How Can I Improve My Students’ English Grammar?


Posted August 31, 2018 by AlexHenry

English grammar can be activated through explicit or implicit teaching. The grammar sharpener provides opportunities for both activities.

 
One of the most common questions I have been asked by English teachers is how can I improve my students’ English grammar? Most teachers have limited time available for teaching and may have to teach large classes. To make things even harder there are so many grammar rules in English and so many exceptions to those rules. So what is an effective teaching strategy? One answer is to teach our students to help themselves. Let’s explore how we can do this?
What do they know already?
In general, most English learners have been exposed to the rules of English grammar at school or through text books. Thus they have a passive knowledge of English grammar but this knowledge needs to be activated meaningful exercises.
How can we activate this knowledge?
In order for learners to make use of their passive knowledge they have to be given opportunities to:
• use mental effort
• access grammar knowledge if required
• identify correct and incorrect grammar structures
How do we choose which grammar structures to activate?
Obviously we don’t have time to go through all the grammar rules in English. So, is there a way to be selective in what we teach and offer individual programmes? The most effective way is to select the grammatical items that cause the most problems for most learners of English. These items are called common errors. By concentrating on these errors we can help our students reduce the number of grammar errors they make when writing.
Which activities will help learners become independent?
There are two main ways we can help our students avoid or correct common errors. The first way is to teach them explicitly the rules of English grammar. The second way is to teach them using a language awareness approach. This approach emphasises the need for language learners to notice differences between correct and incorrect sentences by making mental effort. In this way, learners discover for themselves the rules of English grammar. Both of these approaches are combined in the series of activities found on http://thegrammarsharpener.com
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Issued By The Grammar Sharpener
Website The Grammar Sharpener
Country Australia
Categories Education
Tags english grammar for teachers , english grammar online , ielts grammar , interactive grammar , learn english for ielts , learning grammar , teaching grammar
Last Updated August 31, 2018