CHILDREN LEARNING GRAMMAR

Prepared by

Hendrawan wiguna (17.06.0.003)

Intan ain simanjuntak (17.06.0.000)

ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTEMENT TEACHERS TRAINING AND

EDUCATION FACULTY

RIAU KEPULAUAN UNIVERSTIY

 PREFACE

Thanks to the Almighty God for His bless and grace to the writer for accomplishing the
English paper assignment with the title “Children learning a grammar ”
The purpose of this paper is to fulfill the assignment that given by Mrs. Dewi Yana, M.Pd
as lecturer in English for young learners. 
In arranging this paper, the writer also wants to deliver ours sincere thanks to all the
people who has given their hands to help him completing this paper. Writer also realized there
are still many mistakes in this paper. The writer realized that this paper still imperfect in
arrangement and the content. Then the writer hopes the criticism from the readers can help the
writer in perfecting the next paper. Last but not the least Hopefully, this paper can help the
readers to enlarge more knowledge about English for young learners.

Batam, 26 oktober 2020

Author
Table of content
 INTRODUCTION

Learning grammar

1.1 A place for grammar

In this chapter, I want to open up thoughts about grammar and explore grammar from a
learner's perspective. By doing this, I hope to persuade readers that grammar does have a
region in kid's overseas language learning, and that knowledgeable grammar educating
can be of benefit. Exposing what we suggest by using 'grammar' will remind us that it is
some thing greater than just a listing of labels and guidelines found in grammar books,
and that grammar is intently associated to the meaning and utilization of language, and to
every other with vocabulary. . We will then seem at how some of the current strategies to
help freshmen enhance their grammar can be adapted for younger learners.
To start this chapter, short conversations with young learners will help focus on grammar
and meaning
Conversation between adult (A) and pupils (B)

A B
What’s that It’s T rex
Is it big or small Big

At the end of a short conversation it can be concluded that the child already knows which
objects are of different sizes in other words, the current master grammar words are the
adjectives we teach these children. communicating well with children is a suitable
teaching method that gives them vocabulary by repeatedly inserting grammar and giving
our students the opportunity to learn to speak on their own until they are truly capable. As
children become more proficient, similar conversations can be used to introduce other
new grammars, for example, they are too big to fit in the classroom; it's a big house.
The short conversation about T Rex has illustrated several starting points for thinking
about grammar and young learners
• grammar is necessary to express precise meanings in discourse
• grammar ties closely into vocabulary in learning and using the foreign Language
• grammar learning can evolve from the learning of chunks of language:
• talking about something meaningful with the child can be a useful way to introduce new
grammar
• grammar can be taught without technical labels (eg. 'intensifying adverb')

1.2 Different meaning grammar

The word grammar bus has so far been used to refer to aspects of how a language, in this
case English, is used conventionally, Le to a particular language structure or system. But
this is a slippery word, and is also used to refer to the way the system is described by
linguists, we in 'Chomsky's grammar "" static functional grammar, and internal mental
representations of the language that someone has constructed a grammar learner.
1.2.1 The grammar of language
In order to teach language to non-native speakers, we need to break it down, fix it so
we can understand it as a more static set of ways of speaking, and break it down into
sections to offer students. Breaking the language down into word-sized bits produces
a 'vocabulary', finding patterns in how words are put together to produce grammar '.
So English has patterns, namely regularities across many or most native speakers,
which express the idea of intensification by placing very first adjectives. These
patterns are often called 'rules', but we must note that patterns are rules insofar as
they describe what people usually do, not like school rules' or' football rules' that
teachers or referees make sure to follow.
1.2.2 Theoritical and pedagogic grammars
Chomsky linguistics aims to describe language as it is internalized in the mind /
brain, not as produced by a speaker. Their main purpose is to explore, and unify, at
a theoretical level. similarities in syntax across all languages, and this job has few,
if any, applications for language classes. Halli-dayan linguists, on the other hand,
view language as a tool for the expression of meaning, and hence they categorize
language in terms of how meaning is expressed and the functional grammar of the
product. Now computers can accommodate a very large sample of languages
(Cobuild Bank of English at the University of Birmingham has more than 10
million words at the time of writing), a generation of linguistic corpus that produces
grammar based on real data about frequency and usage patterns, not on the intuition
of native speakers previously used. These descriptive grammars aim to be
theoretically sound, elegant, and complete. They are not especially designed for
foreign language classes and, if they are to be used to inform foreign language
teaching, need to be adapted to keep learning and teaching in mind. Pedagogical
grammar is an explicit description of patterns, or rules, in a language, presented in a
way that is useful to teachers and learners. The teacher needs a general description
and description of the entire language to be taught, but students will find
pedagogical grammar little by little, as the parts are introduced in the textbook unit.
1.2.3 Internal grammar
Learners will meet pedagogical grammar, if not directly from a learners' grammar
book, then indirectly through lessons, teacher explanations and text books. A
further key distinction needs to be made between this grammar', and what any
individual learner actually learns about the patterns of the language: his or her
'internal grammar' of the language. Every learner's internal grammar is different
from every other's because each has a unique learning experience. Internal
grammar is sometimes
 referred to as 'inter language' or as linguistic competence'. I want to emphasize the
distinction between external theoretical or pedagogic grammars and internal
grammars because it helps us understand why a learner may have been taught a
piece of grammar on the syllabus, but may not be able to use that grammatical
form in talking of writing. It is essentially yet another way of pointing out the
difference between teaching and learning, so that learning can be made central to

