I am currently involved in what has become a huge fight on Dave's ESL Cafe Teacher Training Forum concerning the place of grammar in the classroom. I thought I'd use some of this space to explain more fully what I think the place of grammar is for our classrooms.
Grammar in the Classroom: Defining My Position
Teaching grammar does not work.
Now that I have said that, let me clarify what I mean. Grammar has come to mean many things for teachers of English (a point I will return to later). If the term grammar means basic structures of word order and how verbs conjugate when they used to mean differences in time, then teaching grammar does not work.
Now let me clarify what I mean by the term 'teaching grammar'. The teaching of grammar has come to mean that the instruction of rules about how to change words in a sentence. 'Teaching grammar' generally means asking students problems about usage. It also probably means having students find deviations in sentences constructed with the expressed purpose of demonstrating deviation from these rules. There are many standard ways of 'teaching grammar' that we are all familiar with, and for those unfamiliar with these ways, I recommend you have a look in any of the literally thousands of books and Websites that are currently used to 'teach grammar'.
The methods of teaching word order and verb conjugation that fill these thousands (perhaps even millions) of Web and paper pages do very little to alter the way that people use English. Knowledge of these rules will do nothing to change the way that anyone speaks English.
Any belief that 'teaching grammar' creates better users of English, particularly speakers, is based in the 'common sense' experiences of classroom teachers. This is not a minor point, but if it is true, there should be a way to cerate a larger demonstration of 'teaching grammar'. This I have yet to see. There is no systematic, well-designed experimental evidence that can be interpreted as evidence that grammar can be taught in the way it is almost always taught--absolutely none.
6:51:18 PM 
I am currently involved in what has become a huge fight on Dave's ESL Cafe Teacher Training Forum concerning the place of grammar in the classroom. I thought I'd use some of this space to explain more fully what I think the place of grammar is for our classrooms.
Grammar in the Classroom: Defining My Position
Teaching grammar does not work.
Now that I have said that, let me clarify what I mean. Grammar has come to mean many things for teachers of English (a point I will return to later). If the term grammar means basic structures of word order and how verbs conjugate when they used to mean differences in time, then teaching grammar does not work.
Now let me clarify what I mean by the term 'teaching grammar'. The teaching of grammar has come to mean that the instruction of rules about how to change words in a sentence. 'Teaching grammar' generally means asking students problems about usage. It also probably means having students find deviations in sentences constructed with the expressed purpose of demonstrating deviation from these rules. There are many standard ways of 'teaching grammar' that we are all familiar with, and for those unfamiliar with these ways, I recommend you have a look in any of the literally thousands of books and Websites that are currently used to 'teach grammar'.
The methods of teaching word order and verb conjugation that fill these thousands (perhaps even millions) of Web and paper pages do very little to alter the way that people use English. Knowledge of these rules will do nothing to change the way that anyone speaks English.
Any belief that 'teaching grammar' creates better users of English, particularly speakers, is based in the 'common sense' experiences of classroom teachers. This is not a minor point, but if it is true, there should be a way to cerate a larger demonstration of 'teaching grammar'. This I have yet to see. There is no systematic, well-designed experimental evidence that can be interpreted as evidence that grammar can be taught in the way it is almost always taught--absolutely none.
6:51:18 PM [Macro error: Can't evaluate the expression because the name "commentLink" hasn't been defined.]
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