Is grammar important in English learning?

 

Autor:prof.Grama Irina Cătălina, Colegiul Tehnic Petru Poni Roman

             Teaching grammar has always been a central aspect of foreign language teaching. Grammar represents the system of rules governing the conventional arrangement and relationships of words in a sentence. Grammar tells us how to construct a sentence (word order, verb and noun systems, modifiers, phrases, clauses, etc.).

Many students ask teachers a typical question: is grammar really important for us? The answer is clear and simple: yes,it is. Grammar is the pylon of a language and without it any single thing you know may be in a sort of jelly, without much consistency. Grammar provides students with the structure they need in order to organize and put their messages and ideas across. It is the railway through which their messages will be transported. Without it, in the same way as a train cannot move without railways, they will not be able to convey their ideas to their full extension without a good command of the underlying grammar patterns and structures of the language. 

            Grammar mechanism must be assimilated in order to understand and to express oneself correctly in English; one may know every word in a sentence and still fail to comprehend it, if one does not see the relation between the words in the sentence, and conversely, a sentence may contain one (or more) unknown word(s) but if one has a good knowledge of the structure of the language one can easily surmise the meaning of these words, or at least find them in the dictionary.

           How can we teach grammar to support learning in all language skills?

            If the teacher thinks of the grammar that he teaches as a language about language, then grammar is useful any time he discusses particular words or sentences with the students. The formal term for this language about language is metalanguage, a vocabulary about language itself, one that makes it possible for us to redirect our words back on themselves so that we can talk and write about how we talk and write.

            How can we teach grammar so that students discover its rules and principles on their own instead of hearing teacher impose those rules and principles on them?

Grammar is a tricky word. On the one hand, it means the language of language. On the other hand, you may need to remind yourself from time to time that all of us are grammar experts: we all know grammar; we all know how to maneuver words and phrases in order to communicate effectively nearly all the time. We also are all keen observers of language. We see and hear the kinds of language that people use in different situations. The teacher’s challenge is to tap into all this expertise. You may want to consciously practice a repertoire of a few flexible questions and directions that can help elicit points of grammar in many different classroom discussions:

s  How would you say [or write] this in a certain situation, with a certain audience? How have you heard other people say it?

s  Find examples of [a phrase, a type of sentence, a construction, etc.] in someone’s writing or in conversation.

s  What is the pattern in these examples?

s  What could the rule or definition be? Test it out on another example.

            Teachers’ primary goal (as second language teachers) must be to create users or the language, not linguists!

            The study of the structure of the language can have general educational advantages and values that high schools and colleges may want to include in their language programs. It is obvious that examining irregularity, formulating rules and teaching complex facts about the target language is language appreciation or linguistics, not language teaching.

            The only instance in which the teaching of grammar can result in language acquisition (and proficiency) is when the students are interested in the subject and the target language is used as a medium of instruction. Very often, when this occurs, both teachers and students are convinced that the study of formal grammar is essential for second language acquisition, and the teacher is skillful enough to present explanations in the target language so that the students understand. In other words, the teacher talk meets the requirements for comprehensible input and perhaps with the students’ participation ,the classroom becomes an environment suitable for acquisition. Also, the filter is low in regard to the language of explanation, as the students’ conscious efforts are usually on the subject matter, on what is being talked about, and not the medium. This is a subtle point. In effect, both teachers and students are deceiving themselves. They believe that it is the subject matter itself, the study of grammar, that is responsible for the students’ progress, but in reality their progress is coming from the medium and not the message. Any subject matter that held their interest would do just as well.