Grammar as a Process.pdf
- 1. Teaching Grammar as a Process Grammar as a process is inside the vocabulary. Grammar as a process is wherever the language is being used. Grammar as a process is everywhere. Let me give you an example. When a learner meets the sentence “Have you ever been to London?”, the grammar as a process is present in that sentence. The problem is that most teachers and learners are used to seeing grammar as a thing. Questions such as “why is the present perfect here?”, “how can we use the present perfect”, “what’s the present perfect?” show us they really see grammar as a thing. So, they go to grammar books, they do grammar activities, they analyze the rules so as to learn about the present perfect. Grammar as a process is always inside a sentence and teachers have to teach the process not the thing. There we go to the third question: How can we teach grammar lexically? Or rather, how can we teach grammar as a process? Teaching grammar as a process is a very simple thing to do. All you have to do is to show the most important part in a sentence and tell learners to learn it without worrying about terminology and rules. What I suggest teachers do is: 1.Write the main part of a sentence (chunk) on the board (Have you ever been to…?); 2.Tell learners what it means and how to use it in appropriate contexts; the learners’ native language can be used if necessary; 3.Write more examples with the sentence (chunk) chosen; 4.Teach them the correct pronunciation, intonation and ask them to repeat; 5.From time to time, do something to remember the whole chunk Teaching grammar as a process is more fun than teaching it as a thing. All you need to do is to change the way you see the language you teach, mainly the way you define grammar. Once you learn that there are different ways to see grammar, you will definitely get the point of teaching grammar as a process and not as a thing.