Page 12 - HOW TO TEACH GRAMMAR

Now that you have read some students’ compelling reasons for teaching grammar, get together with
a peer and discuss your point of view over theses opinions. Do you agree with them? Why? If you do
not agree, why not?

Why Teach Grammar?
Ahead of his talk at IATEFL 2012 with co-author Catherine Walter about ways of linking grammar with
vocabulary, pronunciation and skills, Michael Swan looks at why you should teach your students
grammar.

People probably argue more about grammar than about anything else in language teaching. Research
and theory have a good deal to tell us in this area. So, does common sense.

1. Regularities

Languages have regularities (if you don’t like the word ‘rules’) in the ways they shape and organize
words for various reasons. If you’re not aware (consciously or unconsciously) of these regularities you
may not be able to understand language successfully, or structure it so as to make yourself understood.
2. Can you pick them up?

Mother tongue: yes, of course, we all do.

Foreign language: some yes, some no, some maybe. (If you could pick all of them up, immigrants
would speak like native speakers.) It depends which regularities and where.
3. Which?

▪ Some regularities are so obvious and simple they can easily be picked up from experience.
English SVO word order. Japanese question formation (put ‘ka’ at the end of the equivalent
statement).

▪ Some regularities are too complex to be fully learnable in a reasonable time by any approach.
English noun compounding or article use. Japanese topic/subject marking.

▪ Some are in between. English question formation. German word order.

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