Teaching Grammar in Class

[JapanG]

I am sure this has been discussed here before but I would like to know what some people who post here think about the idea that grammar based lessons are not effective and that experience, practice and listening to native speech is a better approach. I ask because this board can really get into to some obscure and minor grammar points. Personally, I dont see how we can get around teaching grammar in class, especially when students ask the questions that are asked on this board. Just would like to hear your opinions though the topic may not really be appropriate for the board.

[joshua2004]

I think that is a very important question. My methodology is this: I teach only basic, easy grammar points to the masses, when they are read for it. I highly respect the field of linguistics and find grammar fascinating, but I follow the research that says we acquire a language by comprehensible input, as you more or less stated. Grammar can give you insight and short cuts to acquisition, but the focus should be comprehensible input.

After working for myself, as a private teacher, I found that almost all people are looking for something other than grammar lessons. They want conversation classes, they want to learn watching movies, they want basically what you are trying to describe. Students can tell you that they don't learn through grammar. Teachers will tell you the students don't learn through grammar. So the big question is why is there still so much emphasis on it?

I think this article sums up my point in a concrete fashion: http://www.sdkrashen.com/articles/what_ ... t_take.pdf

more articles supporting this line of methodology here: http://www.sdkrashen.com/main.php3

[Lorikeet]

Interesting and appropriate discussion. I teach grammar, and when I'm a student, I like to have it taught to me as well. However, the methods used make a big difference. I have grammar exercises I give for homework, and check together in class. Sometimes I have students write things and take some of their "beautiful mistakes" for a lesson the next day. I have them work together to correct grammar mistakes. Usually, however, I incorporate whatever grammar we are discussing in the set up for conversations and activities. I myself as a language student need some grammar on which to hang the rest of the language I'm learning, as old-fashioned as it (and I!) may be.

[lolwhites]

Interesting article, though its applicability to the classroom is, I think, doubtful. The main reason for this is that Armando, while not living in the country, was exposed to the language every day for hours at a time. Contrast that with your typical student learning in their own country who may only have a few hours a week of teaching. I'm not sure how it fits Krashen's Theory of Comprehensible Input, given that Armando's early exposure seems to have been anything but comprehensible.

Krashen's theories about Comprehensible Input and Acquisition vs Learning are by no means universally accepted in the field of Applied Linguistics. In my own AL course we had one lecture on Krashen, and another on the criticism. I won't go into details here, but the main objection was that his model is not testable and therefore impossible to prove or disprove.

My own experience of learning Spanish was quite a lot of grammar, followed by living in the country. When I first moved to Spain my spoken language was pretty poor while my formal knowledge was pretty high. However, I advanced quickly; far more so than other who hadn't had any grammatical instruction beforehand. This would seem to be at odds with Krashen's assertion that "learned knowledge" cannot pass into "acquired knowledge".

As Lorikeet points out, there are right and wrong ways to teach grammar. Prattling on about grammar to a class strikes me to be a bit of a waste of class time. They can read grammar books at home if they want and ask the teacher questions when they have doubts, but there's no need for the teacher to act like a walking, talking copy of Swan. Getting the students to analyze their own errors (i.e. "What is wrong with this? Why don't you look at the grammar explanation in section 4.5.1.2.3 subsection A" is more productive than "This is wrong because..."

[Macavity]

Hello everyone,
I'm inclined to agree with Lorikeet on this old chestnut. The question of whether we should "teach" grammar in class puts me in mind of a couple of nice quotes from Winston Churchill:
"From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put."
And:
"It's not enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what's required."

It is difficult to know how to handle this though; I'm never quite sure if it helps or hinders!

Macavity

[JapanG]

I found the same problem as lolwhites with the articles, though interesting. When our students don`t have a chance to speak a lot with native speakers how can they pick up better pronunciation and more natural usage. Most teachers are told to speak no more than 30% of the time in class so the students are speaking to people with the same mistakes as themselves. Furthermore, here in Japan, having high test scores is very important. In this respect, students feel they should be studying grammar since thats what they will be tested on. Its a catch 22. I know many people with high test scores but their speaking is atrocious. I have also found that when a class is basically just speaking, many students tend to feel that they have not learned anything new, as aposed to when they feel they have practiced a new grammar point.

[thethinker]

I think that a big reason for the over-teaching of grammar is that grammar is something that students and teachers can fall back on quite easily - it's more tangible (or at least seems to be) than, for example, speaking skills and so on, and it is therefore easier for a student to sit for hours doing grammar exercises, instead of finding people to practise speaking to, or things to listen to etc., that might actually be more useful. It's also something that a teacher who perhaps hasn't had a great deal of teacher training, but does know the subject matter, can concentrate on in class (it's certainly a way of keeping everybody busy). On the other hand, you might argue that grammar teaching is comparatively unpopular in CELTA-type EFL teaching because a lot of native-speaker EFL teachers aren't actually knowledgable enough to deal with it.

It's interesting what you say, lolwhites, about your "learned knowledge" of Spanish becoming "acquired knowledge". I think I'd certainly rather try to teacher a student with good grammatical knowledge but poor speaking skills than try and teach a student who's happy to gabble on incessantly without any concern for grammatical accuracy.