TEACHING GRAMMAR IN ENGLISH LESSONS

PLAN:
1. Goals for teaching grammar
2. Key principles of teaching grammar
3. Different Methods of Teaching Grammar
4. Planning a grammar lesson

What does grammar mean to you?

Do you think grammar is important? Why? Why not?

Many professionals in the world of English language teaching have explored this
area. Some teachers strongly believe that grammar is the foundation of any
language and should be treated as such. Others think it is a system of rules to
support the lexical pool of the language.
Make up a sentence using the following words: a, read, I, book.
What tense form is this?
Using the above sentence as a model, transform it into Present Continuous,
Past Continuous, Present Perfect and Past Perfect.
What is the focus of the activity?
What could students learn from such an activity?
How does the activity link grammar form with meaning?
How important is context in this activity?
To what extent is this activity focused on accuracy of grammar forms?

while this activity apparently focuses on tense forms of the verb to read‘, it does
not actually teach anything new, does not provide sufficient context and does not
establish any link between form and meaning. Say that such activities are often
counter-productive as they condition students NOT to think about meaning and to
approach language mechanically.
The purpose for teaching grammar is not simply for you to be confident about
correcting mistakes in children’s work, nor is it to pass on tricks and techniques to
be replicated in a mechanistic way. This does not make children writers or lead to
good writing.

Teaching grammar effectively is about enabling children to control grammar to

express increasingly complex ideas. When grammar is taught well, it can make a
significant different to children’s literacy development.

Here are 7 key principles to bear in mind when teaching grammar:

1. Build up your own subject knowledge

To teach grammar, you need explicit as well as implicit knowledge, to be
confident about using the correct terms and explaining these. Don’t just
learn the next term you are teaching. It is important to be able to relate new
learning to other features and the text as a whole.
2. Give talk a high priority in your classroom
Children need to be able to select from a wardrobe of voices that includes
Standard English.
3. Remember the purpose of teaching grammar
Grammar is not simply the naming of parts of speech or for teaching the
rules of English. It needs to be strongly embedded in classroom talk, reading
and writing.
4. Teach grammar in context
By introducing children to grammatical features and language in context,
you will be helping them to internalise these principles. Try not to go for the
ready-made solution by using a worksheet from a book. It will make very
little difference to children’s use of language and will be meaningless for
those learners who are not yet able to think in abstract ways.
5. Read aloud and discuss how authors use grammar
Children who read extensively and are read to will have a ‘toolbox’ of
structures, patterns and rhythms to draw on.
 6. Be systematic
Make sure you know what the class you are working with have already
learned and what they need to learn now. Link new learning with their prior
knowledge.
7. Make learning grammar fun
Teaching grammar can involve investigations, problem-solving and
language play as part of developing children’s awareness of and interest in
how language works.

Different Methods of Teaching Grammar

English grammar is notoriously difficult to learn for both native and second-
language speakers. There are so many intricacies, obscure rules, and exceptions
that it comes as no surprise that different generations of teachers have used various
approaches to teaching grammar to train literate English writers. In the past,
memorization-based techniques that relied on repetition slowly gave way to more
creative methods. Today, we live in a society that prizes literacy and is willing to
adapt to more effective methods to achieve the best results in teaching grammar.

Diagramming Sentences

One of the older forms of teaching grammar, diagramming sentences, first

appeared in the 19th century. This method involves visually mapping the structures
of and relationships between different aspects of a sentence. Especially helpful for
visual learners, this method disappeared from modern teaching at least 30 years
ago. Different forms of diagramming are used to visualize sentences, from the
Reed-Kellogg System to dependency grammar, but all organize the functions of a
sentence in a way that illustrates the grammatical relationships between words.
More recently, diagramming sentences has had a small pop-culture resurgence in
prints of famous opening sentences and websites that allow you to diagram to your
heart’s content.
Learning Through Writing

This method is often used in schools in the U.S. and Canada. Students are
encouraged to explore language through creative writing and reading, picking up
correct grammar usage along the way. If there are specific problems with certain
grammatical rules, these are covered in a more structured lesson. An emphasis is
now being placed upon language acquisition over language learning, as it has been
observed that learning grammar by memorization does not work well and that
students are better able to recognize and understand grammatical rules when
lessons are more interactive (i.e., they have to apply these rules in their own
writing). Repeated practice is also important and easily achieved through creative
or personal writing exercises. This article, posted by The Atlantic, suggests that to
better equip future adult writers, teachers in the 21st century should consider
dropping outdated grammar teaching techniques in early education and opt for
learning through writing techniques.

