METHODS OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES TEACHING AND GRAMMAR
TEACHING
José Rosamilton de Lima1
Charles Albuquerque Ponte 2
ABSTRACT: Language teaching works as means to provide access to knowledge and consequently to
different ways of thinking, creating, feeling, acting, and conceiving reality. To learn a language, the
student needs to use the grammatical rules in contexts that show a level of linguistic competence, in other
words, it is impossible to learn a language without learning its structure. This article is theoretically
based on the conceptions of grammar established by Sírio Possenti (1996). We also take the studies of
other Brazilian scholars, such as Almeida Filho (1998) and Moita Lopes (1996), besides foreigner
scholars such as Richards (2001), Celce-Murcia (1991), Thornbury (1999) among others. We can affirm
that in all the second language methods, grammar is taught inductively or deductively, from the simple to
complex structures, as a support to facilitate reading comprehension. Grammar must be taught with a
communicative purpose or supported by learning of student since it did not damage the spontaneous use
of the target language. Therefore, grammar must be studied around meaningful texts that circulate in
social contexts and concern situations of exact and real composition of the student’s social reality,
besides techniques such as using charts, objects, maps and other simpler drawings, that encourages the
student to learn English.
KEY WORDS: Language teaching, linguistic competence, conceptions of grammar.
RESUMO: O ensino de língua funciona como meios de proporcionar acesso ao conhecimento e
consequentemente a diferentes formas de pensar, criar, sentir, agir e conceber a realidade. Para
aprender uma língua, o estudante necessita usar as regras gramaticais em contextos que mostrem um
nível de competência linguística, ou seja, é impossível aprender uma língua sem que se aprenda a sua
estrutura. Este trabalho está fundamentado teoricamente nas concepções de gramática estabelecidas por
Sírio Possenti (1996). Nós também nos fundamentamos em outros teóricos brasileiros como Almeida
Filho (1998) e Moita Lopes (1996), além de teóricos estrangeiros como Richards (2001), Celce-Murcia
(1991), Thornbury (1999) entre outros. Podemos afirmar que em todos os métodos de segunda língua a
gramática é ensinada de forma indutiva ou dedutiva, a partir de estruturas simples para as complexas
como um apoio para facilitar a compreensão da leitura. A gramática deve ser ensinada com o propósito
comunicativo ou suportada pela aprendizagem desde que ela não prejudique o uso espontâneo da língua
que está sendo ensinada. Portanto, a gramática deve ser estudada a partir de textos significativos que
circulam no meio social e diz respeito a situações reais de comunicação da vida social do estudante,
além de técnicas tais como a utilização de gráficos, objetos, mapas e outros desenhos que estimulam o
aluno para aprender inglês.
PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Ensino de língua, competência linguística, concepções de gramática.
INTRODUCTION
The teaching of language works as means to provide access to knowledge and,
consequently, to different ways of thinking, creating, feeling, acting, and conceiving
1
Especialista em Língua Inglesa e em Linguística Aplicada. Mestrando em Letras. Universidade do
Estado do Rio Grande do Norte – UERN. <rosamiltonlima@hotmail.com>
2
Especialista em Conto de Língua Inglesa no Século XX pela Universidade Federal do Ceará. Mestrado
em Letras (Inglês e Literatura Correspondente) pela Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. Cursa o
doutorado em Teoria e História Literária da Universidade de Campinas. Atualmente é professor assistente
da Universidade do Estado do Rio Grande do Norte.
reality. In the tentative of providing more quality to the teaching of English, the
approach of Parâmetros Curriculares Nacionais - PCNs presents as transversal themes:
citizenship, critic consciousness in relation to language, the socio-political aspect of the
learning of a foreign language, that are sustained by two pillars that conduct the process
of teaching-learning of languages: a theoretical view of the language and the process of
learning understood as socio interactional.
