Q & A with Penny Ur

This Q & A with renowned ELT author Penny Ur aims to find out more about the woman herself, including her opinions on grammar-related issues and other aspects of teaching.

            Q1) What led you to become a teacher in the first place?

I got a PGCE from Cambridge in teaching French and English … but then went to live in a kibbutz in Israel. The kibbutz members said: you know English and have a teaching diploma so you can be an English teacher, which is what we need in our primary school today. So that’s what I did. Later became good at it… and continued.

              Q2) Have you always been good at grammar?

Yes.

              Q3) Could you tell us about a figure who has inspired you in your chosen field?

I think the major figure has been Michael Swan. I first met him when the head of ELT at CUP, Adrian du Plessis, received a copy of an article of mine on teaching conversation, and suggested I turn it into a book in the new Cambridge Handbooks series. At the time, Michael was editing the series, so we set up a meeting in London: two very tall, well-known figures in ELT, and one very small, unknown (somewhat intimidated!) English teacher. Anyhow, Michael edited the book (Discussions that Work), and I learned an enormous amount from his comments, corrections and suggestions on my text. Later, we met several times, and I heard him speak, and always came away from our meetings wiser and more thoughtful. Apart from an encyclopedic knowledge of the English language, particularly grammar, he is totally honest, thinks critically and is a brilliant ‘crap-detector’, and is able to express potentially complex concepts clearly, with a minimum of academic jargon. Whatever positive reputation I possess today in the ELT world, I owe largely to him.

              Q4) What’s the best way to teach grammar these days?

Interesting that you say ‘these days’, as if effective grammar teaching is time-dependent. I suppose some of it is – both time and teaching-context dependent – in the sense that some procedures that worked twenty years ago may not work today, and some that work in EAP may not work in elementary school. However, there are some things which research indicates are likely, wherever and whenever, in most contexts, to be effective in grammar teaching. One of these is explicit teaching – which would include explanation of rules, deliberate practice of target features, corrective feedback on errors. All things being equal, the evidence seems to be that such things contribute to grammatical accuracy in students’ speech and writing, as well as more ‘implicit’ procedures, such as incidental encounter with grammar within a (written or oral) text, or use within a communicative activity. Whether grammatical features should be taught one by one through an explicit grammatical syllabus, or whether they should be taught reactively, as they come up within a communicative activity (‘forms-focus’ vs ‘form-focus), is constantly debated in the literature. My own position is that in the context of school-teaching within a non-English-speaking country, the grammatical syllabus is needed, but has to be backed up by meaningful engagement with target features, both through focused activities (like those in Grammar Practice Activities) and through incidental encounter during communicative tasks. In ESL or EAP – where I have less experience – my feeling is that grammar teaching is best done through reactive ‘focus on form’ during communication, though an underlying grammatical syllabus may be useful as a checklist for occasional ‘mopping up’.

 Q5) Could you share a grammar activity with us that you created and you think went well?

There are lots in Grammar Practice Activities, a lot of which I learned and adapted from other people’s ideas. One which is my own and which I always enjoy doing and feel that students get really useful practice from is ‘Exclamations’ to practise the use of the present perfect to express a past action with a clear relevance to the present. So I give a set of 12 or so exclamations like ‘Congratulations!’ ‘Oh no!’ ‘That’s great!’ ‘Amazing!’ ‘Thank you!’ etc. I ask students to choose one and write a sentence expressing what has (just) happened in order to provoke this response. So someone might write ‘I have just passed my driving test’ to pair with Congratulations!. I give them five minutes to write sentences for as many of the exclamations as they have time for. Then I invite a student to read out a sentence, and the rest of the class have to guess what the exclamation was that they were thinking of. It doesn’t take long for some class wag to respond to a sentence like ‘I have just passed my driving test’ with ‘Amazing!’ and similar humorous responses continue, intermingled with the serious ones. Anyhow, it gives lots of practice of the target feature, through writing, reading speaking and listening, and it’s fun.

