1. As the article “teaching a grammar lesson” remarks, “Fortunately, nowadays with the emphasis on a communicative approach and a wealth of stimulating resources, teaching grammar does not necessarily mean endless conjugation of verbs or grammar translation.” In reality, grammar translation is needed in teaching. Then, how can we make a compromise between the two extremes of a structured based curriculum and a purely communicative classroom when teaching grammar?
Nowdays we do have more resources for teaching, but we also have to face a dilemma. There are too many so-called efficient approaches. As a teacher, we have responsibility to decide which one is better for our students, but are there any principle for us to follow?
We have to know that there are absoultely no certain panacea for grammar teaching, in this case the variety of teaching approach become very important. As the “planning a grammar lesson”remarks “…deductive and inductive approaches are both have their advantages and disadvantage.” Take grammar translation and communicative approaches for example, the former one is not only time saving and make students spend more time to practice the language items but definitely with less fun. The latter one, on the other hand, is more stimulating than the former one. Furthermore, it does not only focus on the memorizing part but also focus on the comprehension and activate. Then, how can we make good use of both approaches in our grammar teaching?
In my opinion, communicative appraoch canbe used in designing the opening of the class and activities. We can generate students’motivation and observe students’learning achievement. Then while entering the body of the class, we can stress on grammar translation approach. After all, this approach can not be totally removed in grammar teaching because it do have its efficiency. At last, we can arrange pair-work activities for them instead of a lot of homeworks. In this way, we offer them opportunities to do oral practice and comprehend the rules at the same time. That would be more fun than the traditional ways and could be useful in other subjects teaching. 2. In what way can we help transfer the rules/patterns learned from the classroom context to the outside world?
I was turtoring two high school students since six month ago, and during this period of time I found that there is a pattern in their learning. They can easily memorize some complicated phrases and grammatical rules, but somehow they always have difficulties to make their own sentences with those items. They can get good grades on multiple choices, but they just can’t do good on sentence making part. It seems hard for them to according to the hint of the question and make a proper sentence. I belive that is just because that they are used to some kind of questions, once they encounter some “new” questions, they will feel intimitdated. However, if we can develop their ability of organizing meaningful sentences would be help on their learning. Take our English teaching for example, Alice showed an interesting PPT she made for her students to us. There are a lot of pictures of her families with thought bubble, and students can practice a certain grammatical pattern with different materials slide by slide. It is absolutely interesting than doing a lot of exercises from textbook or some copies of “grammatical bible”, and it also can help students to practice the rules they just learnt.
Furthermore, they can try to create a possibility of using everything in their dailylife to do the practice. Then when they are familiar with this learning pattern, they will try to find out different resources by themselves and create more possibilities. Their learning won’t be limited in classroom anymore ,and it can help them to overcome their weakness of disablity on answering various questions. I always believe that grammar learning is not only about memorizing but also about comprehending and praticing, however , if it can connect with our dailylife would be better.
Kate, you raise a very good question here, “As a teacher, we have responsibility to decide which one is better for our students, but is there any principle for us to follow?” There is no definite answer to your question because it varies from situation to situation, so we have to be careful when preparing the lesson and design the activities. That’s why when it comes to teaching, subject knowledge is not the only important aspect. We need to know pedagogy well. It’s knowledge about how to teach. When dealing with students who have difficulties transferring their learning to their daily life or make learning more meaningful and personal, we teachers need to know what strategies to use so as to help them. In this modern age, technology can facilitate teaching and learning. It’s a tool and a chance to develop active and independent learning in students. There’s quite a lot to learn, isn’t it?
Comment by alice — April 10, 2007 @ 10:25 pm