Teaching grammar effectively

Teaching grammar effectively

Nowadays grammar is taught in a variety of different ways. Some of these are more
suitable for certain learners than others. We can see this if we look at these extracts
from three grammar activities. They illustrate some choices teachers have to make
when they teach grammar.

[style activities as extracts; leader dots 20 mm x 6]

1

Have to

The verb have to is one way of expressing obligation in English.

Have to is a modal verb.
Have to has a modal meaning.
Have to makes its interrogative and negative forms like ordinary verbs, not like a modal
verb e.g. does he have to?; he doesn’t have to

Complete these sentences with the correct form of these verbs.

1 I …………. do some homework tonight.

2 Guests ………….. wear formal clothes for the wedding – it’s up to them..
3 …………………… we take a present when we visit them?

Ask your partner these questions. Make a note of his/her answers.

HOUSE RULES
Your partner’s name:
1 What time do you have to go to bed?
2 Do you have to take your shoes off when you
go in to your home?
3 Do you have to help your parents look after
your home? What do you have to do?

3
Complete these sentences with has or have.

1 My son …………. to leave the house very early every morning.

2 To become a doctor you …….. to pass lots of exams.
3 Engineers ……………. to be very careful in their work.

© Cambridge University Press 2011

Teaching grammar effectively

These three activities focus on different aspects of grammar. Activity 1 provides

information about the use, meaning and the forms of have to, using grammatical terms
to do this. If a learner doesn’t know or fully understand grammatical terms, this
activity will not be suitable for him/her. Activity 2 does not include rules or
grammatical terms. It focuses on the meaning of have to by setting this structure in a
real-life context (that of house rules) which shows its meaning, then its asks students
to practise the structure by using it to communicate about that context. Activity 3
contains no mention of rules or grammatical terms, nor does it focus on the meaning
of have to. It simply focuses on the correct forms of the verb.

We can see from these extracts that teaching grammar can involve: showing the
meaning and use of the structure, giving rules about its form or use, using
grammatical terms to describe these rules, practising using correct forms and using
grammatical structures to communicate in a given context. The question for teachers
is what should grammar teaching involve in their classrooms? The answer depends
largely on who our learners are: their level, their age, what they need to learn and the
learning style they have. Let’s look at some examples.

Alara is a seven-year-old who is just starting to learn English. Her first language is
Turkish and she knows a few grammatical terms in Turkish.

Teaching Alara grammar by focusing on rules and grammatical terms is not likely to
be successful. Young children cannot make good use of this approach as their
cognitive skills have not yet developed sufficiently to let them work easily with
abstract terms and ideas. Young children learn by doing, so using language to
communicate and get practical things done is likely to be the best way for them to
learn grammar. As they become more fluent their grammar is likely to improve
naturally and automatically, as unconsciously they absorb and work out the language.
Children learn their first language just through using it, and all the research shows that
they learn a foreign or second language best in the same way. In fact, this is not only
true of children but of many adults as well. They prefer to learn through doing and
working with concrete things rather than through thinking about things in an abstract
way.

Pawel and Stefan are classmates. They are 15 years old and have learnt English at
school since they were six. Their level of English is around intermediate. Pawel does
not understand grammatical terms or rules and thinks they are boring. He likes to
learn by talking and using the language, and does not worry about making mistakes.
Stefan likes grammar rules. He feels he needs rules to guide him and he hates talking
unless he feels very sure that he is not going to make mistakes.

Here we have a problem that many secondary-school teachers face. In the same class
there are learners who learn in different ways, who have different learning styles. A
learning style is the way in which a person most naturally and best learns from their
environment. For example, some people learn language by analysing it, others learn
by using it to do activities, some learn through hearing language, others by seeing it.
A teacher needs to make sure that their teaching appeals to a wide range of learning
styles. Generally this means that when teaching secondary-school students and adults
we need to vary our approaches by, for example, including in a lesson or across a
series of lessons some activities which analyse language, some which involve using

© Cambridge University Press 2011

Teaching grammar effectively

language, some which include hearing the language, some which show the written
form of the language. Imagine Pawel attending a class which only works on the rules
of language, or Stefan going to a class which only uses communicative activities.
Both would probably learn little and quickly lose interest.

We can also see from these two contrasting learners that teachers need to be flexible
in their attitudes to grammar mistakes. Pawel may not mind being corrected.
However, Stefan is likely to be discouraged by a teacher who corrects him a lot.
Teachers often worry when they hear their learners making mistakes. They see it as
evidence that the learners have not learnt, and that they as teachers have therefore
failed in their jobs. In fact, research into language learning shows that it does not
work in this way. We do not start using language correctly as soon as we have learnt
it. What we need is time to absorb it and unconsciously work out how it fits in with
the other language we have learnt before. Many mistakes will disappear by
themselves over time and as learners try to make their message clear in their attempts
to communicate.

