The declarative–procedural knowledge of grammatical functions in higher education ESL contexts: Fiction and reality

1 Introduction

The initial impetus for this article came from a casual conversation with a friend who worked as a lecturer of English at a private college in the United Arab Emirates. He was describing an “awkward” situation where some of his students passed a short test on the difference between the simple past tense and the present perfect tense, yet used the two tenses interchangeably when they wrote without any distinction. He wondered, “why does a student who has the knowledge about these two tenses use them mostly inaccurately when he/she writes?” Given the intricacy of second language acquisition, the issue raised should not be very surprising.

English as a second language (ESL) learners face a vast array of challenges that are in large part pertinent to the competence in and the use of English grammatical structures (Abduh et al. 2021, James 2013). From their attempts to learn the various grammatical forms (declarative knowledge), to the complexities of putting what they have learnt into actual written or oral production (procedural knowledge), ESL learners encounter numerous challenges along the way. In essence, “Knowing about language as a grammatical system, which involves knowing the rules underlying syntax, semantics, and phonology, is not a sufficient condition for knowing how to use the language functionally” (O’Malley et al. 1990, 73), indicating a gap between knowing grammar and being able to use it in production (Johnston and Goettsch 2000).

ESL University students at all levels make grammatical errors of all sorts, which affects the overall quality of their work. Atashian and Al-Bahri (2018) emphasised that grammar is a big challenge for university students, especially in academic writing. Their study found that verb tense-related errors were the most prevalent. Singh et al. (2017) found that ESL tertiary students’ errors pertaining to subject–verb agreement and the use of tenses are recurrent. In a study surveying 228 undergraduate theses in the Indonesian context, Sugeng (2016) found that grammatical errors pertaining to verbs, subject–verb agreement, predicates, and clause structure were prevalent in students’ writing. Another study analysing the oral productions of university students in 126 interactions found that the students made errors in prepositions, questions, articles, plural forms, subject–verb agreement, and tense which are very common (Ting et al. 2010). The findings of Sugeng (2016) and Ting et al. (2010) were supported by other studies conducted in ESL contexts at universities (e.g. Abduh et al. 2021, Alghazo and Alshraideh 2020, Eng et al. 2020). It is worth noting here that the prevalence of errors in verb phrases is not a matter of L1 interference because the participants in these studies came from different L1 backgrounds.

Before proceeding, though, it is essential that we define what we exactly take as grammar and as grammatical functions. Grammar has for long attracted the attention of linguists, certainly ever since the 1950s Chomsky and has even become “the vortex around which many controversies in language teaching have swirled” (Larsen-Freeman 2003, 9). Quite understandably, with all the theoretical-and-practical-based controversies that surround grammar, it is normal to find fine-grained differences in defining it. At the heart of these debates, though, there is an agreement to view grammar as rules governing morphology and syntax (morphosyntactic features), with the former being about word formation and the latter word order (Freeborn 1995, Schenck 2017, Thornbury 1999). In addition to this focus, grammar is viewed as rules pertaining to classifications, or categories (noun, verb, and preposition) and the relationships between them (Hudson 2003, Newson 2006).

Of particular importance to the present article is the view that one main feature of grammar is “its meaning-making potential” (Thornbury 1999, 3). To elaborate, the words “George” and “me” have different functions in the following utterances, therefore leading to different meanings at the sentence level.

Dana phoned George and me last night.

George sent me an email yesterday.

This article focuses on the functions that words and phrases play in sentences. This part of grammar relates to how the words are organised to produce meaningful sentences (Cook 2013). In this sense, words in sentences hold functions, such as subject, direct object, indirect object, preposition, article, and object of preposition (Newson 2006). Knowledge of the functions of words is essential to understand the meanings of sentences and to produce accurate ones, thus making this kind of knowledge influential at the declarative and procedural levels. Grammatical functions have been the focus of copious research articles that approached the topic from different angles and that addressed it vis-à-vis various languages. Examples include the interplay between grammatical functions and tone in San Maka (Perekhvalskaya 2021), grammatical functions of verb complements in Mandarin Chinese (Yong 1997), and grammatical functions in Indonesian relative clauses (Sari et al. 2017).

