"The history of language teaching is essentially the history of the claims and counterclaims for and against the teaching of grammar." (Scott Thornbury, 1999)
Please read "Does grammar teaching work?" by Michael Swan (http://www.mikeswan.co.uk/elt-applied-linguistics/teaching-grammar.htm), and "Seven Ways of Looking at Grammar" by Scott Thornbury.
What is your opinion about the importance of grammar in your ESL class? Please use some arguments we had discussed in class to support your viewpoint.
54 comments:
This is Ruby Lin
I believe teachers should not teach grammar at the first place. Students should start learning English through communication. Therefore, they learn how to listen and speak first.Then, reading and writing later on. For the fact that grammar is some abstract language, if you teach grammar at the beginning, students tend to loose their interest of learning the second language. Also, it is better to start to learn a second language if the kids are younger. Young kids would not able to understand the grammar point. For example, at their age, they don't need to know what is present simple tense, instead, they need to understand "do you drink" is an offer! It is what so called a communicative competence. The purpose of learning a language is through communication. You learn by doing it but not by studying it, and this is called experiential learning. Thus, i think we should definitely teach grammar when kids grow up.When kids have already known how to speak and communicate, then we teach them grammar after. In that way, they won't loose the interest of learning English either.
This is Julien Chang, the TA in this class. I really appreciate the efforts all the groups put in our class this week, which resulted in a fruitful enhabcement in knowledge and communicative ability!
One suggestion I have is that all of us should understand on what basis our argument relies. For example, from what perspective do you prefer item learning to fine-tuning learning? While giving your examples, please also try to explain your approach more closely.
But all the groups affiliated under both camps did a great job! Keep up your good work and I expect to listen to your future reports!
This is Sonja Li.
In an early phase of the childhood, children shall not learn grammar, and the main reason is based on “The Natural Order Argument.” There are universal principles of grammar with which we are born, and this is so-called a “mental grammar.” Speakers know the mental grammar in their brains innately. For example, if someone feels thirsty, the grammar module will be responsible for putting the words in the proper order by saying “I want a drink”, not “a want drink I.” For example, if someone wants to eat more than a banana, the sentence will be “I want to eat some bananas.” It is the mental grammar that uses the subject “I” and the verb “want” with the plural noun “bananas”, and add the adjective “some” instead of the article “a.”
When children in a late phase of the childhood, they start to write, they shall pay attention to their written skills. According to “The Rule-of-Law Argument,” a transmission view sees the role of education as the transfer of knowledge. Through a structured system and methodical steps, children can learn grammar rules well. For instance, the teacher can teach his or her students an affirmative sentence, transfer it to an interrogative sentence, and guide them to answer the questions from a short answer to a complete answer.
However, as to promoting children’s oral spoken, the teacher can make them learn the language by doing it, called experiential learning. Based on “The Knowledge-how Argument,” in order to stimulate children’s to use the language, they must have real experience outside the classroom, e.g., the teachers accompany his or her students to the supermarket and let them buy some food. They must have the ability to ask and calculate.
This is Nancy Hsieh.
In my opinion, teachers should teach grammar.
Although grammar has been regarded as the limit of learning acquisition, teachers can teach grammar by instructing students to familiar with it then apply it. Grammar as a skill can develop and reinforce English ability such as listening, speaking, writing and reading. Sentence structures are consisted by subjects, verbs, objects et cetera. If students understand grammar, they can know sentence structure easily. Furthermore they can understand its meaning and improve listening ability by learning grammar. For example, students understand singular and plural of noun like “book” and “books” to know the meaning of conversation. When students speak, they know how to speak by following grammar rules. Additionally students can read and comprehend the meanings by learning grammar. If students understand verb tenses, they can size chronological order when they read articles or books. If students want to write, they can write with correct word order by learning grammar. They can follow the order, subjects, verbs and objects. In short, grammar as a tool can help students learn language.
Instead of the side I was on my team members’ behalf in debate, I shift in favor of teaching English grammar. For the learners of English as a second language, the teaching of grammar occupies the essential and central part in the ESL classroom. For English language beginners, the sense of the English language and grammar share the same importance.
