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Date Posted: 14:19:13 04/11/07 Wed
Author: Houssam Zahreddine
Subject: Re: Task One Group Three
In reply to: Adriana 's message, "Task One Group Three" on 06:07:08 04/08/07 Sun

The Importance of Teaching Contextualized Grammar

It is often said by language professionals that one of the most dreadful aspects of teaching English as a second language concerns grammar. Students will often feel unmotivated if exposed to the subject in a purely structural manner, while, on the other hand, although excessively diluting explicit grammar within the lesson may relieve tensions, this strategy tends to have students abstain from the subject, putting it off to a later imaginary time, which never arrives. Many would say then that the best solution therefore would be to have a balance between these two extremes. However, by doing this, one would be simply balancing out the problem, instead of proposing a real solution to the issue. The truth is that grammar may cease being a problem if one keeps in mind the importance of contextualization when teaching the subject.
When comparing the grammar of the English language to the grammar of a Romantic language (e.g. Portuguese), it is fairly easy to realize that the former is more simplified in regards to the latter, in that it contains less inflections and verb tenses/aspects, often leading us to the conclusion that grammar in English is more homogenously systematic and easier to manage than grammars in other languages. Due to this, teachers have the tendency of wanting to teach it to their students in the form of a structural tool, which can be used to construct error-free sentences. However, this approach usually results in lessons in which students are over-exposed to rules throughout the entire time, without getting the chance to relate the subject at hand to their personal lives. Students tend to be bored, and do not feel motivated to produce language, either due to fear of making mistakes, or due to the fact that the lexicon used in the class is meaningless within their lives, for, in such classes, the vocabulary used serves the sole purpose of conveying grammatical structures, thus becoming, grammaticalized lexis, as opposed to meaningful lexis. This, however, does not mean that the teacher has to cease teaching grammar. He/she has to find a way to relate the subject being taught to the lives of the students, so that these firstly feel as an important and integral part of the classroom, and secondly, feel motivated to produce discourse which is meaningful in their lives, and for such end, incorporate the structure being taught as a means to their production of speech.
Other teachers are so intimidated by the idea of teaching grammar that they abstain from the practice for fear of losing the students’ attention. As a counter tactic, they incorporate several vocabulary-driven games, such as hangman, within the classroom routine in order to keep students entertained. However, once this approach is used, teachers cease being teachers, taking on the role of entertainers, and students end up paying a high price because they now have tons of vocabulary, without having the knowledge of how to form even the simplest sentences. This kind of problem becomes further aggravated when the vocabulary being taught is randomly chosen by the teacher, in which case the student ends up either having tons of meaningless vocabulary from various different semantic fields which have no relevance to his/her life whatsoever, or, forgetting most of it because all of this irrelevant vocabulary cannot be coherently put into strings of words which would otherwise be more easily stored, due to the fact that he/she has not been provided with the skill to perform such a task. Teaching vocabulary is important, but one must remember that along with lexis there must be the skill of how to organize it, and this skill is grammar. Ultimately, then, not only is the choice of the vocabulary to be taught important, in that it must be meaningful in relation to the students’ lives, but also, grammar must be given along with it so that students have the tool to construct sentences through which they can express themselves. Grammar in this case becomes lexicalized grammar.
In conclusion, grammar does not have to be the most dreadful aspect of teaching English as a second/foreign language. As long as it is done within a context which is meaningful to the students, providing them with resources to produce speech which is relevant to their lives, and giving them the possibility of expressing themselves, having students actually learn becomes a more tangible goal. As stated by Ruqaiya Hasan and Gillian Perret, “Speaking meaningfully is not simply producing a structure or a set of words; it is using wording for meaning within a social context for the living of life.”

Bibliography:
Odlin, T. (Org.). Perspectives on Pedagogical Grammar: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Chapter 8: Learning to function with the other tongue: A systemic functional perspective on second language teaching, by Ruqaiya Hasan and Gillian Perret.

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