Monday, April 21, 2008

To teach or not to teach grammar

AN ODE TO A DELECTABLE BORE!



Oh Mr. Brown!



How I wish grammar



was as interesting,



as you.



The only active



or passive things



to me are your



movements.



Who cares about



verbs, unless you're



holding, kissing, touching, stroking, caressing,



my ____?



If you want,



you can even make it



carefully, softly, gently, lovingly, continually,



adverbial.



Oh Mr.Brown!



Don't you know that



divine, handsome, suave, cuddly, heroic



adjectives only apply



to you?



Oh Mr.Brown!



Your tenses are all wrong.



The present counts



not the past.



Oh Mr.Brown!



I wish you taught



Maths, History, Science, Cooking and Netball



too.



At least then



I'd enjoy them even



though I don't



understand them,



either.

Kate Jones

Looking back, I have never really taught grammar in any of my simulated teaching. Mr Lim, my 'sit in' simulated teaching lecturer has always stressed that teachers should never ever teach grammar as an item in the lesson. Hey, he even failed my friend's presentation for her attempt to teach transitive/ intransitive verbs throughout the lesson. But then again, some lecturers emphasise on the teaching of the grammar items in the presentation stage, so I am just keeping my fingers crossed that I won' t have them as my supervisors next semester, hehe.

Nevertheless, we still have to fill in the language focus in the lesson plan. Therefore, my all-time-favourite is adjectives simply because there is no need to go through the drudgery of past, present and what not in adjectives and it comes in naturally in our speech. In the mean time, I am still trying to figure out how we can indirectly teach grammatical items in our lesson, I mean drills will be quite a bore after some time. Anyway, I do not think my grammar had benefited much from the lessons I used to have in school. I think I will dread the day when my students ask me to explain those wretched rules, if only I could quote our sifu' favourite phrase, English Is A Crazy Language again and again...

3 comments:

i TeAcH... said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
i TeAcH... said...

In our last class with Mr. Lim, we actually taught grammar in his class, or learn how to teach grammar to be exact. Mr. Lim gave us some advice, one of it is that, even though drills can be boring, it is one of the way for students to remember grammar items. He taught us how to drill, which I think would be the only way we can teach the students. We are not to go into the explanation part of grammar, but just to practice with them. Make them familiar with the correct grammatical items and what not..
I think there is no reasons why students in school have to know about all the rules about grammar. In some cases, they have to know. But as long as they can make perfect, a sentence without major grammatical errors or no errors at all, that would be the greatest joy for a English teacher. What do you think?

Labyrinth said...

OMG! I love the Ode! hehehahaha very cracking! Well, i can see that most of you are questioning the teaching of grammar and the no-teaching of grammar and the teaching of grammar subconsciously hehe (I like tongue twisting, Mr Brown...hahaha) i hope ive answers for that. Check out my post dated 29th April! Give me some clues of what you think kay? chow..