GRAMMAR TEACHING

TEACHING THE LANGUAGE SYSTEM

It is undoubtedly to say that grammar is an important branch of any language. We use grammar all the time, when we write and when we speak. We also teach grammar all the time through what is called input data. We have two paths to teach grammar explicitly or to create situations for our students in which they need to discover grammar, what is also called ‘’discovery learning’’. The second one might be more complicated and the result is not reliable in many cases. We have widely discussed its advantages and disadvantages and we have come up to the conclusion that depending on the grammar item we can use one or the other approach.

After reading ‘’teaching the language system’’ I can say that teaching explicitly has more benefits for learners widely speaking. It has been argued that it accelerates the learning process as the students focus on form. I have experienced that I do not have enough time to cover the curriculum my school has; and when I try to teach inductively I really feel I am wasting time. I am not saying that students do not learn but they do it slower and some think that I do not want to explain or even worse that I do not know how. I have the thought that the curriculum I am following is specially designed to teach deductively. So, I have made a mix of the two tending more towards the rule-driven path.

What I might be doing wrong is that I have a lack of contextualization in my presentations. Students need to connect the rule with its most common uses and make meaning of it. By creating a good context, interesting and meaningful we can create what is called generative situation and a great quantity of examples come up which we can use for further practice within the same context. It is also important to distinguish the different language styles for each situation we may face in real life since grammar is not only for academic purposes, it is for life.

Another aspect I will incorporate is recycling structures each time adding more functions and uses, it is very common to find lineal curriculums; however, it is very important to integrate what we have previously studied in a transversal curriculum and most important to try to automatize the language structures by practicing them.

REFERENCES:

· Tricia Hedge. "Teaching the language system" in Teaching and Learning in the Language Classroom. Hong Kong. 2000. OUP. pp.146- 164