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METHODOLOGY II
TEACHING GRAMMAR
A. The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English defines grammar as “The study and practice
of the rules by which words change their forms and are combined into sentences’. There are two basic
elements in this definition: the rules of grammar; and the study and practice of the rules.
In this lecture we will be looking at ways in which students can learn and acquire a working
knowledge of the English grammatical system. We will look at various different ideas for introducing
this knowledge, how to practise it, how to make it enjoyable, how to get students to think about
grammatical areas and how to test it. Returning to our dictionary definition we can say that our
approach focuses on the practice rather than the study of grammar.
There are different ways of teaching grammar. They can be subsumed under two headings:
- the inductive / covert way of teaching grammar, by means of which students induce the rues from
examples
- the deductive / overt way of teaching grammar, in which case the teacher gives the students all the
rules they need.
The choice between these two methods depends on a number of factors that need to be taken into
consideration:
- the level of the students
- the degree of difficulty of the rule that is to be introduced
- time – a teacher may need a lot of time to present the students with quite an amount of
comprehensible input, from which they can extract the rule
- the age of the students – one cannot expect an absolute beginner aged 10 to understand intricate
explanations about the grammatical system of English.
Therefore, covert grammar teaching is where grammatical facts as such are hidden from the students –
even though they are learning the language. The students may be asked to read a text where new
grammar is practised or introduced, but their attention will be drawn to the activity or to the text and
not to the grammar. On the other hand, overt grammar teaching means that the teacher actually
provides the students with grammatical rules and explanations – the information is openly presented.
Which kind of grammar teaching is best? Should we just practise using the language and hope
that the students will unconsciously acquire the grammar? Or should we practise using the
language and also draw students’ attention to the formal grammatical characteristics of the
language? Should we teach grammar at all?
In recent years, the emphasis has shifted away from the teaching of grammar. As you all know, the
universal approach to teaching English used to almost completely rely on long intricate grammatical
explanations and, more often than not, on mechanical exercises. Most Romanian teachers would have
their students write and read English before they can actually listen to English utterances. A Romanian
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teacher would usually begin by writing the lesson title on the blackboard (e.g. the Present Perfect),
followed by intricate grammatical explanations and transformation-based exercises, involving neither
real communication, nor proper motivation. Another pattern Romanian teachers would usually follow
implies loud reading of whole chunks of literary works (with no previous discussion) followed by
comprehension exercises which students do, more often than not, by mechanically searching the
answers in the text.
Over the past yeas, there appeared a general feeling that this exhaustive focus on grammatical rules
and explanations was no longer enough. Some people felt that teaching the grammar of the language
did not necessarily help people to use the language. A new of looking at teaching was gradually
created – called the communicative approach. Two of the main issues in the communicative approach
were the teaching of language functions, and the use of communicative activities.
a) Since language is used to do things, to perform certain functions, like inviting, apologising,
introducing, suggesting, etc, we should also teach such functions. When planning a grammar
lesson, the teacher should keep in mind that the aim of the lesson is at the same time structural
and functional. For instance, one can teach a structure like ‘be going to’ and then get the students
to use it as part of a functional conversation involving ‘offers’.
b) As for communicative activities, they were created out of the realisation that getting students to
perform mechanical types of exercises does not help them to creatively use English. Other types of
activities are needed where students can talk or write freely and use all or any language they
know. Language should be used to communicate ideas in activities like role-play, problem-
solving, discussions, games and project work.
B. As a brief conclusion to what we have discussed so far, grammar teaching – of both the deductive
and the inductive kind – has a real and important place in the classroom. Before getting on with the
next section in our lecture, it might be helpful to note some of the most important features of
communicative language teaching.
1. The communication principle. Everything, which is done in the classroom, is done with a
communicative intent. Only activities, which involve real communication, promote the learning
process. Rather than practicing language skills, students use language communicatively. Activities
qualify as communicative if three requirements are met:
a) the information gap requirement. An activity is truly communicative if there are pieces
of information which are not available to all interlocutors.
b) the choice requirement. An activity is truly communicative if the speaker has a choice
over a range of possible utterances. Real communication takes place only if the speaker can choose
what to say and how to say it.
c) the feedback requirement. An activity is truly communicative if the speaker can receive
feedback from listeners and on the basis of it, verify whether the purpose of communication has
been reached.
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2. The task principle. Only task-based activities promote learning, since they truly motivate the
students.
3. The meaningfulness principle. Only activities involving language that makes sense to students
promote learning. A characteristic of communicative language teaching is the use of authentic
materials (newspaper articles, menus, timetables etc.) because students should be able to transfer what
they learn in the outside world. They also should be capable of devising strategies to cope with
language used by native speakers.

