Teaching Grammar

Aims

• Consider different reasons for teaching grammar

• Evaluate different approaches to teaching grammar
Discuss

• Why do we teach grammar?

1. We agreed to went by car.
2. We didn’t knew what happened.
3. Dizzys from the wine we decided to go home.
4. The people are too many so and the cars are too
many.
5. The bus was hit in front of.
6. There are many accidents because we haven’t brought
(broad) roads.
(Hughes & Lascaratou, 1982)
1. We agreed to went by car. GT4.6; BN2.2
2. We didn’t knew what happened. GT 4.4: BN1.8
3. Dizzys from the wine we decided to go home.GT4.2;BN1.8
4. The people are too many so and the cars are too many.
GT3.0; BN4.3
5. The bus was hit in front of.GT2.6;BN4.3
6. There are many accidents because we haven’t brought
(broad) roads. GT2.4;BN4.1
(Hughes & Lascaratou, 1982)
Swan’s (2002) 7 bad reasons for teaching grammar

• Because it is there
• It’s tidy
• It’s testable
• Grammar as a security blanket
• It made me who I am
• You have to teach the whole system
• Power
Nunan’s (2003) 3 Principles for teaching
grammar

1. Integrate both deductive and inductive methods into

your teaching
Deductive = teacher gives grammatical explanation or
rule followed by a set of exercises to designed to help
learners master the point
Inductive = teacher presents learners with samples of
language and through guided discovery helps them to
work out the rule themselves
Inductive learning task (Hall, 2011)

He’s broken his leg.

I’ve been studying all day.
The match has finished.
She’s been waiting here for half an hour.

• What language form is used in each sentence and why?

• How do the simple and continuous aspects of the verb
differ in meaning?
Nunan’s (2003) 3 Principles for teaching
grammar continued

• 2. Use tasks that make clear the relationship between

grammatical form and function.
• 3. Focus the development of procedural rather than
declarative knowledge.
• Declarative = knowing language rules
• Procedural = being able to use the knowledge for
communication.
Focus on form (Hall, 2011)

• Attention can happen at any point in a lesson or series of

lessons
• Either teacher-led or learner activity
• Forms focussed on emerge from learners’ engagement
in meaningful activities
• Cook (2008) suggests using pauses in speech or italics
in writing
• Schmidt’s concept of noticing
Second Language Acquisition (SLA)
research (Cook, 2008)

SLA research has often claimed that there are definite,

‘natural’ orders for language learning.
e.g. learners acquire the grammatical morpheme -ing
before the morpheme third person -s.

4 implications for teaching:

1. Ignore the parts of grammar that have a particular L2
learning sequence, as the learner will follow these
automatically anyway.
SLA research (Cook, 2008)

2. Follow the L2 learning order as closely as possible in the

teaching
3. Teach the last things in an L2 learning sequence first.
4. Ignore grammar altogether
Discuss

• Did hearing about grammar from your teacher help you

to learn a second language? In what way?
• How aware are you of grammar when you are speaking
(a) your own language (b) English
Language Practice Activities

• Drills
• Written exercises
• Dialogues
• Grammar-practice activities and games
References

• Cook, V. (2008).
• Hughes, A., & Lascaratou, C. (1982). Competing criteria
for error gravity. ELT Journal, 36(3), 175-182.
doi:10.1093/elt/36.3.175