Teaching Grammar as a Communicative Resource

Most of the traditional teaching methods of grammar focus on practicing grammar as a rule at the word and sentence levels. So they try to teach students how to make adverbs and adjectives and so on. But the challenge is how to use these rules at the level of communicating? Here comes the idea of teaching grammar as a communicative resource and it is to provide students with opportunities to use grammar in communicative situations such as engaging them in conversations where they have to narrate a story or give an account of something. For example, you say to a student "this is how I spent my vacation, what did you do?" In such as a case the student has to call upon his or her knowledge of grammar and use, for example, the past simple, action verbs, adverbs, adjectives and so on. So, in teaching grammar we have to go beyond the use of grammar at the word and sentence levels and enable students to link it to real contexts and situations.  The following video by Jack Richards explains that:

My Testimony about an E-teacher Online Course

Here is a link which has a number of testimonies from the participants in a 3-week workshop that took place at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), USA., in 2011. My testimony is that last one in the video.

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Teaching - does it create confident and successful learners?

One important aspect of good teaching is enabling students to become confident in their abilities to learn. Teachers need to be really good communicators so that they can bring out shy students and encourage them to talk and ask questions. Fostering confidence in students is difficult to measure though because confidence is not something that we can learn or get out of a bottle; it is something that people get after successfully achieving their goals on a consistent basis. What teachers might need to do is to treat students as individuals who have their own unique abilities rather than treat them in a one-size-fits-all approach. Students need to find their niche in education in order to become confident and this is the role of a good teacher to help them achieve that.

The following video discusses some of the issues raised in the above.

Teaching - why is the quality of my practice so important?

It is not enough to get a degree in teaching and become content with the knowledge and skills you have. Teachers need to develop their knowledge, skills and competencies on a continuous basis. There is no end to learning as there will always be new things to learn. Teachers are not just deliverer of skills and competencies but also passionate learners. In today's rapidly changing world, students have a plethora of digital tools to get the knowledge and information they need. Hence, they do not want teachers to just give them knowledge and information. What teachers need to do today is to model the passion for learning to students.

The following video reinforces the above ideas.

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Teaching - why do the children always have to come first?

As teachers, we do our job to serve the best interests of our students. If our students do not feel that what we teach them relates to their lived experiences, then it is of no much use. What counts as effective teaching is the one which caters for the students' needs. The following clip discusses the principle of putting students first.

Teaching - what are its values, ethics and codes?

Is teaching a profession? This is a thought-provoking question that we need to discuss as teachers. I will be posting videos on this issue in the following days. Today's video is an introduction. Feel free to post your comments!

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My Project in the USA

Here is a link to a proposal of a project that I presented at an E-Teacher Conference at the University of Maryland, Baltimore Country (UMBC), USA, in 2011. I also presented the same proposal at the US Department of States in Washington DC two weeks earlier to the UMBC conference.

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Thanks