Grammar in context

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Scott Thornbury’s 6 Rules of Grammar Teaching

— The Rule of Context

• Teach grammar in context. If you must take an item out of context to focus on it, recontextualize it as soon as possible.

• Always associate grammar form with the meaning of the speaker or author.

— The Rule of Use

• Teach grammar with the objective of improving the learners’ understanding and production of real language – never as an end in itself.

• Always provide opportunities for students to put the grammar to some communicative use: practice, practice, practice!

— The Rule of Economy

• In order to obey Rule 2 (The Rule of Use), be economical.

• Minimize presentation and direct explanation time in order to provide maximum practice time.

• By practicing, students think, communicate, experience learning and remember language.

— The Rule of Relevance

• Do not waste time on grammar items or rules that students already know or will soon forget (e.g., every kind of question tag in one lesson or more than one or two contrastive examples).

• Allow Chinese to facilitate learning objectives, not to simplify or replace English.

— The Rule of Nurture

• The most difficult rule: teaching does not cause learning. The right environment, conditions and opportunity for learning do.

• Language learning is not an “ah ha! Eureka!” kind of learning. It is orienteering: finding one’s way through a jungle step by step, accumulating knowledge and skills through a long, slow, deliberate process.

— The Rule of Appropriacy

• Consider all these rules according to the level, needs, interests, expectations and learning styles of the students.

• These same rules may lead one teacher to focus on explicit grammar teaching more and another to explicitly focus on grammar…not at all.

Grammar lessons should be:

1. Text-based (Content Focus)

• Grammar teaching should always be contextualized (literally meaning ‘with a text’)

• Language never happens out of context; you’ll never find a fish out of water, unless it’s dead.

• There are layers of context that the teacher should make accessible through activities: the situation, the culture and the co-text.

• Grammar and language skills can be introduced independently in preparation activities.

• The language arts/text-based approach allows integration of other, skills-based approaches

• Highly compatible with genre-based and text-type teaching

• More opportunity for authentic and adapted-authentic texts

2. Awareness-Raising (Inductive Process Focus)

• Grammar lessons should require students to think about and understand the relationship between grammar form and language meaning.

3. Task-based (Goal Focus)

• Grammar lessons should require students to do something authentic, practical or interesting with the learned grammar, using it in a context and experiencing language with a purpose beyond classroom exercises or homework.

4. Production-based (Meaningful Practice and Recycling)