Teaching Grammar

The butcher's got some meat. He hasn't got any lamb.

Contrasting sentence pairs have long been used to focus attention on grammatical structure. Classic coursebooks which adopted this approach include L. G. Alexander's First Things First and Bernard Hartley's Streamline Departures. Modern coursebooks also use contrasting sentence pairs to focus on structure, although the structural syllabus is now more likely to be combined with a functional syllabus.

Click here for the two definitions.

A. I'd like some bacon, please.
B. I'm sorry, we haven't got any.

The grammar demonstration dialogue has been criticised for promoting "structure speech". However, a skilled coursebook writer can find natural settings in which both structure and meaningful exchange can be practised.

See, for example, the language laboratory drills for Robert O'Neill's Kernel Lessons Plus. A courtroom drama provides a memorable context for presenting and practising the Third Conditional:

JUDGE: If you hadn't been driving carelessly, you wouldn't have hit the bus stop.
ACCUSED: If I hadn't been late, I wouldn't have been driving dangerously.

Here grammar is combined with a situation and made more memorable through strong characterisation.

I'm going to check the flights, then I'm going to book the hotel, pack a towel...

Some situations, such as making future plans, naturally invite repetition of a grammatical structure. Skillfully produced materials should, however, avoid the "Tum-Te-Tum effect" of structure speech.

For example, when presenting prepositions of place:

I'm going to put the cassette tape into the cassette player.

The teacher's actions provide a concrete context for the language being presented.

The sun shines more in Spain than in England.

Contextualisation is important here. Notice the role played by "knowledge of the world" in appreciating the context. Texts – for example, Level A1 readers or other teaching materials – should give learners from different cultural backgrounds an equal challenge in understanding the relationships between syntax and functions such as contrast and comparison.

In his famous introduction to "the Novish language", a simulation designed to expose trainee teachers to the difficulties of learning a new language, Julian Dakin asks: "Can language learning proceed without conceptual awareness and knowledge of culture?"

"Some" is used when the quantity is definite for plural or uncountable nouns.

The danger of explanations arises when too little time is given to practising the language accurately and responding under the pressure of a reasonably quick response. Nevertheless, grammar practice books containing explanations remain extremely popular. Examples include:

Basic Grammar in Use with Answers and CD-ROM – Raymond Murphy [20/09/2010]

Essential Grammar in Use (with Answers and CD-ROM) – Raymond Murphy, self-study reference and practice book [26/03/2015]

English Grammar in Use (with Answers and Interactive eBook) – Raymond Murphy, self-study reference and practice book for intermediate learners of English [30/07/2015]

I would highly recommend Meaning and the English Verb by Geoffrey Leech [09/09/2004] to teachers who want their diagrams to work conceptually.

I have seen Cuisenaire rods placed on timelines to cue the use of auxiliary verbs in producing negative and interrogative forms. For these representations to work well, a good knowledge is needed of how time is represented in functional contexts and of the syntax needed to match it.

For example, a future plan is more frequently represented through the Present Continuous or a "going to" form than through the Future Simple with will.

I have often used timelines to present the difference between the Past Simple and Present Perfect tenses. However, explanations of use depend on semantics – the meaning of lexical items – as well as syntax.

Diagrams are most useful when there is a relatively direct relationship between the representation and the meaning, as when defining a physical object or representing a clear relationship in time. Their interpretation can become more complicated when meaning changes according to context.

With the Internet, Smart TVs and electronic whiteboards available in many schools, obtaining "all the drawings and pictures you need" is much easier than it used to be.

For advice on using pictures in the language classroom, see Pictures for Language Learning by Andrew Wright [1990].

If you do not have ready access to pictures and need to improve your improvisation skills – as I did when I was teaching on the edge of the Sahara Desert in 1973! – try Stick Figure Drawing for Language Teachers by Francis C. Johnson [1971], ISBN 9780602215491.

There are several reasons for avoiding or restricting translation.

[A] If the class is drawn from several different language backgrounds, translation into one particular language may irritate some learners rather than impress them.

[B] If a direct-method approach is feasible, as it is likely to be in smaller groups where classroom management is easier, translation may be unnecessary.

Usually, if the aim is to teach oral English, you do not want learners' heads buried in bilingual dictionaries. Excessive translation can encourage language interference and make it more difficult to focus attention on the syntax of the language being taught.

There is a market in many countries for books which explain how English grammar works in learners' own languages. A monolingual setting may favour the use of the student's mother tongue as a teaching aid, although it may also strengthen language interference.