Post 104: To Grammar or not to Grammar in your ESL/English class?

Post 104: To Grammar or not To Grammar in your ESL/English class?

Should you make grammar the central component of your ESL language lessons to teach ESL students correct form or correct and accurate speech? Or should you let students figure out their own grammar rules from the comprehensible input you expose them to every day in class the way Rosetta Stone does? Which is the better approach?

Proponents of a grammar-centered classroom (Audio-Lingual Method) of teaching (Lado and Gattegno) argue we must make grammar the core of our language instruction and our role as a teacher is to correct all student grammar, spelling, vocabulary and pronunciation errors. At the other extreme, Krashen and Terrell tell us to teach grammar explicitly and not to correct any learner error.
It is not important whether or not you make grammar the centerpiece of your class. You don't have to choose between using lots of grammar or no grammar at all in your class.

Instead, decide upon how much grammar you want to use based on the needs of your learners. According to Marianne Celce Murcia (my UCLA Grammar professor), there are two kinds of learners:

Analytic learner--that is a language learner who learns language by analyzing  grammar rules and learning the language by learning the language structure and style.  If you have an Analytic learner who likes the more formal style of teaching, then by all means, make grammar the centerpiece of your class or you can just show him where he can get a good grammar book for your class.

Holistic Learner--A Holistic Learner learns best by formulating and testing hypothesis and requires no grammar input. He is able to formulate or generate his own grammar rules (Chomsky's Generative Grammar LAD) from the sentence patterns you give him in the target language as part of the comprehensible input you give to the class. Rosetta Stone does a great job of providing comprehensible input by having students learn the target language through pictures that teach students ideas, objects, actions that convey meaning in the target language without explicitly teaching grammar.

Another factor has to do with age. If you are teaching young children the target language, then you can go light on the grammar and heavy on the comprehensible input due to the limited attention span of youngsters since the little ones love to play games so having them learn language through games and play may be the best way to keep them motivated to learn the target language. Whereas, if you have an adult learner studying to be a diplomat, a business executive or lawyer, then having a grammar based language approach may be the right way to teach that student.

As you can see, there is no one size fits all answer to the question of whether or not to make grammar the center piece of your class. How much you teach grammar rules depends on what kinds of learners you have in your class. You, as the teacher have to make a needs analysis of your class to determine if you have a classroom of Analytic learners or if you have a classroom of Holistic learners or both.

When I was teaching French online, I pretty much just followed the Rosetta Stone curriculum. For the most part, I used a more holistic style or Natural Approach style of teaching French by letting students formulate their own grammar rules through the Rosetta Stone pictures. For the most part, my students preferred the holistic method of learning the target language. However, from time to time, I had some students complain that they missed having a grammar book in class so that they could check up on the 'correct' way to write a French sentence for their French assignments. For these Analytic Learners, I would then direct them to great sources on the Web or e-books that teach French grammar and then these Analytic learners were satisfied. Other times, students would just ask me 'How do you say 'no' in French?" "When do you use 'la' in front of a French noun? and When do you use 'le' in a French noun? " Also, if there were any grammar exceptions that did not fit neatly into Rosetta Stone pictures, I would teach them those exceptions but for the most part, I stuck to the Krashen Natural Approach and followed Marianne's advice on basing how much grammar to use based on student/learner need.  If you want to read the complete article Marrianne wrote about this subject, here is the link to the article:

http://faculty.weber.edu/tmathews/SLI/Readings/Celce-Murcia%201985.pdf
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