I think that ESL teachers can adopt “implicit” instruction to teach beginners grammar without focusing on the explanation of grammar rules since the teaching of grammar can proceed through implicit and explicit teaching. I associate the well-known Audio-Lingual Method (ALM), an oral-based approach, with the implicit teaching, which is closely related to “inductive” reasoning. As the ALM learners become familiar with word order and sentence patterns in the language classroom, they naturally acquire part of syntax; that is, grammar. The grammar rules are inferred from the examples presented first by the ALM teachers. Teaching grammar in implicit methods can avoid the beginners’ class as carrying a heavy “burden,” such as all the parts of speech and parts of sentences.
The teaching of grammar provides ESL learners with the structure of sentences they need for organizing and expressing their ideas to others clearly and efficiently. The learning of grammar enables ESL students to save more time when developing their listening and speaking skills as well as reading and writing abilities. The ESL class can be insufficient in some way without the knowledge about basic grammatical rules and patterns of the English language. To keep the balance for the development of students’ language competence, ESL teachers should pay more attention to teaching grammar by selecting appropriate methods.
This is Patty Lin
I think teachers should teach grammar.For example,Perhaps if students began their ESL school literacy but they had to use meta-linguistic skills to describe their language in use, the story would be somewhat different. Certainly there is a growing body of theory that such matacognitive activities help students think more deliberately about their use of language and the construction of meaning.
This is Cindy Wu.
In my opinion, English grammar is so important for learning English that teachers should teach it. If we want to speak, listen, read, write the English. This first we need to use grammar no matter any kinds. Moreover, i think teacher need to incorrect all students' English grammar when they make any mistakes. It's because students will use the wrong English grammar in every way. That will make them wrong more heavily.
This May Chu,
I support teaching grammar in class, because grammar is the base of language to compose communication; it doesn't work if people always automatically translate forign language by their own language grammar. Such as translate Chinese into English by Chinese grammar, it will just confused the listener and make speakers more and more impress the wrong way to speak English.
If people study English grammar well, they could make countries of the whole world to be connected by a language, because people would not need to guess your "free-talking" but understand well by undeniable and undoubted rules and meanings.
Teacher shouldn't teach grammar because it would discourage students, and limit their usage of a new language. Although there may be some mistakes occur, the students will right their wrongs by observing the teacher's usage of certain sentence patterns. According to the natural arguement, it says that the acquired language is better than the learned language. In other words, the person who learned a language means that person couldn't use it fluently. On the contrary, a person who acquired a language is indeed a native speaker of that language which means the first language. At the beginning stage, giving grammar rules will only put weigh and pressure onto students.
We were all born with a language system that we naturally learn how to communicate without grammar rules from our parents since we were young. We do not approach grammar until teenager, we usually learn grammar to write an essay or for academic purpose and not so much focus on communication. When we speak, we wouldn't emphazise on perferct grammar usage. If so, the language we spoke would sound strange and unnatrual.
This is Betty Yang. I think grammar should not be thought. We can learn English by talking with foreigner and learn the local language. If we do not know foreigners, we can listen some English programs. I want to Global Village Organization before, the teacher there don't recommend us to learn grammar. They think us should learn English by listening and speaking.
This is Eva Chen. 598202261
I don't think we have to teach any grammar. Because when we are talking, we can't stop to think what is next grammar rule i am going to use. no one will stay there and wait for you.
Take our mother language as an example, thought we never learned how to use Chinese grammar rule, we can use Chinese well.
If we gonna teach our student something, i would rather teach them how to speak English well than teach them how to use grammar well. I believe that if we can speak a understandable English then we can write sentences
This is Elly Chang
In my opinion, I think English Grammar is very important, although some people may say "Grammar is just a tool". However, of course every thing we can use is a tool, just like routines, people can also use spoons to eat noodles, but actually we have chopsticks and forks. Therefore, why don't people choose correct ways to do any thing?
This is Chloe Lin. 598201308
I think grammar is important to learning language. so I think it must to learn grammar. If you are talking with someone, the error grammar maybe will get accept, because people knows that what are you talking about. but if you are writing the paper or the email, the correct grammar will make people read fluently. So i think grammar is important for learning any language.
