Teaching English in the Priy Classroom | Page 68

3.1.2 Findings arising from an examination of the supplementary material As another method of collecting evidence, teachers were asked to send a sample of the supplementary material they provide their students with (see section 3.2.2), which provided the researcher with twelve handouts for inspection. These constitute either copies from grammar books or have been written by the teachers themselves and all of them, with no exception, aim at presenting students with more grammar either in the form of abstract rules (see appendix VIIa, p. 137) or in the form of decontextualised exercises (see appendix VIIb, p. 138). Such a practice, however, is rather inconsistent with a number of the respondents’ beliefs as they were stated in the questionnaire concerning the ability of young learners to understand abstract concepts such as grammatical rules (see appendix IV, p. 117, table 32), the role they assign to supplementary material (see appendix IV, p. 121, table 47), as well as the role they assign to grammar (see appendix IV, table 45 in p. 120, table 48 in p. 121, and table 53 in p. 122). To the degree that the particular handouts represent a common practice among respondents, we could claim that their negative attitude towards the methodology of the teaching material which was discussed above (see appendix IV, p. 114, table 20) results from the fact that this does not contain enough grammatical exercises. In this way, however, teachers provide students with a stronger version of an existing grammatical syllabus, and, as a result, while they might contribute to their development of grammatical competence, they leave underdeveloped other elements of communicative competence which are considered essential in order for a person to use the language not only correctly but also appropriately (see section 1.2.2.1). Ellis (1997: 71) emphasises that students who are exposed to large amounts of grammar teaching in the early stages of their language learning fail to develop fluency in the target language and claims that such learners are likely to benefit from communicative activities rather than more grammar teaching. Krashen (1987: 19) refers to such learners as ‘monitor over-users’, stressing that they are ‘…so concerned with correctness that they cannot speak with any real fluency’. Another inconsistency which is revealed between what respondents believe is appropriate and what they do in practice is the fact that, although they believe that children can work collaboratively (see appendix IV, p. 119, table 39), none of the activities they provide their students with as supplement require from them to work in 68