Materials for Teaching Grammar

Materials for Teaching Grammar

by Eriberta Alcaide

​OBJECTIVES

​a. select appropriate materials for the specific competencies/macro skills; b. design and/or improve (existing) contextualized and localized materials for the identified K to 12 English competencies; and

c. produce language learning materials specific for the teaching of grammar

Open Ended

What is grammar>

​What is Grammar?

​- the system of a language

​- adds meanings that are not easily inferable from the immediate context

​- is used to fine-tune the meanings we wish to express

Open Ended

Why should we teach grammar?

​Why should we teach grammar?

1.     The sentence-machine argument

2.     The fine-tuning argument

3.     The fossilization argument

4.     The advance-organizer argument

5.     The discrete item argument

6.     The rule-of-law argument

7.     The learner expectations argument

Open Ended

How should we teach grammar?

​Some Criteria

​a the age and level of the learners who will be using the materials;

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b the extent to which any adopted methodology meets the expectations of a) learners, b) teachers, c) the educational culture within which the learners and teachers work;

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c the extent to which any contexts and co-texts which are employed in order to present the grammar area(s) will be of interest to learners;

​Some Criteria

​d the nature of the grammatical areas to be dealt with, in terms of their form, their inherent meaning implications (if any), and how they are used in normally occurring spoken and / or written discourse;

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e the extent to which any language offered to the learners for them to examine the grammar used represents realistic use of the language, and the extent to which activities for learners to produce language containing the target grammar will result in meaningful utterances, and ones which bear at least some resemblance to utterances which the learners would be likely to want to produce in their own, non-classroom discourse;

​Some Criteria

​f any difficulties that learners can be expected to encounter when learning these areas of grammar, especially with regard to any similarities or differences in form, function, and form / function relationship, between the target language and their mother tongue.