Being part of the English Department in my school, I have been assigned to represent the department to work with some researchers from the Learning Science Laboratory from National Institute of Education for the last two years on the use of mobile technology to enhance teaching and learning. Coincidentally, as I was planning an English lesson for a Primary two class this year, as part of the Seamless Learning initiative, I embarked on this journey in AKE 201, where I was supposed to plan a grammar lesson that had an inductive element in the it. I could not agree more that the timing was just right. I proposed a lesson on prepositions as the Primary twos were covering this grammar item as part of their syllabus. As I crafted out this lesson, I took the opportunity to incorporate the inductive approach as well as infusing the use of technology in this lesson. According to Borg (1999), grammar teaching emerges clearly as a complex decision-making process, rather than the unthinking application of a best method.
Together with the readings, I acquired a clearer picture of what inductive teaching is all about. According to Zhou (2008) and Thornburry (2001), the fundamental ideas behind the inductive approach can be summarized as the following four steps:
1) give students a set of English language data about an area of English grammar, in this case would be prepositions;
2) ask students to generalize a grammatical rule from the set of data;
3) ask students to test the grammatical rule against new English language data; and
4) ask students to revise the grammatical rule to accommodate the new data.
I always believe in thorough planning especially when a pilot class is involved in such case study as classroom time is precious and I ...
... middle of paper ...
...mmar lesson. It gave me new perspectives of how a grammar lesson should be conducted and reformed from the traditional way of teaching grammar- moving away from didactic or deductive teaching towards an inductive one. Truly at times, my concern would be trying to complete the syllabus and preparing the pupils for the examinations. With factor such as time constrain, teachers, like myself, at times adopt the deductive ways as it is much simpler to conduct and intended objectives are clearly delivered to the pupils without much hassle.
Works Cited
Thornburry, Scott. 2001. How to Teach Grammar. London: Pearson Education Limited England.
Zhou, K. (2008). An inductive approach to english grammar teaching [HKBU Papers in Applied Language Studies Vol. 12]
Borg, S. (1999). Teacher Theories in grammar teaching [ELT Journal Volume 53/3]: Oxford University Press.
In the view of Chaudroncited in El Tatawy (2002) the information learners get from corrective feedback allows them to “confirm, disconfirm, and possibly modify the hypothetical, transitional rules of their developing grammars.”
Brooks, J.G. &Brooks, M.G. (1995). Constructing Knowledge in the Classroom. Retrieved September 13, 2002 for Internet. http://www.sedl.org/scimath/compass/v01n03/1.html.
...ualized plan due to time constraints, it is reasonable to treat each student as they do have an individualized education. Teachers should know their students well enough to individualize the classroom activities so all students have strengths in each lesson. Through collaborative efforts, teachers can gain knowledge about the students and new ways to teach according to different learning styles. Working together, each student can receive an individualized education where their full potential is used.
Many researchers like Krashen (1985), Harmer (2007), and Turnbull (2001) emphasise that in most EFL (English as a foreign language) environment, a teacher’s English proficiency ...
Sams explained that both traditional and in-context approaches to teach grammar are unsuccessful because “they treat grammar as something that exists apart from and outside of the writing process itself” (57). When referring to grammar and writing, Sams suggests “to study one is to study the other” (57). Sams explained that she first emphasized the process of drafting and revising. Sams’s instruction included the students working together and sharing their ideas and feedback during the drafting process. However, Sams realized that this process would not be successful without first teaching the students how to revise. Sams then based the instruction on the concept that the students needed to organize their work in a reasonable order that can be understood by others. Sams explained that to organize ideas, the students needed to be able to understand “how their ideas relate to one another” and how to separate “main ideas and supporting details” (58). However, to separate main ideas from...
Richards, J. C., Platt, J., & Plat, H. (2000). Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied linguistics. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press.
