Fundamentos de la enseñanza en inglés I

From: Daiana Escalante

To: Graciela Martínez

Date: 18th October

Report on Is It Grammar o ‘Drama’? On teaching Grammar at schools without despairing

by Patricia Policastro

Introduction

As requested I attended a seminar and workshop about teaching grammar delivered by

Ms.Patricia Policastro which was held at Universidad del Salvador on Wednesday
October 9th and here is my report

A picture is worth a thousand words

The seminar started by showing an image of a woman with a worried expression

surrounded by lot of books, the audience was asked to say what they could see about it.
Then the presenter gave different definitions of grammar, for example the origin of the
word is Greek and it means the art of letters. Another definition given was from David
Crystal who says that grammar is the business of taking a language to pieces to see how
it works.

Music and grammar

Ms Policastro showed a song from Backstreet boys called “Just want you to know” to
relax the audience. After that the presenter asked them how they could take advantage of
the song if they wanted to teach some grammar because it had a lot of different types of
tenses.

How much do I know about the teaching of grammar?

The presenter provided the audience with a set of photocopies with twelve phrases about
teaching grammar and they had to choose the correct option between three answers. For
example, there was a phrase that said Teaching Grammar involves showing my students,
the right answer was how English grammar works and how it is put together.
Another statement said After making it sure that my students have understood the new
topic of grammar I should and the correct option was systematize with their help

Each correct option was discussed and the coordinator explained why it was the right
answer.

Activities for the class

The presenter provided the audience with a set of photocopies with activities, in groups,
they had to say how they would use each activity and with which grammar purpose. For
example, there were two oral activities such as a description bingo with jobs like zoo
keeper and hotel manager, which we can use with the simple present. The other activity
was to create dialogues with different situations like giving directions or inviting someone
to do something.

The end of the seminar

As a closure of the seminar, Ms Policastro gave some advice to the audience to make
grammar teaching more interesting such as try to use games and communicative activities,
to encourage creative writing and to use visual and audio support. That is why she
provided a list of technological resources, for example genially, padlet, schoology and
mentimeter and also a list of songs like “Imagine” by John Lennon or “Another day in
paradise” by Phil Collins to use as a grammatical instrument to prepare a class.

Ms Policastro showed a video of Mr. Bean show where he was at his first class of karate
and he was afraid of tryng it, the purpose of the video was to show that students are afraid
when they have to learn something new and teachers should be patient.

Conclusion

In my opinion the seminar was very interesting and useful because I could learn how to
use different resources to teach grammar and not to just use the fill the blanks activity
after explaining the grammar rules.