Roxana is a 26-year-old who works as a hotel receptionist. She learnt English at

school by learning grammatical terms and rules. She did very well in her end-of-
school English grammar exam. Now she needs to use her English to speak to guests
at the hotel. She has difficulty communicating because her accent is not clear, she
doesn’t understand many foreign accents and she does not know much vocabulary or
expressions related to her job. She is sociable and eager to learn but finds it difficult
to be fluent.

It is possible that Roxana does not need to learn any grammar at the moment as she
already has a solid base. What she needs is to practise and develop her speaking and
listening skills, and to learn vocabulary and expressions related to her work as a hotel
receptionist. As she learns these things she will of course need to use the grammar she
has already learnt, practising it and probably having her mistakes corrected, but other
things about learning English will be more useful to her learning than grammar.

We can see from the example of Roxana that learning grammar is only one part of
learning a language. Learning a language also involves learning the skills of speaking,
listening, reading and writing and learning vocabulary so as to communicate and
interact. If we focus on just learning grammar then we are not really teaching the
learners the language but just a small part of it. We can see from her exam result that
Roxana has learnt her grammar well. Now though she lacks fluency. Maybe she still
tries to piece her sentences slowly together, thinking about each word at a time and
making sure its form is correct. This is a slow process which probably means your
listener will have stopped paying attention to you before you have finished
constructing your sentence! Roxana needs to practise using language fluently, i.e. just
focusing on getting her message across at a natural speed without worrying about the
grammatical accuracy of the forms she is using. Talking freely will help her activate
and make the most of all that grammar she learnt at school, taking it off the page and
turning it into a tool for communication instead of a tool for getting good marks.

So what general points can we take from these examples that would help us to teach
grammar effectively?
 Grammar refers to both the form and meaning of grammatical structures.

© Cambridge University Press 2011

Teaching grammar effectively

 How we teach grammar depends on the characteristics of our learners such as

their language level, age, learning needs, learning style and past learning.
 Presenting grammar in suitable contexts helps communicate its meaning to
learners.
 It isn’t necessary to know grammatical terms and rules in order to use a
language well.
 Teaching grammar by focusing on rules and/ or grammatical terms is unlikely
to be successful with those learners who are not yet able to think in abstract
ways.
 Some learners, particularly those with an analytic learning style or who have
learnt and appreciated grammar before, may find learning some grammatical
terms and rules helpful.
 Learning grammatical rules is not the same as using grammar correctly, so
even learners who learn from rules and grammatical terms need fluency
practice.
 We need to match the way we teach grammar with the variety of learning
styles that our learners have. These learning styles usually include analysing
language, seeing it, hearing it or using it in communication to do something
real. Our lessons can include different activities to suit the different learning
styles. Here are some activities that focus on the past tense and involve a
variety of learning styles.
- telling learners a story about something that happened in the past
- discussing the rules for the use of the past tense
- asking learners to sing a song that uses the past tense
- asking learners to read a story about something that happened
- asking learners to complete exercises using the past tense
- playing games using the past tense (e.g. ask some learners to perform some
actions round the class. After about ten learners have done this, ask the
class as a whole to say who did what.)
 We shouldn’t expect learners to get grammar right immediately or even
quickly. Achieving accuracy takes time and a lot of unconscious language
processing. We don’t need to worry about correcting every mistake we hear
our learners make.
 Learners don’t just need to be able to use grammar accurately but also
fluently. This means that they need opportunities to speak or write freely
without pressure to get things right.
 Using grammar accurately is only one part of being able to use a language.
Learning other things may be more important for learners than learning
grammar at some stages of their learning.
 We can learn grammar unconsciously simply by communicating and using
language to carry out tasks. This may be very effective for some learners.
Others learners may benefit more from a more obvious focus on grammar
through activities that highlight its forms and uses.
 If we teach grammar in the wrong way or at the wrong time learners may not
learn it, and, worse, they may lose interest in the lesson, and possibly
eventually in English too.

If you were teaching someone to play football, would you just give them
exercises to build their muscles or would you make them play in matches?

© Cambridge University Press 2011

Teaching grammar effectively

Would you teach them how muscles work or how the different parts of the
human body interact to produce different kinds of movement? Perhaps you
would prefer to teach them the different ways of kicking a ball? Or would you
combine all these different approaches? Maybe it would depend on who you
were teaching, what they liked, what they needed and what they responded to
best. The language teacher is faced with the same kinds of choices - is it better to
teach grammatical knowledge and skills separately, or to focus on learning through
using, or to use a combination of these? The answers will depend on who your learner
is, their previous learning experience, reasons for learning English and learning style.

© Cambridge University Press 2011