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Using Texts to Teach Grammar (Procedure Explained)

Using texts to teach grammar

How to teach grammar by using texts

I have recently discovered Scott Thornbury’s blog A-Z of ELT. I think that this is one of the best English language teaching blogs. Just to give you a hint of how useful it is to English teachers, this is a post which attracted so many useful and inspiring comments. The post is about how to teach grammar using texts.

There were so many brilliant contributions on the part of teachers to suggest different ways to teach the simple past. This shows how successful our teaching will be if we exchange and share ideas.

This post is a contribution to the exchange. It will cover:

  • The advantages of using texts to teach grammar
  • How to teach grammar structures through texts.

Advantages of teaching grammar through texts

The benefits of using texts to teach grammar are manifolds:

  • Texts provide a context for grammar learning. Starting with a meaning-focused activity to explore grammar is far more useful than teaching grammar through isolated sentences. 
  • Texts offer learners the opportunity to infer the meaning of unknown grammatical structures from the text by providing co-textual information.
  • The texts illustrate how the structure is used in actual communication, especially if they are authentic.
  • In addition to grammar instruction, texts expose students to aspects of text organization. 
  • They also provide vocabulary input and relate structures to meaning and the language system as a whole.
  • Texts are also a good opportunity to demonstrate and practice reading skills practice.
  • Discovering the rules by themselves from the data provided by the teachers in the form of a text encourages the students to be autonomous learners.
  • The rules discovered by the students themselves from the text are far more memorable than the rules told and explained by the teacher in isolated sentences.

Drawbacks of using texts to teach grammar

  • Texts can be difficult for students, especially if they are authentic.
  • Some teachers may come up with fabricated texts that do not represent real communication.

To address the above disadvantages, the teacher may opt for authentic texts that he/she may tweak to simplify the language.

Tips to choose texts to teach grammar

If you are interested in using texts to teach grammar, you may want to consider the following tips:

  • Make sure the text is short and fairly simple. The main focus is grammar, not reading. 
  • The text should contain at least a few different examples of the target language so that when you ask them later in the lesson to identify the target structure, you can help the students notice patterns in meaning and form.
  • If you decide to bring an authentic text instead of a fabricated one, make sure that it is not too difficult.
  • A potentially difficult text can be tweaked to fine-tune it to the level of the students, but it may lose some of its authenticity.
  • There are different genres of text: letters, emails, dialogues, reports, essays, songs, etc. Any of these genres can be used to teach grammar structures. 
  •  Start with a meaning-focused activity to make sure that students have a general understanding of the text. This shouldn’t take too much time. 

How to teach grammar through texts?

A lesson that aims at teaching grammar through texts may follow the following pattern:

  • lead-in and warm-up
  • Reading the text and a short comprehension task
  • Awareness-raising where students’ attention is drawn to notice the target structure and the recurrent patterns.
  • Discovering the grammar rules 
  • Controlled practice 
  • Free practice

NOTE: Tasks can be done first individually, then in pairs and groups (think-pair-share.) 

Warm-up and lead-in

The lesson plan starts with a warm-up and a lead-in. The warm-up can be anything that encourages the student to be in the mood for learning (chanting, game, riddle, etc.). The lead-in, however, is intended to prepare and help in learning the target grammar structure. 

As an illustration, if you want to teach the present perfect, it may be a good idea to review past simple and past participle forms of verbs. For instance, the teacher may invite the students to do a short exercise like the following:

Infinitivesimple pastpast participle
playplayed
watchedwatched
visitedvisited
bewentgone
havehad
spokespoken
writewritten

The warm-up and lead-in activities shouldn’t take a long time to do (five minutes is more than enough.)

After a whole class correction, the teacher may proceed to the reading section of the lesson. 

Start with contextualized grammar structures in texts

Because the lesson focus is grammar not reading comprehension, the teacher needn’t devote too much time to the reading section. Brief comprehension exercises will do reading and choosing between different options the best title for the text, deciding whether a short list of statements are true or false according to the text, identifying who is speaking, etc. The idea is that the students have a general understanding of the text.

Once the reading part is done, it is high time to start exploring the target grammar point. 

Awareness-raising

The teacher may start raising the students’ awareness by devising well-designed guiding activities. The aim is to draw their attention to the target structures, notice the recurrent patterns, and discover the rules.

  • The students start by identifying (underlining, circling, etc) the target structure.
  • Then they try to discover recurring patterns (e.g., the ed forms of the past simple)
  • The aim is to guide the students to discover the rules.

After discovering the rules of the target structure. The students proceed to practice the target structures first in controlled practice exercises. Then, in freer activities where they have to use the target grammar structures to produce something in the form of a speaking or writing activity.

Controlled practice of the target grammar structure

Examples of practice exercises include:

  • Matching
  • Multiple choice questions
  • Gap filling
  • Putting words in brackets in the correct form.
  • Sentence completion
  • Transforming sentences (e.g., from active to passive)

Free practice exercises (production)

 During the production stage, the learners are given a context with a carefully thought-out situation to use the target language. The Teacher Talk Time (TTT) is limited and the teacher’s support is minimal.

Here are a few examples of production activities:

  • Comparing two holiday destinations (e.g., New York and Marrakech.)
  • Making a phone call to make a hotel reservation.
  • Writing a letter of advice.
  • Using surveys and questionnaires to interview one another on a variety of subjects.

Conclusion

Using texts to teach grammar has many advantages. First, it contextualizes the target grammar structures. Texts also offer students the opportunity to infer the meaning of new grammatical structures from the text by providing co-textual information.


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