Can Help Out With Identifying L2 English Substitution and Ellipsis

One of the inspirational forms of integrating technology into Second Language (L2) teaching is using 'corpora'. In this study, corpora were used to develop printed instructional materials to teach grammatical cohesive devices that are not sufficiently represented in L2 English course books. Specifically, the aim was to understand whether the indirect Data- Driven Learning (DDL) application through teacher-prepared corpus-based materials could help out 56 learners with identifying L2 English substitution and ellipsis and also how they would reflect on their experiences by studying with such sources. The change in the learners' proficiencies was measured by comparing their pre and post test scores. In addition, the learners wrote reflections. These reflections were thematically analyzed. Results indicated that the learners improved their skills in identifying L2 English substitution and ellipsis. Considering the subcategories of substitution and ellipsis, it was found that the highest levels of development were observed in substitution clauses and ellipsis verbs. Reflections showed that the learners benefitted from using the printed materials in the learning of the structures. However, they also revealed some pitfalls, such as text difficulty and a lack of thematic cohesion. Some practical suggestions were discussed to promote L2 English learning through printed corpus-based teaching materials.</p