Please answer these questions related to Thornbury's chapter "What is Grammar?" by drawing on your experience as an English teacher and a language learner.
1. What comes to mind when you hear the word grammar? Make a list of words below.
2. Look back at the list you just wrote. Do the words reveal any specific view of grammar and/or grammar teaching?
3. Do you think that students have their own definition of grammar? Why could it be important to be aware of this definition when you teach grammar?
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1. The words are: essential, categories, order, meaning, simple, to build, complex, accuracy, fixed, difficult.
ResponderEliminar2. From the student´s and teacher´s point of view, I have been strongly influenced by text makers. I see grammar as constructing a building. The materials used are the different grammatical categories. For example, the nouns are blocks, the mortar and bars correspond to the verbs that hold blocks together, and the adverbials could be represented by materials that add the finishing touches.
There are also stages when making a building, which range from simple to complex. First, you make the foundation, and then start building from there, following the appropriate process to prevent structural flaws. Gramamr works just like this.
Grammar is thought to be essential when learning a second or foreign language; however, the type of grammar that is taught is exclusively written grammar. As a a consequence, students are expected to use well-formed sentences when speaking.
As a teacher and independent English learner, I have had more access to authentic input, so I have noticed that naturally ocurring speech does not follow the rules of the traditional written grammar. Therefore, I have tried to use authentic materials in class and point out the differences between ¨standard english grammar¨and ¨real grammar¨ according to the context and genre.
3. Based on my experience, I would say that most students believe that written grammar represents the language itself. This is the reason why teachers come across students that expect the teacher to explain the grammar rules instead of inferring them, and provide them with a great number of grammar controlled exercises.
At the end, teachers get students that have been trainned to complete an exercise with grammar items appropriately, but unable to use grammar in speaking contexts effeciently.
I really like of you see grammar as constructing a building and I hope that you use this analogy to explain the importance of grammar to your own students. It also makes it very clear that learning grammar is a process and that they can´t expect to be great at it from the very beginning.
ResponderEliminarI also agree with you in that we should teach both "real" and "standard" language. This is what will really allow our students to communicate in the real world with native speakers.
I´ll be posting something new soon! Great job!