Grammar is one of the key areas of learning for students, especially in junior forms. I do not like teaching grammar because everything is so mechanical. As such, students always feel bored once they have to open the grammar book. Another reason why I dislike teaching grammar using the grammar book is that the book is just way tooooo lengthy and full of rulesssss (that students can't comprehend).
I would say students should know, (and internalise hopefully) the grammar rules instead of memorising the rules because at the end of the way, application is more important than memorisation. The benefit of knowing the rule is that when it comes to application, they can have some evidence and ground to use a particular grammar item instead of saying "I use this because I feel that it's right". However, at the same time, rules are rules; in real life context, flexibility is needed. Therefore, I also encourage students to know and understand the rules.
Apart from knowing the rules, when it comes to enhancing the understanding of grammar, drilling is often used. However, I do not think that drilling is useful because the exercises are often not written in real life context. For instance, when I teach tenses, the exercises often consist of a lot of time expressions that prompt students to use a particular tense, while in real life, it is the context and meaning that matter.
Last year, the way I taught grammar was the deductive approach. However, I found that this method was very boring and students did not seem to learn the grammar items. As such, I have been trying out the inductive approach during grammar teaching, hopefully my students will get a taste of what it is like to use (and learn) grammar with some real life examples and contexts. I am not sure how effective this approach is. Sometimes I do have my reservation and fear that if students do not remember some rules and forms, will they be able to apply their learning in their coming tests and exams? Will I have to unteach and reteach them again if they really cannot internalise and understand well?
Having reflected my own teaching, I do think teachers can make grammar teaching more interesting. One way to do so is to use newspaper to engage students in thinking about why a particular item is used. Another way that might be useful is to ask students to produce their own dialogues by incorporating the grammar items. This might help us check their understanding as well.
Right now, I have tried to ask my students to produce their own notes, with the hope that they can review, rethink and reflect on the grammar items learnt in class. Let's see how things go!
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