TEACHING GRAMMAR
Teaching grammar in teaching a foreign language has had various forms over the years . In the
Grammar-Translation or Cognitive methods it had a crucial role; in the Natural Approach and many
unconventional methods its role was severely limited. Teachers thought that a direct exposure to the
language will result in students’ learning correct structures sooner or later.
Communicative approach has never concentrated on grammar and even today, when our attempts
at being successful language users in order to get our message across and being grammatically
correct are more rational teaching grammar is a secondary goal. Consequently, grammar is
dominated by lexis and language skills, which are considered more important.
It stems from the fact that nowadays people concentrate predominantly on getting their message
across. In an example provided by Komorowska (p. 125)we see a foreigner saying ‘trzecia-ja-przyjśćjutro-pan-tu-ta biuro’, which will tell us all we need to know about the foreigner’s actions. However,
if this foreigner, even knowing the grammar with all its endings, declensions, etc., is ignorant of the
words and says ‘biuro, pan, przyjść, trzecia’, the message will not be conveyed. It explains why
methods concentrating on getting a message across never put grammar as their main objective.
However, not knowing grammar sometimes seriously hinders communication and makes us look
unintelligent and uneducated. A serious businessman should not use the simplistic language
presented above, because it will say much (not necessarily in a positive way) about his reliability and
the company’s image.
As a result, as teachers we have to concentrate simultaneously on the fluency and
comprehensibility of the utterance and its grammatical correctness.
Grammar should be taught in the following stages:
I.
Presentation (introducing the structure and making sure that students know how it is formed
and what it means)
II. Practice (practising a new structure, concentrating on the pronunciation and correct form)
III. Production (making sure that students can use the structure in real life situations)
I. PRESENTATION
To present new grammatical structure well, teachers must make a few decisions:
1. Which structure are we going to teach? (depending on the curriculum, coursebook or
students’ needs)
2. Which aspect of this structure are we going to concentrate on? (e. G. The Present
Continuous Tense at the elementary or intermediate levels)
3. Which form are we going to teach? (e.g. The Past Continuous- regular/ irregular verbs, which
ones)
4. In which situations are we going to introduce and explain the structure? (e.g. The Future
Simple Tense for predictions/ weather forecasts and not planned future, in which ‘be going
to’ will be mostly used)
5. How are we going to introduce the structure? (e.g. teachers have to decide if they will talk
to the students or show them a short real life situation or demonstrate the structure, e.g.
The Present Perfect Tense with ‘I’ve just torn this sheet of paper.’ We have to make sure that
students understand the situation and know what is happening- it is how we learn our
mother tongues)
6. What tools/equipment will be needed to introduce the structure?
7. What words do the students need to know to understand and practice the structure?
The order of presentation:
DEDUCTIVE TEACHING (from explanation to practice)

Saying a new structure in an appropriate context, making sure students understand
it

Checking the correct understanding of the structure

Repeating the structure by students

Writing the structure on the board

Explain how the structure is formed and emphasising its typical elements (endings,
etc.)

Reading it

Copying the structure by students, preferably in an appropriate context (e.g. a minidialogue)
INDUCTIVE TEACHING

Students look at the text looking for unfamiliar grammatical forms or forms the
teacher has drawn their attention to, e.g. past tense endings

On the basis of the text and appropriate examples students have to find some
correlations, understand the meaning of a new form and try to explain the rules used
to form the new structure

After the correction (if necessary) students practise the new structure
Inductive teaching is more effective than deductive one; however it is often more time consuming,
especially if teachers have to look for their own materials, and more methodological mistakes can be
made, e.g. with the overuse of a native language or too complex terminology. As a result, more
experienced teachers should use this way of teaching new grammatical material.
II. PRACTICE
Practising new grammatical structure enables students to repeat it many times in its typical context
and associate its use with this context more. A systematic, controlled and structured language
practice is known a language drill. The basic rule here is to begin practising in a mechanical, fully
controlled way based on a model and moving on to a freer, more natural situations.
There are three main ways of language practice:
1. Imitation
2. Substitution
3. Transformation
IMITATION
Imitation makes students repeat the structure (whole class-groups-pairs-individuals). To make it
more fun, we can use Chinese whispers (głuchy telefon)
SUBSTITUTION (simple, double, complex)
Simple substitution – students repeat the same structure with various lexical items; the teacher has
to give the example and different words for replacement; the student has to use a new word in the
old example and say it:
T: He went to the shop.
CINEMA
S: He went to the cinema
Double substitution- students have to replace two words; it is more complicated and should follow
simple substitution:
T: Susan is going to buy some coffee.
Betty- milk
S: Betty is going to buy some milk.
Complex substitution- students are asked to change the tense, singular into plural, etc.
T: Adam likes jazz. Adam and his sister.....
S: Adam and his sister like jazz.
Or:
T: At the moment Ann is reading a newspaper.
Ann and Tina-yesterday
S: yesterday Ann and Tina were reading a newspaper.
TRANSFORMATION
It requires changing a sentence using a given pattern (e.g. from positive to negative, active to
passive, present to past, etc.)Transformation is a useful technique but may get extremely boring,
repetitive and not realistic. Thus, teachers have to do their best to make transformation fun:
1. Teachers should try to make the situation funny and natural, possible to hear in real life.
2. Teachers choose a structure already familiar to the students (e.g. I’ve got) and give a sample
sentence (I’ve got a nice table in my room.’), then begin the sentence with a different word
to get a new structure that we want to practise (e.g. There is.....’), finally ask the student to
say a new sentence with the old information
INTEGRATION (a variation of transformation)
Students are asked to join two separate sentences into one:
T: I’ll shut the door. It’s cold.
S: I’ll shut the door, because it’s cold.
III.
PRODUCTION (using the grammatical structure in real- life situations)
The main point of introducing new grammatical material is to help our students use them in real life
in a natural way. We may do it by asking them to:

Work in pairs

Work in groups

Write, say and read texts in which new structure will be used

Play language games
LANGUAGE GAMES
 Find someone who
 Guess what (A teacher says that he went to the supermarket and bought something and ask
the students to guess what- students have to use full question forms!!! Did you buy....?)
 Mini-drama (e.g. a student is ill and we have to give him advice using ‘should’)
 An interview with a famous person
 Siblings (one person likes something, the other hates it)
 Phone conversation (The teacher answers the questions that students don’ t see, they have
to write those questions)
 Time machine (retelling stories that have happened or that are going to happen)
RULES OF TEACHING GRAMMAR:
1. Grammar should be introduced by the FUNCTION it has in the language (‘We’ll talk about our
talents today’ and not’ We’ll form sentences with a modal verb ‘can’’.)
2. Grammatical exercises should be clear and have the aim that students can see.
3. Grammatical exercises should enable students to repeat the same pattern, but always in
natural situations
4. Grammatical exercises should be short, vary in form, otherwise students will get bored.
5. The more independent the students are while performing the exercise, the more likely it is
that they will remember the structure.
6. The more personal approach and ‘human touch’ in the grammatical exercise, the more
successful teaching becomes.
7. Students must be explicitly told if they should concentrate on being grammatically correct or
communicatively successful in a particular activity.
Guess what grammatical structure we may practise using this activity and what level the students
may be:
I.
II.