Here is Austina,
The basic part is grammr. it also important in our competition.
But sometime i would teach my students how to learn in comversation. To speak is the bast way of learning different languages.
This is Gary Hsu.
For me, speaking ability is more important than grammar skill, because people is born to speak to others, if you had a ability to speak second language, there are less obstacle for you to learn. But if you are not well in speaking, and good in writing; there may increase the difficulty when communicating with others. So although grammar is important, I thinks speaking skill will be more basically things when you are learning a second language. I choose not to teach in personal opinion.
This is Kimi
I think we should not to teach grammar. because there is more to knowing a language than knowing its grammar. It is one thing to know that Do you drink? is a present simple question. It is another thing to know that it can function as an offer. This simple observation is at the heart of what is now called the Communicative Approach, or Communicative Language Teaching (CLT). From the 1970s on, theorists have been arguing that grammatical knowledge (linguistic competence) is merely one component of what they call communicative competence. Communicative competence involves knowing how to use the grammar and vocabulary of the language to achieve communicative goals, and knowing how to do this in a socially appropriate way.
Two schools of thought emerged as to the best means of achieving the objectives of this communicative approach. Both schools placed a high premium on putting the language to communicative use. But they differed as to when you should do this. The first -- or shallow-end approach- might be summed up as the view that you learn a language in order to use it. That is: learn the rules and then apply them in life-like communication. The more radical line, however, is that you use a language in order to learn it. Proponents of this deep-end approach take an experiential view of learning: you learn to communicate by communicating. They argue that, by means of activities that engage the learner in life-like communication, the grammar will be required virtually unconsciously. Studying the rules of grammar is simply a waste of valuable time.
I suggest children should learn how to speak by communication. because when we young we learn how to speak Chinese through our environment. so if we can learn how to speak then to teach grammar. i think it's a better way for the children than teach grammar for them at the very beginning.
I think if we are learning a second language, we suppose to use grammar in order to make us get involve the situation quickly. I suggest we should both use it and don't use it.
Do not use it at the beginning, so we can learn to speak quickly. After we get familiar to the language and then we can start to learn grammar to know the language better.
This is Elsa Kao
I think teaching grammar is important, because we can learn how to write or speak a correct sentence.
Although we may rarely use grammar in our conversation, grammar is still important, and we can make our sentences more complete.
I also suggest children need to lean grammar, because grammar is a base way for learning English.
In my opinion, grammar is very important, but we can’t teach student to use the formula to learn it. Learning English is not as same as learning math, if we force students to memorize the formulas of English grammar, they will lost interests in English even give up learning it. However, we can use what we’ve learned in this course, like “deductive”, we give students the rule of grammar, and offer them many different examples of sentences, so that they can understand it easier.
With the widespread institution of standards and high-stakes tests, students are expected to recognize and use correct grammar. Teacher can no longer afford to assume that students acquire an accurate understanding of formal language structures through reading, writing, and speaking.
Furthermore, they also cannot assume that prescriptive or descriptive approaches, in isolation, are singularly effective. Rather, English and language arts teachers must embrace the notion that grammar instruction, like any other content area, should reflect current pedagogical approaches.
Grammar instruction should be tailor-made to meet the needs of students, and should weave both prescriptive and descriptive practices into relevant, meaningful instruction.
This is Nicole.
Grammar is an useage of using English correctly; however, teaching grammar on the class will reduce the interest of learning a language. without a savor, the class is dying as an old dead body, nothing funny, boring and scared.
Futhermore, when we were young, we learned our first language without grammar but conversation. conversation is the core of language, because we use language to express our throght. If we lost the confidence of learning language, we can not learn our first language well too. Lacking confidence on speaking will cause a phobias, such as Anthropophobia, Anglophobia and social phobia.
This is Kuan,
I agree that teaching grammar is important.In my opinion, if I never learning grammar, I don't know how to write a correct sentence. It will cause reader confuse what I am write. As the "fine-tuning argument", our propose of learning grammar is that explicit in English in written.
