The Grammar-Focused Lesson

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Parent Category: Articles

Category: Four Skills

Written by Chris Cotter

A lot is required for students to successfully acquire grammar, regardless of a teacher's approach. Students often complain and/or lose interest when the teacher spends too much time on the target language, yet they will also continue to make mistakes and demonstrate poor fluency skills with the new grammar without the additional practice. Students will also continue to make mistakes with previously learned language without review. And this seems to be universally true for all levels and backgrounds of students.

The teacher should realize, though, that it often takes more than one lesson and a handful of practice exercises to successfully acquire any new grammar point. Students learn at different speeds, for example, may approach lessons with less effective learning habits, or may even possess fossilized mistakes, just to name a few possibilities that affect how quickly and effectively they acquire the new language.

The teacher should also realize that some grammar doesn't always exist in the L1 of the students. For example, Japanese doesn't have the future perfect tense, and so this language point often takes longer to acquire. What's more, some grammar exists in both English and the students' L1, but it gets used differently or more/less frequently. And then there is the case of English not having an equivalent.

Some teachers shy away from a grammar-focused lesson, and instead allow students a lot of conversation practice with some correction here and there. Unfortunately, simply providing students with the chance to speak doesn't constitute successful language learning, as students won't consider the importance of accuracy skills for effective communication, for example. Nor will they be able to identify mistakes with form, meaning, and use. They also won't know how to apply the language to new contexts and situations. And although not every lesson will have a singular focus on grammar, there are many opportunities to get students to correctly use the language.

For the most part, students complain about grammar when the activities aren't interesting, challenging, and/or don't allow for greater freedom to use and personalize the lesson. Students aren't educators, and so they fail to realize that they might possess passive knowledge, not active knowledge. In other words, they might understand the grammar, but cannot use it with consistent accuracy and fluency. This is especially true in the middle stages of the lesson when they can work through controlled tasks, such as fill-in-the-blank activities, matching exercises, or unscrambling sentences. However, students will not be able to use the language flexibly, which means being able to apply the grammar to a wider range of situations and contexts.

In the lessons, explicit explanations prove beneficial. The teacher briefly explains the reason for reviewing a grammar point or repeating an activity. When students realize that they yet possess a lot of mistakes or use the language slowly with a lot of false starts, most of the class will readily agree to the additional practice.

For example, let's say the students have just worked through a matching exercises to practice tag questions. Student A had read a sentence and student B had added the appropriate question tag.

Teacher: Everyone did well with the exercise, but I still heard quite a few mistakes. A lot of you also took a long time to add the correct question tag. As we have talked about, speaking slowly gets in the way of successful communication. So let's try the same activity again, but switch partners and see how many sentences you can get through in one minute.

The same problems hold true for previously studied grammar too. Students should encounter, review, and use the grammar from past lessons again and again, even when it means students say "I know this" and "We have already studied this." Again, they don't realize how difficult it might be to use the language quickly, smoothly, and without mistakes. However, not only does repeated review help retention, but it also shows that students need to commit the language to their long-term memories, not learn enough to simply navigate a day's activities only.

As such, the teacher will want to periodically review past grammar, through either a deductive or an inductive approach. A deductive approach will have the teacher re-explain the grammar for review; and an inductive approach will have the students independently rediscover the grammar.

Not only does it usually take more than one lesson to acquire the new grammar point, but the teacher may have needed to progress to the next stage of the lesson, even when students couldn't perfectly use the language. In future lessons, the teacher can review and offer continued practice. The teacher can also take advantage of teachable moments and use ten or fifteen minutes to review previously-learned language whenever the need arises.

Again, explicit explanations help the students understand the reason to revisit some language.

Teacher: Last week we studied tag questions. In my experience, because students often struggle to use this language quickly, let's spend about ten minutes on a quick review.

And lastly, the teacher can and should assign homework. There are worksheets with controlled, discrete-item exercises, such as fill-in-the-blank questions, which focus on accuracy with the language form. However, there is also more open-ended homework, which will provide students with an additional opportunity to personalize the language. For example, the teacher can assign a short, half-page essay that answers a question with the grammar point, and this will also allow the students to use other grammar and vocabulary, linking language, and so on.

As a final word, grammar is an important component in language lessons. It shouldn't be considered boring or overwhelming, provided that:

1: There is a balance between accuracy and fluency skills.
2: The activities engage and challenge the students.
3: Students have enough opportunities to use the language in free(r) activities.
4: Grammar points are revisited in many ways so students acquire the language at their own pace.
5: The teacher incorporates other course objectives; every lesson should not be grammar focused.