1.3 Development of internal grammar

1.3.1 From word to grammar

Cognitive psychology shows that our brain / mind is always working with a
limited attention capacity for mental attention) which is available to concentrate
on completing tasks. When the task is communicating an idea or message through
a foreign language, it seems that finding the right words requires continued
attention, but once the word or piece is well known, using it requires less
capacity, and attention is freed up for grammar. affect the actual need for
grammar to communicate. If you can get your message across without grammar
such as when very little knowledge of a language makes it possible to buy food at
a foreign shop by specifying items and quantities, then there may be some
incentive to encourage grammar learning. Weiner's research of 1-5 year old
Scottish children learning German shows that they use phrases or formula pieces
both for communication and for developing grammar. Wert 1994 Pieces which
have been learned by rote are sometimes broken down into chunks.
1.3.2 Learning through hypothesis testing
Hypothesis testing is the big name given to mental processes that are proven from
a very early age for example, when a baby drops its spoon, sees someone pick it
up, and then drops it again to get it back. Evidence that children work naturally
with rules and patterns comes from production of their creative speech so that
they never hear others say but seem to follow the internal Rules that the child has
built up: for example he takes my balls (cooking), where new past forms are
created according to the current child's hypothesis. Later, this form will turn into a
conventional fortress.
Such purification of language and ideas is characteristic of mental development,
and thus is likely to occur in foreign language learning as well, as children
construct hypotheses about how a foreign language works from the data they
receive from their limited experience with the language. stable and continuous, or
it can involve more dramatic changes where whole sections are rearranged based
on new information. These dramatic changes are called 'restructuring' (Mdaughlin
1990). In the following excerpt, two 12 year old Norwegian children retell a story
called The Playroom they have read previously. The narrative part of the story is
written in put form and if we look at the past tense verbs they use (italic) we can
see how they make some right and others wrong, but also how their error shows
the use of the rule:
Student
1. Grandpa takes Joe around the house and they come to the playroom
2. Joe gasped when he saw the playroom
3.More like a toy shop ...
4. At the end of the room is a toy castle
5. This castle my father made with me when I was your age
6. I made up a story about knights and dragons
Student
1. My father built this tower when I was your age
2. and my dad and my dad are great and they used to make up stories I was a
knight
3. After dinner Joe got into bed
Notice how Pupil: in row 1 uses the unsigned form of the verb show and come,
with no ending, but how it gasps and appears to have an ending. This type of
mixed accuracy often characterizes learning on the sidelines, or in progress.
Panting and looking can be used as pieces of rote, whereas show and come have
been preserved not only as past tenses but as crude verb forms that can be strung
together to express meaning, and will eventually be given the ending they need.
The maked in line s adds more evidence that students are moving from chunk to
grammar learning: here, the basic form of the verb is given the regular past tense
 ending. That's not true, but it is strong evidence that a child's internal grammar is
at work, and we can confidently hope that over time, and with more data, the
internal grammar will separate the usual past tense from the irregular, and will
produce form made. In line 6, the verb created is produced as a rote piece, which I
think is more likely, or is an example of correctly forming an irregular form. Pupil
2 has two attempts to get past shapes and also produce regular shapes.
1.3 Influence of first language
In this theory, the sensitivity to first language work that children develop in early
infancy explains the shift in first language understanding and production
strategies to the use of a foreign or second language. Learners instinctively hear
meaning cues in the order of words or tenses that suit them in their first language,
and they may miss the cues offered by a foreign language. For example,
Malaysian English learners often miss the information carried by the end of the
verb, eg. the difference between work and works, because in the first language,
word endings carry no useful information. Spanish learners can be confused by
the position of pronouns in English, word order is a very reliable gesture and the
first word in a sentence is generally the subject, however, in Spanish, the first
word can be an object pronoun (Van Patten 1996). If foreign language signs are
not very clear, they are even less likely to be noticed and used. Harley (1994)
argues that it is precisely these cross-linguistically distinct and low-profile
features of grammar that require form-focused instruction.

