some ideas for teaching grammar more effectively in an EFL context
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25170/ijelt.v1i2.1421Keywords:
collocations, extensive reading, grammar of orientation, grammar of structure, notice-the-gaps, noticing, pattern grammar, PPP lesson plan, production-practice, scaffolding, task-based approachAbstract
Most teachers in an EFL context place a great importance on grammar and see their primary function as reducing their students’ grammar errors. While ignoring the value of this attitude, this article sets out to show how teachers’ view of grammar is limiting and their approach to teaching grammar (PPP lesson plan and a strong emphasis on grammar production) generates unsatisfactory results. The article then goes on to show how we actually learn grammar through noticing language patterns, noticing-the-gaps, and production, then shows how making hypotheses and testing their validity with authentic texts, building systems to record language patterns and collocations, extensive reading, and scaffolding are the keys to learning grammar. Yet, they are not part of the PPP equation nor are they included in most teachers’ language-teaching routines. It is suggested that these elements along with a more task-based approach could provide useful alternatives. The first part of this article provides some of the theoretical underpinnings, and the remainder looks at some effective techniques for their implementation and some important implications made by these underpinnings and their application in large classes of Indonesian EFL students.
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