Grammar in teaching foreign languages

Following some feedback my last post prompted, I will attempt to respond to the issue raised concerning the teaching of grammar to foreign language students. I am aware of the enormous scope of the issue, but I’ll try my best.

My attitude towards learning and in effect teaching is not prescriptive. I acknowledge the value of learning through exposure to the language and I ensure that my students read and listen to as much authentic English as possible. However, there are a few considerations to be taken into account. I will briefly cite them here though each one of them deserves a whole book rather than a short paragraph:

First of all I teach English as a foreign language: there is no immersion learning. This automatically poses the question of the choice of language material at different levels.

Secondly I teach people of different age groups with different goals or even with different time limits. This defines to a large extent the material and the methods I use.

For children and teenagers who are learning English as part of their general education, I use a course book as guidance to language input and plenty of supplementary material which is adapted to my students’ level (stories, songs and factual books) but also original stuff which I consider accessible by my students.

I do not exclude grammar from my teaching. I am convinced that grammar provides a shortcut to accuracy and it is a tool which most of my students use in their first language learning so it makes sense to take advantage of it in foreign language teaching. Grammar functions in various directions: it generates accuracy in many similar contexts; it confirms learners’ generalisations extrapolated from their exposure to the target language; it raises questions the answers to which further elucidate the understanding of the foreign language; it promotes and enhances abstract thinking.

Grammar is not external to language; it is a set of rules the understanding of which allows speakers to decode the intended message or the application of which allows them to successfully encode and convey their message. Even when a grammar rule is violated, there is some intention in doing so: it probably explains a lot of great poetry!

Adult learners with specific purposes not only appreciate the use of grammar but are of the mindset that takes it for granted because of the way they were taught at school.

I do not get stuck with grammar when the age or maturity or the ability of my students for abstract thought make it irrelevant but by the same token I do not eschew it when it can speed up the process of learning and internalisation. One point I need to clarify here is that by grammar I do not mean the memorization and regurgitation of rules: I refer to the generalisations (rules) learners will make, which will allow them to understand input and produce comprehensible output.

 Grammar is all about meaning. Take word order for example:  in English, if we know who does what the verb denotes, it is because the subject precedes the verb. By contrast in Greek we would know from the ending which denotes case but not necessarily from the word order.

All learners make inferences about how language works whether they can verbalise them or not. Their inferences are tested and confirmed or contradicted. In the latter case they have to make new inferences till they get it right. Grammar preempts those inferences. There is nothing wrong with taking this shortcut if it suits the learner’s mode of thinking and learning. 

Resources: advanced level

Resources in teaching language is a rather tricky issue. Even those  of us who like to think we create our own resources heavily rely on what has been said before. We build on foundations that have been safely laid for us. Therefore, what I am going to say in the next few paragraphs is said without losing sight of the mass of material already available to us thanks to which we can make our own contribution.

The point is that even the best thought-out presentation or resource works with some learners, not necessarily all of them, and a teacher knows their students’ needs, preferences and ability and can adapt activities accordingly.

I thoroughly enjoy creating my own activities and exercises or adapting already-existing ones . I normally use authentic material: poems, literary extracts and articles or news items and customise the activities for my learners.

I make a point of updating my material so as to stimulate the learner’s interest with items which are relevant to their reality. This means learners have the opportunity to read some of the latest news stories and do specific tasks on them.

Having said that, however, I do make exceptions for stories or articles that for various reasons never lose their appeal and can be appreciated regardless of the time of their publication.

Each text lends itself to different kinds of exercises and of course the activities are adapted to the learner’s goals and ability.

The range of topics is wide, from lifestyle and travel to scientific and philosophical, depending on the level of the learner.

I place particular emphasis on vocabulary practice and, therefore, accompany most of my texts with custom made vocabulary exercises which test the words unknown to a specific group of learners and which have been presented while working on the text and written in their vocabulary books.

Here is a sample of my work at an advanced level:

See pdf 1

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-JgIA9pNw-KaExJUlFkc1o1REk/view?usp=sharing

See pdf 2

 https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-JgIA9pNw-KUXRmZjhfdDNTbm8/view?usp=sharing

The first document is the student’s worksheet while the second is the teacher’s copy with answers in bold type and a guide for the summary exercise. Surely different teachers have their own ways of making a teacher’s guide for convenience reasons and in order to focus on real teaching in class. This is just my way.

As regards the more essential question of choosing which words to remove in the first activity, there is a number of criteria. My students may have come across a grammatical or lexical item recently and I need to reinforce it by testing it. Or there may be some details which I can only explain in context or I might even want to throw a little challenge here and there!

Next issue, a really big one, is the type of activity chosen. As the popular saying goes, it is … complicated. The activities used in this particular case are very familiar especially to those who have sat a Cambridge exam and preparing for a higher-level qualification. However, by no means do I limit myself to those only. As one can see, there are comprehension questions, which, despite their removal from most exams, do provide the learner with the opportunity to talk on a subject using ideas from the text. There is also a summary question, which again does not figure in most exams but which is an old-fashioned (I say, timeless) method of digging deeper into the text and going home having really learnt something.