Working in groups
What is grammar?
Grammar is a fixed set of word forms and rules of language usage.
Should or shouldn’t it be taught?
It depends on the context and learning style: Some people acquire a
foreign language better through grammar explanation deductively, others are
more comfortable with acquire a foreign language inductively, with example and
authentic material. For me, it is better teaching a foreign language the most
similar possible to the natural process of learning. As a teacher sometimes you
are in situations that obligate you to use grammar to teach a foreign language
because there is no other way to explain some particularities of a specific language.
What is your favorite
approach to grammar teaching?
Communicative approach or based on projects. These approaches
allow using principally authentic material and promoting active students participation.
On the other hand you can put in action real situations closer to the real
context.
How do you usually
learn it much more easily: inductively or deductively.
For me it is easier acquire a language inductively, but I am aware
about my process of learning which has been mostly deductively because I belong
to the generation exposed to traditional education.
Three people’s activity
Oscar
Osorio, Felipe Bedoya and me prepared a class for our classmates. The idea was
to compare the deductive method and the inductive one.
Felipe
and me, we prepared the deductive one: it consisted on teaching the WH
questions. Felipe explained the theories as the students were adults who were just
habituated to learn through grammar explanation deductively. Also, he explained
the class in Spanish. I did a practical activity for checking the students’ comprehension;
it consisted on filling the blanks with the appropriated WH word of the
question on the blackboard.
Oscar
applied an inductively activity with the support of a video corresponding to an
interview. After that, he started to use WH questions to promote the students’
participation.
Recommended lecture by the teacher:
http://www.nclrc.org/essentials/grammar/grindex.htm
Teaching Grammar
Grammar is central to the teaching and learning of languages. It is also one of the more difficult aspects of language to teach well.
Many people, including language teachers, hear the word "grammar" and think of a fixed set of word forms and rules of usage. They associate "good" grammar with the prestige forms of the language, such as those used in writing and in formal oral presentations, and "bad" or "no" grammar with the language used in everyday conversation or used by speakers of nonprestige forms.
Language teachers who adopt this definition focus on grammar as a set of forms and rules. They teach grammar by explaining the forms and rules and then drilling students on them. This results in bored, disaffected students who can produce correct forms on exercises and tests, but consistently make errors when they try to use the language in context.
Other language teachers, influenced by recent theoretical work on the difference between language learning and language acquisition, tend not to teach grammar at all. Believing that children acquire their first language without overt grammar instruction, they expect students to learn their second language the same way. They assume that students will absorb grammar rules as they hear, read, and use the language in communication activities. This approach does not allow students to use one of the major tools they have as learners: their active understanding of what grammar is and how it works in the language they already know.
The communicative competence model balances these extremes. The model recognizes that overt grammar instruction helps students acquire the language more efficiently, but it incorporates grammar teaching and learning into the larger context of teaching students to use the language. Instructors using this model teach students the grammar they need to know to accomplish defined communication tasks.
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