Teaching Grammar

The aim of this unit

• To make you think about the ways of teaching grammar

• To give you useful information on how teaching grammar can be approached

• To present a variety of grammar teaching tasks

What do you have to do in this unit?

A Input reading

B Exploratory tasks

C Self-assessment questions (SAQ) with answer keys at the end of the unit

D Observation task

E Micro-teaching with an observation scheme

F Integrated task

Warming up discussion

SAQ 0 Agree or disagree with the following statements by marking T (true), F (false) and D (debatable). You will return to these statements after you have studied this unit.

Statements

T F D

Grammar describes the rules of how the language produces sentences Grammar describes the mainstream language norm Grammar studies the construction of written sentences Academics', teachers' and learners' grammars are the same Sentences can be either grammatically correct or not Teaching grammar is teaching the construction of sentences Bi-lingual exercises have no place in teaching grammar In teaching grammar the rules should come first and the examples should follow Rules explain the language in the best possible way Drill is the way to mastering grammar

Input reading 1

Warming up discussion 1

Give your understanding of the following items: “good knowledge of grammar” and “poor knowledge of grammar”

Good knowledge of grammar	Poor knowledge of grammar

Subject of grammar

The subject of grammar is the knowledge of how to construct a sentence. Grammar is concerned with the construction of written and oral sentences. Grammar describes language device to use a finite number of rules that can generate all the sentences of a language. Grammar can also explain sentence construction and tell grammatical sentences from the ungrammatical ones. Sentences can be perceived as grammatical despite possible language inaccuracies and slips (transposition, omission, redundancy, and overgeneralization) and language twists (ellipsis, tags, and anaphoric starts).

Exploratory task 1.1 Give the normative parallels to the following sentences

Spoken grammar	Normative grammar
Transposition. E.g. I'll go to the chicken to fry the kitchen. Omission. E.g. He a teacher at school. Redundancy. E.g. Did he went to school last year? Overgeneralization. E.g. Mom goed to work. Ellipsis. Went where? Tag. E.g. Nice fellow. That one. Anaphoric start. E.g. This guy, he is cool.

Grammar knowledge can be declarative and procedural. Declarative knowledge is what can be demonstrated as the knowledge of rules and/or examples. Procedural knowledge is what can be applied in the process of communication.

According to some theories, declarative knowledge does not become procedural knowledge Krashen, S. 1982. Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Pergamon). Other views hold that "learned" knowledge can help in developing procedural grammar skill (McLaughlin, B. 1987 ).

Knowledge of the items and rules that comprise the formal grammar system of the language is called linguistic competence. Within the theoretical framework developed by Chomsky it is necessary to distinguish competence and performance. "Competence" refers to what the language users know and "performance" to the use of this knowledge in communication (Chomsky, N. 1965.Ellis, R. 1996. P. 712).

Procedural grammar knowledge that is formed in the language user's mind is called mental grammar. It consists of the rules that the learners have internalized and is not the "imprinting" of the normative grammar. That is why learners' utterances can be erroneous with the reference to the norms of the target language, but not to their own "mental grammar".(Ellis, R. 1996. P. 352-353).

SAQ 1.1

Agree or disagree with the following statements by marking T (true), F (false) and D (debatable).

Statements

T F D

Grammar describes only recurrent language Grammar gives classification of recurrent language A grammatical utterance can be incorrect Grammar inaccuracies can at the same time be spoken norms Declarative grammar is the knowledge of rules Procedural grammar is the knowledge of language examples Explicit grammar helps develop implicit grammar knowledge The words "grammatical" and "correct" are not synonyms Grammaticality of written and oral English is different