Teaching Grammar

After teaching for 15 years, I still feel overwhelmed everytime I teach grammar. Teaching grammar has been a topic of the debate among linguists concerning its place within the ESL/EFL curriculum. One of them, Scott Thornbury is against the grammar- based lessons which do not lead to oral fluency. It is oral fluency that most students want. He says language is acquired, rather than learnt. Therefore teaching grammar should be based on a process (Process Teaching) and should not be on the traditional hierarchiel model of transmision.

Thornbury lists 10 fudanmental rules that can be used as gudelines for Process Teaching :

1. The resources used for teaching are the teacher and students themselves
2. The teacher should only use the listening material which is recorded from the students doing pair work or group work activities for re-play and analysis
3. The teacher must sit down at all time the students are seated, except when monitoring group or pair work.
4. The questions must be real questions like "Did you read the newspaper yesterday ?" not "Is there a clock on the wall ?"
5. Slavish adherence to a method is unacceptable.
6. Pre-selected and graded grammar items is forbidden. Any grammar that is the focus of instruction should emerge from the lesson content, not dictate it.
7. The topics generated from the students should be prioritized.
8. Students should not be graded into different levels. Diversity of competence should be accomodated.
9. The criteria and administration of any test should be negotiated with the students.
10. Teachers will be evaluated according to only one criterion : that they are not boring.

When I learnt this lists, I was asking myself whether I can apply this teaching process in my class. As a teacher of a formal school, I am required to follow a set of syllabus which is designed by the institution and normally left to the coursebook in conventional teaching. However, I keep on experimenting with different methods of teaching because I believe that every teaching approach has something to offer. The teacher should seek the method suitable for students with different learning preferences and competence.