Teaching grammar today.

Today, in spite of all those new theories in TGG about levels of grammatical representation from Noam Chomsky and SFG networks of meaning from Michael Halliday, many ESL teachers immediately recall to diagramming sentences and endless skill exercises, when heard the word “Grammar”. They perhaps embraced the notion of traditional teaching with a discrete set of rigid rules to be memorized, practiced and followed which probably make them be frustrated and baffled by the lack of grammar instruction in the classroom.

First, teachers are required to determine what students know. The next step is to determine what the students already know through an assessment. It is important to be careful with this assessment; it is easy to test surface knowledge of a grammar concept without testing the underlying knowledge. Many students will be able to recognize a sentence fragment as incorrect, but they may not know the concept by its correct name, why it is incorrect, or how to correct it. Teachers must design their assessment to reveal true understanding of the grammatical concepts.

One of the most important things to be taken into account is how the students are involved with grammar. Grammar instruction should be custom-made to meet the needs of students, and should interlace both prescriptive and descriptive practices into relevant and meaningful instruction.

As a final point, as TEACHING TODAY recommends, teachers must use the results of the pre-assessment to outline three to four grammar skills to focus on each week. The goal of effective grammar instruction is to weave it into the reading and writing that function as the backbone of the English curriculum. So, they have to consider their pacing guide and embed grammar concepts logically into it.