1.4 A learning-centered approach to teaching grammar : background

1.4.1 Trend in teaching grammar
Young learner school rooms are inevitably affected with the aid of the traits that
sweep via foreign language teaching, us can be viewed from the improvement of
task-based syllabuses in Malaysia, of the 'target-oriented curriculum in Hong
Kong, and of communicative syllabuses in many other countries. Some of these
developments flip out to be precise for novices and learning others are much less
in reality beneficial. Young learner contexts additionally begin trends, however
much less frequently, Prabhu's work on task- based totally gaining knowledge of
 in India in the 1970s used to be influential in early boost ments in task-based
language teaching, for example.
Grammar instructing in latest years has been as inclined as other elements of FLT
to trends, the most enormous of which for our functions has likely been the swing
away from grammar translation strategies through communicative methods and
on to cutting-edge ideas about 'focusing on form'. Each of these perspectives on
language teaching takes a one of a kind view of studying processes, and we can
clarify what is vital about every by analyzing exercise thru the lens of lookup on
studying
1.4.2 Teaching grammar as explicit rules: learning as building block
Language learning is the accumulation of mastered rules of grammar. Grammar
rules are introduced one-by-one, explicitly, to learners. Metalinguistic labels are
used to speak explicitly about grammar, for example the past, and the terms and
organization needed to speak about language are another part of what has to be
learned. Students are expected to learn the rules and practice using the rules for
composing sentences. After more practice, the assumption is that the rules can be
used automatically. To teach a language this way, the structure. or the rules are
sorted into sequences, assumed to develop from easy to difficult, and the order
forms a syllabus.
The way of thinking required to cope with learning through explicit grammar
rules tends to be difficult for younger children. Building block ordering also
greatly did not match the younger children's tendencies to be thematic or
narrative. We need a more organic metaphor for internal grammatical growth that
does not see it as a heap of separate blocks of knowledge, but which captures the
notion of non-linear and interconnected growth: grammar grows like a plant,
perhaps, is watered by the use of meaningful language, and encourages new
shoots while older stems are strengthened. Young children are quite capable of
learning terms such as words, sentences, letters, continuing to learn about their
class of words and labels (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions), about
sentence construction (from seeing punctuation marks) in written English) and the
beginning of the idea of a clause as part of a sentence (for example, a sentence
 with two clauses combined with and). The introduction of assessed meta language
during the prime years, if done meaningfully and through a discourse context, can
provide children with a solid foundation for further language studies.

