The faculty of english philology and translation studies

2.2. Teaching grammar through communication
In teaching English as a foreign language, the study of grammar alone is not enough to understand language acquisition. It is necessary to consider not only how the learners acquire grammatical competence, but also how they learn to communicate, that is how they develop communicative competence. Communicative strategies enable the teachers to created opportunities for the students to use language in situations as close to real life. It makes the learners consider language not only in terms of its structures (Grammar and vocabulary) but also in terms of the communicative functions that it performs. Using Communicative Approach makes the teachers more strongly aware that it is not enough to teach learners how to manipulate the structures of the foreign language. They must also develop strategies for relating these structures to their communicative functions in real situations and real-time. It is important to develop the learners' ability to take part in the process of communicating through language, rather than with the perfect mastery of individual structures Awareness of teaching is empowering. The more interest teachers have in gaining awareness of how they teach, the more chances they will have to direct their teaching towards successful student learning, So in order to make students addict to learning grammar, be able to use correctly that they have learned, and have communicative competence, one essential thing is to train them to be in touch with grammar communicatively by creating natural situation using authentic materials.
Grammar is the science that teaches the proper use of letters, syllables, words, and sentences, or treats the principles and rules of spoken and written language. Acquisition of grammar involves explicit knowledge of grammatical concepts, categories, and rules. The role of grammar, or formal accuracy, has been a major concern in English Language Teaching in recent years and a number of issues are addressed in designing courses and classroom activities for learners. The object of grammar is to teach those who use the English Language to express their thoughts correctly either in speaking or writing. In teaching language as the role of grammar, there are three areas to be considered: grammar, as a rule, grammar as forms, and grammar as resources. Grammar is one of many resources in language which helps to communicate. Without any teaching of grammar, learners are not able to construct a sentence or to choose the words which ought to be placed. Hymes (1972) proposes that language should be taught in communicative situations in order for learners to achieve communicative competence. Communicative competence is concerned not only with what is grammatical but what is appropriate in a given social situation. Without a complete knowledge of significant grammatical facts, learners are bound to have difficulty giving exact expression to their thought. So learners need to become acquainted with certain principles and rules. A broader conception of grammar includes not only a description of the rules for "well-formedness" but also rules specifying the relationship between grammatical forms and the real world".
Communicative Language Teaching emphasizes the importance of structure and vocabulary but preparation for communication will be inadequate if only these structures are taught. Studying them enables students to know the rules-language usage, but they will not be able to use the language. To communicate, people use the language for the functions, such as agreeing, disagreeing, asking for permission or promising. Moreover, people carry out these functions within a social context. Therefore, to have some knowledge of target language forms, meaning, and functions in negotiating to mean, communication is put into practice in the Communicative Approach. The goal of the Communicative Language Teaching is to enable their students to become communicative competent. Communicative competence involves being able to use the language appropriate to a given social context. In this approach, the teacher is a facilitator of his students' learning and a manager of classroom activities.
To establish situations likely to promote communication, as an advisor, co communicator, the teacher's role is less dominant than in a teacher-centered method. So students are more responsible managers of their own learning. The most obvious characteristics of the teaching-learning process are that almost everything is done with a communicative purpose. Students use the language a great deal through communicative activities such games, role- plays, and problem solving tasks. Another characteristic is the use of authentic materials. By using authentic materials, students have an opportunity to know the actual language used by native speakers. Activities have to be carried out by students in small groups. Students will be more motivated to study a foreign language since they will feel they are learning to do something useful with the language they study. Teachers give students an opportunity to express their individuality and feel more secure with the foreign language. This enhanced cooperative interactions with their fellow students and the teacher. In this approach, language functions are emphasized over forms. A functional syllabus is used. Forms are presented at first. When students get more proficient in the target language, the functions are reintroduced and more complex forms are learned. In this approach, students work on all four skills from the beginning. Students can have limited linguistic knowledge and still be successful communicators.
