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.

Section Contents

Goals and Techniques for Teaching Grammar
Strategies for Learning Grammar
Developing Grammar Activities
Using Textbook Grammar Activities
Assessing Grammar Proficiency 
Resources

  

Communicative language competences

Canale and Swain (1980), Canale (1983)

Four components of Communicative Competence 

1. grammatical competenceconcerned with mastery of the language code itself

2. discourse competence
concerns mastery of how to combine grammatical forms and meanings to achieve a unified spoken or written text in different genres

3. sociolinguistic competence
addresses the extent to which utterances are produced and understood appropriately in different sociolinguistic contexts depending on contextual factors

4. strategic competence
is composed of mastery of verbal and non-verbal communication strategies that may be called into action for two main reasons: (a) to compensate for breakdowns in communication due to limiting conditions in actual communication or to insufficient competence in one or more of the other areas of communicative competence; and (b) to enhance the effectiveness of communication

The Common European Framework

Communicative language competences

For the realisation of communicative intentions, users/learners bring to bear their

general capacities as detailed above together with a more specifically language-related

communicative competence. Communicative competence in this narrower sense has the

following components:

linguistic competences

- lexical competence

- grammatical competence

- semantic competence

- phonological competence

- Orthographic competence

- Orthoepic competence

sociolinguistic competences

Sociolinguistic competence is concerned with the knowledge and skills required to deal 

with the social dimension of language use. As was remarked with regard to sociocultural 

competence, since language is a sociocultural phenomenon, much of what is contained 

in the Framework, particularly in respect of the sociocultural, is of relevance to 

sociolinguistic competence. The matters treated here are those specifically relating to 

language use and not dealt with elsewhere: 

- Linguistic markers of social relations

- Politeness 

conventions

- Expressions of folk-wisdom

- Register differences

- Dialect and 

accent

pragmatic competences

Pragmatic competences are concerned with the user/learner’s knowledge of the principles

according to which messages are:

a) organised, structured and arranged (‘discourse competence’);

b) used to perform communicative functions (‘functional competence’);

c) sequenced according to interactional and transactional schemata (‘designcompetence’).

http://www.slideshare.net/ETRC/english-language-competences

General Information

 

"The mediocre teacher tells, the good teacher explains, the superior teacher demonstrates, the great teacher inspires." William Arthur Ward

Course Objective: During the course development, students will be able to analyze the applicability of different foreign language teaching techniques in public and private schools. 

Students will discuss the following subjects: listening comprehension, Reading comprehension, witting, oral production, grammar, pronunciation and vocabulary. Also, they will create and apply an activity in a context determined by the teacher.

This course is formed by a group of fourteen students who are in the seventh semester of the degree and the teacher who is in charge of promoting reflections and activities.