Korean Job Discussion Forums

[OBwannabe]

http://vimeo.com/43113441

Interesting little debate. Certainly nothing earth-shattering here, but would be interested to hear some of your view points.

I believe there is a happy medium to be found. Especially when it comes to ESL students. They need to be taught the fundamentals of writing so they have the proper tools to progress. But as they develop some sort of mastery of the language the need to nitpick on every grammatical point is unecessary.
Those who are native speakers will likely know many of the grammatical rules, without even being aware that they know them.

With that said, I need a refresher....grammar ain't my thang.

[alongway]

Nothing terribly interesting about it. Grammar is essential to understanding.
You can't just simply spout words and expect to be understood without putting them together properly.

Yes, native speakers learn from immersion..but they learn over a period of years..15-20 or so. The reason we specifically focus on grammar is to accelerate that learning.

Appropriate usage is sometimes contrary to explicit grammar, but that doesn't mean you just throw it out.

[some waygug-in]

The idea that we can just learn through immersion is interesting, but

I don't think it's really true.


How many high school graduates actually know how to write properly?

Not many, yet they have been immersed in the language for over 15 years.

Most of my classmates (I was no exception) had to learn how to write

and had to re-learn a lot of grammar when we went to university.

That meant learning the accepted forms (rules) and applying them to our

writing.

my 2 cents.


With ESL/EFL students, I think the grammar has to be at an appropriate

level for the students. I don't think that trying to teach students grammatical terminology is useful until they are past an elementary level.

Too often I saw Korean grammar books that focus on advanced

structures and complex sentences, when the students couldn't even form

basic questions properly.

[Voyeur]

Obviously there is a spectrum at play here. Nobody gets away with teaching zero grammar--couldn't if you tried.

I think age and how many class hours a week a student has. Young kids with plastic language centers can pretty much be immersed. On the other hand, I find that older students with minimal class hours and lots of self-study often want to accelerate their learning by getting a critical mass of grammatical understanding.

[Pinehurst]

Since we rarely speak in a grammatically correct manner, I think we have to teach it for writing.

http://www.brookseditorial.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Got-Milk-Grammar-296x300.jpg

[Privateer]

We may not need to teach it all the time but we should at least know it. I have a CELTA and an MA TEFL and not once were we ever explicitly taught grammar - we're just expected to learn it before teaching it, often from pedagogical grammar texts that can be, shall we say, variable in their level of depth of analysis.

I'm all for taking responsibility for your own learning and all, but doesn't that strike anyone else as a bit odd?

[liveinkorea316]

I tend to present a piece of grammar with a special angle. For example I tell them what feeling it gives when you say it, or I show them a context in which it is used. Often these students have access to any grammar they want front other classes or books but as a native speaker I try to implant that grammar deeply by telling them something about it they don't know regarding its use/significance/whether we actually use it like it says in the book. I will also put up other grammar items they know or I have taught them and say "so what's the difference" and get them to really understand the intricacies of different grammars.

This may be all after a student shows you they can construct a present perfect sentence but upon questioning or intelligent exercise you find they don't understand how or when to use it or what it means compared to another grammar.

I spend just under half my class time on grammar- related activites. I try to keep them fun though with students moving around when practicing with partners anf standing.up. I always want them to comr away with that special 'point' from me that I know a Korean teacher could not have given them. My teaxhing is live. These are all things we can do in the limited time we focus on grammar in our classrooms