Teaching Grammar

Grammar

By Muhammad Shakir

Objectives

• To find out what is grammar• To find out how grammar works at different

levels• To know approaches towards teaching

grammar• To find out the problems students face• To work out solutions collaboratively

Knowing Grammar

•What is Grammar?

Knowing Grammar

• Some definitions of Grammar• The branch of linguistics that deals with syntax and

morphology (and sometimes also deals with semantics).

• A formal grammar (sometimes simply called a grammar) is a set of rules of a specific kind, for forming strings in a formal language. The rules describe how to form strings from the language's alphabet that are valid according to the language's syntax.

Knowing Grammar

• Some approaches towards Grammar• Descriptive Grammar– To describe how people use language grammar.

• Prescriptive Grammar– To provide a set of rules for ‘correct’ language

usage.• Pedagogical Grammar– Most of times, another name for Prescriptive

Grammar

Knowing Grammar

• Some Models of Grammar• Transformational Generative Grammar– Idea initially developed by Chomsky, it deals with

mental processes, psychological point of view of language. Chomsky seeks the definite set of rules of grammar in native speaker.

• Functional Grammar– This school sees language as a tool for

communication, so grammar is an aid to perform various functions.

Knowing Grammar

• Traditional Grammar– Grammar that descends from Greek and Latin.

Fixed sets of word classes, and prescriptive view of language.

Knowing Grammar

• Levels of Grammar– Morpheme– Word– Phrase– Clause– Sentence

• A teacher needs to know how grammar works at various levels.

Knowing Grammar

• Sentence Analysis• Please analyse this sentence (try to be as

systematic as possible)– Thousands of people rallied in Pakistan-

administered Kashmir on Wednesday.

Knowing Grammar

• A Sentence Analysis Framework• Level 1: Sentence• Level 2: Clauses: Dependent or Independent• Level 3: Phrases: Noun Phrase, Verb Phrase,

Adjective Phrase, Advert Phrase, Prepositional Phrase

• Level 4: Word: Noun, Pronoun, Verb, Adverb, ..• Level 5: Morphemes: suffixes, prefixes, infixes

Knowing Grammar: Tree Analysis of a Complex Sentence

Knowing Grammar

• A teacher should explicitly know what is the function of a given chunk in the sentence. It is then possible, that he may be able to explain it to students.

• Additionally s/he needs to know why a particular grammatical form is being used in a given type of text (e.g. narrative, application, interview transcript)

Knowing Grammar

• Sentence Analysis• Please analyse this sentence (try to be as

systematic as possible)– Thousands of people rallied in Pakistan-

administered Kashmir on Wednesday.

Teaching Grammar

• There are three approaches to teach grammar.• Product Teaching: Helps learners to notice and

to structure by focusing on specified forms and meanings.

• Process Teaching: Gives leaners practice in the skills of language use, allowing them to proceduralize their knowledge.

• Skill Teaching: Carefully guides learner to utilize grammar for their own communication.

Grammar as Product

• Noticing: A noticing activity aims to make a certain form salient to the learner, and is intended to do no more.

• Information can be implicitly provided or explicitly provided. Thus we have choice in how fast to ask learners to work out things for themselves.

• Consciousness-raising can be used to guide the learner to notice the regularities of grammar.

Grammar as Product

• Structuring: After noticing learners have to act on it, building it into their working hypothesis about how grammar is structured.

• Structuring for Learner means mechanical manipulation of forms.

• Structuring by learner means that learner has choice of form to make her/his meaning clear.

Grammar as ProductNoticing for the learner

Noticing by the learner

Learners are presented with explicitly formulated information about forms and their functions.

Learners are guided to workout for themselves information about forms and their functions.

Grammar as ProductStructuring for the learner

Structuring by the learner

Mechanical manipulation or repetition of forms.

Learners have to process or manipulate forms as choice to make meanings clear.

Learners have to think for themselves so as to manipulate forms correctly.

Grammar as Product

Disadvantages of this approach?

Grammar as Process

• Task is the focus. Grammar is implicit in the task. Do the task and grammar will be automatically learned. As the name suggests it relies on process. It gives learners freedom to express themselves, and concentrate on meaning.

• But this can lead towards zero grammar. There are some factors which are needed to be controlled.

Grammar as Process

• Time: Time is an important factor. The more the time, the more the chance of better language and better grammar. The less the time the less the quality of grammar and language.

• Topic: Familiarity of topic creates chances of more better language and grammar than unfamiliar topic.

• Shared Knowledge: More shared knowledge less need of grammar or language.

Grammar as Process

Pre-task stage > Task > Post Task

Possible structure of a task

Regulating Time > Regulating > Post Task Topic, context-gap, Public performance

time Reflection

Grammar as Skill

• Product and Process approaches are complementary to each other. Initially learners need some explicit knowledge and afterwards process teaching can provide better means of self expression.

• In Grammar as Skill focus is on:• To consider reading and listening activities to focus

on meaning and attention on grammar • To enable learners to make their own decisions

about deploying grammar.

Grammar as Skill

• Noticing as Skill: Learners are required to notice in order to make sense of language in context, presented through reading and listening tasks.

• Competent language users notice lexis first, and then grammar if there is a need. Learners need to notice grammar.

• For this purpose specific features of a text may be highlighted or asked from students.

Grammar as Skill

• Grammticize: To ‘grammaticize’ is to apply grammar to lexis.

• There are activities which require learners to put lexis in grammatical structures. But actually lexis come first and grammar afterwards.

• By giving a set of words e.g. John, go, come, Marry, learners can be asked to apply grammar on it.

Grammar as Skill

• The may produce ‘John comes, Marry goes’. But by giving explicit context statements the outcome can be regulated. E.g.

• Situation 1: You know that John doesn’t like Marry.• Situation 2: John and Marry are good friends, but

Marry is feeling ill.• Similar activities can be generated which require

learner to apply grammar on the basis of a set of instructions/situation and vocabulary items.

Grammar as Skill

• Reflection: Reflection means to enable the learners to see their mistakes and problematic areas.

• Initially it may not be easy for them to reflect on their own work, but peer reviewing and other such techniques can be used to make them used to of it.

• Similarly at the end of a process task, learners and teacher can explicitly talk about language used and the purpose of using it.

Grammar as Skill

• A reflection activity will lead learners to critically reflect on their grammar, comparing what they actually done and what might have been done.