1.4.3 Communicative approaches: no grammar needed

The main principle of GLT is that students will learn language by using it to
communicate with others. In its strongest form, the foreign language learning
process should resemble a child's first language acquisition, where everything just
happens without direct or explicit teaching. It remains questionable whether such
a powerful form of CLT has ever been adopted in practice. More likely is that
weaker forms were taken, with an attempt to make language practice activities
more realistic. What is certain to happen with teaching grammar is the decline in
its importance in the foreign language classroom.
A form of CLT that is entirely based on listening to comprehensible input is Total
Physical Response (TPR), and a variety of TPR is found in many young learner
course books. In this method as developed by Asher (1972), students listen to
commands in a foreign language and respond only through movements and
actions e. get up and sit down, turn around, put things on shelves. The difficulty in
this input gradually increases and eventually students take over the role of teacher
and give instructions in a foreign language. It is said that students develop skills
in Listening and speaking through TPR, and have been shown to be very suitable
for beginners (Lightbown and Spada 1999). Along with the 'no grammar'
approach, however, there appears to be a limit to what can be achieved without
attention to output and grammar.
1.4. Focus on form: the revival of grammar teaching
Recent evaluations of the dyeing program have shown mixed results for its
success (Harley and Swain 1984: Harley et al. 1995). Children learn foreign
languages quickly and develop excellent accents and listening skills. They can
achieve good results through a second language. But in terms of grammar,
children taught through a second language do not develop the same level of
accuracy as native speakers and, without attention to this form of language,
problems with basic structure persist (Lightbown and Spada 1994). where
communicating meaning is the main goal, learners seem to go through aspects of
grammar, both in listening, where more attention is paid to subject matter than to
the language that carries it, and in speaking, where the teacher is able to
understand what the student wants to say .
grammar of a foreign language is foreign ', and grammar development requires
skillful planning of assignments and lessons, and explicit teaching from the
learner's point of view. The view is that it is increasingly recognized that attention
to form is essential (Doughty and Williams 1998), and that learners need to be
helped to notice grammatical patterns of foreign languages, before they can make
those patterns part of their internal grammar. Schmidt 1990; Van Patten 1996).
Not only attention and attention is needed in input, but also in output, students
need to be helped to focus on the accuracy and appropriateness of their use of
language (Swain 1985, 1995).

Recognizing is, as we have seen, an active process in which learners become

aware of structure, paying attention to the relationship between form and meaning
but not manipulating language itself. Usually paying attention to what is
successful
• supports meaning and form;
• presents forms in isolation, as well as in discourse and linguistic contexts;
• Distinguishing shapes from other familiar forms
• requires active participation by students;
• is at a level of detail appropriate for the learner - a series of concerns
activities can 'zoom in' on details;
• leads, but does not include, activities that manipulate language.
Batstone suggests that structuring usually requires controlled practice around
form and meaning, and that learners should be actively involved in constructing
language to convey precise meanings so as to encourage further attention at a
more detailed level.
In structuring activities:
 • learners have to manipulate language, change shape in order
meaning of express:
• learners can be given choices in content that requires adjustment
grammar to express meaning
• There will be limited impact on spontaneous use - most of the styling work will
still be internal.
1.5. Principle for learning-centered grammar teaching
Good learning-centered grammar teaching will be meaningful and engaging, require the
active participation of students, and will work with the way children learn and what they
are able to learn. As with all other aspects of learning and teaching, the socio-cultural
context of foreign language learning will greatly influence what actually happens in the
classroom, but some general principles for learning centered on teaching grammar can be
summarized:
a. Need for grammar
• Accuracy of grammar and accuracy of meaning
• Regardless of form, shapes will not be learned accurately
• Form-focused teaching is particularly relevant for features of foreign grammar
which differ from the first language or are less visible.

b. Studying grammar as an internal grammar development

• learners should do learning only by teaching grammar not making it happen;
• Grammar learning can work out of participation in discourse, from vocabulary and
from pieces learned;
• Learners' mistakes can provide useful information to teachers about their learning
process and internal grammar.
c. The role takes advantage of teaching grammar rules
• Teaching grammar explicitly requires learners to think about language in very
abstract and formal ways that some enjoy and some find difficult. The younger the
student, the less precise the odds are
• Children can master meta language if taught well, meta language can be a useful
tool.
1.6. Teaching techniques for supporting grammar learning
1.6.1 Working from discourse to grammar
Class discourse context and routines can serve to introduce new grammar, with
access to meaning supported by actions and objects, or to provide further practice
in a language that has been introduced in other ways. Routines are ideal contexts
in which chunks can be expanded.
a. The language of classroom management
Some of the phrases originally used by the teacher can be used by students when
they are working in pairs or groups. The classroom management language can
thus act as a meaningful discourse context in which certain patterns emerge
regularly and help build internal grammar.
Example
The teachers says: give out STUDENT

