The document discusses various aspects of teaching grammar to young learners, including: 1. Grammar is the structure and meaning system of language and should be taught through meaningful and engaging activities. 2. There are different definitions of grammar that teachers may have in mind. 3. Young learners can learn grammar best through games, activities, and meaningful interaction rather than explicit instruction in rules. 4. Learners build their internal grammar over time through hypothesis testing and interaction in the language.

1. Learning Grammar
By: Bishara Adam
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2. A Place Of Grammar
 Grammar is the sound,
structure, and meaning system
of language.
 The goal is to teach the
students grammar through
meaningful activities which are
both fun and engaging.
 It is important that the teacher
always has the goal in mind for
teaching grammar and that the
students learn this in a
communicative ways.
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3. Different Meanings Of Grammar
When teachers are invited to brainstorm what the term ‘grammar’
means to them, they commonly produce a list such as this:
 Parts of Speech (elements or categories)
 Syntactic structures (phrases, clauses, sentence types)
 “Correct” sentence structures (subject-verb agreement and such)
 “Correct” punctuation and other aspects of mechanics (Capitalization,
Contraction, Abbreviations and Acronyms)
 Appropriate usage (often thought of as “standard” or educated forms)
 Sentence sense; style (appropriate and effective use of syntactic options;
ability to manipulate syntactic elements)
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4. The Role of Grammar
in Teaching Young Learners
 Young children are wonderful in absorbing new language.
They can get maximum of language through games and
activities that they find funny. Their success in learning foreign
language does not depend on their knowledge of grammar.
 As Pinter (2006) stated that children can use grammatical
structures very well, they can speak language clearly, but they
are not able to say why they use particular structure.
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5. The Role of Grammar
in Teaching Young Learners
Teachers, of course, should be aware of grammar and structures that
they want their children to know. But they should teach just a minimum
of grammar because mastering grammar is to help them speak with
organized sentence structures in order to make themselves understood.
 Some children are able to deal with simple grammar at the age of ten
or eleven. If our students learn proper speaking habits while they are
young, this should help them become good communicators in the
future.
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6. How Learners Learn A Language
Language learning is result of
Interaction between learners
Meaningful and purposeful interaction
Giving and receiving feedback
Talking together in groups and pairs
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7. How Learners Learn A Language
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When planning a lesson, remember:
Make real communication
Make room for experimenting
Be tolerant of errors
Provide practice of both accuracy and fluency
Link the different skills together
Let grammar rules be “discovered”

8. Development Of The
Internal Grammar
 Young learners have a long time ahead
of them with the language.
 There is no need to rush into technical
rules and labels that will confuse.
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 It seems likely to be far better to give children a sound basis
in using the language while encouraging curiosity and talk
about patterns and contrasts in and between languages and
introducing grammatical language slowly and meaningfully.

9. Development Of The Internal
Grammar: From Words To
Grammar
 In the beginning stages, learners seem to use words or
chunks strung together to get their meaning across with
little attention paid to grammar that would fit the words or
chunks together in conversational patterns.
 If you can get your message through without grammar,
then there may be a little impulse to drive grammar
learning.
 Paying attention to grammatical features of a language is
not something that happens automatically in communicating
and that therefore some artificial methods of pushing
attention are needed: teaching.
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10. Development Of The Internal
Grammar: From Words To
Grammar
Learned chunks of language will make up a substantial part
of early learning and that learnt chunks also provide a
valuable resource for developing grammar as they are
broken down and re-constituted.
 Ways of teaching that help learners notice words inside
chunks and how other words can be used in the same places
may help with the development of grammar.
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11. Development Of The Internal Grammar:
Learning Through Hypothesis Testing
 Children build hypotheses
about how the foreign
language works from the data
they have received from their
limited experience with the
language.
 Errors in language use can
often act as a window on to
the developing internal
grammar of the learner and
are signals of growth.
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12. Development Of The Internal Grammar:
Influence of the first language
 When data is limited, learners are
more likely to use their first
language to fill the gaps.
 So the learners may assume that
foreign language grammar works
like first language grammar.
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 If the foreign language cues are not particular obvious, the
probability of them being noticed and used is even smaller.
 It is precisely these cross-linguistically different and low
profile features of grammar that need form-focused instruction.

13. A Learning Centered Approach To
Teaching Grammar
 It would not be conceptually appropriate
for grammar to be explicitly taught as
formal, explicit rules in young learner
classrooms to children under the age of 8 or
9 years.
 As children get older, so they are
increasingly able to learn from more formal
instruction but we should remember that
grammar teaching can often destroy
motivation and puzzle children rather than
enlighten them.
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14. A Learning Centered Approach To
Teaching Grammar
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 Good learning centered
grammar teaching will be
meaningful & interesting,
require active participation
from learners and will
work with how children
learn and what they are
capable of learning.