Nowadays, we observe that the English classes become monotonous because of the
abstraction and decontextualization of how the grammatical structures are taught:
explained in isolated sentences and practiced in repetitive and discouraging exercises, in
which the students’ background is depreciated, making the teaching of the English
Language mechanic, leaving teachers and students bored.
Hence, although grammar is studied in terms of linguistic rules, the pupil needs to use
these rules in statements that show a level of linguistic competence that permits access
to information of several types. In this sense, most people think that grammar is only
rules and they do not understand it as structure; that way it is impossible to learn a
language without learning its structure. Thus, the main objective of the High School is
the preparation to University, to work opportunities and to transmit knowledge that
awakens the student to citizenship. So, the learner may not feel that what s/he does in
school has no relation with her/his life when s/he is unable to produce utterances in the
foreign language.
In this article we make a historical approach of methods of second language teaching
defining each one of them according to Richards (2001) and Celce-Murcia (1991).
Afterwards, we present the three conceptions of grammar adopting the concepts of
Possenti (1996) and also we show the ways in which the grammar can be taught based
in Larcen-Freeman (1991). We make commentaries about the six variables that
determine the importance of grammar according to Celce-Murcia’s (1991) and finally
we discuss how to teach grammar significantly, suggesting grammar through texts as
consistent second language teaching, based mainly in studies by Thornbury (1999).
1 Historical approach of methods
Throughout human history there has been an interest in the teaching of languages
according to the purpose and necessity of each nation. Thereafter, the normative
grammar presupposes that there is a right form to use language, according to standards
present by written language, imposing a language model of the socially dominant class,
conventionally called high language. The normative grammar sets a standard language
for speakers to follow its rules completely, thus valuing success, and rejecting error,
which are established in rules.
So, learning a modern language has acquired status in the society because the discursive
practice is related to the ideology of power of political, social, economic and cultural
nature. Therefore, learning a language is a social practice. Ideology is any discourse
from social events that appear through interactional processes of people, including a
relationship of complementarity, inclusion and contradiction. Fairclough (1989, p.12)
argued that “ideology is located, then, both in structures which constitute the outcome
of past events and the conditions for current events, and in events themselves as they
reproduce and transform their conditioning structures”.
According to Almeida Filho (1998), learning a second language in school is a necessity
of the learner based on specific values of the social and ethnic group that maintains that
school. Learning a second language includes specific configurations of affectivity such
as motivations, anxiety level, pressure of the group in relation to the target language that
student needs to learn.
Thus, in teaching a new language, the teacher must consider the motivation, attitude,
identification with the target language, the capacity of risk of committing error and age
of the student to best performance in learning that language. The learning process of a
second language usually occurs in a systematic way at school because the student does
not have the opportunity of interacting daily with a speaker of that language, and this is
a factor that difficults learning and increases responsibility in the school. In this sense, a
student learning a language must be able to produce meanings in this second language
by relating with other people and consequently using the knowledge in her/his life in the
society, in real use of language, understanding and providing communication.
According to Richards (2001, p. 4)
As “modern” languages began to enter the curriculum of European schools
in the eighteenth century, they were taught using the same basic procedures
that were used for teaching Latin. Textbooks consisted of statements of
abstract grammar rules, lists of vocabulary, and sentences for translations.
Speaking the foreign language was not the goal, and oral practice limited to
students reading aloud the sentences they had translated. These sentences
were constructed to illustrate the grammatical system of the language and
consequently bore no relation to the language of real communication.
As we can see, the purpose of this teaching was to learn the target language from the
knowledge of its structures that should be following student’s learning, valuing only the
standard modality of this language from the development of writing and the acquisition
of vocabulary through translation of phrases, seen as perfect model to learning of a
language in a structural and normative way, because students are supposed to
comprehend the organization of morphologic elements that constitute the phrase and be
able to dominate the language.
Holden (2001, p. 29) says that the grammatical methodology normally used to describe
a European Language has its origin mainly in Latin teaching. Thus, these identifications
of structural grammar are more adequate to Spanish, Portuguese, French and Italian that
were originated from Latin. On the other hand, English is a mix of Anglo Saxon, of
Latin and Norman French, besides other contributions, so the structure and grammar
obey a group of rules related to different linguistic inheritances. However, with an
efficient methodology through of a dynamic way with techniques that involve the
grammatical knowledge, the learner understands more easily the language structure and
consequently develops proficiently the linguistic abilities.
From this, it appears the first method of teaching second language: the GrammarTranslation from the 1840s to the 1940s. According to Richards (2001), this method had
as goal teaching a language through literary texts for students to develop their
intellectual capacity. Besides, the method focused upon analyzing grammatical points
from sentences with correct translation, thus grammar was taught deductively with
presentation and study of rules; the explanation was made through the comparison
between mother and second language. Vocabulary was presented in bilingual lists and
memorization predominated. Reading and writing were priority, but almost no attention
was given to speaking and listening.
Later, several others methods and approaches appeared along the 20th century that were:
The Reform Movement, The Direct Method, The Audiolingual Method, according to
Richards (2001) and Reading approach, Situational Approach, Cognitive Approach,
Affective-Humanistic Approach and Comprehension-Based Approach, according to
Celce-Murcia (1991). We will see in short each one of them according to the conception
of the mentioned authors. The reform movement values the study of phonetics to good
habits of pronunciation. According Richards (2001, p. 9) “the International Phonetic
Association was founded in 1886, and its International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) was
designed to enable the sounds of any language to be accurately transcribed”.
Grammatical knowledge was taught inductively and translation was avoided, and the
mother language was used in the explanation of new words or to verify student’s
comprehension.
The direct method was a way of using the target language spontaneous and directly.
Grammar was taught inductively and vocabulary from objects, pictures, mimics,
demonstrations and association of ideas. The priority in terms of linguistic abilities were
speaking and listening, focusing on the correct pronunciation and classes were
predominantly in target language.
The audiolingual method was a way of teaching language to foreigners. It had as goal
the proficiency in conversation, thus prioritizing the speaking ability, and grammar was
taught in an inductive way. Because of the small classrooms, many hours a day and
great motivation of the students this method had good results to the learning of
languages and thus there was an increase in English teaching as second language.
Therefore, the audiolingualism was a mechanic method that involved memorization and
speech, language was taught in the form of dialogues, which were listened, repeated and
answered. Vocabulary was studied only in context and student formation was through
instruction.
As we mention previously, we will see the following approaches according to CelceMurcia (1991). In the reading approach, grammar was taught as a support to facilitate
reading comprehension, unlike the direct method, teacher doesn’t need to have a good
proficiency orally in the target language. Reading is exclusively worked through texts
and translation was an essential activity.
The situational approach predominantly used target language in classroom and
prioritized the oral abilities in target language for it postpoud the teaching of reading
and writing. Grammar was taught from simple to complex structures considering real
context of the student, in other words placed student where there could be a
communicative situation.
In the cognitive approach, error was seen as a possibility that analyzed could help in the
learning process. The four linguistic skills were fundamental without any restriction and
grammar was taught deductively and inductively; vocabulary was emphased mainly in
the elementary and advanced levels.
In the affective-humanistic approach the teacher was a facilitator of student learning and
valued the work in pairs and small groups, considering interaction essential to learning,
respecting individuality and feeling of each student.
The comprehension-based approach focused upon listening comprehension seen as base
to development the other abilities: speaking, reading and writing; grammar was
supported by learning of student since it did not damage the spontaneous use of target
language.
In the last years, the modern language teaching is based on the communicative approach
that is sustained by a set of principles that can be used as support to classroom
procedures that provide student learning of communicative way. In this perspective,
according to Richards (2001, p. 172) these principles include:
(1) Learners learn a language through using it to communicate; (2) authentic
and meaningful communication should be the goal of classroom activities;
(3) fluency is an important dimension of communication; (4) communication
involves the integration of different language skills; (5) learning is a process
of creative construction and involves trial and error.
