The use of grammatical terminology

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T: Yeah. But “to” is better. Let’s have a look at the word “her” here. What case is it?

S: Possessive case.

T: No, not possessive.

S: Objective case.

T: Yes. I found that when you were asked to specify the case of pronouns, it was really common for you to categorize them as possessive. Although “her” can be both possessive and objective, it functions as an objective case in this context. Another question, what parts of speech should be put behind objective case? There are two of them.

S: Prepositions.

T: Correct. How about the other one?

S: Verbs.

T: Right, verbs. Like the word “me” in “talk to me.” And in our dialogue, the word “to” works as a preposition here. (J-obs-12-452-472)

As the excerpt illustrates, Jane first explained the meaning of “Let’s talk to her”

by giving them the equivalent Chinese translation directly. She then put more

emphasis in analyzing the grammar points in this sentence, such as the objective case of “her” and the parts of speech of “to.” Within the time of this dialogue instruction, Jane spent over half of it talking about the usages of grammar items.

4.2.2 The use of grammatical terminology

Grammatical terminology was mentioned frequently in Jane’s class. Making inquiries was the most efficient and common technique for her to bring in the terminology. In one episode, for example, students were asked to identify the

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terminology about verbs, such as “How do you categorize the verb look?” What kind of verb is it?”, “What kind of verb is the word let? Who can tell me?” As soon as the terminology was answered correctly, there came Jane’s explanation about the usage (and sometimes definitions) of that terminology, accompanied by other examples.

This was evident in this excerpt:

T: In the sentence “She looks sad,” how do you categorize the verb “look”? What kind of verb is it?”

S: Verbs of perception.

T: No.

S: Verbs of manner? [The investigator’s note: There is not any verb named verbs of manner. Students might confuse it with adverbs of manner.]

T: Still not.

S: Linking verb.

T: Yes, it is. The five senses on our face are categorized as linking verbs. For eyes, we use “look.” How about the verb used for nose?

S: Smell.

T: Yeah. For mouth?

S: Taste.

T: Yes, taste.

Through a series of questions and answers, Jane first refreshed students’

memory about the terminology “linking verb” and then told them the principle of identifying linking verb—five senses. To make sure students’ memory still retained, she further asked them to give the exact words.

For the terminology that may be confusing to students, Jane devoted certain

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amount of time teaching them how to distinguish it. When she talked about past participle, for instance, she further added the concept of present participle by

interrogation: “Now that you learned something about past participle, can you tell me is there anything called present participle?” Once students answered affirmatively, she continued to bring in the terminology “gerund,” which looks exactly the same as present participle but functions distinctively:

T: According to what you’ve learned in Book Three and Book Four, when you see “-ing” behind a verb, it doesn’t necessarily work as a present participle.

There are two kinds of possibilities, present participle and gerund. For example, in the sentence “He is singing,” “singing” is a present participle working as an adjective. Another one, in the sentence “Reading is

interesting,” there are two words in the form of V-ing. Which one is a present participle?

S: Interesting.

T: Yes. How about “reading”? What parts of speech usually appear in sentence initial position?

S: Nouns.

T: That’s correct. The word “reading” functions as a noun here. Due to the fact that it is formed by adding “ing” to the verb “read,” it is called a gerund.

In this excerpt, Jane explained the difference of the two grammatical terms in detail. Two sentences were given as examples to illustrate the functions of gerunds and present participles. In the stimulated recall interview later on that day, Jane elaborated the reason why she put so much focus on this grammar point: “This [the review part] is how I plan my class in Book Five. I told students that I won’t arrange a

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particular period of time reviewing old stuffs. I’ll bring in the grammar they’ve learned from time to time.”

Despite the tendency of using terminology in class, it was interesting to find that Jane did follow her principle of “no difficult terminology” when she compiled monthly test paper. After the investigator scrutinized three different copies of Jane’s test paper for the whole semester, all instructions follow this principle with only one terminology occurred. In that particular exception, students were required to rewrite a sentence by using another sentence pattern that included a “介係詞,” a parts of speech that she thought students should know. In all the other cases where students were asked to write down sentences following certain instructions, examples were given instead of Chinese terminology.

4.3 Tensions between grammar teaching beliefs and practices

The comparison between Jane’s beliefs and practices was literally a process of uncovering the multiple competing forces that each belief carried. The more central the beliefs were, the more often they were witnessed in classroom practices. Generally speaking, most of Jane’s teaching practices were consistent with what she described in the interviews. The tensions presented here related to three aspects of grammar teaching: extracurricular teaching resources, proportion of grammar instruction and the use of grammatical terminology.