There has been much debate about grammar teaching – arguments about whether it should be explicitly or implicitly, or about what approach might be most effective.
Learners usually expect to concentrate on grammar at some point during a course.
The following tips remain valuable to be adopted by most teachers and adapted where necessary.
Grammar Presentation
Present grammar in a meaningful way even if you use the explicit technique. If you do, make sure your presentation highlights the meaning dimension and check whether learners have understood this by using ‘concept’ questions, which highlight an aspect of the situation which makes the meaning of the target form clear.
Grammar Practice
Provide learners with opportunities to use the target grammatical forms. This means providing meaningful activities, where learners can choose what language they produce within the role play, task, etc. Learners should use them to express meaning.
Grammatical Errors’ Correction
Correct grammatical errors carefully. As always, your attitude to correction and giving feedback should depend on the purpose of the activity and on what you think your learners are ready to learn.
Use the Discovery Technique
Use the discovery technique by showing learners examples of a grammatical form in various contexts, encouraging them to work out its significance. The contexts can be drawn from both ‘authentic’ and ‘non-authentic’ sources.
Provide Rich Exposure
Keep on providing rich exposure. It’s important for learners to read and listen to texts from which you can elicit the essential grammatical forms and teach.
Use Authentic Tasks
Use various and authentic tasks to make texts familiar to learners. In this case, subconsciously learners will start to get used to the unfamiliar structures in the text and will understand and use them if they are focused on again at a later point.
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