Lecture 4 Teaching Grammar

1. The Role of Grammar in teaching foreign languages and the composition of grammatical competence

Grammar enables pupils to use linguistic forms meaningfully and accurately. Grammar is an essential aspect of written and oral communication as well as listening and reading comprehension.

Grammar helps learners to pursue regularities and patterns of the language and gives a clear idea of the target language as a system of patterns: word order, verb forms, structures etc. But language is seen not only in terms of forms but also in terms of functions different grammar items play in communication.

Grammar competence includes knowledge of grammar, grammar skills and grammar awareness. The last deals with learner’s ability to analyse grammatical structures they use, compare it with their native language, compare their skills and knowledge with those of a native speaker, understand their mistakes and correct them etc. By grammar here we mean pedagogical grammar, i.e. linguistic scientific description of the language grammar system transformed, abridged and adapted for teaching purposes. Not all grammar items are learnt in schools but some specially selected grammar minimum – active and passive. The former includes those items that should be mastered by learners and be used by them to express their ideas in oral or written speech and, naturally, also understood in reading or while listening. Passive minimum consists of the grammar phenomena learners can understand but not use in their own speech. There are some principles of selecting items for active or passive minimum.

Active:

• Frequency of use in oral speech

• The ability of the item to be used as a pattern

• Exclusion of synonymous structures

Passive:

• Frequency of use in writing

• The ability of an item to perform different functions and express different meanings.

By grammar skills we mean two types of grammar skills: receptive (functioning in listening and reading) and reproductive (functioning in speaking and writing). Receptive and reproductive skills differ not only by the speech skill in which they function but also by their character, the sequence of operations they are made of. Receptive grammar skills: perceiving a grammar item, recognizing (identifying) it and matching the item to its meaning. Reproductive grammar skills start with selecting a certain item to express some idea, putting it into the necessary form and using it when producing an utterance orally or in writing.

Difficulties in developing learner’s grammar competence are mainly predetermined by the nature of the grammar material under study:

• Interference of the learner’s native language, i.e. in using prepositions

• Presence or absence of certain grammar phenomena in the learner’s native language (articles in English or seven cases in Ukrainian noun system; fixed word order, sequence of tenses etc)

• Correspondences in the meaning and usage of grammar items (may not coincide at all)

• The way of expressing grammar categories (number, case, person etc)may differ

Difficulties may be connected with the learning and teaching context:

• Grammar items are presented not in meaningful context but in isolation, thus it will cause additional difficulties when pupils try to use items in situation

• Lots of terms and rules and exceptions (when young learners master rules instead of structures)

• Only mechanical non-communicative exercises are used, learners get unsure of the importance of grammar and if it is of any use;

• Just whole class mode is used, learners become passive.