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Uploaded byMaia Teliashvili
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How to teach grammar

This document discusses different approaches to teaching grammar, including deductive and inductive approaches. It emphasizes that the primary learning experience comes from students practicing language themselves, rather than just listening to explanations. Effective grammar teaching balances presentation with practice activities like drills, exercises, elicited dialogues, and games to allow restricted and authentic output. Clarification can involve short teacher explanations, guided discovery through questioning, or self-directed discovery.

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How to teach Grammar Maia Teliashvili
Teaching grammar is an essential part of school education or adult learning. Without good grammar, spoken or written words lose much of their meaning and most of their value.
English grammar is very complex, and all its intricacies cannot truly be learned by rote, they must be really understood – and understanding is most easily achieved when students are engaged, interested and having fun during a lesson.
Two important approaches of teaching grammar A deductive approach An inductive approach
DEDUCTIVE APPROACH (RULE- DRIVEN LEARNING) Starts with the presentation of a rule and is followed by examples in which the rule is applied.
EXAMPLE OF DEDUCTIVE APPROACH SUBJECT AND OBJECT PRONOUNS The subject is the person or thing doing the action: I left early She went home examples of rule We said goodbye The object is the person or thing receiving the action: She telephoned me I hit him examples of rule We saw her
INDUCTIVE APPROACH (DISCOVERY LEARNING) Starts with some examples from which a rule is inferred.
Students are given a sample and the teacher guides them in discovering the grammar rules used in the sample.
An inductive exercise Grammar: so….that/such…that 1. It was so embarrassing! 2. I’m so tired I could go straight to bed 3. Are you so young that you can’t even share? 4. She’s such a nice person 5. It’s such a shame that he’s gone 6. It was such a warm day I thought it could be nice Answer these questions about so and such • Which word goes before an adjective on its own, so or such? • Which word goes before a noun, with or without an adjective? • Which sentences have two clauses/two main verbs? Is it necessary to start the second clause with that?
The basic teaching sequence “present then practise” The teacher first presents/ introduces/ explains/ clarifies/ inputs the language point and then gives learners a chance to practice using the language themselves.
If we want to plan a well-focused grammar lesson, we need to decide: • Which of these areas we want to spend time on • how long we want to give to each one • What the best sequence is to have them in
Many “ present-practise” lessons are structured as shown below: Clarification- restricted output – restricted output – authentic output
Lead-in: the teacher shows pictures connected to the lesson topic/ context and elicits ideas from students Teacher clarification: T gives/elicits examples of the language and explains/elicits information about them from students. Restricted output: the students work on oral practice of examples of these items Restricted output: the students do a written exercise to practice these items Authentic output: the students are given an opportunity to use these items along with the other language they know, in communicative activities
Many “present-practise” lessons are more complex than this one. The use of examples, explanations and practice elements may be integrated. There should be a balance between practice and presentation
which of these two lesson structures seems more useful to the learners? Lead- in presentation practice Lead- in presentation practice
a language teacher’s job is to push, encourage and help learners to try using the language themselves. The primary learning experience is doing the thing yourself, not listening to someone else telling you about how to do it.
Thinking about grammar teaching as primarily ”practice” rather than “presentation” can help to solve a number of problems that teachers feel they face in class.
What makes the lesson challenging is not the level of theoretical knowledge the lesson deals in, but what you ask students to try and do.
When teachers want the learners to focus on a piece of grammar, to see it, think about it and understand it, to become much clearer on its form, meaning and use they refer to a clarification or presentation.
