Proceedings of The 6th International Conference on Advanced Research in Education, Teaching and Learning
Year: 2022
DOI:
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Back-Shifting – Frequency & Remoteness in ESL Courses
Rasheed A. Sanhoury
ABSTRACT:
Corpus data show that past forms have high level of occurrence in everyday spoken and written discourse for their level of practicality and usage load. Yet, a majority of coursebooks in their selection and sequencing of grammar items tend to introduce present forms first! Adopting such ordering fashion has many drawbacks on learners’ performance and fluency. Taking the Order of Acquisition Hypothesis into account, and mapping it against content pages taken from current coursebooks, the presenter attempts to raise questions and addresses key issues such as; what limitations such sequencing fashion has on the learner, how does it shape and influence classroom interaction, and what are the implications for teachers? In order to bridge the accuracy/fluency gap and to help learners’ raise their grammatical awareness and become more independent and autonomous, the presenter suggests alternative strategies like Back-shifting (highlighting frequencies of past forms) and noticing.
keywords: Course books, fluency, grammar, interaction, Natural Order of Acquisition.