Teaching Grammar (Theory and Practice)

According to Harmer (2007), teachers can teach grammar through five ways; introducing grammar, discovering grammar, practicing grammar, grammar games, and grammar book.

In introducing the grammar, there are four ways that can be done. The first can be usd to teach simple present tense regarding to the use of the theird singpular person. The teachers can use media such as flashcards to present a word and they produce a simple present sentence regarding to the activity shown in the cards. The second activity is still applying a media to teach the students. That is a set of text of simple past tense. Before they read the text, the teacher will give some questions relating to the text content. Therefore, they will be familiar with the text. Then, the teacher ask them about the origin country of the story and to answer the questions. The third is reported speech to help the students comprehend the differences of the present and past activity. The fourth is trying to introduce them with should and should have for intermediate level.

The second way is discovering grammar. The first activity is proposed for pre-intermediate levels about word formation through dialogs. The material is comparative degree that thay will use in the dialog. Secondly, the function and the expression are emphasized.

The next is practicing the grammar which involves five activities. The first is Where can I? which includes present continuous tense. It facilitates the students in participation.  For intermediate level, the second activity uses past tense through a set of text. They are asked to underline the sentence which tense is past. Then, direct exercises for upper intermediate level puts the conditional material. A simple yes/no interview is done. The last is introducing past perfect continuous by separating the students into two groups. They are competing to get the highest score.

To vary the activities, games can be conducted in teaching grammar. The teacher may uses a set of cards to teach them ‘how to ask something’.it can be conducted ofr young learners such as primiary school learners. Another way is introducing the degree of comparison by using the same media. They are required to organize them into a correct sentence. Questioning activities can also be applied. This way actually ruins their concentration. If they do not focus, they will not answer the questions.

Grammar books nowadays have more varieties. Therefore, it is helpful both for the teacher and the students to facilitate the learning and teaching activity.

Commonly Found Questions

Question	:	What kind of strategy which can be used to overcome the problem of having lack of vaocabularies in learning grammar? In fact, new vocabularies are often served in learning grammar. Regarding to the teaching demonstration, it can be well used in a small class. What about in a large class which consists of 34 students?
Answer	:	In order to make the teaching and learning more effective, the material served should be more spesific. Therefore, the vocabularies used are more specific. The aim is to teach the structure not the new words. If the students already aunderstood the structure, it means that the objective has been reached.
Question	:	If some students do not understand a certain material such as present continous tense yet the government policy demand us to teach it to the students, what will you do? Will you fulfill the students’ needs and neglect the curriculum or will you follow the curriculum?
Answer	:	The teachers are required to gain information about the learners’ previous knowledge and characteristics regarding to the material. Since the teachers need to follow the curriculum, it is suggested that the teachers divide the teaching time by adding the learners knowledge regarding to the material. Then, on the other meeting, they must follow the curriculum. We have to remember that the teachers’ jobs are to making complicated things simple and easy.

Critical Analysis

Teaching grammar can be complicated. Based on my experience in grammar course, there are some books that present different theories regarding to the function of certain grammar. To cope with this problem, the teacher should select the appropriate books to be used.

Some years ago, the way learning vocabulary was very rigid. The students are forced to memorize the formulas. Fortunately, there are some interesting ways in teaching it. Some teachers use games and maximizes the use of media such as a set of cards or a story. Learning grammar may be very crucial because it will lead them to create errors. If the errors are categorized as the local errors, the teacher only needs to fix a small parts. However, global errors are very hard to be fixed because it deals with the learners’ belief. The younger they learn, the strong the knowledge is.

References

Harmer, Jeremy. 2007a. The Practice of English Language Teaching. Malaysia: Pearson Education Limited.

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