Grammar: tedious or fun? – Arzu Baloglu
Teaching grammar is a subject I’ve been struggling ever since since I started teaching.When I first started teaching English, I thought the most convenient way to teach the language was to write grammar rules and a few example sentences on the board and make students write them down in their notebooks , later do some drilling, oral repetition and lots of worksheet exercises and finally end the lessons. It was that easy, because I had been taught in this way and other colleagues had been teaching in this very teacher centered way.
In my first years of teaching. it was the easiest way for me because the classes I taught were crowded and there were class management issues I had to handle. Also, there was no support or mentoring from the experienced colleagues in my school. I was all alone, dependent on the coursebooks and grammar woksheets. That is, teaching only grammar with lots of repetition made me not only feel more secure but also helped me manage the students,because they were already accustomed to this kind of learning.
Yes it was the most manageable way but not the correct way. I wasn’t satisfied at all. This repetition and monotony bored me much more than the students. There must have been other ways of teaching and I had to find them. Besides,I wasn’t sure if the students were really learning.
Having searched for some class activities, attended some seminars, and learned from some great educators, I decided to try some class activities with my students.The result was excellent. Students both enjoyed and were engaged, and I was pleased with the result. Therefore ,in every lesson plan I made I tried including some games, songs, and puzzles so that I could make the lessons more efficient. Although it was more fun and useful to include some engaging activities while teaching grammar and students definitely enjoyed the lessons, some of my colleagues didn’t see the point and thought I was not a very good teacher. because I wasn’t teaching the grammar rules to students properly. According to the majority of teachers here (in Turkey), grammar is the most important aspect of the language and a great deal of attention must be given to it. I can remember once that a colleague of mine complained to the administration that I wasn’t qualified enough to teach grammar because I hadn’t made the students copy the rules in their notebooks. Maybe it’s true that I’m not good at teaching grammar. On the other hand, I know that I am happier now by not teaching grammar only.
I have been teaching grammar for a long time now. Honestly,I find teaching other language skills such as writing, speaking, and listening easier and more enjoyable. And also I’m still learning to teach grammar more effectively. Even though I haven’t found the effective method yet, I have some class activities, songs and web tools that foster students’ learning, engagement and motivation in classes. I’ve been compiling them from various sources such as other educators’ blog posts, teachers’ book resources, and the seminars , workshops and webinars I’ve attended. Here are some of the activities I use frequently in classes.
The first one is the well-known ‘Find someone who….’activity. You can adapt it into various grammar structures and also it requires students’ participation, which makes them practise what they learn. They simply need to walk around class and ask their classmates some questions and fill in the handout. Here are my handouts. Feel free to use and adapt them. https://app.box.com/s/sq1kc201rzof6tpyvd57 https://app.box.com/s/ev2t3xedidz7w4vhawzi
The next one works best when practising ‘Relative Clauses’. It’s an activity I first found in one of the teachers resource boks I have. Divide the class into groups of four or five and hand out some cards on which some object, people or place names are written. Students must write three definitions for these names and only one of them must be true. The other groups must find the correct definition. This activity is very competitive and fun. You can also try this activity by giving students a list of words and get them to search their meanings and write their definitions in their own words. If you want to use tech, students can look up their meanings on their mobile phones or tablets as well .You can check out my handout here. https://app.box.com/s/ljomu55ujm02kan0qy8r
The other one is a fun activity which I’ve learned from a colleague. You can use it when teaching any language point. Write a sentence in big fonts on a piece of paper and cut all the elements of the sentence. Mix them and give to a student and ask him/her to put them in the correct order to make a sentence in one minute. While he/she tries to put them into the correct order, another student always utters something nonsense (la,la,la or blah,blah,) to distract him/her. You can also make this activity more competitive by dividing the students into teams.