              Q6) What advice would you give to teachers who feel uncomfortable teaching . grammar?

It would depend why they feel uncomfortable? If it’s because they don’t know the grammar rules well enough, they should take a course or use a reference book (see next question). If it’s because they feel grammar should not be taught in principle, because it violates the principles of the communicative approach – I would try to convince them that grammar teaching is totally compatible with CLT, and can only enhance it – provided, of course, that it’s not overdone! It’s true that there are teachers who spend most of their time teaching grammar at the expense of vocabulary and, indeed, fluent communication, but I hope these are few and far between and their number lessening as time goes by. Occasional explicit teaching of grammar, and the subsequent use of such grammar in a meaningful context is likely to be helpful. 

              Q7) If you had to choose one grammar reference book, which would it be and why?

The latest edition of Practical English Usage by Michael Swan. I’ve already said above what my opinion is of the author! The book itself is very clear, comprehensive, well organized and easy to find your way around, as well as providing clear explanations and examples for clarification.

              Q8) Moving on from grammar, what are your thoughts on using translation in ELT?

I think it has a (limited) place in ELT. Clearly, this would be mainly in monolingual classes where the teacher also speaks the students’ mother tongue. The problem is that in such contexts, some teachers are tempted to over-use L1, including translation, and you’re back to a version of grammar-translation at the expense of teaching communication and fluency. I believe that most of the lesson (80-100%) should be held in English, whatever the level. Having said that, there is a place for the use of L1 (in monolingual classes, as I said above) for teachers to explain meanings of new words, to explain grammar, and to explain through contrastive analysis why the students are making a certain interference-based mistake, and thus help them understand and avoid it. There is also a place, in advanced language study, for exercises involving translation of phrases and sentences, in order to clarify the exact meaning of the text, including aspects of connotation, collocation, register etc. Also, learners of all ages, in my experience, rather enjoy occasional translation exercises! Finally, there’s a place for translation in testing: if a student can translate a question, for example, from their mother-tongue to English using inversion or the auxiliary verbs correctly, this is a pretty quick and reliable indication that they’ve mastered this particular feature.

              Q9) Do you think any credence should be given to learner styles ( i.e. VAK)?

No.

Well, let me qualify that.

Certainly not Visual/Auditory/Kinesthetic, which has absolutely no support from the research; and I’m pretty sceptical about multiple intelligences as well. Having said that, it is undeniable that different people learn different ways: for example, some people prefer a teacher-fronted type of interaction, some prefer working collaboratively with their classmates, some prefer working on their own. Some people have to write things down in order to remember them, for others it’s enough to read and hear them. But there are, as far as I know, no clear, exclusive, categories of learning styles into which we can conveniently classify individual students. What the teacher needs to be aware of is that different students do indeed learn in different ways, too complex to classify but existing nevertheless. An effective teacher needs, therefore, to vary teaching materials, styles, activities, modes, interaction patterns etc. in order to provide a wide range of different kinds of opportunities for learning. 

              Q10) If you were the Minister of Education where you are, in terms of English teaching, what changes to the system would you implement?

1.    I would get schools to start English only at 4th grade (9-year olds), and tell them to devote the earlier grades to consolidating their knowledge of and literacy in their mother tongue, as well as general subjects.

2.    I would increase the number of English lessons a week to five, in all classes.

3.    I would cancel the national tests at present given at grades 5 and 8, which cause teachers to ‘teach to the test’ and focus on test-passing techniques rather than knowledge of English.

4.    I would take the money saved by 3 above and raise the number, and salary, of the counsellors who visit schools to observe and advise teachers.

5.    I would retain the ‘matriculation’ school-leaving exam at grade 12, but would

a.    disallow the use of dictionaries in the exam (time-wasting, and provide an excuse for teachers to neglect the teaching of vocabulary).

b.    cancel the literature component (teachers spend an inordinate amount of time in the last three years of school teaching fairly difficult poems and short stories, at the expense of general English teaching).

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