Hence, the communicative approach provides useful knowledge to the effective use of
the target language. The communicative teacher must create learning situations from
significative contents in use of new language and useful to the intellectual formation of
the student.
We can confirm that selection of grammatical structures are necessary but insufficient to
any operation of language teaching, the idea is to find means to work grammar in a
communicative purpose. Thus, the learning of a second language demands an
integration of a great variety of abilities, activities and processes of reasoning. There is
no justifying to teaching or learning a set of rules if it is not related to other activities
realized in the linguistic program. Then, we can see that grammar teaching with
communicative approach integrates the theory and practice.
It is interesting to speculate that due to this method and approach teachers must adopt
her/his methodology. Thus, according to Holmes (2000, p. 128) “for many people, a
methodology seems to mean a set of correct principles to be followed”. We can affirm
that these principles are based on theoretical knowledge from seminars, articles,
conferences, etc. when applied in a classroom to result in utterances that are analyzed
later resulting in her/his methodology.
The teacher must be sensitive to perceive the student’s social context, to consider the
work material and procedures that will be used in her/his methodology, so in most time
students need funny, dynamic and creative classes, encouraging tools as technologic
resources that are useful outside classroom such as TV, video game, computer.
In short, each teacher has her/his own methodology which is formed of official
methodology, that is the theoretical knowledge argued by scholars and suggested to
classroom, personal methodology based on experience and practice in classroom during
the years in job, and the social context of classes in which the conditions of work and
the student’s reality are considered.
2 – Grammar Notions
Possenti (1996) points out three conceptions of grammar: (1) set of rules that must be
followed; (2) set of rules that are followed; (3) set of rules that a speaker domains.
Hence, grammar is a system of rules to use the language adequately to express well in
oral and written language, established by specialists based on the use of this language
by educated people. This kind of grammar, known as normative, is filled by racist
parameters such as purism, social class of privilege related to economy, politics, culture
and historic tradition. This grammar is prejudiced and elitist because it points out the
correct use of language according to prescriptive norms, establishing for arguments of
aesthetic (forms and uses are included in high language by criteria such as elegance,
beauty, expressivity, harmony, etc.), aristocratic (contraposition of language use that is
made by privilege social class to the popular social class), politic (purism and
vernacular), communicational (constructions and lexical choices that result in
expressing the thought with clarity, accuracy and concision) and historic nature
(excluding forms and uses by tradition).
The second conception of grammar describes it as structures and operations of the
language, showing useful indications for speakers to produce statements that
consequently provide communication. In this sense, grammar is constituted of notions
that describe the linguistic facts of a language, unlike the prescriptive grammar that
considers right only the high language, descriptive grammar is about all that is related to
the rules of operation of a language considering any determinate linguistic variation.
The third conception of grammar relates to the rules acquired by speakers and used in
situations where a communicative interaction is necessary. In other words, it is the
linguistic capacity developed by a learner in a natural way, even if it were submitted to
systematic learning in the school; at the same time that s/he practices the language, s/he
understands language notions and its rules, considering socio-historic and ideological
contexts as a support to communicative interaction processes. Thus, this grammar is the
object of description that consequently we can call Internalized Grammar.
Therefore, based on these three conceptions there are three kinds of grammar:
normative grammar, descriptive grammar and internalized grammar or internalized
linguistic competence of the speaker. Beyond these three kinds of grammar, Possenti
(1996) still mentions other eight kinds: implicit grammar, explicit or theoretical
grammar, reflexive grammar, contrastive grammar, general grammar, universal
grammar, historical grammar and compared grammar. However, the study of these eight
kinds of grammar does not interest to this work.
According to Thornbury (1999, p. 1), “all language in use can be analyzed each of these
four levels: text, sentence, word and sound”. Thus, based on this, we can affirm that
semantic studies meanings in composition of text in global view. Syntax studies
relationships among sentences and their organization to form texts. Morphology studies
formation, structure and flexion of words. Finally phonology studies how sounds are
organized into a language.