However, the relationship between the declarative knowledge and the procedural knowledge of grammatical functions is a complicated one so we rarely find attempts to address the dialogue between the two in a single study. The levels of the declarative–procedural knowledge of grammatical functions can be perceived as a tripartite knowledge pyramid (Figure 1) along which learners are distributed in the following way: 1) The top layer consists of students possessing both the declarative and the procedural knowledge, 2) the second layer includes students possessing either one, and 3) the third layer houses students possessing neither one.

Figure 1

Tripartite declarative–procedural knowledge pyramid.

The top layer entails that some students have the declarative knowledge of grammar and can transfer and use this knowledge in their oral and writing productions, thus possessing the procedural knowledge as well. For example, the students know what an indirect object is and they can use it correctly when they write and speak. The alignment between the declarative knowledge and the procedural knowledge may lead to the overproduction of some linguistic forms and functions (Gass 2013).

The second layer on the pyramid is bidirectional. Within this layer, there are two categories of ESL learners. The first category consists of learners who possess the procedural knowledge of grammatical functions, but not the underlying declarative knowledge, for example using the indirect object in speech or writing but not being able to identify it in a sentence. This is known in the literature as tacit knowledge, where the learners do not know consciously what they know unconsciously (Weisler and Milekic 2000). In this case, “knowledge is said to be represented implicitly when it is inferred to exist from individuals’ systematic behaviour, though these individuals are unaware of the content of their knowledge” (Paradis 2009, 3). The second category consists of ESL learners who possess declarative knowledge of grammatical functions, but not procedural knowledge, for example being able to identify the indirect object in a sentence, yet not using this function in speech or writing. This is known in the literature as the inert knowledge problem, where “knowledge that is gained in (formal lessons in) the classroom remains inactive or inert when put into service (in communication within and) outside the classroom” (Larsen-Freeman 2003, 8). The inert knowledge problem is usually characterised by avoidance, where students tend to avoid using certain forms due to their complexity (Dagut and Laufer 1985, Gass 2013).

The third layer on the pyramid entails that the students do not possess the knowledge of the grammatical functions and cannot use them, for example not being able to identify the indirect object in a sentence and not being able to use it in writing or speech. This kind of low-profile declarative–procedural knowledge may, quite understandably, lead to the underrepresentation of certain functions in learners’ productions.

This article attempts to explore ESL university students’ distribution across the three layers and to further understand the dialogue between the declarative knowledge and the procedural knowledge. The overall argument of the current article highlights the importance of this interaction, which becomes abundantly clear in the typical cases where ESL university students fail to put their declarative knowledge of grammatical functions into accurate application when they speak or write. To understand the declarative knowledge further, a Words-in-Sentences Test was developed, validated, and administered to 841 first-year students in seven universities and colleges in three Arab countries (United Arab Emirates, Jordan, and Oman). The test is not new in the general format since similar tests were developed earlier, following suit of the pioneering Words-in-Sentences Test that was created in 1959 by John B. Caroll as Part IV of the modern language aptitude test, which “has remained in continuous use ever since” (Stansfield and Reed 2004, 44). The test sought to measure the ability to understand the functions of particular words in sentences (Lightbown and Spada 2008) by requiring the examinees to select one word out of five used in a sentence. That word had to correspond in grammatical function to a word used in a stimulus sentence (Gass 2013). The present article utilised the same discretion, and a 15-item test was developed to measure students’ declarative knowledge of grammatical functions in ESL higher education contexts.

The results obtained from the test led to important insights into the students’ levels of declarative knowledge of the main grammar constructs. The results from the test were then correlated with the students’ writing scores, which were obtained from their instructors, to see whether the declarative knowledge of grammar correlated with their writing scores. Then, nine pieces of writing were selected for qualitative document analysis to understand the students’ procedural knowledge in relation to the same grammatical constructs used in the Words-in-Sentences Test. This analysis sought to identify and fathom the themes and/or problematic areas pertinent to grammatical functions among ESL University students.

2 Materials and methods

This study aimed to explore the declarative and procedural knowledge of grammatical functions among university students. The concurrent mixed-methods design was used in instrumentation and data analysis. The utilisation of qualitative measures in tandem with quantitative ones aimed for significance enhancement, which “involves the use of qualitative techniques in order to maximise researchers’ interpretations of quantitative data” (Leech and Onwuegbuzie 2007, 561). According to Collins et al. (2006), significance enhancement may take different forms, such as expanding the interpretation of data and clarifying why the outcomes did or did not occur, which are two main reasons why both quantitative and qualitative strategies were used in this article. To serve the overarching aim of the article, three research questions were developed. This part of the article sheds light on the materials and the methodology used to glean the data necessary to answer the research questions.