15. Principles For Learning Centered
Grammar Teaching
The need for Grammar
 Grammatical accuracy and precision matter for meaning.
 Without attention to form, form will not be learnt accurately.
 Form-focused instruction is particularly relevant for those
features of the foreign language grammar that are different
from the first language or are not very noticeable.
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16. Principles For Learning Centered
Grammar Teaching
Potential conflict between meaning
and grammar
 If learners’ attention is directed to
expressing meaning, they may neglect
attention to accuracy and position.
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17. Principles For Learning Centered
Grammar Teaching
Importance of attention in the learning process
 Teaching can help learners notice and attend to features of
grammar in the language they hear and read or speak and write.
 Noticing an aspect of form is the first stage of learning it; it
then needs to become part of the learner’s internal grammar, and
to become part of the learner’s language resources ready for use
in a range of situations.
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18. Principles For Learning Centered
Grammar Teaching
Learning grammar as the development of internal grammar
The learner has to do the learning; just teaching grammar does
not make it happen.
Grammar learning can work outwards from participation in
discourse from vocabulary and from learnt chunks.
Learners’ errors can give teachers useful information about their
learning processes and their internal grammar.
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19. Principles For Learning Centered
Grammar Teaching
The role of explicit teaching of grammar rules
Teaching grammar explicitly requires the learner to think
about language in very abstract, formal ways that some enjoy
and some find difficult. The younger the learner, the less
appropriate it is to teach explicitly.
Children can master language if it is well taught.
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20. Ways of Teaching Grammar:
Inductive & Deductive
 Inductive grammar - indirect grammar teaching, teacher
does not provide grammar rules. There is a text where new
grammatical structure is introduced. Children read the text
and find out the new structure. Children’s attention is not
focused on the structure, but on the text. Children work with
the text, they practice new language and the focus does not
have to be on the grammar. Children play with the words,
sentences and they can take the new grammar in incidentally.
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21. Ways of Teaching Grammar:
Inductive & Deductive
Deductive grammar - explanation of the new grammatical rules and
structures to children. Teachers of young learners tend to focus on vocabulary
and pronunciation the most, however, it is important not to neglect grammar
in the classroom. It is important that children develop all four skills, and
grammar along with vocabulary will allow them to do this. Teacher should
make sure all new grammar is taught before the activity. The focus of this,
should be that the children understand the meaning of the grammar. Children
may learn easily but they also forget quickly. So recycle new grammar
frequently to help them remember.
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22. Stages in Teaching Grammar to EYL
(English for Young Learners)
 Grammar teaching includes stages that children should go through
before being able to use a new grammar item (Scrivener, 2003).
The grammar item in presentation should be:
 Clear - there should not be any difficulties in understanding, children
should understand the text.
 Efficient - there should be a maximum of new grammar, children should
be forced to use new language.
 Enjoyable and interesting - children should be motivated on the highest
level and be interested in the activity.
 Appropriate - it has to be proper for language that is presented.
 Productive - children should be allowed to make own sentences and
questions using the grammar that they have learnt.
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23. Teaching Techniques For Supporting
Grammar Learning
1. Working from classroom discourse: Routines and
classroom contexts can serve to introduce new grammar
 The language for classroom management: Some very simple
phrases for classroom management can be introduced and as
time goes by, these can be expanded. Pupils can use some
phrases originally used by the teacher when they work in pairs/
groups.
 Talking with children: If a child offers a comment about a
picture, for example, the teacher can respond with fuller
sentences that pick up the child’s interests. Talk with children as
a class can also offer incidental focusing on form.
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24. Teaching Techniques For Supporting
Grammar Learning
2. Guided noticing activities:
 Listen and Notice: Filling a grid while listening
to a conversation. Noticing the grammatical
features are important to fill the grid.
 Presentation of new language with puppets: The
children listen several times to the story-
dialogue: repetition + contrast.
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25. Teaching Techniques For
Supporting Grammar Learning
3. Language practice activities that offer structuring opportunities
 Questionnaires, surveys & quizzes: Preparation and rehearsal of the questions
are necessary to ensure accuracy; the activity must be managed so that the
questions are asked in full each time.
Information gap activities: An information gap activity is an activity where
learners are missing the information they need to complete a task and need to
talk to each other to find it.
 Helping hands:
 Drills: The dangers of over-using drills occur mostly if the children do not
understand the content. Repetition drills can help in familiarizing a new form
but substitution drills are the ones that offer more for grammar structuring. A
substitution drill is a classroom technique used to practice new language.
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26. Teaching Techniques For Supporting
Grammar Learning
4. Proceduralizing activities:
Polar animal description re-visited: Description of the animal
they choose needs some grammatical knowledge that has already
entered the internal grammar through noticing and structuring.
 Dictogloss: the teacher reads out a text, students take notes and
re-write the text in pairs/ groups.
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27. Teaching Techniques For Supporting
Grammar Learning
5. Introducing metalanguage:
 Explicit teacher talk: Useful and possible to talk about language
without using technical terms.
 Cloze activities for word class:
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