Dear FLE 404 members,
In this assignment, as a prospective English teacher, you need to describe your approach to teaching English grammar and teaching language skills (i.e., how you prefer to present grammar points, how you prefer to teach language skills, your difficulties in teaching grammar points and language skills while teaching English,your students' difficulties in learning grammar and skills). Please give examples from your experiences in the practice teaching schools.
I believe we should not teach grammar separately. I support teaching grammar inductively. when the students learn the rules, they do not care about the meaning of the structures. they just form sentences according to the rules. during the pratice teaching in both terms, I tried to integrate teaching grammar with reading because I believe contextualizing is very important in language teaching. students were sometimes having difficulty because they were accustomed to learning grammar deductively. but, in the end they were successful in learning grammar points inductively.
ReplyDeletefor the teaching grammar i would propose two different things first is for younger and 2nd is for adults learners. for young learners i will never teach them structural grammar but do it through the readings activities and something that will include integrated but not directly taught grammar. however, for the adults learners i think i will use structural teaching because they are not acquirers of the language but learners how Krashen proposes.
ReplyDeleteI believe that grammar is a core point in teaching a language, so I give considerable importance to the grammar teaching. I have experienced teaching grammar to both young learners and adolescents. What I have learned from my experinces is that teaching grammar to these different levels and age groups are significantly different from each other. For young learners, the best way to teach grammar is to give them enough input and wait for full understanding. In adolescents and adults however, I believe that meta language is really beneficial. I am not a big fan of deductive teaching, however sometimes giving the rules explicitly saves time and energy.
ReplyDelete"Practice makes perfect"
ReplyDeleteThat is why after presentation, practice holds great importance.
With young learners, I was to teach should/should not without using Turkish. I used their classroom rules hanging on the classroom's walls in "we do this, we do not do this" form. So I changed them and rebuilt the sentences which were familiar to them and which they knew already with should/should not and then distributed a worksheet including other persons other than "we" (the only pronoun they saw should/should not with) to show that it does not get the third person singular morpheme. They learned really well.
With adolescents, giving the rule as a formula works much better, it is also time saving and I focus production more when it is adolescents as I spent less time with presentation. I always taught grammar and I feel pretty confident as all of them went really good.
Rules.... when we hear the word Grammar, Rules come to our mind. in order to teach Grammar, I think we should teach Rules first in a detailed way with the example sentence. we can get extra example sentence from the students. in this way we can learn where they have difficulty. and then Practice is the best way to make the information more permanent. we can prepare useful handouts activities for them.
ReplyDeleteMy always preferred style of teaching any language skills is the inductive way. Especially for grammar, I like to first give the meaning before the form. I prefer providing a context where sts can relate what they learn to a meaningful phenomenon or event. When the sts are made familiar with the structure by being exposed to it unconsciously, they can be given the rule, but not necessarily. I am always on the side of “acquisition”, not “learning”. Therefore, I sometimes think that it is not even necessary to give the rule. But it is not to deny that rules are sometimes beneficial. For the other skills,especially for speaking, communication is significant. The students should be able to use language in their daily life and express themselves in the foreign language with ease.
ReplyDeleteI believe that pupils like the way I teach and really love the songs and power points. They are so energetic and they are so keen on doing every task I give them. They try to follow the songs and find a way to show that they can do or carry out the task. In vocabulary teaching I use photoes and flash cards that children love. They like talking and/commenting on the pictures and to compare them. However I realized that they can also learn with first experiance. If we show them the real objects and mame them play a game or simply to touch and show the objects their memory last longer. I strongly believe that my partner was a successful example of that technique.
ReplyDeleteAlso I prefer to teach vocabulary items and grammar structures deductively as long as they are not young learners, because teenagers can comprehend the rules easily. Also the vocabulary and grammar should be given in a context at first then in this way they can learn better and remember the structures easily. However, before giving the rules deductively, there should always be a context which provides a presentation for students to see the structures and guess their meanings. This contex can be, a reading passage, songs etc. Also if the students are young learners, I would teach them inductively. there is no need to give some rules. As they see in the contex, they get accustomed to them and understand their implied meanings in time as they see.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking, listening skills are the best way of introducing a grammar point. also it can be supported with a game. There are many games that appropriate for each level of students. After introducing the grammar point and doing activities about that, teacher can show the rule of this grammar point but not use extra metalanguage.
ReplyDeleteWith the adults, rules work best but with the young learners they are meaningless.Grammar topics should be given implicity to the young learners.Repetition,drills and practice also work well with young learners. If we give them the rules directly they are confused. As teachers we should wait for a long time for production. In contrast, we can give the rules to the adults directly. They have the capacity to understand metalanguage.
ReplyDeleteI had the opportunity to teach grammar both to the young learners and the young adults in high school. there were not problems with young learners because they didn't focus on the structure or the form,however the students in the high school always wants to learn the form, the rules, and the structure. therefore it was really hard for me to give just the rules and not focusing on the usage and meaning of the grammar points. I prefer inductive grammar teaching so I don't give the rules first, I would rather giving the grammar points in a context before focusing on the structure.
ReplyDeleteI believe that both for language skills and grammar the best is creating contexts and trying to teach the grammer points implicitly. If we just give the grammar points and dome examples, I do not think that the students get the exact meannig. so, I believe that the grammar should be given implcitly especially for young learners. on the other hand, we can give rules explicitly to adult learner because they have the capacity to understand a topic by rules.
ReplyDeleteThe goal of grammar instruction is to enable students to carry out their communication purposes.So I want to teach the grammar point in the target language or the students' first language or both. The goal is to facilitate understanding. Then I Will limit the time I devote to grammar explanations, especially for lower level students whose ability to sustain attention can be limited.I will present grammar points in written and oral ways to address the needs of students with different learning styles.
ReplyDelete• Be sure the examples are accurate and appropriate. They must present the language appropriately, be culturally appropriate for the setting in which they are used, and be to the point of the lesson.
• Use the examples as teaching tools. Focus examples on a particular theme or topic so that students have more contact with specific information and vocabulary.
I think grammar teaching is important in a language class especially in Turkey where a foreign language is learned for the examinations in which grammar knowledge is measured. I would prefer teaching it implicitly if possible, otherwise it turns out to be mathematic formulas which is more difficult to explain and teach.
ReplyDeleteEspecially for young learners grammar shouldn't be taught explicitly. They should acquire the structures.
Grammar is my nightmare. I couldn’t have a stable idea and methods for grammar teaching. However, the point I never give up is the contextualized teaching of the grammar, I mean, I don’t support just giving the rule. My teaching philosophy is teaching the foreign language as the way the first language is acquired, therefore, especially for the young learners; I am supporter of giving input and help the learners to acquire the language. However, this semester, I observed that giving the rule is helpful for the adult learner because they have developed logical thinking and they are more satisfied with metalanguage. While using the language in daily communication, all skills and parts are use integrated, therefore, I am trying to integrate much skill in my lessons as much as possible to protect the nature of the language.
ReplyDelete