The document provides a comprehensive guide on teaching grammar, defining grammar as a multi-faceted concept rather than a strict set of rules. It emphasizes a 3-dimensional framework of form, meaning, and use, and discusses various methods for teaching, balancing accuracy and fluency, and providing effective feedback. Additionally, it includes practical activities, examples, and resources for educators to enhance grammar instruction.

1. How to teach grammar
Alice Chiu
0936-825423

2. Main Menu
1. What is grammar?
2. What should be taught?
3. How should it be taught?
4. Examples of PPT slides
5. Online Resources

3. 1. What is grammar?
 Grammar is not…
– a discrete set of meaningless
decontextualized or static structure
– prescriptive rules about linguistic form
 What is grammar then?

4. 2. What should be taught?
A 3-D Grammar Framework
form/structure
use/pragmatics
meaning/semantics
From: Larsen-Freeman, D. (2001). Teaching Grammar. (pp. 251-266).
In Celce-Murcia, M. (Ed.) Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language.
(3rd Edition). Boston: Heinle & Heinle.
How is it formed? What does it mean?
When/Why is it used?

5. The advantages of the framework
form/structure
use/pragmatics
meaning/semantics
It makes teachers understand the scope and
multidimensionality of the structure.
It helps teachers to identify the challenges.

6. 2.1 Teaching form
 20 questions (questions)
 family portraits (possessives)
 describing a person or a place by using
relative clauses
 information gap activity (practice
different forms/patterns)
 sentence-unscrambling task
(a problem-solving activity)

7. 2.2 Teaching Meaning
Making association between form and meaning
 realia and pictures (comparative forms)
 actions
–TPR (imperative form)
–matching: phrase-meaning association
(phrasal verbs)
–story telling with action (phrasal verbs)

8. 2.3 Teaching Use
 Role plays in different social contexts
– Example 1: giving advice
• Giving advice to friends
• Giving advice to young kids
• Advice columnist (speaking and writing)
– Example 2: past tense vs. present perfect
• Job interview
 Linguistic discourse context
– Teaching passive voices: focus on issues rather
than agents
• a text completion task

9. 3. How should grammar be taught?
3.1 Accuracy vs. Fluency
3.2 Striking a Balance
3.3 from Cognitive Approach to
Communicative Approach
3.4 Important features
3.5 Sequencing
3.6 Providing Feedback
3.7 General Guidelines
3.8 Conclusion

10. 3.1 Accuracy vs. Fluency
Form-focused Meaning-focused
Grammar translation Direct method
Features of patterns
and grammar points
Interactive/group work
(comprehension input)
Cognitive-code
approach
Communicative
approach
Develop explicit
knowledge (know what)
Develop implicit
knowledge (know how)
accuracy fluency

11. 3.2 How to strike a balance
 Fluency requires practice in which students
use the target language point meaningfully
while keeping the declarative knowledge in
working memory.
 Meaningful practice of form:
– Students have to receive feedback on the
accuracy.
– Concentrate on one or two new forms at a time.
Repeated noticing and continued awareness
of the language feature is important.

12. 3.3 From Cognitive Approach to
Communicative Practice
1. Explicit formal instruction
2. Structured-based communicative task
3. Practice and production exercises
4. Subsequent communicative exposure
to the grammar point

13. 3.4 Important features
 consciousness raising
– either through teacher instruction (a
deductive method)
– or by their own discovery learning (an
inductive method)
 examples of the structure in
communicative input
 opportunities to produce correct
grammar points

14. 3.5 Sequencing
 A grammar checklist
 Not following a prescribed sequence
rigidly
 Many structures would arise naturally in
the course working on the tasks and
content and would be dealt with then.

15. 3.6 Ways to Provide feedback
 Giving explicit rules
 Recasting
 Self-correcting
 Peer-correcting
 Collecting students’ errors, identifying
the prototypical ones, & dealing with
them collectively in class as an
anonymous fashion.

16. 3.7 General Principles for Grammar
Teaching
 little and often (recycle and revisit)
 planned and systematic
 offering learners a range of opportunities
 Involving acceptance of classroom code
switching and mother tongue
 text-based, problem-solving grammar
activities
 active corrective feedback and elicitation
 supported in meaning-oriented activities and
tasks

17. 3.8 Conclusion
 By thinking of grammar as a skill to be mastered,
rather than a set of rules to be memorized, we’ll be
helping students go a long way toward the goal of
being able to accurately convey meaning in an
appropriate manner.
 When the psychological conditions of learning
and application are matched, what has been
learned is more likely to be transfer. Therefore,
presenting rules and forms in the context of
communicative interaction is necessary.

18. 4. Examples of PPT Slides
 Integrating ppt into grammar teaching
– Visual learners
– Interesting stories
 Examples
– ….require that S V….
– Inversions ( 倒裝句 )
– as…as possible

19. 5. Online resources for self-study
 Oxford University Press online practice
– Natural Grammar
– Oxford Learner’s Grammar
– The Good Grammar Book
 English works: grammar exercises
 Big Dog’s grammar

20. End of this Session
 References
Larsen-Freeman, D. (2001). Teaching Grammar. (pp.
251-266). In Celce-Murcia, M. (Ed.) Teaching English
as a Second or Foreign Language. (3rd Edition).
Boston: Heinle & Heinle.
Fotos, S. (2001). Cognitive Approaches to Grammar
Instruction. (pp. 267-284). In Celce-Murcia, M. (Ed.)
Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language.
(3rd Edition). Boston: Heinle & Heinle.