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Module 2: Grammar Presentations
AIMS To help students improve their understanding of grammar. To always present grammar in the clearest, most useful way. To make sure that we as teachers know our grammar. To guarantee that grammar teaching is not difficult or boring for the students.
What is Grammar? Can you answer that question in a single word? Go on, have a go.... You probably were thinking about words like rules, structure, patterns etc these are normal words to think of but the real answer is easier than that. ANSWER; GRAMMAR = MEANING If that seems too simplistic let's think about it from a historical perspective, what came first the language or the structure? Did our language flop out of English mouths fully formed or did it take time for it to develop into what it is now? Did we impose meaning upon the language or it did it impose meaning upon us? Like with every piece of vocabulary in the language, the grammar took time to develop as well. If you read texts from a few hundred years ago it is not just the words that can confuse you but also the organization. This is because language is a living entity, as the people who spoke it needed new or clearer ways to express themselves so too the language bent itself to accommodate this. In short, as we became more sophisticated so did our mother tongue and no doubt in another two hundred years English will look quite different to the language spoken today. Every sentence we utter contains grammar that helps make the meaning clear, whatever dialect we speak, the standard organization of the language is largely the same and this is what we teach in the classroom. Look at the following collection of words: I go cinema. We have a very basic sentence in English, a subject, a verb and an object. However what we cannot decide is what the person who said this means. There is no real clue first of all as to time, do they mean a present habit? A present action? A future action? Then it could be:
I go to the cinema every week. I am going to the cinema. I am going to go to the cinema. I will go to the cinema.
And this is without even considering the past. Grammar is important.
PAGODA Uber Teacher
Module 2: Grammar Presentations
EXAMPLES Read through the following four grammar presentations seen in SLE/PIP classes. Presentation One Miss Take: Herb Tense: Miss Take: Herb Tense: Miss Take: Herb Tense:
I am boring, why is that sentence wrong? I think it's correct. No it's wrong, what's wrong with it? But Miss you are boring. (thwack!) Ouch!
Presentation Two: Miss Take: Herb Tense: Miss Take: Herb Tense: Miss Take: Herb Tense: Miss Take:
Give me an example of a cleft sentence Herb. Errrm.....sorry one more time. What is a cleft sentence? Is it a type of shoe? Don't be silly Herb, it's part of English. So is the word 'confusing' Miss. (Thwack!) It was I, Miss Take, Who hit you!
Presentation Three: Miss Take: Herb Tense: Miss Take: Herb Tense: Miss Take:
Herb, what did you do last weekend? Erm, I went to cinema and I see a movie. Oh you saw a movie, what was the story? A big boat was sinking and they all dies. Excellent, let's put that on the board and take a look at it together. Here we are talking about the past.
Presentation Four Miss Take: Herb read the first line please. Herb Tense: My friend is going to sing on TV this weekend, I hope it will be good. He will be very nervous I think but after we are going to go to his favourite bar to celebrate! Miss Take: Very good, now in that text there were two different ways to talk about the future, find them and with your partner and discuss how they are different. 2 minutes. Herb Tense: Hmmm, well one seems sure and the other less sure ...
PAGODA Uber Teacher
Module 2: Grammar Presentations
IN PRACTICE All teachers have at some point used one or more of the above methods when introducing, teaching or reviewing grammar in their lessons with varying degrees of success. Let's critique them. PRESENTATION ONE: The teacher begins by asking what seems like a valid question, often during error correction we want students to spot an obvious mistake. However in this sentence there is no mistake in grammar but in specific meaning, the form of the adjective ~ed or ~ing changes the meaning. Therefore it would be better if the teacher wrote two sentences and had students compare them. I am boring / I am bored. PRESENTATION TWO: The teacher here begins with an immensely difficult question in a class because it asks students to come up with an example based only on the name of a structure, even native speakers cannot do this a lot of the time. An episode of The Simpsons famously has a teacher ask Bart Simpson to name the adjective in a sentence and he names every single word except the adjective. It is much better to guide students towards meaning, for example “ Which word describes...etc� PRESENTATION THREE: This is a useful way to introduce grammar, first of all it makes the expectation of what grammar should be used; the question is asked in the past tense and uses the target language. Secondly it tests whether the students can use this tense correctly in their answer, a useful way to avoid over presenting and thirdly, it makes the topic personal by asking the students about their own experiences which is much more accessible to the students learning. PRESENTATION FOUR: Here the teacher has used one of the easiest methods for teaching grammar; a text, in a text we can see the language being used naturally, it contains a story and it allows the student to comprehend meaning before worrying about the structures involves. By having students read and even re-read the sentences they are able to compare the two verb tenses and guide themselves to understanding the different uses.
PAGODA Uber Teacher
Module 2: Grammar Presentations
Teaching Grammar There are three main ways to introduce and teach grammar in a class, look at the following chart.
Presentation: The teacher introduces the examples himself and explains them to the students in a clear and concise way to ensure understanding and labels the sentences. This would normally be followed by an immediate practice activity. The teacher has assumed that the class will not know the grammar well or at all Guided Discovery: The teacher will take examples from the students, such as asking a question “ What did you do last weekend?” “If you had a million dollars, what would you do?” etc and put these examples on the board, or the teacher may use his own examples. He will then give the class the task to use the grammar or to discover what is it used for, the teacher will help with clues and then the teacher will listen to the student's ideas and conclude together. This method assumes the students should be aware of the grammar but may be unsure of how to apply it. Self-Directed Discovery: The teacher will give the students a text to read that contains the grammar or for more advanced students it could be a listening or a media clip. The teacher will set a task to discover the grammar and the students must conclude why it is used as part of the comprehension. The teacher may give a few clues but expects the students to be able to explain why. For example two election speeches from Obama and McCain that begin “ If I president I will... / If I were president, I would....”