the scissors the paper

the paper the books

the pencils

The noun phrases can be expanded to match or to extend grammar

Development
give out the small scissors
collect the green writing books
tidy the paper from the cupboard
find the red pencils that are on my desk put away
b. Talking with children
conversations with each child can be very useful for language development, as
they can grasp exactly what a child needs to know in order to further talk about
his interests, room for growth.
1. If a child gives something voluntarily, in their first language or in a foreign
language they can master, the teacher can respond in a foreign language, offering
a more complete or more precise way of saying it.
 Son: my mummy hospital
Teacher: oh! your mother at the hospital. Why?
This type of 'corrective feedback' can also be used to broaden the conversation. If
a child makes comments about a picture, for example, the teacher can respond
with more complete sentences that interest the child:
Child: bird tree
Teacher: Yes. The bird is in the tree. He sits on the branch. Although grammar
may not be the main goal of language learning from an assignment, grammar can
be part of what is being discussed
1.6.2 Guided nothing activities
a. Listen and notice
Pupils listen to connected sentences or parts of speech, e.g. stories or phone calls,
and complete tables or grids using what they heard. To complete the grid, they
need to pay attention to the grammatical aspects that are captured. Halliwell
(1992) suggests using a grid to practice prepositions. the student has to listen to
the prepositions in the sentence to know which box to tick: eg. the cup is on the
chair / the cup is at the end of the chair.
b. Presentation of new language with puppets
in a language syllabus which requires the teacher to regularly present a new
language to children, the idea of paying attention to learners can help to be
introduced to more traditional ways of teaching grammar. When introducing new
patterns, the teacher can build dialogue with a storyline, which uses a pattern of
repetition plus contrast, for our puppets to play with. In a story like the one I used
for children 5-10 years, a crocodile (Groc) and a squirrel discuss doing
swimming. The teacher can then recap the routine events by pointing to the
calendar and reciting his own key pattern phrase: 'On days this, I visited my
grandmother, etc. To aid input processing, students can be given a blank calendar
and asked to complete Croc's regular Continue from listening, making a
distinction between routine events, 'On Monday, I catch fish, a non-routine event
"On Sundays, I'll teach Squirrel to swim' .
1.6.3 Language practice activities that offers structuring
a. Opportunities
opportunities
in structuring activities the goal is to help learners internalize the grammatical
pattern so that it becomes part of their internal grammar The focus is an internal
work that happens as a result of activities that demand accuracy, rather than on
fluency in production. Various types of classroom tasks can be used with
grammar structuring goals. Some manipulation and pre-planning by the teacher
may be needed to ensure that the activities include plentiful practice of the
particular form.
b. Question, quiz, and surveys
This is commonly found in youth course books, after inputting their favorite
foods, for example, children are asked to interview their friends to find out their
favorite foods. Teachers need to plan which forms of language students will
encourage them to use. Question preparation and rehearsals are needed to ensure
accuracy, and activities must be organized so that the questions are always asked
in full. Once information from several people has been gathered, group work on
the compiled results can offer further opportunities to internalize or structure
grammar patterns, but only if arranged strictly. Remember that structuring
requires students to manipulate language so that it produces shapes with attention
and accuracy. Numbers can be placed on a pre-prepared chart and added up. They
can then be put on a chart showing the favorite foods, and an oral report prepared,
and then presented with the graph to the whole class. Again, oral reports must be
complete and accurate, so attention should be paid to tenses and word order. This
should be practiced by the group, and corrected by the teacher during the practice
stage so that accurate forms are spoken aloud in the final presentation.
c. Information gap activities
Activities with information gaps are often found in textbooks to practice oral
skills. Again, with only minor adjustments, they can be used for grammatical
purposes rather than spoken fluency purposes.
d. Helping hand
 The topic was helping in the home, and children, as I recall as 6 or 6 years of age,
had drawn around their hands and cut out the shapes of the hands (if this demands
motor skills, the teacher can prepare the cuts and shapes in advance). On each
