How does the phrasal-syntax method proceed in practice?

The meanings of words are dependent on the particular phrasal and situational context in which they are being used. The meanings often change according to the contexts in which they appear. For this reason the focus must be on phrases and sentences in particular contexts, rather than on the individual words themselves.

Given that few useful and/or reliable grammar rules exist, the focus must be on syntax, on authentic sentence formulation, on language conventions, on a case by case basis.

Students will be presented with contexts, or situations, and offered language formulations, phrases and sentences, with which to engage in them, to verbally interact. The teacher won’t pretend to have any secret knowledge, nor waste time seeking to impose order on the anarchy of English. The students won’t waste time in wishful thinking that there is some ‘short-cut’ to learning English.

The value that the teacher can provide is in interrogating the English language and providing the student with a framework of the simplest ways of dealing with particular contexts or interactions. This will provide them with a solid foundation, in terms of both confidence and language skills, from which to build on.

Teachers can start the students off with the most common phrases and language usages. They will be presented to the learner via more or less direct translations, or language equivalents where no direct translation is possible, with appropriate explanations in the learners’ native language.

By memorising these, and practicing with them, students can develop confidence and fluency in using them. There is no avoiding disciplined memorisation. The student must put in the effort.

The teacher can actively contribute to student motivation by ‘leveraging’ their efforts, by ensuring that the student gets the greatest returns to effort. Materials must be developed with these principles in mind.

Students can then acquire new and less common phrases and language usages as they come across them, watching TV, videos, reading books, newspapers, and magazines, and interacting with people. They will have a history of success, and therefore enough confidence to attempt using new phrases and adapting them to their needs.

Language acquisition follows a natural progression. We are first, as babies, ‘immersed’ in a language. We constantly hear it, without any notion of what it is about, what it might mean. We can soon recognise discrete sounds amongst the ‘noise’. This is the first step. To recognise discrete sounds, discrete language ‘items’ within the apparent babble, the sing-song, the noise.

To put it simply, we have to be able to hear the discrete parts of the language. We have to be able to recognise that particular sounds are in fact individual sounds, words, and phrases. You probably haven’t thought about this, so do the following. Listen to a video, or TV or radio program, in a language you are totally unfamiliar with. You will hear a lot of sing song.

You will not be able to ‘hear’ discrete words and phrases.

The first stage is to learn to hear, and to comprehend discrete sounds within, the foreign language, to be able to recognise them as individual words and phrases.

The next stage is to learn the meanings of the most useful and important language items. Note that the first stage is not to learn words. Why? Words can have entirely unrelated and different meanings depending on their phrasal contexts. Few words will ever be used in isolation; therefore it is more productive to learn phrases, rather than isolated words.

The next stage is to learn how to speak the language, to articulate the words and phrases with the correct pronunciation. It is important for the teacher and designer of learning materials to identify how particular sounds are produced, articulated, or enunciated, in the students own language.

For example, Korean’s have a tendency, due to the faults of their teachers, to over exaggerate their pronunciation of the last consonant of English words. Hence I could never find a ‘telephone card’ for my mobile phone. No-one could sell me a telephone card. Of course I had absolutely no problem buying a telephone ‘card-er’.

In the Korean language the last consonant is hardly enunciated at all. English teachers often have trouble getting their Korean students to more strongly enunciate, to produce or articulate, the last syllables or sounds of English words. It appears that, in order to encourage them to do so, they, the teacher, over-exaggerate the end sounds when they correct their students. The Koreans end up over-exaggerating the end sounds of English words.

German and Polish has no ‘th’ sound. Germans and Poles can feel very self-conscious when trying to form the ‘th’ sound. For the native speaker it comes as second nature, and they don’t think twice about it. For the German and Polish student the action is so ‘unnatural’ that it feels extreme. For them it feels like they are sticking their tongues out and flapping them around. You will have to clearly demonstrate where you place your tongue to produce the ‘th’ sound; just in front of the top teeth. Practice it like you would practice any other physical activity, until it becomes second nature. Have you noticed that in German W is pronounced V, and V is pronounced ‘fow’? This will help you anticipate mistakes in pronunciation, and allow you to pre-warn the student about common mistakes made by their fellow natives, so that they might become more self-editing of their own pronunciation and language usage.

Does the native language of the student have any sounds in common with English, or whichever target language you are teaching? Try to find similar sounds in the native language of the student, so that you have a ‘touchstone’ to compare the unfamiliar sounds with. It will give you a physical aid to introducing the new physical movements needed in performing the target English sounds. Those who aim to produce English language learning materials must be familiar with the students’ native language, to be able to identify similar, different, and misleadingly apparently similar but actually different, phrases, language usages, and sounds. It is always best to build upon what people already know. It is always best to find ways to relate what someone knows to what they don’t, to relate the unknown to the familiar.

While teaching English to Germans I came across a number of apparently similar words, which were in fact very different in meaning, often having the opposite meanings. They have come to be known as ‘false friends’. Gift, in English, of course means a present, a good thing. In German gift means poison. Germans tend to misuse terms like ‘make’. They must be warned that ‘shit’ sounds a lot harsher in English than “Sheisse” does in German. It is best to bring these up before the students form a habit of using them incorrectly. A habit once formed is hard to break!

As a teacher you will be demonstrating and practicing phrases. Learning useful phrases and building confidence in using them is paramount when students are learning the language in order to interact in, to communicate in, English. Traditionally many students end up learning huge amounts of vocabulary and can read and write very well, but have too little confidence to actually interact verbally in English. They become good at tasks like reading and listening for understanding, at comprehension and ‘cloze’ exercises, but lack the confidence and skills to actually participate in verbal interactions.

The positive feedback effect of successful encounters and interactions is a huge motivating factor in language learning. It motivates greater effort and promotes further language acquisition. It builds confidence. You will need this confidence to ‘bounce back’ from frustrating or embarrassing experiences.

For this reason students should learn to laugh at themselves, and not take themselves too seriously. It is inevitable that they will make lots of mistakes, and say silly things. How often women have laughed at me after I have walked into the staffroom of an English school in Germany, and told them all that I was horny, when I meant to express that it was really hot? It took quite a few such responses before I asked them what was so funny!

Students should be given scripts, describing situations and the phrases to be used in those situations. The note will tell them to go up to someone and say the phrase.

The other person will have to respond with the phrases they have learnt. The phrases being used in the lesson will be posted on the whiteboard and so on. Like Marlon Brando, they will be able to read their ‘lines’ from strategically placed cue cards. They will be active in the process, by having to choose the appropriate phrases from a range of options. In this way the activities will be interesting and fun.

Students will learn just as much from their ‘mistakes’ as from their successes. Each student will learn from each other’s’ example. The lesson must be about interaction and verbal practice. This will be reinforced by notes which they are to memorise. The notes will merely reinforce what they have been physically ´doing´. This allows for ‘muscle memory’, which reinforces the written and spoken and the deliberately...