Teaching Grammar – Is It Good or Bad?

Task: A student in your class approaches you and tells you she is very bored with the grammar lessons, and that she feels she can learn English without learning grammar separately. Write a script explaining what you would tell this student. Also write what you may do differently in your instruction as a result of the conversation.

Student: I think grammar is boring to learn and I can learn to speak English without learning grammar.

Teacher: It is possible to learn to speak a certain amount of English without learning grammar rules. However, you will reach a certain point where memorizing words and phrases may not be enough for you to express the message you want to say or write. When you learn a rule you can use it make your own sentences using any vocabulary you know. This helps you in many different situations. You will also know if the phrases you are saying are correct. For example, learning rules about when and how and to use pronouns will help you be able to use them correctly in many different places without memorizing a phrase for each situation. People will better understand your message.

Student: I will know if people understand me by what they say.

Teacher: They may be able to understand the main point in your message, but it may not be spoken correctly. Learning grammar rules will help you speak and write English with fewer or no errors.

Student: I don’t care if I’m not saying or writing everything correctly. I can say the message in another way if people don’t understand me.

Teacher: Learning grammar rules will help you organize a correct sentence in your mind so when you speak to someone, they will understand you the first time. Knowing rules will also help you notice how other people use them correctly or maybe use them incorrectly. Do you have any suggestions about what we could do in class to make learning grammar more interesting?

As a result of this conversation I would do the following:

-Ensure this student is not more advanced than the others. Maybe she isn’t being challenged enough.

-Strive to make the grammar lessons authentic and meaningful for students.

-Ensure there are a variety of teacher- and student-centered activities, and the activities are meeting a variety of learning styles. Include some presentations by the teacher followed individual practice as well as task-based learning and information-gap activities. These latter activities would involve the use of all language modalities and authentic learning activities which would facilitate learning and memory of the rules.

-Reread the students’ needs assessments. Have the students review and make changes to the goals they stated at the beginning of the course. If necessary, adjust the lessons’ content and activities to accommodate the students’ goal changes.

Memories of Grammar Classes

Most of the grammar that I learned was taught by the teacher presenting rules along with a few examples written on the chalkboard or reading the examples that were presented in the textbook. Then the class was assigned practice exercises. This involved either copying sentences from a textbook using the correct word(s) to fill in the blank or rewriting a sentence and incorporating the newly learned grammatical concept. These practice exercises were corrected the following day in class. Most of the grammar rules were fairly easy to learn and apply to the exercises that we were assigned. However, the practice exercises were seldom directly followed up with writing our own examples or applying the grammatical rules to a written composition. When the class was assigned to write a story, we were not provided with a rubric or suggestions on how to use specific grammatical concepts to improve our written compositions. I think this would have facilitated my learning of and ability to apply grammatical concepts.

Adding partner and group learning activities that involved all four language modalities would have facilitated learning and made it more enjoyable. I find that learning a rule is easier if I can associate it with a meaningful event or situation and have opportunities to verbalize it as well as write it.

Grammar and Vocabulary ESL Course

I have never taken a university course that focused on grammar and vocabulary and look forward to this one. I anticipate learning meaningful and interesting ways to teach grammar rules at the same time as learning the rules myself.

I think grammar has had a bad reputation in the past because it has often been taught in isolated situations where memorization of rules has been the primary way to learn them. Applying the rules to relevant and authentic situations has often been missing in the learning process which results in forgetting the rule.

As an elementary school teacher, I have thought of learning vocabulary as acquiring new concepts. However, this would not necessarily be the case for many ESL students. They already have a vast amount of knowledge in their first language. Therefore, learning vocabulary would involve associating the English word with the corresponding concept in their first language.

My Reflections - ESL Course #2 (An Introduction to Second Language Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening)

The role and value of the Canadian Language Benchmarks for Adults in assessment and program planning was an important part of this course. Other CLB documents that I became aware of and/or used during this course are Additional Sample Task Ideas, A Guide to Implementation, Companion Tables, “Can Do” Checklists and ESL for Literacy Learners. These documents are informative and will be used extensively.

Designing needs assessments and administering one to a student was a great learning experience. This initial assessment is useful for determining students’ approximate benchmark levels, interests, goals, and learning preferences. Listening, speaking, reading, and writing samples completed at the needs assessment session can be used to measure students’ progress throughout the course. Interviewing students individually may be time consuming; however I felt that I had learned things that I would not have known about the student had the assessments been completed in a group setting.

Another part of this course was developing a professional development plan. This was interesting and will be useful in providing a focus for future PD. The first step in making this plan was to research various ESL job descriptions. The next step was to list the key knowledge, skills and attitudes needed to do the job well. After that I highlighted all the skill areas that I already possessed. Anything not highlighted were skills that could become part of my professional development plan. After selecting fours skills, a plan was made to develop each which included the specific skill to be developed, actions that will be undertaken to learn the skill, resources that may be accessed, target completion date and how I will know when I have learned the skill.

This course continued with on-line viewing of ESL lessons. I enjoy watching and learning from these videos.