Teaching Grammar

Introduction

These pages are based on a workshop I gave on teaching advanced grammar at International House Barcelona, Spain. The workshop was in the form of a number of criteria for teaching grammar which I stated and were then discussed. Here, I have stated more or less the same points but also filled them out a little, in an attempt to make up for the lack of discussion in a (fairly) static text. However, as this is the web, I can easily update and change the content, so if you have any comments on anything you read here, I'd be happy to discuss them by email - my address can be found at the bottom of this page - and possibly make changes to reflect other peoples comments, opinions and criticisms.

This page is still under development, and not all the links in it are yet 'live'. Why not come back in a week or so's time to see if there's been any progress?

Contents

• Qualities of a good explanation
• Qualities of a good presentation
• Some examples of presentations
• Some problems specific to advanced grammar

Qualities of a good explanation

• be correct
• be consistent
• be simple
• have no exceptions
• be complete
• be exhaustive
• be general
• be productive
• enable discrimination
• be ‘memorizable’

Qualities of a good presentation

• be clear
• be efficient
• be memorable
• use standard terminology
• use informative terminology
• not rely on translation

Examples of presentations

• some/any
• present perfect
• adjective order
• conditionals
• causative have
• inversion

Problems specific to advanced grammar

• it can be bitty
• it requires explanation of subtle differences
• students have seen most of it already

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Last update: 1/04/96