1. Introduction English language study requires learners mastering several parts including phonology, grammar, vocabulary etc. Among them, grammar studying plays an increasingly vital role in English language learning in secondary school. Generally, the traditional way of teaching involves a teacher-commanding class which teacher spent half class on the certain grammar points and using exercises to evaluate whether students fully master them. However, the old approach usually results in a class s filled with bored and exhausted students who may give wonderful result in tests but failed in communicating events. Since language functions on communicating, new teaching method should consider this purpose more than in the old days. As Wu (2012) mentioned, there's no agreed-upon method of teaching English conditionals so far. Consequently, the research of new and personal approach is going to be made through this proposal. Language intuition has long been discussed in English language teaching. Also known as sense of language, the definition comes from According to Terrence(1998),he indicates the definiton of intuition refers (rather vaguely) to the presence of feelings and affective states in their non-quantitative dimension by the theory of Shanahan. However, the use of intuition in language teaching is seldom discussed among western scholars. On the contrary, in the field of language studies, it is commonly mentioned by Chinese linguistics. Li&Ma&Wang(2006) promoted that “The intuition of language is the direct capacity of sense. It comes from the long term of language studying and practicing.” They also indicated that the intuition could help language studying and preforming more efficiently. The gap in the previous literature is... ... middle of paper ... ...bstitute traditional grammar teaching (lecture and exercise)? 6. What is the most useful way do you think could foster language sense better? 7. To what extent do you think the language sense could contribute to your English study and scores in exams? 8. What are the most common ways to nurture language intuition in the secondary school of China? Questionnaire for Group 2: 1. Would you give students listening, speaking or reciting exercises for homework? If yes, how much and how often do you do it? 2. What is the grammar teaching approach you often used in class? 3. How many grammar exercises would you give to students after a grammar class? 4. What is the most efficient and useful way do you think to foster language intuition? 5. Could fostering language intuition substitute traditional grammar teaching in English language teaching in secondary school of China?
“Let Them Talk!” written by Wayne E. Wright is an article that focuses on the idea of promoting English Language Learners (ELL) oral-language skills in the classroom instruction time to improve their literacy and academic achievement. Too often are an ELL’s speaking and listening skills overlooked and not given enough attention to, even though it is one of the most important parts of communication. Wright encourages teachers working with ELL students to allow time for the student to adjust, not to pressure them into their language development, respect their various stages, bring them into whole class and small group discussions, correct simple language errors in speaking that impeded comprehension, and have them interact and communicate in the classroom for meaningful purposes.
Communicating what we want to say, how we want to say it is the goal of expressing ourselves linguistically. For English Language Learners (and their teachers), the ability to do that successfully in their new language presents a challenge. In the content areas of instruction, it is especially important to draw out the information that a student already knows in their native language – even when they do not have the linguistic ability to express themselves in English – in order to assess their level of understanding and engage prior knowledge. Using non-linguistic representations provides a way of bridging that gap between actual understanding and the ability to express that understanding for English Language Learners. For teachers, non-linguistic cues or representations are an effective alternative method in the process of delivering language and content instruction. In this essay, I will discuss why non-linguistic representations work differently than linguistic methods. I will also evaluate selected Teachscape video to discuss how some teachers use these methods, tasks that allow English Language Learner students to develop authentic use of their new language, and the difference between a student-centered and a teacher-centered classroom.
Since the 1940s, new solutions to successful English as a Second Language (ESL) instruction have been discovered many times. Like bestseller novels, the latest hit pop songs, and blockbuster films, second-language theories and methodologies enjoy a few months or years in the spotlight and then fade away into oblivion due to many instructors not taking the chance to truly experiment with these instructional methods. There was always a “tried-and-true” methodology from an expert theorist, who may or may not have had first-hand experience learning a second language, to fall on. Douglas Brown, a renowned professor of San Francisco State University, notes that languages were “not being taught primarily to learn oral communication, but to learn for the sake of being ‘scholarly’ or…for reading proficiency” (15). Theories of second-language acquisition did not start to pop up until the instructional objective became oral competence and comprehension. New and effective methodologies of ESL classrooms are necessary in order for learners to obtain and understand the language and its culture; teachers need to consider their teaching style, each student’s learning style, and the classroom behavior, interests, and culture.
