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Using Grammar

The document emphasizes the importance of teaching grammar within a communicative context in language education, highlighting that students should learn grammar through practical real-life skills rather than through traditional terminology. It suggests that immersing students in functional scenarios, such as introducing themselves, allows them to grasp grammatical concepts naturally. The approach aims to reduce students' anxiety towards grammar and enhance their ability to communicate effectively in English.

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Svitlana Zakharchuk
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4 views2 pages

Using Grammar

The document emphasizes the importance of teaching grammar within a communicative context in language education, highlighting that students should learn grammar through practical real-life skills rather than through traditional terminology. It suggests that immersing students in functional scenarios, such as introducing themselves, allows them to grasp grammatical concepts naturally. The approach aims to reduce students' anxiety towards grammar and enhance their ability to communicate effectively in English.

Uploaded by

Svitlana Zakharchuk
Copyright
© All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

PART 2: THE PLACE OF GRAMMAR IN COMMUNICATIVE

LANGUAGE TEACHING

3. USING GRAMMAR TO COMMUNICATE


When creating a CLT lesson plan to teach grammar, we must bear in mind the
word “communicative”. Try to teach students a new grammar form, whether it be
a tense, an auxiliary verb, a conditional form etc. by immersing them in a context or
function (real life skill) that naturally requires the use of that grammar. As Noam
Chomsky theorised and demonstrated: humans are naturally “wired” for grammar.
We don't need to teach “What is a verb?” Humans already innately know the
concept of “verbs”.

Mentioning or teaching grammar items such as “articles” or “the Present Simple” in


the communicative classroom risks raising students' affective filters. Many
students think: “Grammar? Oh no! I was terrible at grammar when I was at school!”
Add to this, the many exceptions to grammar “rules” and perhaps your own inability
to get the language item across, and you end up with a dry, boring class with very
little cohesion, leaving students confused and upset. Perhaps the student may start
thinking of dropping out of the course, as they cannot see how learning “definite
and indefinite articles” helps them communicate with their English-speaking
brother-in-law, when they catch up with each other on the internet.

Instead of this debacle, aim to teach grammar in a communicative way through a


function, for example: “exchanging personal information” or “introducing yourself”.
We teach students to say: “Hi, my name's Jorge. I'm from Mexico. I'm 31 years old,
and I'm a dentist.” The student has then learnt a practical real-life skill in another
language. They can walk out of that class with something useful: the student can
now – obviously with varying degrees of success – introduce himself to his English-
speaking brother-in-law.

Additionally, with these few sentences, the student has been introduced to various
grammatical items, without ever mentioning the word “grammar”:

 Verb “to be” in Present Simple and its contractions (I’m, my name’s)
 Indefinite article “a” before professions (I’m a dentist)
 Possessive adjective (my name)
 Preposition “from” for countries (I’m from Mexico)
 Conjunction “and” for joining two sentences ( … 31 years old and I’m a dentist.)
As you can see from this example, students are learning to use grammar in order
to communicate, rather than learning about grammar.

TEACHING TIP: Students don’t need to know grammar terminology. Teachers may
still name a tense, a noun, or an article, but this is rather for ease of reference than
because a student needs to know this in order to understand and use the language. See
also Module 2, Part 1, 3: The Role of Grammar in CLT today.

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