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Teacher's Corner: Teaching Grammar for Communicative Competence -…
Teacher's Corner: Teaching Grammar for Communicative Competence
A communicative grammar lesson gives students the opportunity to practice the target grammar item through specific communicative tasks and activities
Should teachers even teach grammar? The fact remains that we do not use language without grammar. >>>>Then, the problem is not grammar itself, but the ways that grammar has been taught and learned.
Grammar Translation Method (GTM),
often taught grammar separate from the larger contexts in which language is used. While these approaches were often effective for developing a receptive (reading) knowledge of a language, they sometimes failed to provide students with the ability to use language communicatively in speaking and writing.
Audiolingualism (ALM)
have focused on developing communicative competence. Communicative competence does not mean an absence of grammar instruction but rather grammar instruction that leads to the ability to communicate effectively.
Teaching grammar communicatively
”: _ Grammar instruction and lessons are not limited to introducing a grammar item or itemshaving learners do controlled exercises, and then later assessing students on their ability to understand grammar items. -- Grammar lessons are designed to include a communicative task or activity. - A communicative grammar lesson might start in very much the same way as a traditional approach with presentation of a grammar item and examples, followed by controlled exercises to practice the grammar item.
A communicative grammar lesson gives students the opportunity to
practice the target grammar
. The beginning stages of a communicative grammar lesson often focus on accuracy while fluency becomes more important during practice stage.
Resources to get started on using games for communicative grammar:
using games for grammar practice:
Activate: Games for Learning American English has many fun communicative grammar games:
Teaching Grammar Communicatively in Large Classes
Teachers might not be able to do an entire communicative lesson but might be able to do one or two interactive activities.
Set up situations for productive grammar practice outside the classroom:
Gve students more opportunities for communicative practice in English clubs, where students meet regularly for communicative practice and other fun activities such as poetry contests or singing competitions * give them out-of-class assignments that require using the target grammar point.
Teaching Grammar in Context
* it’s one thing to understand a grammatical item in certain examples or to be able to choose the right form in a grammar exercise, but it’s another to see how a language item works within a conversation or piece of writing.
A grammar lesson might start with a context with the target grammar item that students work to understand or explain.
For some grammar items, showing the context first might be the best approach, and for other grammar items, starting with rules and examples might be a better choice.
Depending on your students’ level of proficiency, a full or partial explanation of the grammar form and a certain amount of practice with the target grammar item will still be needed.
Consciousness-raising text
It means making students aware of the properties of a certain grammatical feature by highlighting them or helping students to notice them in some way (Ellis, 2015).
Language Functions and Forms: A Brief Summary
Language function refers
to what students do with language as they engage with content and
interact with others. Students use language functions in order to express ideas, communicate with others, and show
understanding of content in an academic setting.
Oral language:
giving instructions - making requests - defending an argument
Academic writing:
describing processes
classifying objects or ideas
comparing or contrasting things or ideas
Language forms
deal with the internal grammatical structure of words and phrases as well as the word themselves. When one compares boy and boys, for example, or man and men, he or she is considering the relationship between different language forms or structures. It includes cross-curricular academic vocabulary - words or phrases frequently used accross different content-areas. It may include: * verbs, complex prepositions, nouns
Language learners need to acquire both the f
unctions (uses/purposes
) and
the forms (structures + cross-curricular vocabulary)
that make up the English language in order to reach higher levels of proficiency. Teachers also need to understand the language demands of a task as they relate to both function and form in order to best support students’ language development.
Examples of Language Functions and Forms
Language Functions
During my observation, students were engaged working with Asking Informational Questions and comparing
Language Forms
During my observation in fieldwork, students worked with the conditional mode
Academic Language Functions
Colorin Colorado
Seek Information
Examples: use of what, when, where, and how to gather information
Inform
Examples: Recount information presented by teacher or text, retell a story or personal information
Compare
Examples: Make/explain a graphic organizer to show difference and similairy.
Order
Examples: Describe/make a timeline continuum, cycle, or narrative sequence.
Classify
Examples: Describe organizing principles, explaining why A is an example but B is not.
Analize
Examples: Describe parts, feature or main idea of inormation presented.
Infer
Examples: Describe reasoning (inductive or deductive) or generate hypothesis to generate causes or outcomes.
Justify and persuade
Examples: tell why A is important and give evidence in support of a position.
Solve problem
Examples: Describe problemsolving procedure; apply to real life problems.
Synthesize
Examples: Summarize information cohesively; incorporate new information into prior knowledge
Evaluate
Examples: Identify criteria, explain priorities, indicate reasons for judgnent, confirm truth.
Bringing Focus on Grammar to a Content-Based Lesson
ESL teachers' focus has shifted from teaching about language to scaffolding the content so that it is accessible to the multilingual students in the class. However, to be most effective, teachers must balance the emphasis on language and on content in a content-based class
We need to help students learn the structures that allow, for example, for the creation of complex sentences and the control of the English verb system
Explicit versus Implicit
Grammar instruction needs to be woven into the other, meaning-focused activities in class. We must always strive for a balance between a focus on meaning and a focus on form. The following ideas are key to achieving this balance.
Salience
Salience refers to how noticeable something is in the input.Language learners will focus on the pieces of language that provide meaning (lexis) before they will focus on the grammatical aspects of words or sentences.
Noticing
Noticing hypothesis is another helpful idea for ESL teachers. This theory is related to the idea of salience, in that Schmidt posited that in order for a learner to acquire a new language form, the learner must first notice that form in the input. It is wise to begin by helping learners to notice the forms. We do this by making the forms more salient so that they stand out to learners.
Strategies to Help Develop Grammar/Forms
1. Input Flood.- One useful approach to helping students notice a language feature is to raise the number of times the feature appears in the learner’s input. The input flood can help them “get a feel” for the form, but more will still be needed if students are to learn the form.
Noticing and Awareness Activities
Teachers might provide their students with activities that help them notice forms and then become consciously aware of how the forms are made.
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