As we can see, in methods and approaches of language teaching, we can understand the
way grammar was taught, that because, in the real use of a language, grammar is applied
to provide communication. Therefore, there are two ways to work grammar: deductively
or inductively.
Larcen-Freeman (1991, p. 292) says that “in a deductive activity the students are given
the rule and they apply it to examples”. Thus, in the deductive way the rules are explicit
and the students must create examples of practice use of language, demonstrating
comprehension of the content studied, breaking the rules of language. However, the
rules must present clarity, truthfulness, importance and simplicity. It is interesting to
speculate if we must present many rules to children and teenagers: in this case, the
teacher should explain only simple rules in order to provide less risk of harming the
comprehension of the student. In the deductive approach, the rules that involve the
forms are quickly explained as priority to adults because of their capacity of
systematization of these rules.
In the inductive approach as students are submitted to discover the rules themselves
there is a greater mental effort that provide memorization and learning, and
consequently students become more motivated and active, leading their own learning
process. According to Larcen-Freeman (1991, p. 292), “an inductive activity is one in
which the students infer the rule or generalization from a set of examples”. Even so as
teacher does not explain the rules spend much time; besides s/he must be careful to lead
students by themselves to formulate the rule.
Brown (1994) uses Celce-Murcia’s table saying that there are six variables that
determine the relevance of grammar. Each variable presents items in sequence from the
least important to the most important. 1- age (children  adolescents  adults), 2proficiency level (beginning  intermediate  advanced), 3- educational background
(preliterate no formal educational  semiliterate some formal educational  literate
well educated), 4- language skills (listening  speaking  reading  writing), 5register (informal  consultative  formal), 6- needs and goals (survival  vocational
 professional).
Firstly, we must consider the students’ age, so as we refer to children and teenagers it is
advisable to explain a grammatical pointer, in a simpler way. The PCNs approach
(1998) suggests, in elementary school, to explore a little systemic knowledge and focus
more on world and textual knowledge. Conversely, in High school the teacher must
decrease the focus on world and textual knowledge and increase it on systemic
knowledge. Thus, adults have capacity of abstraction to systemic rules of language
structure acquiring grammar knowledge to consequently advance in their
communicative skills.
Secondly, we must consider the proficiency level for the work focusing grammar for
beginners risks of impeding the acquisition of fluency of skills; on the contrary, in the
advanced level, grammar can or not be important depending on the accuracy already
acquired by learner, so it will not damage her/his communicative fluency.
Thirdly, we must consider the educational background, because students with a higher
formation are cognitively more receptive to grammatical rules that help correct errors to
improve their already fluent abilities. On the contrary, students that have no formal
background education may have serious difficulties in the comprehension of the
explanations and grammatical terms due to their complexity.
In relation to linguistic skills, the determinant fourth, the study of grammatical forms
may be more adequate to improve writing over than to speaking, reading and oral
comprehension. Grammatical knowledge is necessary mainly in the writing of academic
texts, books, newspapers and magazines, among others. That happens because writing is
more often used in formal context in that writers must use the high language so that
texts have to be well elaborate and comprehensible.
The fifth determinant is the register that gives more importance to grammatical forms in
formal than in informal context. As we are in an informal conversation about a movie or
a soccer game it is not necessary use high language, because we speak spontaneously
without we worry about the errors considered by prescriptive grammar. However, as we
are in a situation of formal speech to an audience, or in an interview to get a job,
elaborate a document, write a scientific paper, it is essential use grammatical knowledge
to high language.
Finally, we have needs and goals, therefore for learners that have professionals goals it
is necessary a greater accuracy than for learners in a survival level. Here one must
consider that in which situations it is important to give emphasis to grammar. For
example if a person is in an other country and needs to buy food, clothes, go places, it is
not necessary have much knowledge, but if a person needs a job it is indispensable to
communicate accurately.
