Dr. Madhuri Gokhale works as an Assistant Professor, Fergusson College with Pune, India.
One of the essential aspects of the teaching of any language is the teaching of its grammar. Ur (1988) defines grammar as ‘the way a language manipulates and combines words in order to form longer units of meaning’ (p.4). There has been a lot of discussion on whether grammar can really be taught or should it be caught by the students. However, there is a general agreement among teachers that a systematic and deliberate teaching of grammar is essential to master a language. This paper focuses on the teaching of grammar at the undergraduate level in the Indian context. Let us begin by talking about the way grammar is generally taught in the Indian classrooms.
Grammar is taught in India right from the first standard to the last year of undergraduate studies. Thus, every student has to learn grammar for about fifteen long years. However, it is observed that in spite of teaching grammar so extensively, students are unable to communicate in English well. Students suffer from English phobia and join courses to develop their linguistic competence even after completing their graduation. Thus, there seems to be a lot of ‘teaching about the language’ rather than ‘teaching the language’ in the Indian context.
Generally, the teaching of grammar has been regarded as a highly structure based and formal activity in the Indian context. Thus, in most cases, grammar is exclusively taught for its own sake. The general pattern for the teaching of grammar is to give some rules using a lot of technical terminology, talk about the exceptions to the rules, ask students to solve some exercises that are often mechanical and monotonous and this is the end of the teaching of grammar. Even if the students’ performance in a grammar test is fairly good, there is no guarantee of the fact that he would be able to speak and write in English well. Thus, it can be said that in most cases, grammar is taught as an end in itself rather than as a means to an end. Ideally, the teaching of grammar must help our students to produce utterances that exemplify the grammatical rules, but it seems that generally the teacher focuses on teaching the rules of grammar and ignores the communicative aspect of language.
One of the major drawbacks in the teaching of grammar seems to be that it is taught and examined in isolation. It is not taught with reference to a particular context and in relation to language skills. In most cases, the teacher centred approach is adopted while teaching grammar. Since students have to play the role of passive recipients, they feel bored in a grammar class. Naturally most of the students have unpleasant memories of their grammar classes. Students generally dislike grammar as they find it drab and difficult. There is a tendency to believe in the notion that all learning should be serious in nature and so students do not get an opportunity to have fun, laugh with peers and develop a sense of camaraderie with the teacher in a grammar class. In most cases, the deductive approach is used while teaching grammar and generally Standard British English is used as a teaching model.
This approach to the teaching of grammar seems to be linguistically unsound and pedagogically undesirable. It is felt that the teachers of English in India need to seriously think of how they can encourage their students to come out of their shell and enrich their communicative competence as opposed to mere grammatical competence. This paper suggests some of the techniques for the teaching of grammar so as to make the study of grammar an enriching and pleasurable activity for our students.
There is a need to adopt the learner centred approach while teaching grammar. Nagaraj (1996) argues that in the learner centred approach, the teacher is ‘just a facilitator- a person who manages the environment and material which will help the students to become autonomous’ (p. 44). It must be remembered that though the student is at the centre in this approach, the teacher’s role is also very crucial. The active involvement of the learners in different activities can help the students to grasp grammar in the true sense of the term.
It is true that it is necessary for the students to understand the rules in order to develop their grammatical competence. However, instead of providing the rules in a readymade manner, the teacher must try to channelise the students mind. In other words, the teacher must follow the inductive approach to the teaching of grammar. For example, instead of giving the structure of the present continuous tense as am/as/are+V-ing, the teacher can write five sentences on the blackboard and ask students to find out if there is anything common to all those five sentences. This kind of puzzle solving activity becomes interesting for students and they get the happiness of deriving the rule as well.
The main purpose of teaching grammar at the undergraduate level is to provide remediation as there is not much ‘new grammar’ to be taught at this level. As said before, since students are not able to produce grammatically correct sentences in connected texts, there is a need to make a journey from the teaching of formal grammar to the teaching of functional grammar. It must be remembered that the ultimate aim of teaching grammar at the undergraduate level is to enable students to take part in communicative interaction and so an attempt must be made to bring grammar closer to students’ life. Context plays a very significant role in the teaching of grammar. Topics that can give an opportunity to the students to practice a particular grammatical item must be given and students can be motivated to speak on those topics. The following examples reveal how a teacher can move from the teaching of formal grammar to the teaching of functional grammar.
– After teaching the simple past tense, students can be asked to speak on topics like ‘The Happiest Day of my Life’ or ‘the First Day of my college’.
– After discussing the rules of the active-passive voice, the teacher can ask students to write a paragraph on ‘How is tea prepared at home’.
– In order to give practice to the students in the use of present continuous tense, some sentences describing different interesting actions can be written on the slips of paper. A student can be asked to act out a command and other students can be asked to identify the action that is being performed.