At the height of the Communicative Approach to language learning in the 1980s and early 1990s it became fashionable in some quarters to deride so-called "old-fashioned" methods and, in particular, something broadly labelled "Grammar Translation". There were numerous reasons for this but principally it was felt that translation itself was an academic exercise rather than one which would actually help learners to use language, and an overt focus on grammar was to learn about the target language rather than to learn it.
As with many other methods and approaches, Grammar Translation tended to be referred to in the past tense as if it no longer existed and had died out to be replaced world-wide by the fun and motivation of the communicative classroom. If we examine the principal features of Grammar Translation, however, we will see that not only has it not disappeared but that many of its characteristics have been central to language teaching throughout the ages and are still valid today.
The Grammar Translation method embraces a wide range of approaches but, broadly speaking, foreign language study is seen as a mental discipline, the goal of which may be to read literature in its original form or simply to be a form of intellectual development. The basic approach is to analyze and study the grammatical rules of the language, usually in an order roughly matching the traditional order of the grammar of Latin, and then to practise manipulating grammatical structures through the means of translation both into and from the mother tongue.
The method is very much based on the written word and texts are widely in evidence. A typical approach would be to present the rules of a particular item of grammar, illustrate its use by including the item several times in a text, and practise using the item through writing sentences and translating it into the mother tongue. The text is often accompanied by a vocabulary list consisting of new lexical items used in the text together with the mother tongue translation. Accurate use of language items is central to this approach.
Generally speaking, the medium of instruction is the mother tongue, which is used to explain conceptual problems and to discuss the use of a particular grammatical structure. It all sounds rather dull but it can be argued that the Grammar Translation method has over the years had a remarkable success. Millions of people have successfully learnt foreign languages to a high degree of proficiency and, in numerous cases, without any contact whatsoever with native speakers of the language (as was the case in the former Soviet Union, for example).
There are certain types of learner who respond very positively to a grammatical syllabus as it can give them both a set of clear objectives and a clear sense of achievement. Other learners need the security of the mother tongue and the opportunity to relate grammatical structures to mother tongue equivalents. Above all, this type of approach can give learners a basic foundation upon which they can then build their communicative skills.
Applied wholesale of course, it can also be boring for many learners and a quick look at foreign language course books from the 1950s and 1960s, for example, will soon reveal the non-communicative nature of the language used. Using the more enlightened principles of the Communicative Approach, however, and combining these with the systematic approach of Grammar Translation, may well be the perfect combination for many learners. On the one hand they have motivating communicative activities that help to promote their fluency and, on the other, they gradually acquire a sound and accurate basis in the grammar of the language. This combined approach is reflected in many of the EFL course books currently being published and, amongst other things, suggests that the Grammar Translation method, far from being dead, is very much alive and kicking as we enter the 21st century.
Without a sound knowledge of the grammatical basis of the language it can be argued that the learner is in possession of nothing more than a selection of communicative phrases which are perfectly adequate for basic communication but which will be found wanting when the learner is required to perform any kind of sophisticated linguistic task.
In responding to student communication, teachers need to be careful not to focus on error correction to the detriment of communication and confidence building. Teachers need to let students know when they are making errors so that they can work on improving. Teachers also need to build students' confidence in their ability to use the language by focusing on the content of their communication rather than the grammatical form. Teachers can use error correction to support language acquisition, and avoid using it in ways that undermine students' desire to communicate in the language, by taking cues from context. When students are doing structured output activities that focus on development of new language skills, use error correction to guide them. When students are engaged in communicative activities, errors should be corrected only if they interfere with comprehensibility and be responded by using correct forms, but without stressing them.
The goal of grammar instruction is to enable students to carry out their communication purposes. This goal has three implications: Students need overt instruction that connects grammar points with larger communication contexts. Students do not need to master every aspect of each grammar point, only those that are relevant to the immediate communication task. Error correction is not always the instructor's first responsibility.
Which method works the best is up to the individual teacher, but one thing is certain: it is the English teacher's job to make sure this information is cleverly presented. Therefore grammar is one of those issues that do not have an easy solution. It is tricky and it is tough, kind of like all important things in life. It is not for the faint of heart or the creatively shallow.