Issues of Grammar

Teaching and Assessment

Chapter 2 – Lesson 2
 • If you’ve ever taught grammar, you may be
familiar with complaints like these.
• It’s not only students who often dislike
grammar lessons, though. Some teachers
Why should question it, and some parents and
administrators think it’s an outdated
we teach practice.
grammar? • If you’ve encountered resistance in your
English teaching experience, you may feel
like teaching grammar is fighting an uphill
battle.
 • English Language Arts teachers
need to have a firm
understanding of why they are
teaching grammar because – let’s
face it – opposition will come.
Why should we It’s natural for skeptics to
question why we are teaching
teach grammar? certain concepts, but when we
don’t have an answer, things get,
well….a little awkward.
• So, why bother? Because it
matters.
What are some of the primary
reasons grammar
is not taught?
• It’s boring.
• Students don’t like it.
• Kids don’t remember it.
• The skills don’t transfer to real
life.
• Teachers don’t understand it.
• It’s an outdated practice.
• There’s not enough time.
Professionals need to help students understand
grammar, but in order to do so, we need to understand:
Grammar lessons and units need to be
structured effectively.

The overall grammar sequence impacts

students’ understanding.

Grammar needs to be taught both directly and

in context.

Teachers have to take time to study grammar

and understand how language works.
 “Cooperation works better than
competition in the large class:
cross-ability grouping allows the
more able learners to improve
The teacher is their language skills by honoring
their ability to explain, to state
not the only clearly, and to give
pedagogue effective examples, while it
provides the less able with
considerable
support” (Hess, 2001, p.3)
 Pre-test

The 8 Parts of Speech

How to
Sequence Simple & Complete Subjects &
Grammar Predicates
D.O. / I.O. / P.N. / P.A. (Subject
Complements)
Why?
• Students have to understand nouns, verbs, and
modifiers to be able to identify the subject and verb
of a sentence as well as to divide a sentence in two:
complete subject and complete predicate.
• Direct objects, indirect objects, and subject
complements next because infinitives and gerunds
can function as some of these elements.
• Cover coordinating conjunctions with the 8 parts of
speech because the other conjunctions rely upon an
understanding of more complex grammar concepts.
Two main issues in teaching grammar.

Teaching large multi-level classes Catering to different learning styles.

Teaching large multi-
level classes
• Unfortunately, we often deal with many classes that
do not conform the pedagogical norm of 20-25
students per classroom.
• In many parts of the world teachers may have a
class size range from 30 students to over 130.
• This, of course brings benefits and challenges.
The benefits
There are always enough students for interaction.
We tend to think small classes are ideal. However,
when there are very few students in a class, they
quickly get to know one another. Opportunities for
personalization become rare as students have fewer
new ideas to offer, and the classes themselves can
become quite dull.
The benefits
We get a rich variety of human resources.
Depending on the age of our students, but normally
we always have students from different backgrounds,
that can contribute their experiences to the whole
class and make the learning experience more
significant and interesting.
The benefits
We can collaborate

In mixed-ability classes, we can deploy the more able

students to play tutoring roles for their less linguistically
able students and take some of the load of teachers. This
can create a positive, collaborative climate.
The biggest challenge in making students “tutors” is that
they will feel that they are not learning anything. But
with enough support and guidance from the
instructor, peer-to-peer tutoring can be very beneficial
for all involved.
The benefits
We are never bored.
This point reflects the richness and diversity of the large
class. There are always multiple
things going on, issues to attend and challenges to meet.

Professional development occurs naturally.

Although we prefer small classes, the techniques we have
taught will have to be reinvented and refined with larger
groups.
The challenges
We often feel out of control.
Even the most experienced teacher can have trouble
managing a large class. If we opt for pair or group
work, simply getting students in and out of groups
can pose a formidable challenge even before any
teaching takes place. A chaotic environment can
happen when all students talk at the same time, this
will generate so much noise. It is often difficult
to hear individual students or to make oneself heard.
The challenges

Hess (2001) suggests that a solution to a chaotic

environment is organization.
Good organization, among other things, helps
students to know what is expected of them and to
get on task quickly and efficiently. Having a
special place on the board where homework
assignments are always placed or where
directions for the first activity of the day are
written, and a place where all the scheduled
activities for the lesson are listed, help in
establishing good control (Hess, 2001, p.4).
The challenges
In the larger class we may feel trapped in
problems of management.
We are confronted with multiple tasks, some of which
are performed simultaneously with numerous
practical managerial decisions including taking
attendance, collecting homework, and so on.
The challenges
In terms of grammar, we have to deal with the following
questions:
How and when do we deal with errors when they occur in
the course of a communicative activity?
How about if the error occurs during a form-focused drill
or exercise?
How do we give feedback to students who are at different
stages of grammar development, and for whom some
explanations will either be irrelevant or incomprehensible?
The challenges
We are frustrated by the huge amount of written
work.
Correcting the grammar errors in students’ written
work is, for many teachers, the most time-consuming
thing they do. Collaboration is key, getting students to
act as peer reviewers of each other’s work can be
helpful for the teacher when this is done in
the classroom.
The challenges
Activating the quiet student is difficult.
Even though some students can learn just as
effectively by not participating as they can by
participating. Giving them adequate time to prepare
what they have to say, possibly by providing them
with grammatical cues to improve accuracy, not
requiring them to speak up in front of the whole class
can actually improve participation rates.
Catering to different
learning styles
A learning style refers to the learners’
preferred way of learning. It is
“an individual’s natural, habitual, and
preferred ways of absorbing, processing and
retaining new information and skills”
(Kinsella, 1995, p. 171). Some individuals
are visual learners while other prefer to learn
by listening to the target language.
Willing (1987)
identified 4
different language
learning styles.
How do you imagine that the four different types of
learners might prefer to study grammar?
References
• https://www.readingandwritinghaven.com/the-nerdiest-of-confessions-whywe-
teach-grammar-and-you-should-too/
• https://www.readingandwritinghaven.com/how-to-sequence-grammarinstruction/
• https://www.slideshare.net/juliovangel/issues-in-teaching-grammar