Download How to teach grammar

How to teach grammar
Alice Chiu
0936-825423
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2.
3.
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What is grammar?
What should be taught?
How should it be taught?
Examples of PPT slides
Online Resources
1. What is grammar?

Grammar is not…
– a discrete set of meaningless
decontextualized or static structure
– prescriptive rules about linguistic form

What is grammar then?
2. What should be taught?
A 3-D Grammar Framework
How is it formed?
form/structure
What does it mean?
meaning/semantics
use/pragmatics
When/Why is it used?
From: Larsen-Freeman, D. (2001). Teaching Grammar. (pp. 251-266).
In Celce-Murcia, M. (Ed.) Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language.
(3rd Edition). Boston: Heinle & Heinle.
The advantages of the framework
It makes teachers understand the scope and
form/structure of meaning/semantics
multidimensionality
the structure.
It helps teachers
use/pragmatics
to identify the challenges.
2.1 Teaching form
20 questions (questions)
 family portraits (possessives)
 describing a person or a place by using
relative clauses
 information gap activity (practice
different forms/patterns)
 sentence-unscrambling task
(a problem-solving activity)

2.2 Teaching Meaning
Making association between form and meaning
realia and pictures (comparative forms)
 actions
– TPR (imperative form)
– matching: phrase-meaning association

(phrasal verbs)
– story telling with action (phrasal verbs)
2.3 Teaching Use

Role plays in different social contexts
– Example 1: giving advice
• Giving advice to friends
• Giving advice to young kids
• Advice columnist (speaking and writing)
– Example 2: past tense vs. present perfect
• Job interview
 Linguistic discourse context
– Teaching passive voices: focus on issues rather
than agents
• a text completion task
3. How should grammar be taught?
3.1
3.2
3.3
3.4
3.5
3.6
3.7
3.8
Accuracy vs. Fluency
Striking a Balance
from Cognitive Approach to
Communicative Approach
Important features
Sequencing
Providing Feedback
General Guidelines
Conclusion
3.1 Accuracy vs. Fluency
Form-focused
Meaning-focused
Grammar translation
Direct method
Features of patterns
and grammar points
Interactive/group work
(comprehension input)
Communicative
approach
Cognitive-code
approach
Develop explicit
Develop implicit
knowledge (know what) knowledge (know how)
accuracy
fluency
3.2 How to strike a balance

Fluency requires practice in which students
use the target language point meaningfully
while keeping the declarative knowledge in
working memory.
 Meaningful practice of form:
– Students
have to and
receive
feedback onawareness
the
Repeated
noticing
continued
accuracy.
of the
language on
feature
is important.
– Concentrate
one or two
new forms at a time.
3.3 From Cognitive Approach to
Communicative Practice
1.
2.
3.
4.
Explicit formal instruction
Structured-based communicative task
Practice and production exercises
Subsequent communicative exposure
to the grammar point
3.4 Important features

consciousness raising
– either through teacher instruction (a
deductive method)
– or by their own discovery learning (an
inductive method)
examples of the structure in
communicative input
 opportunities to produce correct
grammar points

3.5 Sequencing
A grammar checklist
 Not following a prescribed sequence
rigidly
 Many structures would arise naturally in
the course working on the tasks and
content and would be dealt with then.

3.6 Ways to Provide feedback
Giving explicit rules
 Recasting
 Self-correcting
 Peer-correcting
 Collecting students’ errors, identifying
the prototypical ones, & dealing with
them collectively in class as an
anonymous fashion.

3.7 General Principles for Grammar
Teaching




little and often (recycle and revisit)
planned and systematic
offering learners a range of opportunities
Involving acceptance of classroom code
switching and mother tongue
 text-based, problem-solving grammar
activities
 active corrective feedback and elicitation
 supported in meaning-oriented activities and
tasks
3.8 Conclusion

By thinking of grammar as a skill to be mastered,
rather than a set of rules to be memorized, we’ll be
helping students go a long way toward the goal of
being able to accurately convey meaning in an
appropriate manner.

When the psychological conditions of learning and
application are matched, what has been learned is
more likely to be transfer. Therefore, presenting
rules and forms in the context of communicative
interaction is necessary.
4. Examples of PPT Slides

Integrating ppt into grammar teaching
– Visual learners
– Interesting stories

Examples
– ….require that S V….
– Inversions (倒裝句)
– as…as possible
5. Online resources for self-study

Oxford University Press online practice
– Natural Grammar
– Oxford Learner’s Grammar
– The Good Grammar Book
English works: grammar exercises
 Big Dog’s grammar

End of this Session

References
Larsen-Freeman, D. (2001). Teaching Grammar. (pp.
251-266). In Celce-Murcia, M. (Ed.) Teaching English
as a Second or Foreign Language. (3rd Edition).
Boston: Heinle & Heinle.
Fotos, S. (2001). Cognitive Approaches to Grammar
Instruction. (pp. 267-284). In Celce-Murcia, M. (Ed.)
Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language.
(3rd Edition). Boston: Heinle & Heinle.