Form- Fucused Instruction
Teaching Grammar
Grammar has always been a challenge in Language Teaching. Although still there are lots of critiques about Grammar Translation Method, what has been placed? Do scholars really replaced something? To me, it is worth to think about it! HDB book somehow answers to the above questions. “Grammar tells us how to construct a sentence and discourse rules tell us how to string those sentences together. Semantic tells us something about the meaning of words and string words. Then pragmatics tells us about which of several meanings to assign given the context of an utterance or written text. (Structure, semantics and Pragmatics)”
GMT was concentrated on just form and mostly information was isolated. On the other hand “grammaring” is described as a dynamic process of engaging learners to knowledge of language more than solid information grammar is treated as a skill.
How “grammaring” can be applied?
According to Brown learners age, proficiency level, educational background, language skills style, needs and goals should be considered while teaching grammar. Since all these criteria’s are different teaching should be occurred accordingly.
According to students need and context grammar can be presented both inductively and deductively. More than meta-linguistic knowledge functional information is useful. Grammar should be integrated to the other language skills. It is clear that error correction is not useful. Charts, objects, maps and drawings, dialogues and other written texts are suggested as some helpful techniques to teach grammar.
Teaching Vocabulary
Allocating specific class time to vocabulary: Especially for young learners there are a lot of joyful vocabulary teaching techniques. For adults some teaching time for essential vocabulary is crucial. As teacher helping students to learn vocabulary in context is better than ask students to memorize them as it was in past. Bilingual dictionaries could be very useful in case of emergency but it is clear that they are not useful in terms of learning vocabulary in long process.
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3 comments:
I always thought that teaching vocabulary was important. Somebody once told me that "Communication is hard without grammar, but it's impossible without vocabulary". That said, I still think grammar is CRUCIAL.
I'm a fan of grammaring. There are so many parts of grammar that seemed difficult to teach, but when looked at through the eyes of grammaring it starts to come clear. I'd go into specifics, but if you're taking Karen's grammar class this semester you'll be a convert as well.
On vocabulary, that is huge. I'm a BIG reader, so to me I want to know as many words as possible so I can read. This means that any chance I have to learn words is contextual for me. I forget that not everyone has that same push.
You're right about there being ways that are fun for kids to learn vocabulary. I think it would be fun to spend some time in class trying some of these out.
Question-do you want to continue teaching young students? You seem to have a great passion for it.
I look forward to learning more about teaching grammar. It is a difficult thing to teach. I'll take on vocabulary teaching any day! The wonderful thing about words is the more you know the more precisly you can communicate your thought and feelings.
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