How to teach grammar anonimous

There are many arguments for putting grammar in the foreground in second language teaching. Here are seven of them: 1) The sentence-machine argument Part of the process of language learning must be what is sometimes called item-learningthat is the memorisation of individual items such as words and phrases. However, there is a limit to the number of items a person can both retain and retrieve. Even travellers' phrase books have limited usefulness -good for a three-week holiday, but there comes a point where we need to learn some patterns or rules to enable us to generate new sentences. That is to say, grammar. Grammar, after all, is a description of the regularities in a language, and knowledge of these regularities provides the learner with the means to generate a potentially enormous number of original sentences. The number of possible new sentences is constrained only by the vocabulary at the learner's command and his or her creativity. Grammar is a kind of 'sentence-making machine'. It follows that the teaching of grammar offers the learner the means for potentially limitless linguistic creativity.

Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 2004

With the rise of communicative methodology in the late 1970s, the role of grammar instruction in second language learning was downplayed, and it was even suggested that teaching grammar was not only unhelpful but might actually be detrimental. However, recent research has demonstrated the need for formal instruction for learners to attain high levels of accuracy. This has led to a resurgence of grammar teaching, and its role in second language acquisition has become the focus of much current investigation. In this chapter we briefly review the major developments in the research on the teaching of grammar over the past few decades. This review addresses two main issues: (1) whether grammar teaching makes any difference to language learning; and (2) what kinds of grammar teaching have been suggested to facilitate second language learning. To this end, the chapter examines research on the different ways in which formal instruction can be integrated with communicative activities. Continuing in the tradition of more than 2000 years of debate regarding whether grammar should be a primary focus of language instruction, should be eliminated entirely, or should be subordinated to meaning-focused use of the target language (for historical reviews see Howatt, 1984; Kelly, 1969), the need for grammar instruction is once again attracting the attention of second language acquisition (SLA) researchers and teachers. We briefly review arguments against and in support of grammar teaching before examining the approaches to grammatical instruction investigated in current research. 1

2000

The study of how learners acquire a second language (SLA) has helped to shape thinking about how to teach the grammar of a second language. There remain, however, a number of controversial issues. This paper considers eight key questions relating to grammar pedagogy in the light of findings from SLA. As such, this article complements Celce-Murcia's (1991) article on grammar teaching in the 25th anniversary issue of TESOL Quarterly, which considered the role of grammar in a communicative curriculum and drew predominantly on a linguistic theory of grammar. These eight questions address whether grammar should be taught and if so what grammar, when, and how. Although SLA does not afford definitive solutions to these questions, it serves the valuable purpose of problematising this aspect of language pedagogy. This article concludes with a statement of my own beliefs about grammar teaching, grounded in my own understanding of SLA.

In the field of language teaching, especially in second language teaching, teachers and researchers are constantly concerned with the most efficient ways to provide knowledge to learners leading to acquisition. This article aims to reflect form-focused instructional options regarding grammar teaching, in light of the computational model for second language acquisition, and discuss if there is a best way to teach grammar and what it is. For that, firstly, the instructional possibilities are presented, in their macro and micro-options. Secondly, discussions on whether we should select an option or not and on whether we could balance different options throughout a lesson are carried. Finally, sample material is provided in order to present possible ways to conduct a grammar lesson.

This paper questions the role of grammar in language teaching and learning. Firstly it identifies the constituencies in academic language teaching, and their often conflicting notions of language programs. Several kinds of learners are discussed, with particular attention to the large group who are uncomfortable with any technical analysis, including formal grammars. Some conventional ideas about what a natural language grammar actually is are challenged. The consequences of a connectionist view of language processing are briefly explored. The power of collocation sets is identified as a key to language acquisition. Language is set in the broader cognitive context of memory processes and patterns of generalization. Pedagogical grammars are viewed as forced external generalizations with little organic presence in memory, but some suggestions are made about how to make use of them. Actual student language memory, as well as teacher self-insight into L1 are both contrasted with the idealized patterns assumed by academic language programs. Finally, the stubborn problem of average teacher behaviour is set against the real ways in which people appear to use grammars and learn languages.

Academic Leadership Journal in Student Research, 2013

understanding (Krashen, 2008) or if learners require some explicit knowledge of grammatical rules in order to help compensate for changes in learners' cognitive abilities (Ellis, 2008). Therefore, explicit grammar instruction continues to be a contentious issue in SLA and much attention has been devoted to understanding its effectiveness in developing learners' grammatical competence and performance. The attention this issue continues to receive, despite the prevalence of explicit grammar instruction in many English for academic purposes (EAP) settings, can be attributed in part to the lingering influence of strong versions of communication-based approaches to grammar instruction, which have emphasised attention to communication with little or no attention to grammatical forms (Nassaji & Fotos, 2011). On the one hand, some researchers and practitioners contend that explicit instruction of grammar, which refers to raising awareness of the grammatical rules of the language, is necessary for learners' linguistic development because it leads to learners' noticing of their own errors. Consequently, this causes learners to reconstruct their own understanding about grammatical structures (Batstone & Ellis, 2009). On the other hand, some view explicit instruction of grammar as ineffective as students have shown to be capable of acquiring grammatical structures implicitly through repeated exposures to input, without awareness of the rules (Krashen, 2008). Additionally, this debate is linked to several other issues in SLA, including: explicit vs. implicit knowledge,

Second Language Learning and Teaching, 2011