The first research question was “What is the current status of the ESL university students’ declarative knowledge of grammatical functions as revealed by their scores in the Words-in-Sentences Test?” The instrument used to answer this question was a Words-in-Sentences Test that was developed by the researchers (Appendix). This test was composed of 15 multiple-choice questions of five items each to select from. The items tested selected ten grammatical functions (subject, subordinating conjunctive, object of preposition, direct object, noun modifier, subject complement, object complement, prepositional phrase head, predicator, and adjective modifier) that correspond to various word classes. The selected grammatical functions, the corresponding word classes, the number of test items, and the distribution of these in the test are shown in Table 1.

For each one of the 15 test items, a stimulus sentence was written with one word underlined, and another sentence with five words underlined and labelled from A to E. The participants were asked to choose from the second sentence the word that has the same grammatical function as the one underlined in the stimulus sentence. The tests were scored manually by the researchers and were given a mark each out of 15 based on the number of correct answers. The scores from the test were used to answer the first research question pertaining to the students’ declarative knowledge of grammatical functions. This test was administered to 841 university ESL students, who were all in their first year.

The second research question was “Is there a correlation between ESL university students’ scores in the Words-in-Sentences Test and their writing scores?” In order to answer this question, the students’ scores in the Words-in-Sentences Test were correlated with their writing scores retrieved from the universities they studied at using Pearson Correlation Analysis.

The third research question was “What are the themes pertaining to the declarative knowledge and the procedural knowledge of grammatical functions as revealed by the Words-in-Sentences Test and the writing samples?” This question was put forward to find the most salient themes pertaining to university students’ declarative and procedural knowledge of grammatical functions. The answer to this question involved the use of qualitative content analysis (Leech and Onwuegbuzie 2007), which lent itself to an in-depth examination of participants’ responses to the Words-in-Sentences Test and their written essays. A number of themes were generated from this analysis. These themes were discussed in terms of the three layers of the declarative–procedural knowledge pyramid presented earlier in order to generate practical implications about the dialogue between the two types of knowledge. This analysis specifically involved nine participants that represent the three levels of achievement in their essay and test scores – three essays from each level as shown in Table 2.

It can be realised that the first two questions can offer a partial explanation of some aspects of the learners’ knowledge of grammatical functions and how this type of knowledge statistically correlates with their writing scores. Thus, it was sensible to examine authentic language data to see how well this knowledge accounts for the production of these grammatical functions in writing; therefore, the third research question, which calls for qualitative analysis, was put forward in order to get more well-informed and profound understanding about the declarative–procedural knowledge of grammatical functions by identifying the most stand-out issues and thus opening eyes on further research opportunities in this area.

2.2 Test validity

The validity of the Words-in-Sentences Test was established in the following way. All 15 pairs of items were inserted into Carnegie Mellon University’s “Parse a Sentence” Programme (Temperley et al. 2016). The test construct validity was established by two means: 1) ensuring that the underlined word in the stimulus sentence has the intended function, and 2) ensuring that only one word out of the five words underlined in the second sentence has the same function of the underlined word in the stimulus sentence. For example, the first pair in the Words-in-Sentences Test sought to test the students’ declarative knowledge of subject as shown below:

The results from the “Parse a Sentence” analysis showed that the underlined word in the stimulus sentence “girl” was subject, and that only one word, which was “I,” out of the five underlined in the second sentence was subject, too. Figure 2 shows the grammatical functions as revealed by the parsing analysis for pair 1.

Figure 2

Parsing analysis for the first pair of sentences in the Words-in-Sentences Test.

3 Results

The first research question was about the current status of the students’ declarative knowledge of grammatical functions. The results of the students in the Words-in-Sentences Test show that the declarative knowledge of the grammatical functions of words recorded a low average of 6.8 out of 15, as shown in Table 5:

The actual scores in the Words-in-Sentences Test per college are shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3

Students’ scores in the Words-in-Sentences Test.

