Learning Grammar

Teaching and learning a foreign language like English is not easy task. The situation become more difficult when the learners are primary school children and teaching and learning focus is grammar, an activity often regarded as ‘boring, ‘uninteresting’ and ‘’tedious’. However, one’s mastery over a language is determined by the appropriate use of language by that individual following grammatical rules and failing to follow the rules of grammar marks one’s use of language as erroneous. Therefore, systematic attempt is done to teach grammatical rules and structures to the language learners from the beginning of language teaching and learning process. However, the success or failure of learning, mastering and using the grammatical rules and structures is largely determined by the technique and approach used by the grammar teacher to teach. The leaner-cantered, interesting, motivating technique of grammar teaching is believed to generate positive results whereas traditional, teacher-centered, uninteresting, uninvolving method is believed to be a cause of failure for learners to learn and master grammar rules and structures. Therefore, the grammar teaching technique, which involves language learners, to maximum, in learning in amusing and creative way, motivating, challenging and stimulating his/her mental processes, and reducing classroom anxiety and fear,  is desired and recommended for fruitful language teaching and learning process. In this respect, the present paper discusses the effectiveness of using games for teaching grammar to primary school students as a technique which could easily be utilised and exploited for maximum benefits for learners. The study is based on the practical experiment done on the students of two primary schools in Sebha city of Libya using grammar games. The results, which proved to be fruitful and positive, are discussed as a basis for the argument in support of using games for teaching grammar to school children.

Despite the existence of a range of grammatical theories, few are designed for, nor are broadly well understood by, the language teaching field. The field itself, moreover, has adopted various approaches to teaching grammar as well as variant terminologies both for grammatical notions (such as subject or agent) and for certain grammatical constructions (such as phrasal verb or compound noun). While recognising the value of this diversity, we propose a seven-point framework for teaching grammar, named the 7Cs. The 7Cs consists of categories, combinations, components, concepts, correlations, connections and contexts. Between them, these 7Cs cover all pedagogically relevant aspects of the grammar from formal considerations through to pragmatic and contextual issues. In addition to offering a standardised terminology and annotational techniques, the 7Cs framework offers sufficient capacity to capture the complexities of various structures. The framework is presented with pedagogical rationales after which it is exemplified in application to the passive voice.

Collocation is known as one of the most problematic areas in learning a second language and it seems that if one has tendency to improve his or her communication ability in another language, the elaboration of collocation using competence is among the most important issues. This study investigated the role of implicit input enhancement in teaching grammatical collocations for Iranian EFL learners. Two groups of Iranian intermediate EFL High School students in a language institute in Ardebil participated in this study. One group was assigned as control group and the other as experimental that received treatment sessions. A Twenty-item multiple choice pre-test was administrated at first for both control and experimental groups. 10 sessions of treatment through bolding the target grammatical collocations in the reading passages were provided for experimental group. Post-test was administrated for both control and experimental groups after treatment sessions. The scores of post-test were analyzed using t-test. The results of t-test showed that there was no significant difference between the two groups. The findings demonstrated that enhancing the collocational input is not significantly beneficial for EFL learners.