Grammar matters, but how you teach it matters more!
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Books contain grammar lessons, but how do you use this in a communicative classroom?
These past few weeks, I’ve had a lot of questions about teaching ‘grammar’; partly because more and more teachers and schools are moving towards a more communicative approach to teaching, but also because of the new curriculum in Flanders. As our books contain grammar lessons, I get asked this question rather frequently. I therefore wanted to share my thoughts with you from my own experience as a consultant for Pearson, but also as a former English teacher.
Are these grammar lessons a bad thing? No, my personal view is that grammar is a cornerstone of the English language, just like vocabulary... but not in the way it’s traditionally perceived. Let me explain why.
Why grammar is a good thing
A grammar lesson has nothing to do with teaching rules with the sole purpose of instilling them into the students. The aim is always to enable students to communicate, as this is the primary reason for teaching English in the first place. Forming sentences requires grammar and vocabulary, and that is why it’s important. However, it needs to be in context and it needs to be communicative. Personally, I do not believe that teaching your students sets of rules will help them at all – and luckily for me, the Pearson English Language Teaching methodology is not based on this, either.
The methodology behind grammar lessons
How should you teach a grammar lesson? First of all, all grammar lessons start with context. No rules are explained at the beginning. For instance, in Wider World we start with authentic videos of people answering questions about what they can and cannot do, or where people describe themselves. There are series where youngsters talk about everyday life in a way that is relatable for students. These videos are really useful and provide ample examples for your students to start talking or writing about the topics. This personalisation and activation of language is the last activity in the grammar lesson. Getting them to use language to communicate is what it’s all about, isn’t it?
Yes, there is a grammar box, and yes, there are some gap-filler exercises between the start and end of the lesson, in case you want more practice with the grammar topics. But do you need to do these exercises? No! You can pick and choose what is relevant for your students. We do recommend using the authentic material that provides examples, though, and we do definitely recommend having your students talk and write as much as possible in communicative contexts, as this will help them prepare for using English in real life.
My most successful grammar lesson
Let me tell you about my most successful ‘grammar’ lesson for first-year pupils that I have repeated time and time again. Before the ‘grammar’ lesson, I made sure that I had a stack of paper, coloured pencils and paper clips ready. I created groups and told them the following:
You have 15 minutes to build the biggest, craziest or most beautiful tower
As I personally believe in monolingual teaching, my students were very familiar with using just English to communicate with one another, even though they had just started learning English and were only aged 12 or so. The kids actively discussed how their tower would be crazier or more awesome than the other groups’ towers. After about 15 minutes, I asked them to place all the towers on my desk and started discussing the differences between them with the class. In the last 5 minutes of the lesson, I related it back to the little grammar box in the book showing comparatives and superlatives. The thing about this specific grammar lesson is that all the students successfully used grammar to communicate, and it was never about trying to teach a set of rules.
Written by Janette van Kalkeren