Inductive Teaching

The inductive method of teaching grammar involves presenting several examples

that illustrate a specific concept and expecting students to notice how the concept
works from these examples. No explanation of the concept is given beforehand,
and the expectation is that students learn to recognize the rules of grammar in a
more natural way during their own reading and writing. Discovering grammar and
visualizing how these rules work in a sentence allow for easier retention of the
concept than if the students were given an explanation that was disconnected from
examples of the concept. The main goal of the inductive teaching method is the
retention of grammar concepts, with teachers using techniques that are known to
work cognitively and make an impression on students’ contextual memory.
Deductive Teaching

The deductive method of teaching grammar is an approach that focuses on

instruction before practice. A teacher gives students an in-depth explanation of a
grammatical concept before they encounter the same grammatical concept in their
own writing. After the lesson, students are expected to practice what they have just
been shown in a mechanical way, through worksheets and exercises. This type of
teaching, though common, has many people—including teachers—rethinking such
methods, as more post-secondary level students are revealing sub-par literacy skills
in adulthood. As one former teacher states, deductive teaching methods drive many
students away from writing because of the tediousness of rote learning and teacher-
centered approaches.

Interactive Teaching

Another method of teaching grammar is to incorporate interactivity into lessons.

Using games to teach grammar not only engages students but also helps them to
remember what they’ve learned. This method allows teachers to tailor their lessons
to the different learning styles of students. For instance, each student can be given
a large flashcard with a word on it, and the students must physically arrange
themselves into a proper sentence. Other games can include word puzzles or fun
online quizzes.

Over the years, many methods have been developed for teaching grammar and
have been built upon, abandoned, or combined, all with the same goal in mind—
teaching students how to communicate effectively and understand how to use the
English language. Because of the grammatical complexity of English, each method
has its pros and cons. Some lessons are less likely to be remembered, while others
may require more in-depth explanation and practice. Regardless of how grammar
is taught, a well-rounded understanding of English grammar is the most important
factor in improving the literacy of students.
 PLANNING A GRAMMAR LESSON

Without grammar, words hang together without any real meaning or sense. In
order to be able to speak a language to some degree of proficiency and to be able to
say what we really want to say, we need to have some grammatical knowledge.

By teaching grammar we not only give our students the means to express
themselves, but we also fulfil their expectations of what learning a foreign
language involves. Fortunately, nowadays with the emphasis on a communicative
approach and a wealth of stimulating resources, teaching grammar does not
necessarily mean endless conjugation of verbs or grammar translation.

 Which approach?

 Presentation, practice and production (PPP) Presentation

o Presentation

o Practice

o Production
 Conclusion

Which approach?

There are two main approaches to teaching grammar. These are the deductive and
the inductive approach.

 A deductive approach is when the rule is presented and the language is produced
based on the rule. (The teacher gives the rule.)

 An inductive approach is when the rule is inferred through some form of guided
discovery. (The teacher gives the students a means to discover the rule for
themselves.)

In other words, the former is more teacher centred and the latter more learner
centred. Both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages. In my own
experience, the deductive approach is undoubtedly time saving and allows more
time for practising the language items thus making it an effective approach with
lower level students. The inductive approach, on the other hand, is often more
beneficial to students who already have a base in the language as it encourages
them to work things out for themselves based on their existing knowledge.

Presentation, practice and production (PPP)

A deductive approach often fits into a lesson structure known as PPP (Presentation,
Practice, Production). The teacher presents the target language and then gives
students the opportunity to practise it through very controlled activities. The final
stage of the lesson gives the students the opportunity to practise the target language
in freer activities which bring in other language elements.