In math, the importance of foundations is emphasized in every lesson. As I am often told by my girlfriend, “Sure, I can do calculus, but don’t expect me to count to four.” I relate to nothing more when it comes to my relationship with written English. I can string together sentences and write an essay, but please do not ask me the difference between who and whom, and god forbid I need to use a semicolon. Somehow, I reached my senior year in the English department and I haven’t gotten a grasp on things that are culturally considered part of a basic education. English is a lot like math. There are variables that need to be placed into a formula but we no longer teach how these variables work. In the first chapter of Mark Lester’s “Grammar and Usage in the Classroom” the devolution of grammar education in the American classroom is examined,
Muncie, J. (2002). Finding a place for grammar in EFL composition classes. ELT Journal, 56(2),180-86. doi:10.1093/elt/56.2.180
Sekelj and Rigo (2011) stated that there are three phases of learning the English language. The first phase is the pupils of Year 1 to Year 4, where in this phase, pupils are preferably do a lot of mechanical drilling and practicing some patterns of grammatical features which occur in the context of dialogue that are related to their real-life without any metalinguistic explanation in order to allow them to participate orally and physically as much as possible in dialogues, role playing and dramatizing. It is because, in this stage, it is important to make them conscious of their progress and increasing their motivation to use the language. Teacher should use a variety of activities to teach grammar such as by using songs, riddles, games and stories because it could be very helpful and an efficient ways in teaching grammar as what had suggested by Long (2000) where this FonF approach is effective because it is learner-centered and tune to the learners’ internal syllabus. According to Sekelj and Rigo (2011), Vilke (1977) said that, at the early age, the unconscious acquisition process is superior to the learning one due to the child’s cognitive development. Next, the second phase is Year 5 to Year 6 where in this stage, grammar start to be taught explicitly but with simple and clear explanation and awareness of accuracy of grammar structure should be
I believe students feel daunted by all the rules that the teachers are trying to teach them with grammar. However, writing classes are encouraging the students to release their barriers with writings and encourage their inner thoughts to be released as well. In the study from Patrick Hartwell’s article, he mentioned that, “So Grammar 1 is eminently usable knowledge—the way we make our life through language—but it is not accessible knowledge; in a profound sense, we do not know that we have it (Hartwell).” This article encourages our grammar knowledge, which we have stored unknowingly, be brought out and one way that this could be is if we let the students hand in their writing unedited to the teacher to look over their mistakes but not to make any corrections. Then the students use a red pen to correct their mistakes and edit their paper themselves so that the teacher has an understanding of what grammar errors students can correct on their own. This way students’ strengths and weakness in grammar are considered more than teaching the rules of grammar. In order to learn and gain an understanding of grammar, it must be a part of students’ education since it helps students correct their overlooked mistakes and for professionalism’s sake. Grammar is needed as Christensen’s article summarizes when she says, “We must teach our students how to match subjects and verbs, how to pronounce lawyer, because they are the ones without power and, for the moment, they have to use the language of the powerful to be heard (Christensen).” Grammar is important for our writing, nevertheless; grammar shouldn’t be the focus of how we write instead our thoughts should
Most children learn language with remarkable ease, but how are we to account for this extraordinary fact? The problem plaguing our understanding of language and language acquisition can be described as. How can one learn anything genuinely new and become linguistically creative and how this learning is possible at all, unless one already has some path into language, for example, a suitable framework in which language learning takes place? It is this framework that interests us here.
Nassaji, H., & Fotos, S. (2011). The role of context in focus on grammar: Teaching Grammar in Second Language Classroom (pp.121-134). New York and London: Routhdge
Grammar is introduced with the use of dialogues which students imitate and repeat. The students induce grammar from the examples and explicit instruction is avoided. Techniques such as dialogue memorization, repetition, backward build-up, chain, substitution, single/ multiple slot substitution drills are mainly used. Students are imitators of the teacher and try to respond to the teacher’s directions as accurately as
Key words: approaches, task based grammar lessons, learn vocabulary through pictures, activities that raise accuracy and fluency levels.
The Direct Method teaches language in the identical way in which the child first learns his mother tongue. The language is prepared through illustration and conversations in surroundings. As Direct Method put stress on speech, students obtain flow in speech. They think directly in English without the involvement of the mother tongue. They are fast at comprehending spoken English. The Direct Method learners also have good pronunciation of each word. Students who are learned through this method speak in English with great potential. In Direct Method language is taught through presentation. The Direct Method makes use of audio-visual cooperation. The use of these cooperation promote learning and makes lesson fascinating. It promotes reading and writing. Learners can speak in flow, they also write impartially quickly and rightly. In classrooms that allow students to up and down between languages, thinking in English is dejected in difference, a classroom that engages students in English demands them to do more thinking in English. By using the Direct Method, students are able to understand what they learn, think about it and then express their own ideas in correct and even ask question about words they are enable to understand and knows English about what they have read and learnt. Classes who have few students, so the power of the learning process can be enhanced. In direct method translation cannot be used. The interaction goes from both ways like teacher to student and from student to
In most institutions of learning today, the classes are made up of students from different ethnic backgrounds. These have different traditions and also speak different languages. In a typical classroom, the majority of the students will speak the same language. The teacher must then employ strategies which will accommodate all the students in the class. This will ensure that every learner gets the best quality of education. This will enable them to be better prepared for career and expressing themselves. In this paper, strategies to assist learners of the English language in their literal development for third grade learners. In the paper, three strategies that can be used by the teacher will be discussed. New strategies and research that will help the English language learners to gain in depth mastery of the language will also be discussed. Due to the widespread learning of the English language in most schools, addressing issues of the language learners is of vital importance. Teachers should have the understanding that cultures are what give someone identity and therefore no student should leave their culture for another. Instead, there should be the blending of different cultures so that students can appreciate and learn from each other.
Next, I will use songs to teach grammar. I will play the song in the class for several times. Then, I will omit certain words from the lyrics and ask the students to fill in the blank. The students will be learning grammar in the way, than the old boring
A large part of an English teacher’s job deals with helping students find their own voices amidst the many teachings of their parents and peers. A student’s voice can be their values, their interests, and their perspectives of the world in which they live. Their voice can be their critical questioning of the many situations they face, whether in a text, the school cafeteria, or a park after school. It is the job of an English teacher to aid in finding this voice through their writing. It is by putting words and thoughts down on paper that a student can sometimes feel comfortable enough to take risks and find their true voices. Although traditional grammar instruction has long been thought to improve this skill, this is no longer the case. Instead, by providing a classroom environment in which students are immersed in classic literature from many genres including poetry, short stories, and novels, students will learn how to harness grammar for their own purposes of finding their voice in their writing.