PRINCIPLES AND CONCEPTS

IN THE TEACHING OF
GRAMMAR
Grammar teaching should balance
attention to Form, Meaning and Use
 
 Premise One: Life and language are meaningful
  
 Premise Two: Learning should be meaningful…
What does not work when teaching grammar?
 Teaching grammar as a subject in isolation from writing is
not effective.
 Students learn nothing about the use of grammar by
diagramming sentences.
 Learning to identify parts of speech does not improve the
quality of a student’s writing.
 Studying grammar in isolation does not help students avoid
grammatical errors in their writing.
 Teaching grammar as grammar is not helpful and takes up
classroom time that could be better spent reading and
writing.
 What does work when teaching grammar?
Educator and author on teaching English, Rei R. Noguchi, says, “We
need to teach not so much ‘rules of grammar’ but ‘principles of
writing.'” Research validates his theory and the following principles have
been proven to be more effective than teaching grammar as a separate
subject.

 Include reading and writing

 Students should self-assess their own work

 Combine sentences meaningfully

 Use “mini-lessons”

 Literature for grammar

Premise Three: Language knowledge and language skills are not the same