Policy and options in the classroom treatment of grammar

How is our own view of Grammar?

Many teachers were encouraged to feel negative about grammar, to adopt an emotional antigrammarian stance, and to regard grammar as dull or old-fashioned. So we must make an effort to free
ourselves of such prejudices and to re-examine the possibilities and merits of grammar in the language
class. Grammar teaching, positively looked at, helps learners to become skilled in recognizing, analysing,
and eventually mastering these structural features which are essential in order to achieve proficiency.
So, what does the literature on grammar teaching suggest teachers to do?

Contextualize
Contextualize
The literature on grammar teaching urges teachers to put whatever grammatical feature is being taught
into a meaningful context of practical use so that the meaning is never in doubt. The context has the
advantage of showing the grammatical feature in use, and this may motivate the students to learn it. But
it has the disadvantage that the feature is hidden in the situation and in the flow of discourse.
What the language teaching literature fails to emphasize is the skill needed to pick out a relevant
grammatical feature from a context or situation. For the teacher the item to be learnt is obvious, but to the
learners, on the other hand, the item may be unfamiliar, and because it has no salience, they may not
understand what they are supposed to look for or why. So students also need to decontextualize.

The grammatical context

On syllabus design the attention has been paid to the gradual and cyclical development of grammatical
competence, and this is generally addressed to the teacher. The teacher sees the item being taught in the
context of the whole grammatical syllabus. It is equally important for learners to see a particular feature
which is the subject of a lesson not only as an isolated item but as part of an evolving system of
interrelationships which should become differentiated as it grows. By seeing a particular item in a
grammatical context the student will acquire a better orientation to the grammar as a whole.

..TO BE ABLE TO CONSULT A

REFERENCE GRAMMAR..

A GOOD IDEA
FOR
STUDENTS

Rules and explanations

Much uncertainty exists about the value of rules and other forms of explanation for the acquisition of
grammatical features.
In the early 1970s, Cooke (1974) made a study of the role of explanation. He concluded that we should
be on our guard against the overuse and misuse of explanation. This argument for explanation is based
on the assumption that it can be an aid for certain students under certain circumstances. That is to say
that, the tendency to generalize about explanation of teaching and learning is unrealistic and misleading.
Grammar rules obviously are not always a help, because learners cannot always cope with the
complexities of grammar rules and grammatical generalizations. Often learners do not have the
terminology which would enable them to understand a particular rule, let alone apply it. But even if they
can handle the terminology, it is a far cry from understanding a grammar rule and applying it in
deliberately designed exercises, to its real-life application in ordinary language use.

FIRST CONDITION FOR THE

FORMULATION OF GRAMMAR
RULES

THE TERMINOLOGY

The technical terms such as article, adjective, etc. and the subtechnical vocabulary which consists of
general words used in a particular way, such as refer to or substitute are needed as long as learners
are expected to have a technical understanding of the second language grammar. But this vocabulary
should be iontroduced gradually and with care, always bearing in mind the learnersmaturity and background. So

TO SIMPLIFY THE WORDING OF RULES

MAXIMALLY

THE AIM IS

CLARITY

Grammar practice

Some writers oppose a formal grammatical syllabus and with it an emphasis on drills and exercises in
the language class on the grounds that a grammatical focus invariably distorts any attempt to
communicate.
The generic term practice covers what in language courses are usually referred to as exercises and
drills. Exercises tend to be more open ended than drills. Drills are usually constructed so that they allow

only a single correct answer. What they have in common is that they are not real communication and they
intended not to be.
The three issues that come up from grammar practice:
a) The recent trend is towards contextualized drills in a situation which is relevant to learners. The
question is whether such drills require learners to make realistic choices, or whether they have the
same weaknesses as earlier drills which learners were able to perform effortlessly but with few
lasting benefits.
b) The problem of grammatical practice has recently reappeared in the study of inmersion-type
language programmes where the language is learnt through communicative use. In these
programmes learners does not adequately acquire certain grammatical features such as verb
tenses or the order of pronouns.
c) The relationship between explanation and grammatical practice is usually discussed in terms of the
relative merits of inductive versus deductive approaches to grammar teaching.
INDUCTIVE

DEDUCTIVE

Examples

Rules

Practice

Examples

Rules

Practice

Educationally, the inductive sequence is probably to be preferred, because it encourages language

learners to start out from their own observations and to discover the principle or rule for themselves rather
than being told in advance what the rule is. However, it may be unrealistic to expect that the L2 grammar
can be entirely discovered by the learner.
On the contrary, the deductive sequence cannot be ruled out altogether. The examples here are preselected, so the discovery of the grammatical principle is often carefully guided rediscovery and not based
on a natural language behaviour.
In conclusion, the teacher must find a balance between the different phases of grammar teaching:
observation, explanation or rule, examples and practice. These phases does not come one after the other.
They are rather a matter of forward and backward motion, a gradual process of familiarization and
accommodation.

Error correction
It is a part of the learning process and according to Celce-Murcia (1985) we can compare more effective
with less effective teacher correction strategies:

More effective

Less effective

Teacher elicits information from the class.

Teacher lectures, gives rule, or explains.

Teacher elicits peer or self-correction.

Teachers corrects directly.

Teacher gives focused, specific cues as

Teachers gives indirect, diffuse cues on type

to what correction is needed and where.

and location of correction needed.

Teacher conducts meaningful practice of

Teacher conducts mechanical drill of

problematic form.

problematic form.

Teachers correct selectively.

Teacher corrects everything.

Error is inevitable in SLL and this has encouraged a greater tolerance in teachers attitudes to student
performance. Thus, an element of judicious error correction is required to complete the cycle of
classroom treatment of grammar.