Comments on: Why Grammar is Overrated – Part 2

By: turklis1

turklis1 — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 13:24:09 +0000

I would agree on all those points Mohammed. For most exams, sadly, grammar is a big part of them. I have to say that I’m lucky to teach at a school where students come to learn to communicate in English, not to pass government exams. Otherwise I’d be teaching grammar in Turkish rather than English in English.

By: Mohammed Rhalmi

Mohammed Rhalmi — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 13:16:36 +0000

Although most teachers would argue about the explicit vs implicit teaching of grammar, I’d like to point out that providing enough input containig targeted structures is an excellent idea. Building on this input to raise students awareness of the structures, explore inductively the ways structures are built and actually use them communicatively, is another step that can be considered.Finnally with more advanced students, more explanation may be introduced, especially for studenst who are required to pass an exam.

By: Why bother? « Doing some thinking

Why bother? « Doing some thinking — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 02:03:36 +0000

[...] becomes the focus of the lesson instead of yet another aspect of it, then, as Nick said in his post, it’ll confuse students more than it’ll help [...]

By: turklis1

turklis1 — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 18:08:42 +0000

Hi Lynne, good to know this is an issue in the foreign language teaching world and not just EFL

I think one of the big issues is the way people are educated to teach foreign languages. It seems to me that the universities are terrible at this, otherwise why do so many come out obsessing over grammar that just simply doesn’t help the students?

I love the anecdote about showing students the door. I’ve had so many fights with beginning students about why we’re not teaching them loads of grammar.

By: Lynne Hutchinson

Lynne Hutchinson — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 17:32:41 +0000

Hi Nick,

I really do wish some of the French teachers of EFL would read your article, it might save me an awful lot of time in business school classrooms and in professional business English classrooms too!

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen eyebrows shoot up when I announce that if anyone in the room has come for grammar lessons, then the door is over there.

Getting students to understand WHY we use different structures, i.e. what the function is seems a much more valid approach than going into the meanders of a totally abstract grammatical explanation (even if the teacher CAN do it, I still don’t think it’s a good idea). And compared to the effort French students have to put into getting word and sentence stress in the right place (for those of you who don’t speak French, it is a syllable-timed language and does not have a word-stress system) so their utterances are actually understandable, grammar seems such a waste of time.

Thanks to Leslie for giving us the link to your website – it’s nice to be able to bounce ones ideas, especially when they don’t usually go in the same direction as most of my colleagues’

Looking forward to reading any follow-up.
Lynne

By: turklis1

turklis1 — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 11:30:10 +0000

Thanks for the continued additons to the discusson. Yeah, I saw that bunny video and said, “Somehow I have to use this in a lesson.”

By: Leslie Burns

Leslie Burns — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 04:16:22 +0000

Hi, Nick

I see you’ve been busy since my last visit. Hope the TESOL Greece conference went well.

Good follow-up to the previous article.

I started writing a comment, but (as usual! LOL!) it got way out of hand so I’ve published it on the “discussion” section of my own blog rather than pop another thousand-word response into your comment form here.

My comment

All the best,
Leslie

P.S. That video about the Easter Bunny is pretty funny stuff. I’ll be forwarding it to a couple of friends whom I know’ll get a kick out of it. (No pun intended!) Nice one, mate.

By: Nicky

Nicky — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 10:43:03 +0000

>>”If you walked into a Turkish language classroom and someone told you that Turkish is an SOV language, would that have meant anything to you before becoming a teacher?”

No, but if somebody had told me it was a S.O.B. language, it sure would have, har har har…

I actually agree with you here, for me the main value of knowing and using this type of jargon-heavy grammar explanations in class is to just kind of shut up those annoying students who insist on asking “Why? Why? Why?” for everything little thing and won’t take “Because I said so” for an answer. You just say the word “ditransitive” and their eyes glaze over before you know it.