English is a flexible, malleable language. It is constantly changing, maybe even faster than other languages due to the huge influence it has worldwide in addition to the different cultures and languages immigrating into English-speaking countries.
In my case I feel passionate about the English language, the sounds, the complex yet simple grammar. How many books do I have about the English language? Most definitely over 22 – just about the English language – I’m not counting grammar or literature books.
Now many people learn English through their gaming addictions.
As an ESL/ EFL teacher, I try to encourage my students to enjoy the language learning process…. don’t see it as an end in itself but rather as a means towards an end.
One point of contention is that some students want to learn grammar while others just hate the sound of the word.
- Grammar can be presented in an attractive and practical way
Since the inception of the communicative approach, the main trend in teaching grammar has been as an integrated part of the lesson. When teaching the simple past for instance – regular verbs – many false beginners have already seen them but never learned the proper pronunciation.
They will be fated to fail when trying to say these verbs for instance.
ASKED
PHONED
So the best approach is to integrate grammar into the other skills, they’ll learn the grammar but also the listening and speaking part of the language .
Defenders of teaching grammar as a stand alone part of the class is that it would get lost in the noise of other points – it’ll be explicit teaching. Many times the proper grammar has never been acquired because it’s never been noticed.
So a blending of the two approaches would bring the best of the results. That’s I would call the Blended Approach.
- Blending approaches in language teaching yields the best results
Cheers,
Mo
The Americanoid Blog 