In this sense, grammar is a tool to an efficient communication, because it is a support to
reading, text comprehension and language structure acquisition.
Thornbury (1999, p.1) declares that:
Grammar is partly the study of what forms (or structures) are possible in a
language. Traditionally, grammar has been concerned almost exclusively
with analyses at the level of the sentence. Thus a grammar is a description of
the rules that govern how a language’s sentences are formed.
In short, the normative grammar is a set of rules to speak and write well, it is the study
of words, of their classes and flexions, of their functions and relations in the sentences
of the language, of their literal meanings, of their organization in a lexical levels, and of
the relations of meaning that are established among them and of the meaning of the
sentences. The normative grammar also includes identification of the phonemes of the
language, their possibilities of combination in syllables and the relation that they
maintain with graphemes in the written form.
The descriptive grammar considers the diversity of linguistic variation as a way of
human communication and its finality is the description of these variations with the
purpose that the student comprehends the linguistic facts in constitution and operation
of the language. Thus, it studies the facts of the spoken and written language and the
natural laws that regulate them. Its use is imposed to users of language, which must
worry with those inherent rules that permit us to use it with communicative finality. The
teacher in a classroom adopts these two conceptions of grammar when working with
textbooks.
The internalized grammar is the comprehension of the diversity of linguistic variation
and the domain of the rules of a language in spontaneous practice that happens in daily
situations in communicative interactions. The teacher working with textbooks in a
classroom does not adopt this conception of grammar.
3 – How to teach grammar significantly
According to Moita Lopes (1996), there are students’ depositions mentioning
difficulties to learn the English language, thus we often hear many pupils affirm: “I
understand nothing of English”, “I learn cannot Portuguese”, “let alone English”,
“English is very complicated, as I start to study it my head hurt”.
These statements demonstrate that we have much to do in order to make the teaching of
English more significant for the students, so, in many schools the language teaching is
distant from the student’s life that is allocate to grammar teaching of way discouraged.
It is essential to study grammatical contents because they provide an efficient
communication, but the way it is worked mainly in isolated sentences in an exhausting
way makes the English classes monotonous.
For many years, the teaching of English language has worried teachers and scholars of
this area, because the second language has never been taught very well in a public High
school, since our schools don’t offer adequate conditions for a satisfactory result of this
teaching. Thus, teacher and scholars still have a lot to do in order to turn the teaching of
English more significant to the pupil’s life. In fact, a situation is created in the school of
abstraction and artificiality that is not related to the life of the student.
The grammatical rules are usually seen as the enemy and the friend of most students of
languages. In the first place, as the foreign language presents a behavior different of that
from the mother language, for instance, when some contents are not similar in the two
languages, the rules seem to be an extra complication, in other words they are more
difficult to be learned. It is interesting, however, to speculate that when the students
learn the rules they acquire more assurance, consequently they domain the language. In
this sense they will domain the language practicing, applying the rules and learning how
it works in a real situation. Thereby, grammar knowledge leads to a larger
understanding of the structure and consequently to the more correct use of a foreign
language.
According to PCNs (1998), to learn a foreign language it is essential a theoretical
comprehension about what language is, and about the point of views of the knowledge
in relation to language use that builds meanings in the social world. Thus, for that
meaning construction process to happen, people use three types of knowledge:
systemic, world and textual knowledge. These kinds of knowledge compose the
communicative competence of the student.
The systemic knowledge involves the several levels of linguistic organization that the
people have such as lexicon-semantic, morphologic, syntactic and phonological
knowledge. It makes possible for people to produce sentences and select grammar
adequately or for them to understand sentences in the systemic level of the language.
The world knowledge refers to experiences along life and stored in the memory of
students about several things and actions, and the textual knowledge is related to
students’ comprehension about of textual diversity; the conception that they have of
discourse genres, as vehicle used in a society, to achieve specific objectives of
communication that are identified by a variety of formats and socio communicative
functions, in which one topologic sequence prevail, such as narration, argumentation,
exposition, description and injunction; besides, the students must perceive to which
sphere of human activity these texts are extracted, as for example, scientific, literary,
religious, journalistic, advisement, daily activities, etc.