finger they write a sentence describing something they do to help out at home.
Mine is a plate. I play with my younger sister. Each child's sentence can be
different. The strips of paper are then displayed on the walls, making a kind of our
palm tree into a hand shape. It looks very effective, but it's also interesting for
kids to read, to see what their friends are doing at home
e. Drills and charita
drille is a useful way to give all children speaking practice when the class
becomes large for speaking individually. They also offer language support and
engagement to children when it is used to practice a new language because the
child can listen to other parts he or she is unsure of, and practice can be lively and
enjoyable if the pace is maintained. Repetition exercises, where the child repeats
what is said. the teacher says it can be helpful in getting used to the new form, but
substitution exercises are those that offer more for grammar arrangement.
example:
T: You want to play soccer
ST: "Let's play soccer
T: You want to go swimming
P: Let's swim.
(Doff 1988)
As an alternative, the teacher can use a single word or picture as a guide for
students to produce sentendeces:
T: Cinema
ST:! Let's go to the cinema
T: Football
ST: Let's play football
(Doff 1988)
In each case, students do grammar work in their minds to produce lines in
practice, and this can help with structuring
1.6.4 Procedure avtivities
Task design must ensure that grammar is essential for achieving task goals and
that some attention to accuracy is required, but the idea is that attention to
accuracy can gradually be relaxed as it becomes automatic.
a. Polar animal description e-visited
It is helpful to remember what happened to the arctic animal description task.
We can see now that doing descriptions does require grammatical knowledge
that has entered the internal grammar through 'paying attention' and
'structuring. Students can choose their animal, so they must choose and adapt
the grammar form for their own particular choice. Presentations can be
repeated several times to other classes, to parents, on tape for another school,
and each repetition moves the child towards better fluency. with new forms.
b. Dictogloss
This is a common activity that offers many possibilities for young learner
classrooms (as well as for older learners and adults) once reading and writing
are established. Wajaryb (1990) describes various activities that take some
opportunities to learn traditional dictation in a more meaningful way.
The basic idea of Dictogloss is that the teacher reads the text several times,
students listen and take notes between readings, and then reconstruct the text
in pairs or small groups, with the aim of being as close to the original and as
accurate as possible.
1.6.5 Introducing meta language
a. Explicit teacher talk\
Here is a teacher doing some metalinguistic work with 11-year-old pupils on
plural forms in English. Notice how he uses the repetition contrast pattem, and
how he formulates the 'rule' at the end, after the specific examples
Tilf we have many of them...Two of them!
P: cows
T: house?
T: horses
(some more examples of regular form)
T: sheep?
T: sheep
 T: yes() we don't put thes at the end of sheep
Ti wolf
twolves
( how do we write it) yes?
W.O.L..V.E.S
T: you should (1.0) oge should think but it isn't
so (2) yes 1
1. W.O.L.V.E.S
TI yes it.a) yes (10) it's a special word (0)
one wolf.) with
two wolves with V
We can see that it is both useful and quite possible to talk about language
without using technical terms. However, since these children seem to have the
concept of plural and singular, the technical terms might be usefully
introduced to them. This will also depend on whether they have beurt meta
language terms in their find language lessons.

1.7. Summary
Developing the grammar of a foreign language is a long and complicated process,
luckily, young learners have a long time ahead of them with the language. There is no
need to rush into technical rules and labels that will confuse. For their ultimate success, it
seems likely to be far better to give children a sound basis in using the language, while
encouraging curiosity and talk about patterns and contrast in and between languages, and
introducing grammatical meta language slowly and meaningfully
In this chapter. I have suggested that grammar does have a place in young lamer
classrooms. But the teacher of young learner can probably best help to develop children's
grammar in the foreign language, not by teaching grammar directly, but by being
sensitive to opportunities for grammar learning that arise in the classroom. A grammar
sensitive teacher will see the language patterns that occur in tasks, stories, songs, rhymes
and classroom talk, and will have a range of techniques to bring these patterns to the
children's notice, and to organize meaningful practice. To do this well requires
considerable knowledge and teaching skills!

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