Module 2.Teaching language aspects 2.1 Teaching Grammar
Aims: The students will be able to have a clear idea of the organization of teaching grammar,
inductive and deductive approach, and presentation and practice techniques.
??? What is your idea of what grammar is?
Grammar is sometimes defined as “the way the words are put together to make correct
sentences”
Another possible definition might be:
“Grammar is a set of rules that define how words (or pats of words) are combined or changed to form acceptable units of meaning within a language”.
??? What is a grammar structure?
“A specific instance of grammar is usually called a grammar structure”
??? Can you give examples of grammar structures?
# Noun plurals, the Past Simple, comparison of adjectives etc.
Grammar meaning
Grammar does not only affect how units of the language are combined in order to “look right”; it also affects their meaning. The meaning of a grammatical structure may be difficult to teach. It is fairly simple to explain that the addition of a plural –s to the noun in English indicates that you are talking about more than one item. But how would you explain when to use the present perfect and when the past simple? In this case a very important question turns up: a question of grammatical terms.
Grammatical terms
Activity.
Match the terms with their definitions. Put the terms in order beginning with the largest, finishing with the smallest one.
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the phrase
the discourse (the text)
the clause
the word
the morpheme
the sentence
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the largest unit of language
a bit of word which can be perceived as a distinct component: within the word “passed” are the 2 morphemes: “pass” and “-ed”.
A shorter unit within the clause, of one or more words, but fulfilling the same sort of functions as a single word.
A kind of mini-sentence: a set of words which make a sense unit, but may no be concluded by a fool stop.
A set of words standing on their own as a sense unit, its conclusion marked by a full stop or equivalent(question mar, exclamation mark)
The minimum normally separable form: in writing, it appears as a stretch of letters with a space either side.
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Let us analyze the sentence in terms of the relationship between its components.
??? What are they called?
Parts of the sentence.
??? What are the most common parts of the sentence?
Subject, predicate, object, complement, adverbial
Different parts o the sentence may be realized by various kinds of words; these are called parts of speech.
??? What are the parts of speech in the English language?
Noun, verb, adjective adverb, pronoun, auxiliary verb, modal verb determiner, preposition, conjunction
Now, let us look at grammar from the point of view of teaching it.
??? Is grammar the main learning objective or the means of acquiring through mastery of the language?
One learns one’s mother tongue without studying grammar. The important question is not whether teaching and learning grammar is necessary for language learning, but whether it helps or not.
Activity.
Read the following statements about learning and teaching grammar and decide to what extent you agree or disagree with each one.
Opinoin1. Pupils should be taught grammar rules before they even begin the unit. The teacher explains the rules that are going to come up then do some exercises with the class. That really helps them be clear about what unit is about and they can do the activities in the unit better. They learn better that way.
Opinion 2. You don’t really need to teach grammar explicitly, saying things like, “This is the past perfect tense and you form it like this”. That’s unnecessary. Learners will pick it up for themselves. If hey want grammar, the teacher can give them exercises to do outside class, but don’t waste precious class time teaching i. Its better to each learner to communicate, to practice, as much English as possible in class with real language. Grammar will look after itself.
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