C. When teaching any new structure or item of grammar, a teacher must observe three stages:
1. Presentation – a short stage, whose aim is to introduce the new language. During this stage, the
teacher’s role is dominant.
2. Practice – the second stage is still tightly controlled by the teacher. The aim of his stage is to
allow students to use the new language in controlled conditions.
3. Production – the main aim of the third stage is to allow students to use the new language as freely
as they want to. This time the students are in control; the teacher is no longer the central focus; the
students are by far the most active.
1. Presentation
This stage shouldn’t last longer than 5-10 minutes. It relies on the interaction between the teacher (the
most active character during this stage) and students. While presenting the new language, the teacher
needs to:
- contextualise the new language in a situation (see hand-outs)
- use visuals: drawings, pictures, actions
- make sure the language is appropriate for the students’ age-level
- avoid introducing new vocabulary
- choose a situation that is generative/productive (lots of examples)
- be quite concise
Let us now look at a number of presentation techniques.
a) Using charts
If the teacher wants to present the pattern how does X go to school? he can put a chart on the board
and then ask a student ‘How do you get to class?’. When the chart is filled with information about
other students, the teacher can model the question and answer: ‘How does X go to school? He goes to
school by car’ (see A on handouts).

NAME Bus Car Train Bicycle Foot

Juan *
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b) Using a dialogue
Students may listen to / read a dialogue which shows a piece of new language, like ‘Do you like …?
Yes I do / No I don’t’. After completing a comprehension task, students move straight onto a
personalisation stage (applying the new language to themselves).
c) Using a mini-situation
The teacher wants to present the students with the pattern ‘If he hadn’t … he wouldn’t have …’. He
can put some mini-situations (see handouts) on the blackboard (drawings or card-boards). Students
then ask and answer like this: ‘What would have happened if he had…?’
d) Using texts for contrast
Students may read a text which provides situations that allow them to contrast tenses e.g. future
continuous and future simple (see B on handouts).
Lord Kane, an important British diplomat, must fly to Washington immediately on an emergency
mission. A government car is taking him to London airport now. A special plane is already waiting.
Everything is ready for an immediate take-off.
THE PLANE WILL BE WAITING FOR HIM WHEN HE GETS THERE.
IT WILL TAKE OFF WHEN HE GETS THERE.

It is only a few seconds before 4 o’clock in the factory where Billy works. All the men are working
hard but they know that the whistle always blows at exactly 4 o’clock. They always stop then and rush
home.
THEY WILL ALL BE WORKING WHEN THE WHISTLE BLOWS.
THEY WILL ALL STOP WHEN IT BLOWS.

Therefore, at the presentation stage, materials (textbooks, drawings, etc.) give the students a
considerable amount of grammatical information. However, teachers often want to offer extra
grammar information themselves. How can this be done?
a) Modelling
The teacher can give a clear spoken model of the new language, which should be done with normal
speed, stress and intonation. The teacher can give this model a number of times and then ask students
to repeat it, both in chorus and individually.
b) Isolation
Teachers may isolate parts of the sentence they are modelling so that they can give them special
emphasis. When teachers present the first conditional, for example, they might model a sentence like
this (see C on handouts):
If it rains, she’ll get wet …listen, she’ll … she will … she’ll … she’ll get wet. If it rains, she’ll get wet.
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c) Visual demonstration
1. Writing
The teacher can write sentences on the board and underline the critical points. Relationships between
questions and answers, for example, can be shown with arrows and boxes (see D on handouts).

He watches TV every evening.

Does he watch TV every evening?

