How to teach grammar

Alice Chiu
0936-825423

Main Menu
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

What is grammar?
What should be taught?
How should it be taught?
Examples of PPT slides
Online Resources

1. What is grammar?
Grammar

is not

a discrete set of meaningless

decontextualized or static structure
prescriptive rules about linguistic form
What

is grammar then?

2. What should be taught?

A 3-D Grammar Framework
How is it formed?
form/structure

What does it mean?

meaning/semantics

use/pragmatics
When/Why is it used?
From: Larsen-Freeman, D. (2001). Teaching Grammar. (pp. 251-266).
In Celce-Murcia, M. (Ed.) Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language.
(3rd Edition). Boston: Heinle & Heinle.

The advantages of the framework

It makes teachers understand the scope and

form/structure of meaning/semantics
multidimensionality
the structure.

It helps teachers
use/pragmatics
to identify the challenges.

2.1 Teaching form

20

questions (questions)
family portraits (possessives)
describing a person or a place by using
relative clauses
information gap activity (practice
different forms/patterns)
sentence-unscrambling task
(a problem-solving activity)

2.2 Teaching Meaning

Making association between form and meaning
realia

and pictures (comparative forms)

actions
TPR (imperative form)
matching: phrase-meaning association
(phrasal verbs)

story telling with action (phrasal verbs)

2.3 Teaching Use

Role plays in different social contexts

Example 1: giving advice

Giving advice to friends

Giving advice to young kids
Advice columnist (speaking and writing)
Example 2: past tense vs. present perfect

Job interview
Linguistic discourse context
Teaching passive voices: focus on issues rather
than agents

a text completion task

3. How should grammar be taught?

3.1
3.2
3.3
3.4
3.5
3.6
3.7
3.8

Accuracy vs. Fluency

Striking a Balance
from Cognitive Approach to
Communicative Approach
Important features
Sequencing
Providing Feedback
General Guidelines
Conclusion

3.1 Accuracy vs. Fluency

Form-focused

Meaning-focused

Grammar translation

Direct method

Features of patterns
and grammar points

Interactive/group work
(comprehension input)

Cognitive-code
approach

Communicative
approach

Develop explicit
Develop implicit
knowledge (know what) knowledge (know how)
accuracy

fluency

3.2 How to strike a balance

Fluency requires practice in which students

use the target language point meaningfully
while keeping the declarative knowledge in
working memory.
Meaningful practice of form:

Students
have to and
receive
feedback onawareness
the
Repeated
noticing
continued
accuracy.
of the
language on
feature
is important.
Concentrate
one or two
new forms at a time.

3.3 From Cognitive Approach to

Communicative Practice
Explicit formal instruction
2. Structured-based communicative task
3. Practice and production exercises
4. Subsequent communicative exposure
to the grammar point
1.

3.4 Important features

consciousness

raising

either through teacher instruction (a

deductive method)
or by their own discovery learning (an
inductive method)
examples

of the structure in
communicative input
opportunities to produce correct
grammar points

3.5 Sequencing
A grammar

checklist
Not following a prescribed sequence
rigidly
Many structures would arise naturally in
the course working on the tasks and
content and would be dealt with then.

3.6 Ways to Provide feedback

Giving

explicit rules
Recasting
Self-correcting
Peer-correcting
Collecting students errors, identifying
the prototypical ones, & dealing with
them collectively in class as an
anonymous fashion.

3.7 General Principles for Grammar

Teaching

little and often (recycle and revisit)

planned and systematic
offering learners a range of opportunities
Involving acceptance of classroom code
switching and mother tongue
text-based, problem-solving grammar
activities
active corrective feedback and elicitation
supported in meaning-oriented activities and
tasks

3.8 Conclusion

By thinking of grammar as a skill to be mastered,

rather than a set of rules to be memorized, well be
helping students go a long way toward the goal of
being able to accurately convey meaning in an
appropriate manner.

When the psychological conditions of learning and

application are matched, what has been learned is
more likely to be transfer. Therefore, presenting
rules and forms in the context of communicative
interaction is necessary.

4. Examples of PPT Slides

Integrating

ppt into grammar teaching

Visual learners
Interesting stories
Examples

.require that S V.
Inversions ( )
asas possible

5. Online resources for self-study

Oxford

University Press online practice

Natural Grammar
Oxford Learners Grammar
The Good Grammar Book
English

works: grammar exercises

Big Dogs grammar

End of this Session

References
Larsen-Freeman, D. (2001). Teaching Grammar. (pp.
251-266). In Celce-Murcia, M. (Ed.) Teaching English
as a Second or Foreign Language. (3rd Edition).
Boston: Heinle & Heinle.
Fotos, S. (2001). Cognitive Approaches to Grammar
Instruction. (pp. 267-284). In Celce-Murcia, M. (Ed.)
Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language.
(3rd Edition). Boston: Heinle & Heinle.