TEACHING GRAMMAR

Teaching grammar plays a central role in every  EFL teacher's classroom. The important question that needs to be answered is: how do I teach grammar? In other words, how do I help students learn the grammar they need. This question is deceptively easy. At first look, you might think that teaching grammar is just a matter of explaining grammar rules to students. However, teaching grammar effectively is a much more complicated matter. There are a number of questions that first need to be addressed for each class:

·         What are the objectives of this class?  

·         What type of learning background do the learners have?

·         What learning materials and resources are available?

·         What kind of learning style does each student have?

Once you have answered these questions you can more expertly approach the question of how you are going to provide the class with the grammar they need. In other words, each class is going to have different grammar needs and goals and it is up to the teacher to determine these goals and provide the means with which to meet them.

Inductive and Deductive

First a quick definition:

Inductive is known as a 'bottom up' approach. In other words, students discover grammar rules while working through exercises.

Deductive is known as a 'top down' approach. This is the standard teaching approach that has a teacher explaining rules to the students.