This is Jade,
From my personal perspective, I strongly recommend that we should teach English grammar in class. Even though the debate we had last week, our group was the side stood for NOT teaching grammar. As a student who study in a foreign language, learning it's grammar is crucial. Without the foundation of grammar or sentence structure, we are not able to have further idea of the language we are learning. Most likely,We will make common mistakes all the time, just because we are lack of the knowledge of grammar. Therefore, learning grammar is essential for people who studying foreign languages.
This is Nancy Shih
In my personal opinion, I think teacher should teach grammar in class. Because whatever we want to listening, talking, reading, and writing in English, we must use the correct grammar that people will understand what you want to expressing. Chinese is our mother tongue, and we live in Taiwan, so we always use Chinese to conversation with each other. But sometime we can't use English to talk with foreigners. Of course, we can't practice grammar anymore. So, I support to teach grammar in class.
This is Aster Chen
I think it is necessary to teach grammar but which way to teach is depending on teachers. Some teachers just give grammar formulas to students and force students to memorize those formulas. On the contrary, some teachers teach grammar in a interesting way.
This is Livy Wang
I think we have come a long way from the prescriptive tradition but not from the prescriptive approach. I feel that the grammar may be useful to a linguist or a scholar in his research but it is not useful at the beginning level.
For non-native English speaker, it might be useful to learn English grammar, so we can establish the knowledge of writing English essay or letters. Otherwise, it would be too hard to people writing a proper essay.
This is Amanda Ho
I think we have to teach grammar. Because our mother tongue is not English, we must have a lot of grammar errors when we are writing or speaking. By learning grammar, we can decrease the errors.
According I mentioned, teaching grammar is necessary for teachers to teach students.
I think teaching English grammar is very important, because without basic grammar it is difficult to express what is your idea.
This is Joyce. In my opinion, I think that grammar is really important. Because we have to communicate with people. We should learn grammar that we can use it more clearly.We also can let our article or sentence more content than others.
This is Sharine Wu.
In my opinion, teaching grammar is very important, and the main reason to learn languages is to communicate. From the intense debate last week, we would find that most of the groups "for" teaching grammar the winners. Important though, teaching grammar cannot be overdone, which means that we can teach a student tons of grammar, so that “he can recite long lists of irregular verbs but can’t ask for a cup of coffee. (Michael Swan mentioned in his article ‘"Does grammar teaching work?’)” If so, the teaching is ineffective. Learning grammar helps us use it more accurately so that we can understand more when communicating with others. We should know how to use grammar and put it into practice instead of swallow the whole grammar textbook.
Learning grammar is crucial for everything. It's like a structure build the complete sentence. If you don't know the rule of grammar, you can not express what you want to other people. And people may misunderstand you that cause problem on communicating. For example, there are many tenses in English when you use the wrong tenses, you could not describe the event clearly. Zia Lin
This is Molly. I think learning grammar is important, because it is a basic rule to extend the longer sentence. We couldn't rely on conversation to learn English. We may use another way to communicate with other people. For example, we may chat online with friends by typing. We need to understand the grammar rules to type the words for preventing ambiguous, and then our friends will understand what we want to express.
This is Eddy. I think that learning grammar is important. Grammar is the way in which sentences are structured and the language is formatted. I think it may be a bit boring to study correct grammar. But if you don’t know the rules of grammar, then you will never be able to communicate clearly and effectively in the English language.
This is Kimble,
I consider that learning grammar is essential. Grammar is really basic rule in language. When you are writing, you need to use grammar to support, word by word, phrase by phrase, until a complete sentence. If you want to talk to people, you also need to use grammar. Using grammar can allow you to speak more clearly, you can express want you want to say exactly, also your feeling and emotion.
This is Yoyo.
I agree that the grammar is important in English. People have to know how to make the sentence correctly, because if your grammar is wrong, and it may cause the different interpret. For example, if you don’t know the rule of grammar, you may make a strange sentence in your article. However, grammar is not easy for a second language leaner, because the systems between east and west are totally different. That’s why we say that learning English need some good materials and teachers to lead you to improve the English.
Hello Kimble,
I have same idea. Grammar is really important in English. A complete sentence is really help people to understand what you want to say.
Best,
Yoyo
Hi I am Carrie Cheng.
