Tag Archives: english teaching

Grammar

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="608"] By José Zavala[/caption]

Mmmm, knowing as a committed man in cultural subjects, my answer is as simple as All I can learn and use in my life. So, here I am, almost thirty years after I started to study formally English reviewing, finally understanding and even discovering new topics and rules every day.

Thinking of a “subjective amount” of grammar every teacher should know for the fact of being precisely an English teacher, this answer may have different approaches. And it is needed to star by making a reflection about what Grammar is:

Wikipedia (no author mentioned in: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammar) refers:

“In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics, and pragmatics.

Linguists do not normally use the term to refer to orthographical rules, although usage books and style guides that call themselves grammars may also refer to spelling and punctuation”.

So, grammar is rules, clauses, syntax and even phonetics and semantics… Grammar is the thinking of the language, then, why do some people dare to say grammar is boring or complicated? Or going deeper and thinking over the “amount”, how much is it necessary to know, understand and apply? And if there is a field of these ones you don’t like or understand then maybe it is not prudent to consider oneself a teacher, isn’t it?

Returning to the opening question, I might suggest that in a basic level an English teacher must know pretty well all the elements he/she manages for the level or levels in charge. In public education or even in private in the initial courses you could not master the most exquisite rules but, at least, there is a minimum. And you can know which is by revising all the contents and reviewing and conceiving how to offer those rules to newcomers in English.

Communicative goals (and all of them belong to the Grammar topics) to reach might be:

• Conditionals
• Time actions
• To be specific in time quantities and measures
• To be able and then
• To communicate effectively in different contexts

 

I truly think that every teacher five year experienced should know an enormous amount of lovely Grammar!!!

P.S.

I believe I know many grammar rules (specially clauses and phonetics), if someone in the course on a day feels he/she needs some counseling, Here I am!!!

Continue reading →