Page 127 - Teaching English at Primary Level: From Theory into the Classroom

Grammar Focus

SONG ARE THE .

SINGING A CHILDREN

Figure 7.4 Example of a Colour-Coded Sentence

ing with a focus on rules and language analysis. Read (2008a) points out
that it is not sensible to teach grammar explicitly before ages 8–10, but also
stressesthatthisdecisiondependsontheeducationalandculturalcontextof
learning. Her reference book 500 Activities for the Primary Classroom includes
a number of valuable activities aimed at raising YL’s grammar awareness.

Teaching Grammar in Upper Primary Classes
Older learners are able to grasp grammar at a more abstract level and are
probably already familiar with some metalinguistic expressions in L2, like
‘sentence,’ ‘nouns,’ ‘verbs,’ ‘tenses.’ We can therefore use more explicit gram-
mar activities and analyse or compare different language points. Pupils may
be encouraged to study parts of a structure and then find or create simi-
lar patterns. However, this should be always done in a contextualised task,
such as by focusing on a story or picture. A useful technique is also to use
colour coding for labelling different sentence parts (e.g. yellow for nouns,
blue for main verbs, red for auxiliary verbs, green for articles, etc.), jumble up
the words and ask pupils to create new sentences following the color-coding
scheme (Figure 7.4).
A number of teachers have also recognised the benefits of using inductive,
discovery-oriented techniques in teaching grammar. Rather than presenting
agrammarruletothestudents,theteacherleadsthemtowardsageneralised
grammar rule and lets them discover the grammar point for themselves. For
example, instead of presenting the differences between the present simple
and the present continuous, the teacher may decide to provide some exam-
ples for comparison and ask the learners a series of questions. Using the dia-
logue below, which illustrates the basic differences between the uses of the
present simple and present continuous, the teacher might ask the following
questions to help the learners formulate the rule: Can Alex come out to play
football with Pete? Why not? Does he play his guitar on Mondays? Does he
always play the guitar at the same time?, etc.

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