In a 60-minute lesson each stage would last approximately 20 minutes. This model
works well as it can be used for most isolated grammatical items. It also allows the
teacher to time each stage of the lesson fairly accurately and to anticipate and be
 prepared for the problems students may encounter. It is less workable at higher
levels when students need to compare and contrast several grammatical items at
the same time and when their linguistic abilities are far less uniform.

Presentation

In this stage the teacher presents the new language in a meaningful context. I find
that building up stories on the board, using realia or flashcards and miming are fun
ways to present the language.

For example, when presenting the 2nd conditional, I often draw a picture of myself
with thought bubbles of lots of money, a sports car, a big house and a world map.

 I ask my students what I'm thinking about and then introduce the target language.
"If I had a lot of money, I would buy a sports car and a big house."

 I practise and drill the sentence orally before writing it on the board (positive,
negative, question and short answer).

 I then focus on form by asking the students questions. E.g."What do we use after
'if'?" and on meaning by asking the students questions to check that they have
understood the concept (E.g."Do I have lots of money?" No. "What am I doing?"
Imagining.)

 When I am satisfied that my students understand the form and the meaning, I move
on to the practice stage of the lesson. During this stage of the lesson it is important
to correct phonological and grammatical mistakes.

Practice

There are numerous activities which can be used for this stage including gap fill
exercises, substitution drills, sentence transformations, split sentences, picture
dictations, class questionnaires, reordering sentences and matching sentences to
pictures.
 It is important that the activities are fairly controlled at this stage as students have
only just met the new language. Many students' books and workbooks have
exercises and activities which can be used at this stage.

 When teaching the 2nd conditional, I would use split sentences as a controlled
practice activity. I give students lots of sentence halves and in pairs they try and
match the beginnings and ends of the sentences.
Example: "If I won the lottery," …. "I'd travel around the world."

 I would then do a communicative follow up game like pelmanism or snap using the
same sentence halves.

Production

Again there are numerous activities for this stage and what you choose will depend
on the language you are teaching and on the level of your students. However,
information gaps, role plays, interviews, simulations, find someone who, spot the
differences between two pictures, picture cues, problem solving, personalisation
activities and board games are all meaningful activities which give students the
opportunity to practise the language more freely.

 When teaching the 2nd conditional, I would try to personalise the lesson at this
stage by giving students a list of question prompts to ask others in the class.
Example: do / if / win the lottery?

 Although the questions are controlled the students are given the opportunity to
answer more spontaneously using other language items and thus the activity
becomes much less predictable.

 It is important to monitor and make a note of any errors so that you can build in
class feedback and error analysis at the end of the lesson.

Conclusion
 When teaching grammar, there are several factors we need to take into
consideration and the following are some of the questions we should ask ourselves:

 How useful and relevant is the language?

 What other language do my students need to know in order to learn the new
structure effectively?

 What problems might my students face when learning the new language?

 How can I make the lesson fun, meaningful and memorable?

Although I try to only use English when teaching a grammar lesson, it is

sometimes beneficial to the students to make a comparison to L1 in the
presentation stage. This is particularly true in the case of more problematic
grammatical structures which students are not able to transfer to their own
language.

It is also important to note that using the PPP model does not necessarily exclude
using a more inductive approach since some form of learner-centred guided
discovery could be built into the presentation stage. When presenting the 2nd
conditional I sometimes present the language in context and then give the students
a worksheet with a series of analysis questions to do in pairs.

PPP is one model for planning a lesson. Other models include TTT (Test, Teach,
Test), ARC (Authentic use, Restricted use, Clarification and focus) and ESA
(Engage, Study, Activate). All models have their advantages and disadvantages
and I, like many other teachers I know, use different models depending on the
lesson, class, level and learner styles.

Further reading
Grammar Practice Activities: A Practical Guide for Teachers. Penny Ur,
Cambridge Handbooks for Language Teachers 1988
Grammar Games and Activities for Teachers. Peter Watcyn Jones, Penguin Books
1995
How to Teach English. Jeremy Harmer, Longman 1998
How to Teach Grammar. Scott Thornbury, Longman 1999