– In order to give them practice to master the structure of the simple future tense, the teacher can form small groups in the class. One member of every group can be asked to play the role of a fortune teller and others can ask him questions. For example, questions like ‘When will I get a good job?’ or ‘Will I get a lot of money in my life?’ would help the students to understand the use of the simple future tense.
– After teaching the interrogative form, students can be asked to write down a few questions that they can ask a famous player, a politician, a hundred years old man or a film star.
– Students can be asked to make a list of items they would have to carry in order to go on a study tour for a day. . This can give them in using indefinite articles as well as the quantifiers. For example, a mat, some tea, an umbrella, a notebook, a pen, a pullover, some money, etc.
A dictionary can be used as an effective tool for the teaching of grammar. A dictionary gives us usage which is the basis of grammar and so students must be motivated to refer to a dictionary in the class. For example, students must be made aware of the fact that while writing a paragraph, if the students are not sure about which preposition they should use after a word like ‘different’, it is a dictionary that can guide students to arrive at the appropriate answer, as the dictionary gives us the information that the prepositions ‘to’, ‘from’ and ‘than’ can be used after the word ‘different’.
Since the teacher’s main aim in teaching grammar at the undergraduate level is not to make students familiar with the technical terminology, but to make it sure that they are able to participate in different day to day situations, it is felt that minimum technical terminology should be used in the classroom. It is often said that it is easy to teach in a difficult manner, but it is very difficult to teach in an easy manner and this applies to the teaching of grammar as well. The teacher must develop the skill of simplification for teaching grammar effectively. The use of simple diagrams can help the students in understanding the rule. For example, while teaching the present perfect continuous tense, the following diagram can be drawn.
The diagram makes it clear to the students that this tense is used in English when the action begins in the past, continues in the past and also continues in the present time. The use of simple pictures can also prove to be useful in understanding the rules. For example, while explaining the difference between ‘between’ and ‘among’, a picture of a boy standing between two boys and a picture of a boy sitting among several boys can be shown to the students. It is felt that the use of simple diagrams and pictures can facilitate the learning of grammar to a large extent.
Rather than teaching rules in isolation and then giving examples, it is felt that grammatical patterns should be introduced if possible in contrast with other patterns. For example, the simple past tense and the present perfect tense can be taught simultaneously. There is a tendency to give isolated sentences in a grammar test. For example, students are asked to fill in the appropriate form of the verb ‘go’ in a sentence like ‘My sister _______ for a walk every day’. The problem with this kind of question is that multiple answers are possible and it fails to test whether the students have understood subtle differences of meaning .It is felt that if some kind of context is provided to the students, it would lead to a better understanding of the rules of grammar. For example, ‘My sister did not like to do any physical exercise and so she suffered from joint pain. Yesterday the doctor advised her to do some exercise every day and now she _______ for a walk every day’. (go)
Audio visual aids have a mass appeal and they should be used in a grammar class to sustain the students’ interest in the learning process. For example,
-After teaching the imperative form, the teacher can show a short film to the students in which the imperative form is prominently used.
-In order to give practice to the students in the use of pronouns, students can be asked to bring their family photograph to the class and describe it.
-An interview of a well-known film star can be recorded by the teacher and shown to the students on television in the class. Later on, the teacher can ask them some questions to give them practice in using the indirect speech.
-Songs are one of the most enchanting resources that can be easily used in a language classroom. For example, a teacher can pick up a song which makes use of several adjectives. A sheet can be given to the students on which the poem is written, and the students can be asked to listen to the poem three times and fill in the missing adjectives on the sheet. Later on, there can be a discussion on the possibilities of using different adjectives in the context of the poem. For example, the teacher can ask students to listen to the following famous song from ‘A Sound of Music’.
‘Bright copper kettles and warm woollen mittens,
Brown paper packages tied up with strings, these are a
Few of my favourite things’.
It is necessary to provide greater exposure to the students in the target language and so the use of mother tongue should be avoided in a grammar class. It is felt that it is essential to motivate our students to think in the target language itself. Group discussions and the activity of role playing must be frequently conducted in the class. For example, in order to give practice to the students in the use of the interrogative form, students can be asked to imagine a situation in which a murder has taken place in their neighbourhood and one student who plays the role of a detective should ask questions to others.
Literature can also be used as one of the powerful resources to teach grammar. Generally, in the Indian context it is believed that only a language teacher must pay attention to the development of students’ grammatical competence. However, since literature can work as a powerful pedagogical tool to stimulate the students’ interest and provide foundation for language development, it should be used to develop students grammatical competence. For example, while teaching the story ‘The Greedy old woman and the Lime Tree’, the teacher can draw students’ attention to the use of the imperative form.
