--- title: "Review of — paper by Nikouee (2017) — summary and ideas" description: "This is a short review by Majid Nikouee of an edited Routledge volume on English grammar pedagogy (Christison, Christian… 2 references." authors: ["Majid Nikouee"] year: 2017 venue: "Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics 20" source: "https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/CJAL/article/view/25576" licence: "CC BY (journal licence per DOAJ; Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics)" licence_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" summary_licence: "Elamur Cosmic License" canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/nikouee-2017-review-christison-m-christian-d/" --- [Elamur Research](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/nikouee-2017-review-christison-m-christian-d/) [home](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/) / [2017](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/2017/page/5/) / Review of: Christison, M., Christian, D., Duff, P. A., & Spada, N. (Eds.). (2015). Teaching and learning English grammar: Research findings future directions (xiv + 236 pp.). New York, NY: Routledge. # Review of: Christison, M., Christian, D., Duff, P. A., & Spada, N. (Eds.). (2015). Teaching and learning English grammar: Research findings future directions (xiv + 236 pp.). New York, NY: Routledge. **Authors:** Majid Nikouee · **Year:** 2017 · **Venue:** Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics 20 · **Licence:** [CC BY (journal licence per DOAJ; Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics)](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) **Links:** [Publisher's page](https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/CJAL/article/view/25576) · [PDF](https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/CJAL/article/download/25576/29668) · [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W2614462256) **Citations:** 0 citations (OpenAlex, 2026-10-14) ## Summary This is a short review by Majid Nikouee of an edited Routledge volume on English grammar pedagogy (Christison, Christian, Duff & Spada, 2015). It is the second book in a Routledge series titled Global Research on Teaching and Learning English. It asks how explicit attention to grammar can coexist with communicative, meaning-centred teaching. Its twelve chapters (three overviews and nine empirical studies) fall into four sections: - a historical survey of grammar teaching, - cognitive and socio-affective studies of form-focused instruction (FFI), - corpus work linking lexis and grammar, - teacher and learner beliefs about integrated versus isolated FFI, plus implicit versus explicit instruction. The book's shared position is that grammar should be taught inside meaningful communication rather than as a detached object. The reviewer considers it a useful bridge between research and classroom practice for teachers, researchers and materials writers, since some teachers rely on experience more than evidence. He singles out the corpus section, which shows how to find the vocabulary that typically accompanies particular grammatical structures. ## Key points - The volume has 12 chapters in 4 sections (3 overviews, 9 research studies) and runs xiv + 236 pages (Routledge, 2015). - Section 2's FFI studies cover: - Valeo on the present conditional in content-based teaching. - Hondo on whether instruction before or after a task better aids comprehension of epistemic *must*. - Tomita on a Japanese learner's willingness to communicate. - Park on pretask instruction versus planning time. - Section 3's corpus work includes: - McCarthy arguing for selecting syllabus structures systematically by corpus frequency rather than by intuition. - Liu and Jiang surveying attitudes to a lexicogrammatical approach. - Folse searching two corpora for the verbs that most often occur with the present progressive and the regular past tense. - Section 4 includes: - Burns and Borg on teachers' beliefs about grammar teaching. - Spada and Lima comparing integrated and isolated FFI preferences in ESL versus EFL settings, before and after learners experienced each approach. - Ellis concluding that implicit and explicit instruction both belong in teaching. - Celce-Murcia's opening overview recommends a discourse-based grammar approach, in which learners attend to form while their main focus stays on meaning. ## Interesting ideas - Picking which structures to cover by measured corpus frequency, rather than by intuition, makes the selection reproducible and defensible. - Lexicogrammar holds that each grammatical structure has a characteristic set of words it tends to co-occur with, such as the verbs that typically appear in the progressive. - Epistemic *must* is treated as a distinct meaning that learners must be taught to recognise apart from obligation. - Ellis argues that implicit exposure and explicit rule instruction complement each other rather than compete. - Hondo's study shows that the timing of instruction relative to a task (before versus after) changes how much learners benefit. ## For Mova How these ideas could serve Mova, our small open language model — its files, stages and tests: - **I1** (learn): Coverage priorities for repair rules and evaluation sets could be ranked by how often a construction actually appears in our corpora, not by what developers find salient. - **I2** (world): Verb-class knowledge could record which tense and aspect forms each verb usually takes, giving the world builder priors for state versus event readings. - **I3** (frames): The pragmatics layer should explicitly separate epistemic from deontic modal readings and expose the cue that decided it, so the choice stays explainable. - **I4** (learn): This supports keeping hand-written explainable rules alongside statistically trained parsers, letting each check and correct the other. - **I5** (learn): In LLM teacher tiers, we could test whether giving guidance before a self-play task or as correction after it yields better repair rules. *Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.* ## Institutions - [University of Alberta](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/university-of-alberta/) — University, Edmonton, Canada · 23 works · 2,655 citations 📚 Shelves (4): [🎭 Arts and Humanities](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/arts-and-humanities/) · 9,296 works · [🗣️ Language and Linguistics](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/arts-and-humanities/language-and-linguistics/) · 9,206 works · [💭 Psychology](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/psychology/) · 798 works · [💭 Developmental and Educational Psychology](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/psychology/developmental-and-educational-psychology/) · 260 works 🧭 Topics (1): [English](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/english/) · 1,373 works ## Cite Cite as: Majid Nikouee. 2017. Review of: Christison, M., Christian, D., Duff, P. A., & Spada, N. (Eds.). (2015). Teaching and learning English grammar: Research findings future directions (xiv + 236 pp.). New York, NY: Routledge. Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics 20. The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. ```bibtex @article{nikouee2017review, title = {{Review of: Christison, M., Christian, D., Duff, P. A., \& Spada, N. (Eds.). (2015). Teaching and learning English grammar: Research findings future directions (xiv + 236 pp.). New York, NY: Routledge.}}, author = {Majid Nikouee}, journal = {Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics 20}, year = {2017}, url = {https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/CJAL/article/view/25576} } ``` - [← previous New perspectives on cohesion and coherence: Implications for translation](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/kunz-2017-new-perspectives-cohesion-coherence/) - [next → Standardising the Arabic language and script: regional and global cultural stakes](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/hudrisier-2017-normalisation-de-la-langue-et/) - [↑ back to papers of 2017](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/2017/page/5/) ## References 2 references, 0 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet. 1. Christison, M., Christian, D., Duff, P. A., & Spada, N. (Eds.). (2015). Teaching and learning English grammar: Research findings future directions. New York, NY: Routledge. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Christison%2C+M%2E%2C+Christian%2C+D%2E%2C+Duff%2C+P%2E+A%2E%2C+%26+Spada%2C+N%2E+%28Eds%2E%29%2E+%282015%29%2E+Teaching+and+learning+English+grammar%3A+Research+findings+future+directions%2E+New+York%2C+NY%3A+Routledge%2E) 2. The Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics: 20, 1 (2017): i-ii [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=The+Canadian+Journal+of+Applied+Linguistics%3A+20%2C+1+%282017%29%3A+i%2Dii) *Updated 24 October 2026*