Holistic grammar teaching 6

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Report on article “Holistic grammar teaching 6”

Since I also write small articles about teaching young learners to English, I have to read different kind of works in this sphere, but today I have found out that I have never read articles about grammar or teaching it. That’s why for this task I wanted to try something new and chose this article. But it is not the only reason for doing so, yes maybe this article at first sight may seem ordinary scientific work but it is not true. It can be a jolt of fresh air to your opinion about scientific articles and teaching grammar, of course.

The author of the article is Rod Bolitho, Academic Director at Norwich Institute for Language Education, UK. The article mainly deals with the problems of teaching grammar, correctly rule-based way of teaching it. The main objective in this work is “if-sentences”.

The first issue raised by the author is the ways of teaching grammar elements. I support the opinions of Mr. Rod because we are all teaching and learning grammar in the same way without any changes over many years. I think that’s why many people hate grammar and do not correctly understand some of its elements. Because in some situations form and meaning are totally disagree with each other. As an example the author takes “if-sentences”.

I think many of us are aware of conditional sentence which is deeply connected with if-clause. From my own experience I can say that “if-clause” one of the themes I had to learn a great deal of time. Because I wondered how we can use past form of verb in present and why we shouldn’t use would with if? I think not only I had such kind of questions at that time but also many learners have such questions even now. That’s why I’m absolutely agree with the author’s opinion, this kind of rules make English language more difficult for the learners.

For this reason the author offers breaking rules about conditional. His strengthens his opinions with the fact that in spoken discourse not all speakers follow the rules, they prioritize meaning over form so that when we teach our learners we should prepare them for the examples like these: 1) -If I manage to get a baby-sitter, I would consider coming; 2) –I’d have shouted at you if I’d have seen you!

Another way of teaching if-clause more realistically is using authentic materials. In this case the author offers using authentic dialog and asking students identify and comment on the conditions expressed in the text. I like using realias in teaching, in this instance, students will be able to identify other options of clauses in a context.

One more useful information, I have got from this article is using hypothesis in teaching if-clauses; I think this is a really good way of treating them. This method makes learners think deeply and creatively. The first approach offered by Mr. Rod is “On condition”, there students will be given various situations and asked “What would you do…?” Student should answer by using conditionals in a different way. The next way is “Turning points”, I want to use it in my lessons in the future because it makes students give rein to their imagination. This is not about solving problems; by giving them one situation invite them to think about their own life stories not about that situation. The main thing they should understand from this activity in this case, is conditional.

By reading this article, I have got really useful information, majority of which I think absolutely right and also I think we should estrange traditional rule-based teaching method of grammar. We should make changes and teach grammar by using more authentic materials.

In conclusion, I want to say that I have always been supporter of any progressive changes but I completely disagree with one point in this article. On this view, now many grammarians consider that there is no such category as the “future tense” and that there are only two tenses in English. I’m glad that they begun reducing other tenses but I think it will be correct if there are 3 main tenses: past, present and future. In my opinion, considering future tense as a modality is not so good idea. In many languages there are only 3 tenses and somehow it makes learning them easier than English. I think making future tense as a modality creates the chaos in learning English.