There is a common perception that all learning should be serious in nature. However, for effective learning the teacher should create moments of laughter in the class. A well known philosopher Aristotle has rightly pointed out that ‘That is truly learnt that is learnt with pleasure’. Different games can be conducted in the class to teach grammar as they are interesting, amusing and at the same time challenging. The spirit of competition generated by a game can make them participate enthusiastically in the activity. For example,
-Students can be divided in groups of twenty each. Every student can be given a slip on which a word is written. The group can be asked to form a grammatically correct sentence using those words.
-A good actor in the class can be asked to mime some adjectives (for example, ‘surprised’, ‘naughty’, ‘fantastic’ etc) and other students can be asked to identify the adjective.
– The class can be divided in two groups. One student from one group can be asked to write the name of any renowned person in his notebook. Students from the other group can be asked to guess the person’s name by asking yes/no questions like ‘Is he an artist?’ or ‘Is he from India?’. An activity of this kind can help students to learn the formation of yes/no questions.
A teacher who teaches grammar must revisit the same topic after a few days. Different challenging activities must be conducted in the class from time to time in order to give adequate practice to the students in the topics that have already been taught. For example,
-Students can be given some headlines from the newspaper and they can be asked to insert articles wherever necessary.
-In order to provide practice to the students in the use of ‘should’ and ‘must’, students can be asked to imagine and write ten sentences that a doctor may tell his patient so that his health remains good.
– Jumbled sentences can be given to the students and they can be asked to form a grammatically correct sentence.
Due to the rapid expansion of English to different parts of the world, the non-native varieties of English have gained recognition and they are considered to be worthy of study in their own right. English satisfies both the global and local needs of Indians, and hence it’s a glocal language in India. Today Indian English is considered to be one of the important second language varieties and research is being undertaken to identify the patterns in Indian English at various levels of linguistic analysis. For example, there is a tendency in Indian English to use sentences like ‘He has submitted the documents yesterday’ or ‘My friend is learning music since 1997’. Such sentences are marked as wrong by the teachers in the examination papers. In the absence of a comprehensive grammar book of Indian English, right now teachers in English have to follow the British model. However, the teachers must recognize the ‘ecological validity’ of Standard Indian English, and while teaching grammar they can initially passively accept sentences of this kind. In other words, the absolutist concept of ‘correct English’ or ‘proper English’ should be replaced by a pragmatic approach. In an undergraduate class in India, generally there are around 120 students and it is very difficult for the teacher to correct all errors simultaneously. So it is necessary to make a distinction between ‘errors to be tolerated’ and ‘errors to be rectified’, and it is felt that if students use the patterns that are a part of Standard Indian English, they should be tolerated by the teachers. It is necessary for the teachers to develop a sense of respect towards Indian English and come out of the ‘linguistic schizophrenia’ , so that Indian English can be used as a suitable model for teaching in the near future in the Indian context.
It is clear from the above discussion that teaching grammar is not just a simple matter of explaining rules to the students, but it is a much more complicated and challenging task. It is necessary for the teacher to employ different strategies for teaching grammar effectively. If we create opportunities for students to learn grammar in different contexts in class, there is a possibility that our students would learn grammar well. It is hoped that Indian teachers of English would think of fascinating techniques to enrich students’ grammatical competence as well as communicative competence. Since teaching is a developing art, every teacher must use his /her ‘individual talent’ to make the learning of grammar an enjoyable and enriching experience for our students. I would like to conclude this paper with the suggestion made by Good and Brophy (2003). They comment, ‘The… perfect teacher does not exist. All of us can refine skills, discard ineffective tactics and develop new ones. None of us will ever be a perfect teacher…but all of us can become better teachers than we presently are’ (p. 54).
References
Good, T. and Brophy, J. (1986), EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY: A REALISTIC APPROACH, Longman, New York.
Malinowski, B.M. (1989), ‘Getting the Students to Talk’, FORUM, Volume 27, Number 4, pp. 43-45.
Nagraj, G. (1996), ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING: APPROACHES, METHODS, TECHNIQUES, Orient Longman Pvt. Ltd, Hyderabad.
Ur, P. (1988), GRAMMAR PRACTICE ACTIVITIES: A PRACTICAL GUIDE FOR TEACHING, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
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absolutely right. Learning need not be serious in nature. however though many teachers agree upon it, they do not seem to be implementing this activity based method in a class due to various reasons like strength in the class….
A thought-provoking article on the stereotyped methods to teach grammar.Welldone!
While teaching grammar in the class for examle present continuous tense, it is better to crate situations in the class and take sentences out of those situations fir example teacher shold ask one student to drink water from a water bottle and while the student is still drinking water tell the sentence “Amit is drining wate.” and then write the sentence on the black board. This will create a sense of using the language in actual conversation.