Planning a grammar lesson

Planning a grammar lesson

Tanya Cotter, British Council, Morocco

Without grammar, words hang together without any real meaning or sense.
In order to be able to speak a language to some degree of proficiency
and to be able to say what we really want to say, we need to have some
grammatical knowledge. By teaching grammar we not only give our
students the means to express themselves, but we also fulfil their
expectations of what learning a foreign language involves. Fortunately,
nowadays with the emphasis on a communicative approach and a wealth of
stimulating resources, teaching grammar does not necessarily mean
endless conjugation of verbs or grammar translation.
• Which approach?
• Presentation, practice and production (PPP)
o Presentation
o Practice
o Production
• Conclusion
Which approach?
There are two main approaches to teach grammar. These are the deductive and the inductive approach.
• A deductive approach is when the rule is presented and the language
is produced based on the rule.(The teacher gives the rule)
• An inductive approach is when the rule is inferred through some form
of guided discovery.(The teacher gives the students a means to discover
the rule for themselves)
In other words, the former is more teacher centred and the latter more
learner centred. Both approaches have their advantages and
disadvantages.
In my own experience, the deductive approach is undoubtedly time saving
and allows more time for practising the language items thus making it
an effective approach with lower level students. The inductive
approach, on the other hand, is often more beneficial to students who
already have a base in the language as it encourages them to work
things out for themselves based on their existing knowledge.

Presentation, practice and production (PPP)
A deductive approach often fits into a lesson structure known as PPP
(Presentation, Practice, Production). The teacher presents the target
language and then gives students the opportunity to practise it through
very controlled activities. The final stage of the lesson gives the
students the opportunity to practise the target language in freer
activities which bring in other language elements.
In a 60 minute lesson each stage would last approximately 20 minutes.
This model works well as it can be used for most isolated grammatical
items. It also allows the teacher to time each stage of the lesson
fairly accurately and to anticipate and be prepared for the problems
students may encounter. It is less workable at higher levels when
students need to compare and contrast several grammatical items at the
same time and when their linguistic abilities are far less uniform.
Presentation
In this stage the teacher presents the new language in a meaningful
context. I find that building up stories on the board, using realia or
flashcards and miming are fun ways to present the language.
For example, when presenting the 2nd conditional, I often draw a
picture of myself with thought bubbles of lots of money, a sports car,
a big house and a world map.
• I ask my students what I'm thinking about and then introduce the target language.
"If I had a lot of money, I would buy a sports car and a big house."
• I practise and drill the sentence orally before writing it the board (positive, negative, question and short answer).
• I then focus on form by asking the students questions. E.g." What do
we use after 'if'?" and on meaning by asking the students questions to
check that they have understood the concept (E.g. "Do I have lots of
money?" No." What am I doing?" Imagining.)
• When I am satisfied that my students understand the form and the
meaning, I move on to the practice stage of the lesson. During this
stage of the lesson it is important to correct phonological and
grammatical mistakes.
Practice
There are numerous activities which can be used for this stage
including gap fill exercises, substitution drills, sentence
transformations, split sentences, picture dictations, class
questionnaires, reordering sentences and matching sentences to
pictures.

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• It is important that the activities are fairly controlled at this
stage as students have only just met the new language. Many student's
books and workbooks have exercises and activities which can be used at
this stage.
• When teaching the 2nd conditional, I would use split sentences as a
controlled practice activity. I give students lots of sentence halves
and in pairs they try and match the beginnings and ends of the
sentences.
Example: "If I won the lottery," …. "I'd travel around the world."
• I would then do a communicative follow up game like pelmanism or snap using the same sentence halves.
Production
Again there are numerous activities for this stage and what you choose
will depend on the language you are teaching and on the level of your
students. However, information gaps, role plays, interviews,
simulations, find someone who, spot the differences between two
pictures, picture cues, problem solving, personalisation activities and
board games are all meaningful activities which give students the
opportunity to practise the language more freely.
• When teaching the 2nd conditional, I would try to personalise the
lesson at this stage by giving students a list of question prompts to
ask others in the class.
Example:do / if / win the lottery?
• Although the questions are controlled the students are given the
opportunity to answer more spontaneously using other language items and
thus the activity becomes much less predictable.
• It is important to monitor and make a note of any errors so that you
can build in class feedback and error analysis at the end of the
lesson.

Conclusion

When teaching grammar, there are several factors we need to take into
consideration and the following are some of the questions we should ask
ourselves:
• How useful and relevant is the language?
• What other language do my students need to know in order to learn the new structure effectively?
• What problems might my students face when learning the new language?
• How can I make the lesson fun, meaningful and memorable?
Although I try to only use English when teaching a grammar lesson, it
is sometimes beneficial to the students to make a comparison to L1 in
the presentation stage. This is particularly true in the case of more
problematic grammatical structures which students are not able to
transfer to their own language.
It is also important to note that using the PPP model does not
necessarily exclude using a more inductive approach since some form of
learner centred guided discovery could be built into the presentation
stage. When presenting the 2nd conditional I sometimes present the
language in context and then give the students a worksheet with a series of analysis questions to do in pairs.

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PPP is one model for planning a lesson. Other models include TTT (Test,
Teach, Test), ARC (Authentic use, Restricted use, Clarification and
focus) and ESA (Engage, Study, Activate). All models have their
advantages and disadvantages and I, like many other teachers I know,
use different models depending on the lesson, class, level and learner
styles.