How to Teach Grammar
TESOL Methods
Spring 2022
What is grammar?
• Grammar is not…
• a discrete set of meaningless
decontextualized or static structure
• prescriptive rules about linguistic form
• What is grammar then?
‘Traditional’ definition 1
Grammar may be roughly defined as the way
language manipulates and combines words
(or bits of words) in order to form longer units
of meaning (Ur 1988, p.4).
‘Traditional’ definition 2
[Grammar is] a description of the structure of
a language and the way in which units such
as words and phrases are combined to
produce sentences in the language
(Richards, Platt and Weber, 2003).
‘Traditional’ definition 3
[Grammar] is the way in which words
change themselves and group together to
make sentences. The grammar of a
language is what happens to words when
they become plural or negative, or what
order is used when we make questions or
join two clauses to make one sentence
(Harmer, 1987).
What’s the difference between a
‘prescriptive’ and a ‘descriptive’
grammar?
• Prescriptive grammar prescribes rules governing
what people should/shouldn’t say.
• Prescriptive rules are not natural, must be
taught/learned in school, often reflect value
judgments.
• Descriptive grammar describes the rules that
govern what people do or can say.
• Descriptive rules are natural, known intuitively,
need not be taught.
What should be taught?
How is it formed? What does it mean?
form/structure 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.
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)
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)
• Linguistic discourse context
• Teaching passive voices: focus on issues rather
than agents
How should grammar be taught?
• Accuracy vs. Fluency
• Striking a Balance
• from Cognitive Approach to Communicative
Approach
• Important features
• Sequencing
• Providing Feedback
• General Guidelines
• Five Steps
Accuracy vs. Fluency
Form-focused Meaning-focused
Grammar translation Direct method
Features of patterns Interactive/group work
and grammar points (comprehension input)
Cognitive-code Communicative
approach approach
Develop explicit Develop implicit
knowledge (know what) knowledge (know how)
accuracy fluency
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 receive feedback on the
accuracy.
• Concentrate on one or two new forms at a
time.
• Repeated noticing and continued awareness
of the language feature is important.
From Cognitive Approach to
Communicative Practice
1. Explicit formal instruction
2. Structured-based communicative task
3. Practice and production exercises
4. Subsequent communicative exposure to the
grammar point
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
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.
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.
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
Five Steps
1. building up students’ knowledge of the rule or
rule initiation;
2. eliciting functions of the rule or rule elicitation;
3. familiarising students with the rule in use
through exercises or rule practice;
4. checking students’ comprehension or rule
activation; and
5. expanding students’ knowledge or rule
enrichment.
Conclusion
• By thinking of grammar as a skill to be mastered,
rather than a set of rules to be memorized, we’ll
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.
Useful Sites
• https://www.gamestolearnenglish.com/vocab-game/
• https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/grammar
• https://dictionary.cambridge.org/grammar/british-grammar/
• https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/grammar/index.html
• https://www.usingenglish.com/