We could differentiate three general categories of clarification 1. Teacher explanation (teacher tells the learner) 2. Guided discovery (T helps the learner to tell himself) 3. Self-directed discovery ( learner tells himself)
handout classify the following grammar clarification activities. Are they mainly (E) explanation, (G) guided discovery or (S) self-directed discovery? 1. You write some sentences (all using the past perfect) on the board, but with the words mixed up, then hand the board pen to the students and leave the room. 2. You tell a story about your weekend. Every time you use a verb in the past simple, you repeat it and write it on the board. at the end , you write ‘past simple’ on the board and explain that you used all these verbs in the past because the story happened last Saturday 3. You lecture about the construction of conditional sentences 4. You create a board situation, clarify a specific meaning and then elicit appropriate sentences from the students or model them yourself. 5. You hand out a list of 20 if sentences. You ask students to work together, discuss and find out what the ‘rules’ are. 6. Students discuss interpretation of timelines on the board and try to make example sentences for them. you intervene when answers seem elusive and at one point explain the difference between two tenses 7. Students decide they want to learn about reported speech. They go to the library or learning centre and find out more.
The answers • 3,2 –explanation • 4,6,5- guided discovery • 1,7 –self- directed discovery
Teacher’s explanation should be: • Quite short as too long one gets students confused, bored and embarrassed. • Talk slowly • Use less complicated language • Give examples • Ask questions • Use diagrams or visual aids
Guided discovery An alternative to giving explanations would be to create activities that allow learners to generate their own discoveries and explanations. Teacher questions will ‘nudge” the learners towards key points. In this way, long explanations can be avoided and learners can take a more active role in their own progress.
Teacher’s role in guided discovery is: • Select appropriate tasks • Offer appropriate instructions, help, feedback and explanations • Manage and structure the lesson so that all learners are involved and engaged.
“Socratic questioning” that leads people to discover things that they don’t know. • Ask questions that focus on the meaning, context and form. • Offer appropriate examples for analysis and discussions • Ask learners to analyse sentences from texts • Ask learners to analyse errors • Ask learners to hypothesise rules • Raise the awareness as to what they have learned
Self-directed discovery This is what learners do when studying on their own without a teacher- or in a class where the teacher’s role is primarily to facilitate the learner’s own self-direction.it is the least commonly found in classrooms.
Although teachers often spend a lot of time on ‘input’ stages- for example, in giving explanations- the real learning experience is when learners try to use the language themselves. In order to give students intensive oral or written practice of specific language points, you can use carefully designed activities.
Restricted output Oral drills Written exercises Elicited dialogues grammar activities/games
Drills Drills provide intensive oral practice of selected sentences, giving the learners a chance to practice ‘getting their mouths around’ the language without worrying too much about meaning.
The basic drill involves simple repetition: • Teacher: he’s going to open the door • Students: he’s going to open the door.
Many teachers consider drills old- fashioned and never use them. certainly there is some danger that students repeating are just making noises with little idea what are they saying, but of all activities in the classroom, the oral drill is the one which can be most productively demanding on accuracy
Variations on a drill • Repeat the grammar item on its own • Repeat the grammar item in a phrase/ sentence • Repeat the intonation pattern • Repeat a sentence starting with the first word/ starting at the end rather than the beginning • You give opening of sentence, students complete it • You introduce sentence by repetition, students must respond with a follow-on ‘reply”, or then give an instruction for transformation of sentence (e g change to the past perfect) • You say sentence with errors, students put it right • You say /show cues( key words, pictures) and students construct a complete sentence.
Exercises • Do it as individuals, then compare and discuss answers with neighbours • Work in pairs or in small groups • Work in teams- make a competition out of it • Do it together on the board- teacher-led or student-led • Hand out a jumbled list of answers to match to the questions • Cut up the sentences and give one to each student, negotiate arrangement and answers • Hand out the exercise with your answers already written in, some right, some wrong. The students must correct your work • Make various games out of it. E.g. Auction
Elicited dialogues These are short dialogues (four-ten lines) which contain a number of examples of specific items to be practiced. Students will get many chances to repeat the dialogues in class and thus increase their familiarity with these items.
Grammar practice activities and games Grammar practice activities are designed to focus on the use of particular items of grammar. The material is designed so that the students have opportunities to work with the target language
The examples of grammar activities are: • split sentences • Grammar quiz • Memory test • Picture dictation • Miming an action • Growing the story/ chain story • Questionnaires • Grammar auctions • Board games and so on
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