METHODOLOGY FOR TEACHING ENGLISH GRAMMAR

 METHOD OF TEACHING ENGLISH GRAMMAR

• Indeed, one may know all the words in a sentence and yet fail to understand it, if one does n`t see the relationship between the words in given sentence.
• No speaking is possible with the knowledge of grammar, without the forming of grammar mechanism. Grammar is something that produces the sentences of language.
• Correct selection of a grammar teaching material is the first steps towards the elimination of mistakes.

HOW TO TEACH GRAMMAR?

• Teaching grammar should be based upon the following principles:

Ø  Conscious approaches to the teaching of grammar. It implies some rules for the teacher.

Ø  Realize the difficulties the sentence pattern presents for your learners. Comparative analysis of the grammar item in English, within the English language may be helpful.

Ø  Think of the shortest and simplest way for presentation of the new grammar item. Remember the more you speak about the language, the less time is left for practice.

GOALS AND TECHNIQUES FOR TEACHING GRAMMAR:

• The goal of grammar instruction is to enable students to carry out their communication purposes. This goal has three implications:

       I.Students need overt instruction that connects grammar points with larger communication contexts.

    II. Student don`t need to master every aspect of each grammar point, only those that are relevant to the immediate communication task.

 III. Error correction isn`t always the instructor`s first responsibility.

METHOD OF TEACHING GRAMMAR:

• There are two methods of teaching grammar. They are:

                   I. Deductive Method

                II.  Inductive Method

• Deductive Method: The Deductive method the teacher states the rules and gives examples in their illustration. He then asks the students to apply those rules to a given exercise.  For example, while teaching the students to change sentences of active voice in the simple present tense to the passive voice, the teacher states the following rules:

i.     For changing active voice to passive voice, the object of the active voice becomes the subject of the passive voice and the subject of the active voice becomes the object of the passive voice.

ii.       The form of the verb of simple present tense in the active voice changes to is / am / are + past participle in the passive voice.

iii.       In the passive voice, the subject of the active verb is generally made the object of the preposition ‘by’.

iv.   Explain first

V.    Examples

VI.   Practice  

• Then he gives examples to illustrate the rules/ the next step is to ask the students to apply the rules to the exercise.
•  Inductive method---cum—deductive approach: 
• Present the structure.
• Explain it
• Practice it
• Teach grammar inductively and apply it deductively, and try hard to keep in your mind and to get into the minds of your scholars, that language is a living, growing thing, that language is “thought, moving and making its own shape as it moves, and that everyone could and should frame for himself every rule of grammar.
• Never give a rule until you have got its examples. Let the law follow and no precede exemplifications of that law. Make it part and parcel of any English lesson by drawing attention to a number of examples which appear to indicate a rule. Let the learner give the rule. Teach English as you would teach football, by action and practice. The rules show themselves in both, and need not be learnt by heart first.
• Nor need a boy be able to define a football or a cricket bat before he can play with one. Why should he define a noun or a verb before he can use one? Would you rather take a child to the Zoological Gardens and let him see the animals alive and moving or give him definitions of them to learn by heart?
• As soon as the children formulate their rules with the help of concrete examples they should be helped to apply them to further examples. Inductive teaching of grammar is meaningful up to a long drawn out affair. It is all right at the early stage where terms of grammar should be introduced with the help of concrete examples. At the middle stages the teaching of grammar should be correlated with and based on the text-book. But the main difficulty is that it is hard to get a reader which has been graduated to a grammatical scale. It is still advisable to connect the various concepts of grammar with concrete illustrations from the book. The children should be given an idea of the correct construction and tits usage as they come across it in the context