Lynne Flowerdew (2009) “Applying corpus linguistics to pedagogy” International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 14:3, 393–417
Works Cited Curzan, Anne and Adams, Michael. How English Works: A Linguistic Introduction. New York: Pearson Longman, 2006. Crystal, David. The English Language: A Guided Tour of the Language.
Fromkin, V., Rodman, R., & Hyams, N. (2003). An introduction to language (7th ed.). Boston: Heinle.
A large part of an English teacher’s job deals with helping students find their own voices amidst the many teachings of their parents and peers. A student’s voice can be their values, their interests, and their perspectives of the world in which they live. Their voice can be their critical questioning of the many situations they face, whether in a text, the school cafeteria, or a park after school. It is the job of an English teacher to aid in finding this voice through their writing. It is by putting words and thoughts down on paper that a student can sometimes feel comfortable enough to take risks and find their true voices. Although traditional grammar instruction has long been thought to improve this skill, this is no longer the case. Instead, by providing a classroom environment in which students are immersed in classic literature from many genres including poetry, short stories, and novels, students will learn how to harness grammar for their own purposes of finding their voice in their writing.
Sekelj and Rigo (2011) stated that there are three phases of learning the English language. The first phase is the pupils of Year 1 to Year 4, where in this phase, pupils are preferably do a lot of mechanical drilling and practicing some patterns of grammatical features which occur in the context of dialogue that are related to their real-life without any metalinguistic explanation in order to allow them to participate orally and physically as much as possible in dialogues, role playing and dramatizing. It is because, in this stage, it is important to make them conscious of their progress and increasing their motivation to use the language. Teacher should use a variety of activities to teach grammar such as by using songs, riddles, games and stories because it could be very helpful and an efficient ways in teaching grammar as what had suggested by Long (2000) where this FonF approach is effective because it is learner-centered and tune to the learners’ internal syllabus. According to Sekelj and Rigo (2011), Vilke (1977) said that, at the early age, the unconscious acquisition process is superior to the learning one due to the child’s cognitive development. Next, the second phase is Year 5 to Year 6 where in this stage, grammar start to be taught explicitly but with simple and clear explanation and awareness of accuracy of grammar structure should be
North, S. (2012), 'English a Linguistic Toolkit' (U214, Worlds of English), Milton Keynes, The Open University.
In the process of completing this coursework, I have realised that every teacher should be all-rounded and equipped with adequate skills of educating others as well as self-learning. As a future educator, we need make sure that our knowledge is always up-to-date and applicable in the process of teaching and learning from time to time. With these skills, we will be able to improvise and improve the lesson and therefore boost the competency of pupils in the process of learning. In the process of planning a lesson, I have changed my perception on lesson planning from the student’s desk to the teacher’s desk. I have taken the responsibility as a teacher to plan a whole 60-minutes lesson with my group members. This coursework has given me an opportunity
When discussing the teaching of grammar, it is crucial to realise what the exact meaning of grammar is because grammar is more closely related, in instructors’ perspectives, to language pedagogy than of other modalities (Hudson,2012). In other words, to understand this study and its purposes to distinguish what pedagogical grammar methods should be implemented and what aspects of grammar teachers instruct in class, it is worth accentuating its definitions first. Consequently, it seems sensible to contemplate meanings regarding the term “grammar” with a view to finding out what the most common understanding of grammar is as there is lots of diversity in the usage of this term. Demystified by Ur (2012,p. 82-84), the
In this course I experienced an important change in my beliefs about teaching; I came to understand that there are many different theories and methods that can be tailored to suit the teacher and the needs of the student. The readings, especially those from Lyons, G., Ford, M., & Arthur-Kelly, M. (2011), Groundwater-Smith, S., Ewing, R., & Le Cornu, R. (2007), and Whitton, D., Barker, K., Nosworthy, M., Sinclair, C., Nanlohy, P. (2010), have helped me to understand this in particular. In composing my essay about teaching methods and other themes, my learning was solidified, my knowledge deepened by my research and my writing skills honed.