2. Time lines
Time lines provide students with a spatial representation of tense and aspect. Thus, the present perfect
continuous in the sentence ‘I’ve been reading the newspaper’ might look like this (see E on handouts):
Activity started

Past Now Future

3. Fingers
After modelling a sentence like ‘She will arrive tomorrow’ the teacher holds up four fingers and says
this sentence, pointing to a finger for each word. The teacher then puts fingers 1 and 2 together and
now says the contracted form of the sentence.

To conclude our discussion on the presentation stage, here are a few questions that each teacher must
ask himself when planning a presentation stage or after the presentation in order to check if something
was left out:
1. The structure itself. Was the structure presented in both speech and writing, both form and
meaning?
2. Examples. Were enough examples provided of the structure in a meaningful context? Are you
sure the students understood their meanings?
3. Terminology. Did you call the structure by its (grammar-book) name? If so, was this helpful? If
not, would it have helped you if you had? What other grammatical terminology was (would have
been) useful?
4. Language. Was the structure explained in the students’ mother tongue, or in the target language,
or in a combination of the two? Was this effective?
5. Explanation. Was the information given about the structure at the right level: reasonably accurate
but not too detailed? Did you use comparison with the students’ mother tongue? Was this/would
this have been helpful?
6. Delivery. Were you speaking (and writing) clearly and at an appropriate speed?
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7. Rules. Was an explicit rule given? Why/why not? If so, did you explain it yourself or did you
elicit it from the students? Was this the best way to do it?

D. In the final section of this lecture we are going to look at exercises and techniques which
encourage students to ‘discover’ facts about grammar and grammatical usage.
In the previous section we looked at ways in which the teacher gives the students examples of the
language which the students then repeated and used. The teacher explained the grammatical and
phonological form of the new language through various techniques.
Discovery techniques, on the other hand, are those where students are given examples of language
and told to find out how they work – to discover the grammar rules rather than be told about them. At
the most covert level, this simply means that the students are exposed to the new language, with no
focus. At a more conscious level, students can be asked to look at some sentences and say how the
meaning is expressed and what the differences are between the sentences.
We will be looking at three types of activity: preview, matching techniques, and problem-solving.
a. Preview
Students are exposed to the new language; they do not concentrate on it at this stage, but the fact of
having seen the grammar ‘in action’ will help them to deal with it when they have to study it later.
Activities such as reading and listening to texts expose students to language in this way, because while
students are practising listening and reading skills, they can also be absorbing new language.
What language do you think is being previewed in the following excerpt (see F on handouts)?

If you travel by air across the centre of Africa or South America, you fly over forests for thousands of
kilometres. These great forests are like oceans of trees. They are full of thousands of trees and
different kinds of plants and animals.
However, the world’s forests are getting smaller all the time. We are cutting down the trees because
we need wood, and because we need more farm land. Some people say that there will not be any
forests like these in 20 or 30 years’ time. What will happen if they disappear?
If we cut down our forests, a lot of plants and animals will disappear from the world. In a lot of places
the new farm land will soon look like the old deserts. Crops will not grow there. It will not rain very
often, and the weather will get very hot. Perhaps the climate of the world will change.

b. Matching techniques
The point of matching techniques is to get students to work things out for themselves: they have to
make choices about what goes with what, and making choices helps them to discover correct facts
about grammar (see G on handouts).
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You’ve been to Brazil, are you?

You can play the flute don’t you?
You study economics did you?
You aren’t going to leave haven’t you?
You didn’t fail the exam can’t you?

c. Problem solving
As students move from beginner levels of English through to intermediate and beyond, their level of
English allows us to encourage them to talk about grammar and analyse its properties (see H on
handouts).

A. Study these examples:

1. Goodbye. I’ll see you tomorrow.
2. Look at those big black clouds; it’s going to rain.
3. We bought our tickets yesterday. We’re leaving at 4 o’clock this afternoon.
4. Beth may come to stay with us next weekend.
5. The weather might be better if we wait until July.
6. Our boat leaves Southampton at 10 am next Monday and arrives in New York next Friday
evening.
B. Now write the numbers of the examples above in the appropriate columns:
The speaker is sure The speaker is not sure