Teaching Grammar: Explicit Vs Implicit

A conclusion in the Teacher's Course

So far one of the main discussion points in the Teacher's course has to do with the way of working with grammar within a class. On one side we have the explicit method, in which, we focus on the deduction of grammar rules. On the other hand, we have the implicit method, which fosters the inference of these rules within a context. The thing is that both styles are needed in a classroom. That is to say, explicit grammar and implicit grammar work well together if we take into account that our students have different learning styles, needs, and backgrounds.

This is an example of how to have a balance of the two above mentioned methods. Let's say that we want high-beginner students to be able to compare things. We may have a short warm-up using pictures, they can be related to places and landmarks. Then we have them braistorm some differences they see. After that, they are asked to work with a receptive activity which may either be a reading or a listening exercise, which contains information about these landmarks.

Students have to interact with the text, first in a guided way, this could be through a mechanical drill, then they may have semi-guided exercise, to move to freer exercises. In this stage, students can infer the grammar rule they use in order to compare two things using comparatives and superlatives. This way, students will have again some interaction with materials, but this time they will focus on the grammar point, which is still in context. Once having worked with this process, students can have some initial oral and written practice on this topic.

Hard-working classmates, great!

TEXT REVIEW

As it is observed in the pictures we were working in groups.

Being a teacher implies taking decisions. Sometimes as teachers we are asked to choose a text book to work in our English lessons. Based on our experience and the different approaches to teach grammar, we decided if the books that Katy took to the class were a good option to work with or not.

This was a very interesting class. We weorken in small groups to analyse some grammar books; the point was to find the way the authors build knowledge.

We checked two books. The first one was called Understanding and Using English Grammar by Betty Scrampfer. We ageed that the book can be used as extra material for our studnets to practice as it is not contextualized and some of the exercises are repetitive. However, it's an excellent material to reinforce grammar.

On the other hand, we also checked Grammar in Context by Sandra N. Elbaum. This book tries to integrate reading and listening skilles, but we considered exercises must be better explotated. Although we agreed this book could be used as the main text book in our class, it would be needed to adapt some of the exercises.

Prepositions & Particles

By Dr. Haj Ross

Some of us as non-native speakers of English find it difficult to understand the difference between prepositions and particles. In the teacher's training couse, we had a lecture by Dr. Haj Ross, an expert in linguistics, who brought a very meaningful activity to make a distinction between these two parts of speech in English language.

The distinction he made served as a basis to incorporate the disctintion within further lessons for Mexican students.

We would like to thank the lecturer for his extensive speech!!

Teacher's Training Course

The authors of this blog are sure the information will help us to become experts in the lingüistic field.

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