As our group discussed last week, a lot of group made good examples. And I really agree that if we want to explain something deeply or if we have to write research paper, then grammar is pretty important, if it is not, why should all teachers care about grammar so much?
But I think children don't need to learn grammar. Children always learn by imitation, so don't give them too much pressure, forcing them to remember the grammar rules isn't a good choice.
This is Zoey,
I think that the grammar is important for English because it is the basic rule of English. If you need to write some formal things, you need the grammar rules. It can help you have a good sentence structure. Even you want to talk to people; you also need some basic grammar. So I think teaching grammar is important.
This is Zoey,
I agree with you that grammar is so important. Because we need grammar no matter on speaking and writting.
hi Jane,
This is Zoey and I
agree with you. If we don't learn any grammar, we could not express what
we want to say clearly.
This is Micky, I personally think teachers should teach grammar altogether with other skills, such as writing and reading skills. Grammar won't benefit learning English until we teach students how to apply it to the use of English. For example, in my school which uses whole langauge approach, Chinse English teacher teaches grammar but foreign English teacher doesn't, where we don't expose too much grammar rules to students so that students are able to speak fluent English. What perturbs the teachers and parents are how students apply grammar skills they've learned on their writing. If we should teach grammar, sprial lesson plans are fundenmental and profitable for students learning grmmar, which means students might have to repeat learning the same grammar each year, but the level gets deeper and deeper by year. In this way, students will be able to review and learn new stuff year by year.
Hi, everyone. i am Summer. if i were a teacher, i would teach grammar. however, i do not think about grammar is the most important part of learning language. The reason why students want to learn second language is that they are interested in this language but definitely not grammar is interesting part of it. then, i would highly support that students can learn grammar from many aspects of language. Take for an example. students can learn basic grammar from conversation or reading articles. if teacher teaching difficult at first, students would not into learning at all.
Hi, I am Nomad. I think teaching English grammar is necessary for English larner. Those rules can help you when you have to speak English. Because you have to let people understand what are you talking about. Those English grammar skills also help you when you are writing. You can't use your body language when you are writing. The readers are confused by your poor grammar.
Summer, I agree with you when you say grammar is not the interesting part when learning second language. Grammar is many people thought the dullest part when learning English, therefore, it's teacher's job to make learning grammar interesting, especially young learners.
Nomad, I don't think we learn grammar because we need to speak correct English. I think as long as spoken English is comprehensible, it reaches its goal. English native speakers they don't learn grammar at all, they can still speak correct English. I think why we learn grammar is because we want to write correct English and grammar rules help us understand complicated sentences when we read novels, long stories, etc.
What do you think?
Hi,I'm Nomad
I'm totally agree Zoey' opinion because rules are very important.
Those rules and grammar are very important for English learner.
Hi,I'm Nomad.
I have same idea with Eddy. Grammar isn't interesting but its necessary.
I am Carol. I think teachers should teach grammar. During learning a language, we have to learn some skills such as listening, speaking, writing and reading. None of these skills is dispensable. I think grammar is very essential for every learner. Some students just want to improve their speaking skill and they just want to practice having conversation with their classmates in class. Although having a conversation, we seldom use difficult and correct grammar, grammar is important when we are writing and reading. We understand the context of articles by grammar and use grammar to organize articles.
In my opinion, I think grammar is very is important but it is boring. If you want to learn English well, you still need to learn grammar.
This is Vita
Sometimes when we too focus on the grammar, it’s a little bit boring, but it’s necessary and important to who is not native speaker. So, basically, I think grammar is important because it is the language that makes it possible for us to talk about language.
i think we should try to learn the grammar :
1.to improve our fluency and accuracy.
2.to check we understand a meaning of a grammar.
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This is Jeff 503061256:
I think that teacher should not teach grammars at the first time.
Because as for my opinion, I think the most important things to learn a foreign language are listening and speaking. I think the main purpose for students to learn
a foreign language is to communicate with others.
Due to this opinion, I think that teachers should teach their students how to listen and how to speak. Of course, the most important thing is require them to memorize vocabularies. Students can try their best to figure out the grammar rules via listening and speaking.
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