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Grammar

GRAMMAR

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My own road to master the English grammar was different.

Grammar – an oasis or a desert? For me it first was neither since I did not need it. I had learnt most of my English grammar from songs. Later on at the university I had to learn the rules as well to be able to teach them at school. While studying other languages I started to admire the beauty of grammar in other languages, too. So, these days grammar is an oasis for me. Move the arrows and make your choice!

In the early years of CLT many linguists and some teachers started to feel teaching grammar was not important and even ignored it. Fortunately, this attitude turned out to be impossible in practice and we kept on teaching grammar – but not exactly like we had done before.

There were three drastic and permanent changes in practising new grammatical structures thanks to comminicative language teaching:

  • Firstly, CLT teachers realized that we must make use of 3 kinds/levels of exercises in practising grammar: 1) mechanical, 2) semi-communicative and 3) communicative exercises and tasks. Up to that point exercises had nearly always been mechanical.
  • Secondly, having learnt the rules and having done a couple of written mechanical exercises, we moved on doing ‘authentic’ oral activities in pairs and groups. In brief, the focus was in doing oral grammatical exercises at 3 levels, instead of written ones. I will explain ‘how’ in the next articles.
  • Thirdly, CLT teachers realized that differentiation was needed in mixed-ability classes since some students did mainly only mechanical exercises while the best ones were able to move straight on to using the new structures in free speech or activities.

Three methods in teaching grammatical rules

Grammatical structures and rules can be taught using ‘the inductive or deductive method’ or they can be learnt without any rules just by being exposed to the new language a lot; pretty much the way mother tongues are learnt.

  • Most teachers know the term ‘inductive method’ of teaching grammar, which means the formulation of the rules on the basis on examples.
  • It is contrasted with the ‘deductive method’ which means the teacher explains the rules in detail and then lets the students practise and apply the rules. This is the easy way out in teaching grammar. The teacher thinks ‘I taught you the rules and it is up to you to learn them. Practise and we need to move on.’
  • The third ‘method’ is the lexical approach to teaching grammar which means learning grammatical structures as ‘chunks’ ; i.e. word combinations, words, set phrases or set structures. With minimum reference to any rules it is very similar to the learning of mother tongue. The Dodson method is based on chunks as well but it makes heavy use of the mother tongue.

I will deal with the communicative teaching of grammar, the inductive and deductive methods as well as the lexical approach and the Dodson method in much more detail in separate articles.

Few people like grammar. Grammar is just a tool, not the aim of language teaching. And it is not always a must. Like me, the English grammar can be learnt from games, songs or any other source without official teaching, without the learner realizing it!

My own history on learning and teaching the English grammar

Now I am going to have a look at my own experiences as the learner and teacher of grammar. My road to the English grammar was different.

A lot of input in a foreign language can lead to subconscious learning of grammar without knowledge of the rules.

I used to have an ambivalent attitude to grammar. When I went to the university in the early 1970s and had been accepted to study English, I knew very few rules of the English language. Still, even if I only wrote one essay in all my school years, I mastered the written language rather well. How come? It was at that time it dawned on me that I must have learnt the rules subconsciously while singing in English and spending a lot of my time listening to songs and writing down the lyrics. So I am a living example that one does not need to study any rules of a foreign language to learn it, provided we are exposed to the language for a long time, usually thanks to our hobby that involves the use of the foreign language.

So, I must have learnt the grammatical elements as chunks, lexical units of various length, and then generalized the models to cover different situations as well.

A teacher has to know the grammatical rules to be able to justify his/her marking of essays, exams and oral presentations.

Consequently, I was in deep trouble when I started teaching English before I had taken my official grammar tests at the university. For instance, I was amazed about the difficulty of making questions in English just three hours before I had to teach the rules to my evening class. When to use ‘do, does, did’ and when to leave them out and under what circumstances! What are auxuliaries and what is their roles in questions? It was all Hebrew to me! I was sweating like a little pig before the lesson. Luckily I did not know most of the adult students were teachers themselves and six of them were heads of their school.

Of course, I had to learn all the rules of English rather quickly and I actually enjoyed explaining the students why particular structures were considered wrong or inappropriate. Even more so, I enjoyed presenting grammar rules so that minimum number of grammatical terms needed to be used and the learning was logical, proceeded step by step and included a lot of oral practising.

However, I realized my road to mastering the English grammar is not a common one and therefore I have always used the inductive method in introducing most of the new grammatical points.

In some rare cases I have been applying the deductive method or the lexical approach to teaching grammar. They all work well but the success in using them depends on the proficiency level of the class. In other words, what kind of learners they are and how good their English is.

Let’s face it. If you go to the city centre and shout out ‘I know the English grammar in and out!’ no-one will be impressed.

But if you speak beautiful English with correct grammar in your utterances, some people might be impressed.

The following matters will be discussed in my next articles.

GrammarCommunicative grammar, tasks and differentiation
The inductive and deductive method in teaching grammar
Grammar in the ‘good old days’
Teaching grammar the old style and CLT style, comparison
Teaching young beginners grammar, the lexical approach
The Dodson bilingual method
Communicative teaching (CLT), Grammar

THE DODSON BILINGUAL METHOD

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Is there a method that allows the teacher to use the mother tongue in teaching English without feeling guilty? Yes, there is. The Dodson bilingual method.

