Grammar: the accuracy of calling its teaching an art Grammar learning and the implicit comprehension of language patterns

 https://eltnews.gr/post/grammar-the-accuracy-of-calling-its-teaching-an-art/

Considering one of the definitions of art as “the process of making the familiar unfamiliar”, grammar teaching can justifiably be paralleled to art. Grammar estranges language, it makes it look unfamiliar. For us, teachers, it takes long and intensive training to teach grammar accurately and comprehensively, and we need to instruct grammar in a way that learners want to remain engaged.

Learners’ attitudes and responses to the scientific side of language

Students respond to grammar defensively: we observe how they silently withdraw and how they reluctantly, or minimally engage to grammar activities. Grammar seems to be the point where language makes no sense. Especially English grammar. Jonathan  Rigdon (1903) voiced the complexity of English grammar early on: “he who can analyse the English sentence is well prepared to analyse anything else”.

Also confounding can be the appropriate timing: The time by when learners get the grip of a grammar pattern and the reasoning that undergirds it, seems arbitrary to teachers. It is, to a massive degree. Direct and explicit input of the grammar is integral but sadly not sufficient. The first encounter with an explicit layout of the theory and the patterns of a grammar rule, is bound to be disappointing. Learners will end up with questions for which teachers cannot provide answers. Because there is no reasonable explanation. This disheartening stage is a first step to fuller comprehension-to language acquisition. Learners thereupon know how to decode it once they encounter it in context-or roughly recognize it. The more frequent encounters and the more variable the context, the higher the possibility for the learners to grasp the rule in full range. At some point, learners pick up the mechanism, but this point may be during the instruction of another, overlapping or random grammar chunk. Each learner develops their unique connections to build language comprehension, but they are about to converge at some point. There needs to be perseverance and variety of the methods employed to teach grammar. Sometimes, learners respond to communication-oriented teaching, and sometimes the only road to understanding is grammar-based, text-based instruction.

Poor grammar abashes the speaker, as it conveys that there is no control over the talk,-therefore-thought. Sadly, little can be done to recover this insufficiency when it is mostly needed. R. Patterson (1907) said that “nothing is more evident than the carelessness in expression [as it] indicates carelessness in thought”. 

  

Smoothing out grammar comprehension

For instance, learners are more likely to come to terms with the passive voice when it’s time for them to learn the causative form, or at least, the understanding of the former is massively (and inexplicably) facilitated.  The mastery stage is taking long to be observed and, relapse is also a probability. 

Alternation of challenging and low-difficulty grammar tasks is suggested to retain motivation levels high. When teaching a grammar chunk for the first time, un-burden the focus of the learner from other memory challenges: provide the chunk within comprehensible vocabulary context, so that the effort is directed to the grammar pattern. On a subsequent encounter, and once the pattern is relatively attained, then we can level up the context.

Little, if any, should be taken for granted. Differentiation has become an essential in all teaching contexts today. That said, when teaching transitive and intransitive verbs, we should remember that a percentage of the learners won’t remember what a verb is, in the first place. Address it, preferably in an implicit way, or make sure it is included at some point in your presentation and bring it to the attention of the learners who you know need it-but won’t ask it.

Straight into the production. Most learners will do everything to postpone language production and employment of grammar patterns they’ve just encountered. As teachers, we know that the time when they feel mastery and control over the pattern is never coming. The reality being so, include activities that ask for language production, at least low energy. Scaffolding activities from the first day will only benefit learners, as experience and practice transcends theory, it is an essential part of the uses of difficulty.

Conclusion

A.L. Bartlett (1899) postulated it accurately when concluding that “[it is] only by repetition that the principles of grammatical construction become familiar and only by constant and careful exercise that the use of good English becomes habitual”. As a final remark, as teachers we have to aim high and be intent on helping learners become articulate and fully autonomous speakers.

References

Bartlett, A.L. (1989). The Essentials of Language and Grammar. Silver, Burdett and Company.

Patterson, R. (1907). English Grammar. American Annals of the Deaf. Nov. 1907, Vol. 52 (5), p.p. 422-438. Gallaudet University Press. https://www.jstor/stable/44464130.  

Rigdon, J. (1903). Grammar of the English Sentence. Hinds, Noble & Eldredge. 

© Marina Siskou, 

Athens, 2023 

The article was used for exclusive publication in the ELT News ©

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