It can be clearly seen from Figure 3 that none of the universities scored an average that goes beyond 60%, with two universities even scoring averages below 40%. This is a clear indication that the university students’ declarative knowledge of grammatical functions falls between weak and adequate.

The second research question sought to find whether or not there was a correlation between ESL university students’ scores in the Words-in-Sentences Test and their writing scores. Overall, there was a significant correlation between the test scores and the writing scores, indicating that knowledge of grammatical functions can be an index to writing quality. The correlation results showed that the students who were top scorers in the writing test were also top scorers in the Words-in-Sentences Test, which also applied to mid-scorers and low scorers with minor exceptions. Table 6 shows a detailed description of the correlations.

On a cautious note, while a strong correlation was established between the participants’ scores in the Words-in-Sentences Test and writing, no claims are made about a causality relationship, that poor identification of the functions of words leads to poor quality of writing since the latter can be the result of many other factors, such as the teaching methods used. Having established the correlation, it is now handy to consider the qualitative analysis of the students’ declarative–procedural knowledge of grammatical functions, hence, the findings of the third research question: What are the themes pertaining to the declarative knowledge and the procedural knowledge of grammatical functions as revealed by the Words-in-Sentences Test and the writing samples?

The qualitative analysis of the data from the Words-in-Sentences Test and the nine essays revealed a number of issues that have been classified under themes within the three layers of knowledge. The themes found through the qualitative analysis are presented below.

4 Discussion

The present study has revealed that ESL University students’ declarative knowledge of grammatical functions is below the average pass score of 7.5 out of 15. This finding is alarming as it indicates that the 12+ years of exposure to English in the classrooms was not very productive in terms of acquiring the necessary, let alone basic, grammatical functions by the majority of the participants. This was patent in the findings of the first research question and is in agreement with the findings from previous research (e.g. Altheneyan and Boayrid 2019, Nuruzzaman et al. 2018, Sugeng 2016, Ting et al. 2010). A feasible explanation of this finding could be that new ESL classroom trends are more apt for communicative language teaching, which does not prefer explicit teaching of grammar. The present study also found a strong and significant correlation between the students’ scores in the Words-in-Sentences Test and their scores in essays, which indicated that their declarative knowledge of grammatical functions was substantially mirrored in their procedural knowledge. This finding is in harmony with the findings of several studies that found problems in ESL students’ written productions at the grammatical level (e.g. Al-Shujairi and Tan 2017, Fareh 2014, Setiyorini et al. 2020).

The issues revealed by the qualitative analysis of the students’ tests and essays were revealed on a number of counts. It was noticed that whenever there was a correspondence between the declarative knowledge and the procedural knowledge, it could happen irrespective of the participants’ academic level (Theme 1). That is to say, even low achievers were, in many cases, able to use functions they knew – as revealed by the Words-in-Sentences Test – in their essays correctly. It is worth noting that these grammatical functions showed instances of abundant use in some essays, which shores up the claim that the alignment between the declarative knowledge and the procedural knowledge may lead to abundant use (Gass 2013). The abundant use found in some essays cannot be explained in terms of easiness, though. For example, 700 university students (around 83%) out of 841 answered item 1 in the Words-in-Sentences Test, which addresses subject, correctly, compared to only less than 20% of the participants (163 out of 841) who answered item 10 in the Words-in-Sentences Test, which addressed object complement, correctly. Despite this, both grammatical functions were abundant. Therefore, it is worth considering why ESL learners use certain grammatical functions more than others although the declarative knowledge and the procedural knowledge both exist and given that easiness is not the cause.

The findings within Theme 2 (Absence or limited knowledge) are not difficult to explain since this theme emerged in essays written by students who lacked the declarative knowledge of certain grammatical functions as per the findings from the Words-in-Sentences Test. Obviously, this theme represents the third layer on the pyramid, which entails that the students possess neither the declarative knowledge nor the procedural knowledge of the grammatical functions.