Slow learners and beginners share one disadvantage: they do not understand the exact meanings of sentences unless they are explained in the mother tongue. Most teachers probably try to speak as much English as they can but sometimes they have no other choice than resort to their mother tongue.

The only time when I have been using the Dodson bilingual method in teaching languages was in the mid-1980s when I taught Swedish to complete beginners. The method itself was developed by Professor J. Dodson, a Welshman, and even if it was not widely used and accepted I think it is worth introducing here. For slow learners this method is excellent in getting them to use the new language from the very beginning.

The Dodson method is sometimes linked with the oldfashioned translation method but that is unfair because the students do not actually do a translation but they learn the phrases by heart after repeating them after the teacher and making changes in the phrases. It is actually very close to the lexical approach.

The time phrases in Example 1 below may seem simple and even childish but if you could do these exercises in Japanese, Arabic or Persian, would you not be proud of yourself! A lot of input and repetition at the right level with the help the mother tongue helps the students tremendously.

Example 1, learning to tell the time: It’s eleven o’clock. / It ‘s two thirty / It’s fifteen past four / It’s twenty to ten (4 basic phrases visible on the screen)

Stage 1: Pre-task: BINGO numbers 1 – 30

Stage 2: The students read the 4 basic phrases above aloud after the teacher who gives the meaning in the mother tongue.

Stage 3: Then the teacher says one of the same phrases in the mother tongue BUT changes one or two underlined words in it and the class says the phrase in English in chorus. I’ll repeat: The teacher uses the mother tongue but the students don’t!

Model visible: It’s eleven o’clock.
Teacher says the phrase in the mother tongue:
Kello on 10. Kello on 7.
Kello on 12.		Students say in English in chorus:
It’s ten o’clock.
It’s seven o’clock.
It’s twelve o’clock.
Model: It’s two thirty.
Kello on 5.30.
Kello on 10.30. … etc.		It’s five thirty.
It’s ten thirty.
Model: It’s fifteen past four.
Kello on 13 yli 7.
Kello on 25 yli 3. … etc.		It’s thirteen past seven.
It’s twenty-five past three.
Model: It’s twenty to ten.
Kello on 5 vaille 8.
Kello on 25 vaille 11. … etc.		It’s five to eight.
It’s twenty-five to eleven.
Finally all four patterns in a random order
Kello on 10 vaille 7. Kello on 6. Kello on 11.30. Kello on 7 yli 9.		It’s ten to seven.
It’s six o’clock.
It’s eleven thirty. It’s seven past nine.

Stage 4: The students work in pairs either doing what the teacher just did or writing times on a paper and the pair responds to it.

The next stage would, of course, be going through additional time phrases such as It’s eleven o’clock. /It ‘s two thirty = It’s half past two / It’s fifteen to four = It’s a quarter to four etc.

The main points in me using Dodson’s method ran as follows:

  • Decide if you need to have a pre-task to do some revision (numbers, days of the week, months, verbs, adjectives etc.)
  • Choose the key phrases you want to teach in advance, decide which word(s) you wish to change and write down the other words you wish to use in the phrases.
  • The Dodson method is rather hectic for the teacher who has to bang in the mother tongue phrases rather quickly.
  • Short utterances and sentences serve as units of teaching.
  • Grammar is not emphasized and structures are learnt as lexical items, pretty much like in the lexical approach.
  • Natural situations and dialogues in them serve as a starting point and then we proceed the narrative texts on the same topic.

Example 2: A situation in a shop.

Stage 1: The whole dialogue and all options are repeated aloud after the teacher.

Stage 2: The teacher says the phrases in the mother tongue and the students say them in English, about 40 phrases. In a good class you can skip this stage.

A: Good morning /afternoon. I’m looking for a silver ring / a colour TV / a blanket / jeans / running shoes. How much is it / are they?
B: Well, it depends on the size and quality. 50 dollars / 600 euros / 45 pounds / 38 dollars the cheapest ones / 80 pounds for the best ones.
A: Ah, this one looks/ these ones look very nice / beautiful / very warm / modern / wonderful.
B: Yes, you are right. It comes from Britain / India / China / from a nearby factory / from abroad.
A: Fine. I’ll take this one / these ones / the black model.
B: Okey, how do you want to pay? 50 dollars / 600 euros / 45 pounds / 38 dollars / 80 pounds. In cash or by credit card?
A: In cash, here’s the money / By credit card. Here you are.
B: Thank you sir / madam. And welcome back again.

Stage 3: The students read the dialogue in pairs picking up any green items they want or replace them with their own words and ideas ( = the last idea is the simple automatic way to differentiate the learning situation)

Stage 4: The students work in pairs and write a similar dialogue but make a lot of changes in it and the dialogues are later on circulating in the class and read by the others.

There is not much ready-made material like this available but in some classes this technique may be worth the extra trouble it causes in planning. My memories from these classes are still pleasant and the response from students was very favourable.