Besides this, the approach of the PCN+ Ensino Médio (2002) suggests that teacher
selection should come from three purposes: linguistic structure, acquisition of
vocabulary repertoire and reading and interpretation of texts. The last item is important
because it includes other two, in another words the work with linguistic structure and
acquisition of vocabulary only has meaning in a contextualized text. Therefore,
grammar must be taught and practiced in context, this means using whole text as
contexts for grammar teaching.
Thus, Thornbury (1999) points out some advantages for using texts. Firstly they
provide co-textual information, allowing learners to deduce the meaning of unfamiliar
grammatical items from the co-text and if the texts are authentic they can show how the
item is used in real communication. Second, because as well as grammar input, texts
provide vocabulary input, skills practice, and exposure to features of text organization.
Finally, their use in the classroom is good preparation for independent study, moreover
if the texts come from the students themselves, they may be more engaging and their
language features therefore more memorable.
So, we must organize the grammar contents around of significant texts that circulate in
social contexts and concerning situations of exact and real compositions of the students’
social reality. However, the students need to use grammatical rules in sentences that
make possible to reach a level of linguistic competence able of allow access to
information of several types the grammatical contents must be taught through authentic
texts that belong to the students’ social universe. The grammar teaching has to be
worked place in communicative approach to revert the situation of decadence of the
English teaching.
Diverse activities of fixation linguistics structures must be made to others activities. It is
necessary to avoid mechanic and repetitive tasks where there is no mobilization of more
complex competences and abilities. In grammar teaching the teacher must use
techniques that become dynamic, thus, Brown (1994), citing Sandra Mckay’s (1985),
points out the following techniques: using charts, objects, maps and other simpler
drawings, using dialogues and written texts.
Hence, the systemic knowledge of the language must be acquired in the application of
the grammar, having for base the development of a work with the diversity of textual
genre. The study of grammar based upon text develops the reading, allows acquisition
of inclusive vocabulary, encourages students to themes related to their lives and gives
support to writing. This positive approach of grammar will become more pleasant and
useful to teacher and student, instead of seeing grammar as an obstacle to learning a
second language.
Grammar is significant as the student is able to use naturally the rules of high language
in oral or written sentences placed in communicative context that provide to learner
self-knowledge as a citizen into the globalization process, that can apply information
acquired to tasks of their lives that need this background activated in school, in
situations such as vestibular, developing proficiently linguistic abilities.
Conclusion
In this sense, the normative grammar points out the correct use of the language
according to prescriptive norms, establishing for arguments of aesthetic, aristocratic,
politic, communicational and historic nature. Its study is extremely necessary, because it
deals with formal language, so the language scholars and teachers must find a dynamic
and stimulant way to teach this kind of grammar. The descriptive grammar deals with
all that is related to the rules of operation of a language considering any linguistic
variation. The internalized grammar is the linguistic capacity developed by a learner in a
natural way.
As we have perceived in all the second language methods, the grammar is taught
inductively or deductively, from the simple to complex structures, as a support to
facilitate reading comprehension. Grammar must be taught with a communicative
purpose or supported by learning of student since it did not damage the spontaneous use
of the target language. Thus, in the deductive way the rules are explicit and in the
inductive way the rules are implicit and the students are submitted to discover it
themselves. It is interesting to point out that are six variables that determine the
relevance of grammar: age, proficiency level, educational background, language skills,
register, and needs and goals.
Therefore, grammar must be studied around meaningful texts that circulate in social
contexts and concern situations of exact and real composition of the student’s social
reality, besides techniques such as using charts, objects, maps and other simpler
drawings, that encourages the student to learn English.
References
ALMEIDA FILHO, J. C. P. de. Dimensões comunicativas no ensino de línguas. 2 ed.
Campinas – SP: Pontes, 1998.
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