In addition , songs can be one of the most impactful ways to teach vocabulary and grammar . Moreover, they can be used as warmers or fillers .You can use the song ‘Tom’s Diner’ to practise ‘present continuous tense’,’My baby shot me down’ for ‘simple past tense’ and ‘would’ and ‘If I were a boy’ to teach ‘the conditionals’.Here is one of the song lyrics . https://app.box.com/s/n8e4v1g2wp3dyub9rjz2
We cannot ignore the fact that grammar is necessary. On the other hand, our aim shouldn’t be to teach grammar rules only .Instead, we can make the lessons more attractive through some meaningful class activities. As you get to know your students you can adapt and blend the activities into their needs and learning processes. Frankly, I haven’t found the most effective way yet and I don’t know if there is one but at least I’m trying to do my best to facilitate learning. You can try to break the boredom of the grammar lessons as well as creating such an engaging and student-centered atmosphere by avoiding repetition and routines .
If you seel some useful ideas, iTDi is one of the perfect places where you can find lots of help and mentoring to develop your teaching skills. It has helped me a lot and I’ve been learning lots of new ideas from colleagues all over the world. Please don’t hesitate to join in and connect with the great educators here.
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Oh, it was so reassuring to read 🙂
Not the fact that the old-school approach to teaching grammar is still alive, but the evolution through reflection.
I was taught the same way and I still know about schools where learning English equals learning and applying grammar rules in very controlled ways supplemented with cramming lists of vocabulary items. (Free practice is so threatening :P)
Thanks for writing this, Arzu!
Thanks a lot for your lovely comment Barbi. I am glad you liked this post. I know that many learners and teachers prefer old approach but thinking outside the box is also great 🙂
Good for you! Sometimes the students actually demand the old secure-style way of learning with grammar worksheets but we have to show them the light.
Naomi
Thanks Naomi. I totally agree with you 🙂
I’m not saying just because she is my teacher but she is the best. She has even a nickname . BTE (BestTeacherEver) I enjoy every minute of our lessons . English Literature may sound totally boring but she makes it enjoyable . Her only mistake is working so hard . She doesnt have to and it’s obvious she already knows that but she still isnt changing her way. That makes her the best in the world. Its been 4 years but I’m a little bit sad since its our last year together. One thing that I’m sure about is I will miss those lessons .
A suggestmet from a pupil of Arzu Teacher’s : go find her if you want your child to be successful in English .
Hi Arzu,
Thanks for sharing your views on teaching grammar and how you manage to evolve and bring new light into learning.
I feel so identified with your feelings of boredom when I taught those lists of rules. Sometimes I think it was more boring for me than for my learners.
Thank you for sharing some of your resources. There’s so much we can do to learn about the language avoiding those patterns that look like equations as if we were teaching math.
However I also agree with Naomi, and sometimes, especially adults, demand the rules, and worksheets, in which case I still do my best to provide practice through the use of pictures or stories and eventually I ask them to come up with the “equations”.
Just today as one of my learners was facing some challenges with confusing words, and verbs + ing/inf, we watched a video, we sang a song but she still wanted to be sure she had understood. So I asked her to write a few sentences for me to complete with the right forms. I intentionally made some mistakes and she was able to assess and give me feedback.
I would like to know if she won’t ask me for the patterns in the following classes though.
Loved reading your post
Thank you again
Hi Debbie,
Thanks a lot for your lovely comment. It’s a relief to know that I’m not the only one who feels like that when teaching grammar. I know students sometimes feel more comfortable and secure by studying only the grammar rules,but in your class you handled your student’s demand really well and gave her another option to try. I liked that 🙂
Arzu
That’s true, for many students grammar is boring. They can’t understand the rules in a practice That’s why they dont learn and don’t active at the lesson
Thanks for your game ideas I also teach grammar through some games, board games and songs Learners learn how to play without knowing that they learn grammar
Thank you for sharing such engaging activities! I try to use creative activities as well, as students immediately become interested. As far as songs are concerned, I ask my students at the beginning of each school year to make a list of their favourite songs. About the “Find someone who. . .” activity, I have always been afraid to use it in my large classes (up to 25 students). Twenty teenagers walking around the classroom may cause a lot of noise!
Unfortunately, there are always “colleagues” that have something bad to say about your teaching, only because their students are jealous of your creative teaching style!
Thank you for your post, Arzu! I love English Grammar, and teaching it is really interesting and engaging. I don’t like making my students do boring exercises in the course books. We usually play grammar games like “Charades”. For my younger learners, I cut sentences into pieces, put them into a balloon, blow it, and at our lesson then students work in pair, pop a balloon without their hands, and then make a sentence out of the small pieces.