The findings within the second layer were revealing apropos the nature of the relationship between the declarative knowledge and the procedural knowledge. The finding about the avoidance (Theme 3) strategy used by some high scorers in the written essay, for example S2 not using subordinating conjunctions, corroborates claims about ESL learners’ avoiding the use of certain L2 forms due to the difficulty the learners find with these forms (Dagut and Laufer 1985, Gass 2013). According to Laufer and Eliasson (1993, 36) “What is avoided is typically a target language word or structure that is perceived as difficult by the learners.” These university students apparently avoided the use of complex structures in order to produce writing that is free of errors and thus achieve a high score; this strategy was effective as reflected by the high scores these students achieved in writing, partly due to the avoidance strategy. However, this issue can also be taken as an indication that avoidance equates with difficulty when it occurs in high-quality pieces of writing. In the case of S2, subordinating conjunctions may not have been easy to use without the risk of making errors and compromising the mark, a claim that is strongly supported by the data from the Words-in-Sentences Test, which revealed that only 409 students out of 841 could answer item 4 correctly. Therefore, the theme of avoidance can be taken as an instance of the inert knowledge problem where the declarative knowledge, though present, is not translated into procedural knowledge (Gass 2013, Larsen-Freeman 2003).

Another finding within this layer was that fluency took over accuracy (Theme 4). Some essays have witnessed correct usages of certain functions that were incorrectly answered in the Words-in-Sentences Test. Such was the case of S2 who used the direct object correctly in her essay, yet answered the corresponding item incorrectly in the test. A sensible explanation of this could be that the involved form “want + to + infinitive” is very common in ESL students’ productions and is used more often. The high exposure to and usage of this grammatical function made it possible for some students to use it correctly despite their lack of declarative knowledge about the same function. A similar explanation can be given to the cases where the participants used the object of preposition function correctly in their essays, yet responded incorrectly to item 3 about the same function in the Words-in-Sentences Test, for example, S5. Therefore, the theme “fluency overtaking declarative knowledge” can be tightly linked to the tacit knowledge, where the unconscious or procedural knowledge was not manifested in the conscious, or declarative, knowledge (Paradis 2009, Weisler and Milekic 2000). While possessing the procedural knowledge has much to commend in it, tacit knowledge has been problematised by a constant stream of research that has investigated the importance of focus on form (e.g. Basturkmen et al. 2004, Ellis 2005, Valeo and Spada 2016) and noticing grammatical forms and functions in the ESL learning process (e.g. Ellis 2005, Gass 2013, Saville-Troike 2006). Taken together, those studies emphasised the importance of focusing on form and noticing grammatical functions in ESL, which makes possessing the procedural knowledge alone insufficient to acquire the language in full since the declarative knowledge is likely to be compromised.

5 Conclusions and implications

The current study sought to understand the declarative and procedural knowledge dialogue in the area of grammatical functions among ESL university students. The overall argument of this study was that the dialogue between the declarative knowledge and the procedural knowledge of grammatical functions among ESL University students was ineffective. To make the analysis as straightforward as possible, the learners were classified into three categories based on the alignment between their declarative knowledge and procedural knowledge of grammatical functions, using the visual of a three-layer pyramid. It was found that the majority of the students who took part in this study have not acquired most of the grammatical functions as per the Words-in-Sentences Test results. The significant correlation between the grammatical functions and the writing scores of the participants revealed that the problem extends beyond the declarative knowledge to the procedural knowledge of these functions. The qualitative analysis has revealed a number of issues within the three layers of the knowledge pyramid, pertaining to four themes: the correspondence between the declarative knowledge and the procedural knowledge and the students’ academic level, absence or limited usage, avoidance and fluency overtaking declarative knowledge.

While the findings of this study are revealing in terms of ESL university students’ declarative knowledge and procedural knowledge of grammatical functions, we should not be tempted to generalise the findings as the intricate dialogue between the two types of knowledge needs to go through more investigations in different higher education contexts. Still, the findings of the present study can serve as an eye opener for language teachers in other ESL contexts, who might assume that the students who possess the declarative knowledge of grammar can use it accurately and therefore rely on test scores to determine their students’ levels. In addition, based on the findings of the present study, a number of recommendations can be forwarded in terms of further areas of research. The issue of overproduction of certain grammatical functions calls for further exploration. This study found that when the students possessed both the declarative knowledge and the procedural knowledge of grammatical functions, these were used abundantly. Since this could not be interpreted in terms of easiness, it is worth conducting more studies to provide a clear explanation. Another area for further exploration can be designing experimental studies to measure the impact of teaching grammatical functions on students’ achievement in writing, thus taking this study’s findings about correlations a step further to examine causality.