PAGODA Uber Teacher
Module 2: Grammar Presentations
Common Mistakes and how to avoid them. The world in a box - “ We use the first conditional to talk about the future, plans, possibilities, certainties, promises and things which we think will happen but may not” While all of this is true it is completely useless to a student without examples and you couldn't possibly teach all of these uses in a single class. Teaching only the meaning as it applies to the topic of the lesson. For example; when choosing between holidays we would use the first conditional “ If we go here, we can relax but If we go to Spain, we will eat a lot” Guess what's on my mind - So what is this on the board? Well I hope it's a sentence, and even better if it's in English but that is what it is. Avoid asking cryptic questions and hoping that the students will say exactly what you want or that they will simply name the grammatical structure. Guide them to it's meaning first and then structure. The lonely Grammarherd – Can anyone use the past perfect in a sentence? When do we use the past perfect? “What is the structure of the past perfect” “Tell me something about yourself using the past perfect” While wonderful that the teacher is concept checking the use of the grammar they have disconnected the language from the topic and asking the students to improvise a sentence about anything, very difficult even for native speakers. Connect back to topic and have students work together to create for example the story of their morning using the past perfect. The Ass of U and Me - The past simple is used to talk about completed actions that happened in the past, the regular verbs take an ~ed ending while irregular verbs are different and have to be learned separately. The past continuous is used to talk about an action that had duration in the past ...blah blah blah. If your class is low level they will not understand the explanation, if your class are intermediate and above they will know this already and will probably be mystified why you think they don't. Give them an exercise to do and have them show you whether or not they know the grammar. The Overload – Let's take a look at the grammar used here, what grammar is in the text? The problem here is that there will be A LOT of grammar used in any piece of language, do you want the students to point out every adjective, noun, pronoun, verb tense, verb form and so on or are you looking for something specific. Be sure you know what you want the students to find and guide them towards it.
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Module 2: Grammar Presentations
TIPS
A Useful Formula: MEANING - Always begin with what the sentence means, many of your students will know what this + this makes, they have studied it rote in school for many years but what they often lack is understanding. If students understand what the sentence means first they can learn how to apply it. STRUCTURE - Always secondary to meaning but very useful to practice to ensure students are wording something correctly and to weed out common mistakes USE - Conclude through the topic, when do we use this grammar and why? The Board - An essential tool in explaining and clarifying meaning, remember one great written example is better than 10 vague oral examples. Get into the habit of starting with this example and leaving it up as a reference for the students to follow.
Examples of Text - Most of the books contain a reading text of some sort, or a listening or you can easily find or even better create a short text of your own. That way you can be sure that the concept / grammar you want to focus on is all that is there.
Know it Yourself - No one expects you to be the king or queen of grammar but your students will expect you to know what it is you are teaching. You should always check as part of your lesson planning what the grammar is and that you know how to explain / teach / review it. The best way to be sure is always to have a grammar book to hand to check for examples (The Complete Guide to Grammar ISBN 184193-357-0 is a good one) DO NOT BLUFF! If you are asked a question you are not sure about do not make up an answer, tell the student you will check and get back to them.
Illustration - Sometimes it is much easier as a presentation but also as a student task to find a way to demonstrate or illustrate grammar rather than explain it. Time lines, scales, graphs charts, story boards, games etc that prompt the students to show understanding are very useful. e.g students must rank frequency adverbs in a sliding scale from never to always, or students must plot on a time line two sentences I left when he arrived / I had left when he arrived or a series of pictures of a man's day and they must write his story in the past tense.
PAGODA Uber Teacher
Module 2: Grammar Presentations
GRAMMAR GAMES: - Many of the games that can be used to test understanding of vocabulary can also be used to test grammar, but here are some that perhaps are better suited as class activities for grammar. Passive Voice jeopardy – on the board you make this chart and put whatever categories you like, for example: Food kimchi
Countries Philippines
Landmarks Eiffel tower
People Alexander Bell
pizza
Korea
Dongdaemun
Lady Gaga
noodles
France
Mount Fuji
George Michael
poutine
Mexico
Grand canyon
Sarah Palin
In teams students must create a passive voice sentence for points, the teacher and other students judge whether it is a good sentence that says something about the item in the box, e.g This country was invaded by the Japanese 3 times. / This has been enjoyed by Koreans for a long time. Team Two
In pairs/groups students must create a defining and non-defining relative clause and answer trivia questions to get to the top of the pyramid first.
Korea
Team One
Relative Clause Pyramid
Beer
Wine
Top Gun
Avatar
Angkor Wat
The Louvre
The Question Word tic tac toe Following a story, article, listening the students must work together in pairs or groups to create questions using the words on the chart that can be answered directly in the reading. The aim is to get three in a row for your team.
WHO
WHEN
WHERE
WHOSE
WHICH
WHAT
WHY
WHOM
HOW
PAGODA Uber Teacher
Module 2: Grammar Presentations
So my grammar teaching stars we look to you now to stamp out the fallacy of grammar being “academic” and “dull”, it's an essential part of the language and we cannot communicate properly without it. Make it relevant, make it topical but most of all make it clear! I shall leave you with another famous quote: I never made a mistake in grammar but one in my life and as soon as I done it I seen it Carl Sandburg