Module 1, Task 12: Summar

 

Congratulations on the successful completion of Module 1!

 

Watch the video summarizing the most important points from this week. You can download the transcript HERE Download HERE.

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Transcript:

On bricks, walls, gardens and metaphors

We started the course with an overview of most influential approaches to grammar teaching, which hopefully helped you put the communicative approach in a historical context. Being aware how the field evolved definitely deepens our understanding of various approaches to teaching grammar. There are important lessons to be learned from history: focus on discovering what works, for whom, when and why.

The main focus of the past week were two approaches to teaching grammar, two metaphors to reflect on: the organic garden approach, and the brickwall approach. The sample lesson plan you analyzed illustrated the most important characteristics of the organic garden approach:

• Grammar is brought to students’ attention as a part of communicative language practice.
• In a communicative lesson, the target grammar structure is a vehicle for communication, not just the object of study.
• The students are primarily focused on the message - on ‘what’ is said rather than ‘how’ it is said.
• The students feel a desire to communicate because they are asked to talk about themselves and contribute their ideas.
• Communicative grammar tasks also contain some kind of ‘gap’  - information, opinion, affect or reason - which students seek to bridge.
• The teacher’s role is to make students aware of grammar structures or help them notice certain grammatical features while they are engaged in completing communicative tasks.
• The teacher is also facilitator establishing situations likely to promote communication and the use of target grammar structures.
• Communicative grammar teaching is not mechanical. Rather than asking students to focus on definitions and rules, teachers may focus on imparting instructional strategies where the focus is on creative usage of grammar.

However, it is important to mention that teaching and learning contexts can impose certain restrictions to applying the organic garden way of teaching:

• lower level (beginner) learners might find it hard without enough 'bank' of knowledge to build on;
• short lesson time, e.g. 40 min;
• large class size;
• mandatory materials/course books designed with the brickwall approach in mind;
• materials/course books do not correspond to the students' needs and interests;
• mixed levels of students' language proficiency in the same group;

These restrictions do pose a difficulty, but they are not insurmountable. In many ways, classrooms are similar to gardens: there are soils which are harder for planting specific flowers. Master gardeners know what they need to do to prepare the ground and have good conditions for growing. In the following modules, we will continue exploring what teachers can do to bring different grammar gardens into blossom.

 

To cite this page:

World Learning. (2019). Module 1 Summary. In “Teaching Grammar Communicatively” [MOOC].