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Are
You Making the #1 Grammar Teaching Mistake?
John Brezinsky, Higher
Education
Marketing Manager
Even
experienced grammar instructors sometimes make one classic mistake in the
classroom. Learn what this mistake is, why it's bad for your students,
how to avoid doing it, and how the Focus
on Grammar series helps keep you away from it.
Big Mistake: Spending too much time explaining grammar
You want to be sure that your students understand the grammar
completely before you give them any exercises. Then you end up not
having enough time for all of the activities you had planned, and you
skip the communicate role-play you scheduled for the end of the lesson.
Why is this bad?
First, it sets up the expectation that any grammar point can be
understood and acquired in a single lesson. Second, it reduces the
amount of practice that students receive, which is when much of the
real learning of how grammar works takes place.
How can you avoid it?
In two words: planning and discipline. As I mentioned in a previous article,
each lesson needs time set aside for production of the target grammar.
This means you will have a limited amount of time for explanation. Make
the hard decisions about how much students absolutely need to know and
stick to it.
Some students will protest. They will say that they need more questions
answered and more examples. It is up to you to remind them
that they will learn more by doing the exercises and practicing than
they will from another example sentence.
Let Focus on Grammar help
The explanations in each unit of Focus on Grammar are
broken up into convenient chunks. This allows you to quickly choose what to cover in class and what to recommend for
self-study. Contact your Pearson Longman ELL Specialist or request a sample today.
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