Applied Linguistics and Language Teacher Education by Nat Bartels

186 PRESERVICE TEACHERS’ KAL AND TRANSFER TO PLANNINGnew, and contrasted with the commonly held view that grammar is one-dimensional.This complexity challenged the participants and induced anxiety in several. Twelve outof 19 participants expressed some degree of anxiety or confusion about the new material,the most extreme version of which was found in the following quote:Before the readings and discussion I was “scared” of grammar. Now, I’m terrified. I seea lot of things I don’t know and they just don’t seem to stay in my mind. (B.V., journal,9/12/01) 2They also wrote about how the new approach would influence their teaching, as in thefollowing:Before, I really liked grammar, but my idea was that it was always taught in a rulesbasedmanner. The readings and discussion are helping me open my mind to thepossibilities in making grammar meaningful for my students. (L. B., journal, 9/12/01)Some participants were concerned about the challenges of teaching grammar to Englishlanguage learners (ELL) given this more nuanced view of grammar:I have only gotten more interested in how to teach grammar. The problem is that nowI’m thinking about the way grammar can be prescriptive and descriptive and as a resultam beginning to feel more confused which way to teach ELLs. (G.M., journal, 9/12/01)While this view opened up grammar as a more interesting subject to learn and teach, italso brought out feelings of disorientation because it was inconsistent with most of theparticipants’ prior experience with grammar.3.1.2 Applying KAL to TeachingThe journals written the second and fourth weeks of class are characterized by questionsabout how to apply KAL to teaching. Some show emerging comfort with formallinguistic analysis, intended to develop their metalinguistic knowledge, as exemplified inthe following excerpts:I think that slowly I’m gaining a better understanding of simple grammaticalterminology. ...As a result, I’m not falling into the same patterns of learning grammarthat I’m used to using. In other words, my frustration level is kept lower. (G.M., journal,9/19/01)However, transfer of KAL to teaching was seen as problematic. Participants expressedconfusion about how formal analysis helps in grammar teaching, with five participantsspecifically bringing up that issue in their journals and four others writing that theywondered how they would explain grammar to young children without usingmetalinguistic terminology. This concern can be explained by the fact that theparticipants were beginning their elementary ESL student teaching placements and werelargely concerned with how to make what they were learning the English Grammar classapplicable to teaching children. Conversely, many participants specifically commentedon the benefits of the activities carried out that day in class that linked the formalanalysis of verb forms to an explanation of sample student errors. This was a connection