Teaching Grammar - Week 9 - Principles of Grammar Teaching

Introduction: Hello and welcome to Week 9 of the course Teaching Grammar for the Bachelor's in English Teaching at ULACIT Term IIIC 2023. In this class we will do several activities to consider 12 principles for grammar instruction as well as look at the topic of tasks in grammar learning.

Today's Goals:

• Review principles of effective grammar teaching.
• Analyze three sample tasks to identify the gap type.
• Share the World Englishes text and activity sequence you designed.

Guiding Questions:

• How can principles inform my approach to grammar instruction?
• How do communicative tasks increase students' grammar ability?
• What teaching strategies can we use to increase students' awareness of English varieties?

Warm Up: Halloween Trick-or-Treat Puzzle

Even though we are a little late to celebrate Halloween, click the group link below and go to the section of the document that corresponds to your group number. Read the clues to solve the puzzle.

• Group Link: CLICK HERE

Task 2: Reading Response - 12 Principles for Grammar Instruction

Let's take a moment to discuss these questions related to your assigned reading for this week.

• Your Principles: In general terms, what principles (guiding beliefs) inform your approach to grammar teaching? You don't have to mention specific concepts from the reading. Simply make a few statements like, "I think effective grammar teaching involves... because ..." or "When I teach grammar I usually try to... because ..."

• Important Contrast: The chapter begins by describing the difference between to related concepts. What do they refer to? How are they taught/acquired? Which one gets the most attention in traditional grammar instruction?

• Grammar Knowledge
• Grammar Ability

• Teach what Students Need: Principle 1 says that teachers should teach the grammar that students actually need and they can do this by working backwards to analyze the kinds of texts or tasks students need to be able to perform and then identifying the language they need to perform these tasks. What did you write in your study guide in this section? Do you consider this to be a better approach to course design than starting with grammar structures and trying to decide which texts or tasks can be used with them?  

• Text/Task Type
• Purpose
• Structure
• Major Language Features

• Teach Text Awareness: Principle 2 says that teachers need to move beyond analysis of single sentences in grammar instruction and also show students how grammar is used in discourse (extended texts). What are some of the benefits of discourse-level analyis in grammar instruction? Why do you think that sentence-level analysis continues to be the dominant focus of grammar instruction in classrooms, textbooks, and practice exercises?

• Variety is Key: Principle 5 argues for the importance of teaching grammar in a variety of ways. What is your understanding of the differences between these two approaches to grammar teaching? Which one do you use more often in your teaching?

• Deductive Approach
• Inductive Approach

• Other Thoughts: Take a look at the list of 12 principles you read in the article. Choose three of them and share something that stood out to you about this principle. It can be something you thought was interesting, a new idea you hadn't thought about before, something you disagreed with or felt confused about. 

• Principle 1: Identify the Grammatical Resources the Learners Need
• Principle 2: Teach Awareness of the Nature of Texts
• Principle 3: Develop Awareness of Differences Between Spoken and Written English
• Principle 4: Use Corpora to Explore Texts
• Principle 5: Use a Variety of Teaching Approaches
• Principle 6: Provide Opportunities for Guided Noticing
• Principle 7: Provide Opportunities for Meaningful Communicative Practice
• Principle 8: Provide Opportunities for Students to Produce Stretched Output
• Principle 9: Make Links between Grammar and Vocabulary
• Principle 10: Use Student Errors to Inform Instruction
• Principle 11: Integrate Grammar with the Four Skills
• Principle 12: Use the Resources of the Internet and Technology

Task 3: Task Based Options in Grammar Instruction

Although in many English classrooms around the world, the grammar portion of the lesson is seen as boring, abstract, and passive. However, if you buy the idea that grammar is not an abstract set of rules but a communicative resource that allows us to express ideas, then students should have ample opportunities to use grammar in productive scenarios during their lessons. One way to do that is through the design of communicative tasks. 

• Exploring Communicative Task Gap Types: CLICK HERE

References:

Richards, J., & Reppen, R. (2016). 12 Principles of Grammar Instruction. In E. Hinkel (Ed.) Teaching English Grammar to Speakers of Other Languages. Routledge.