Reading about grammar and the ups and downs to teaching it seems like an endless fight between supporters and non-supporters of grammar teaching. Chapter two in the Weaver textbook is a good chapter to introduce the reader to the multiple amounts of research that has been done on the effectiveness of teaching grammar. I have just completed the Grammar for Teachers course in the spring, and a lot of what Weaver mentioned really brought me back to when I was a student being taught traditional grammar. Grammar to me is like when I took math in high school. It's super hard, but when you get it, you feel extremely smart for understanding something that is difficult. One thing my grammar teacher said to me that I won't forget is "teaching grammar is easy, but putting it into practice is the hard part because people do not speak and write according to the rules of grammar." In the early portion of the chapter, Weaver hinted that the battle between traditional grammar and then teaching grammar according to usage is a hard distinction to make. On page 10, Weaver points out a sentence where broken down into the deep structure the word tired is acting as the verb, but on the surface level of the sentence, tired is acting as an adjective. This example to me is a perfect reason why teaching grammar is so controversial. How can we teach our students the parts of speech and how they function if the form and function are always changing?
As a future ESL teacher, I find grammar very useful and I put my best effort into learning grammar for my future students, and not just for the 3.0 I needed out of the class because when teaching ESL students, they need to be taught specific grammar points. Also, when a student is learning English he/she will most likely have specific grammar questions that I will be expected to answer. Sure grammar teaching is hard and controversial, but there is good place for it in education, and it should not be ignored.
No comments:
Post a Comment