Teaching grammar has been proved to be a controversial issue, since it can and already is approached individually, that is, differing from teacher to teacher, from student to student, from method to method.
When we were asked about how to teach grammar, the first thing we thought of was the importance of contextualizing the grammar structures. In the article “Teaching Grammar”, written by Jeremy Harmer, we’ve come across the word “pragmatically”, that describes this idea of approaching grammar through a realistic way. But how could we do this? By encouraging the reading process and showing the students interesting stories, comics, poems, songs and games, which present the language being used by its native speakers.
Harmer came up with a question that certainly makes us, teachers, think: “Should grammar be taught by the teacher or discovered by the student?”
There’s no doubt that both are likely to happen. The student has the first contact with grammar when he/she begins to speak a foreign language. A child is (sub)conscious of the use of grammar even before being taught systematically and the same should happen to someone who is learning another language. The teacher’s role is to make sure that the student really understands what his/her choices, while using grammar, imply.
In order to develop these specific skills, we could work with different texts, but we should be careful not to be trapped by those false activities of asking the students to write down a number of adjectives, verbs, or adverbs they have found throughout the text and ending up the exercise just after that. It is advisable, though, that we show them what that same adjective, verb or adverb means in the sentence. How that structure changes or makes that sentence comprehensible for the others. So, what could be concluded after reading the article was that grammar will never be unimportant and we can never run away from it, because it is a fundamental part of a language, like vocabulary. We need to get ready to learn and deal with the difficulties of grammar and teach it using our own method, which must be based on our students’ needs.
When we were asked about how to teach grammar, the first thing we thought of was the importance of contextualizing the grammar structures. In the article “Teaching Grammar”, written by Jeremy Harmer, we’ve come across the word “pragmatically”, that describes this idea of approaching grammar through a realistic way. But how could we do this? By encouraging the reading process and showing the students interesting stories, comics, poems, songs and games, which present the language being used by its native speakers.
Harmer came up with a question that certainly makes us, teachers, think: “Should grammar be taught by the teacher or discovered by the student?”
There’s no doubt that both are likely to happen. The student has the first contact with grammar when he/she begins to speak a foreign language. A child is (sub)conscious of the use of grammar even before being taught systematically and the same should happen to someone who is learning another language. The teacher’s role is to make sure that the student really understands what his/her choices, while using grammar, imply.
In order to develop these specific skills, we could work with different texts, but we should be careful not to be trapped by those false activities of asking the students to write down a number of adjectives, verbs, or adverbs they have found throughout the text and ending up the exercise just after that. It is advisable, though, that we show them what that same adjective, verb or adverb means in the sentence. How that structure changes or makes that sentence comprehensible for the others. So, what could be concluded after reading the article was that grammar will never be unimportant and we can never run away from it, because it is a fundamental part of a language, like vocabulary. We need to get ready to learn and deal with the difficulties of grammar and teach it using our own method, which must be based on our students’ needs.
*BASED ON THE ARTICLE "TEACHING GRAMMAR" BY JEREMY HARMER. PUBLISHED ON THE MAGAZINE "ENGLISH TEACHING PROFESSIONAL", OCTOBER 1997, PAGE 38.
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Cecília,
I'd like to remind you about our next immersion event. You can't miss it!
Angela
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