Effective ways of teaching grammar at secondary school

Introduction

Language is an unavoidable part of everyday life. It is arguably the most essential medium by which humans communicate with each other. Without language the society would be in a mess of miscommunication, they would misunderstand one another. Recognizing the language as a significant aspect of daily life causes us to think and wonder why it is so often misused and fraught with errors.

There are many quotes of scholars and writers about the language and grammar, most of them have the same aim and idea. As Edgar Allan Poe said “A man's grammar, like Caesar's wife, should not only be pure, but above suspicion of impurity.” However, a person who knows a language perfectly uses a thousand and one grammar lexical, phonetic rules when he is speaking. Language skills help us to choose different words and models in our speech.

It is clear that the term “grammar” has meant various things at various times and sometimes several things at one time. One of the most necessary step for the future teacher is to know what grammar means itself. Grammar is the whole system and structure of a language or of languages in general, usually taken as consisting of syntax and morphology (including inflections) and sometimes also phonology and semantics. [1]

For me the grammar issue was settled at least twenty years ago with the conclusion offered by Richard Braddock, Richard Lloyd-Jones, and Lowell Schoer in 1963. “In view of the widespread agreement of research studies based upon many types of students and teachers, the conclusion can be stated in strong and unqualified terms: the teaching of formal grammar has a negligible or, because it usually displaces some instruction and practice in composition, even a harmful effect on improvement in writing.” [2, pp. 37-38] Indeed, I would agree with Janet Emig that the grammar issue is a prime example of "magical thinking": the assumption that students will learn only what we teach and only because we teach.[3, pp. 21-30 ] But the grammar issue, as we will see, is a complicated one. And, perhaps surprisingly, it remains controversial, with the regular appearance of papers defending the teaching of formal grammar or attacking it.[4, pp. 55-63]

Grammar is a component in all language skills: reading, writing, speaking, and listening. Teachers need to know rules of grammar as well as techniques that help students use grammar effectively and effortlessly. It is clear that the communication depends on grammar, as a result no speaking is possible without the knowledge of grammar, without the forming of a grammar mechanism. The main person who will be able to develop such kind of mechanism is a teacher. Teaching grammar is of a fundamental importance. However, the question is, how it should be tackled or what kind of approach or methodology should be applied. There is no a simple rule or a rule that can be generalized. This depends on the teacher's experience and preference based on his actual assessment of the learners needs. I think that learning must be made seriously interesting and a teacher should prepare materials according to the audience, i.e. type of students in the class. Methodologies differ because we have different levels of competence in learners. A thorough understanding of different areas of grammar is a fundamental need.

The structure of my course paper can be characterized by the aspects below: