Page 128 - Teaching English at Primary Level: From Theory into the Classroom

Teaching Grammar and Vocabulary

Classroom Insight: Discovering Grammar
Pia often uses discovery-based techniques for Examples One Two or more
making learners notice a grammar point even aduck ducks
in lower levels but without using metalan-
apig pigs
guage. For example, when teaching the plu-
ahorse horses
ral ofnouns,she first asks students to match
acow cows
names of animals in singular and plural (duck, a sheep sheep
ducks, pig, pigs, horse, horses, cow, cows,
sheep, sheep) with pictures of one or more an- Rule a duck no ‘a’ + s = ducks
Special case
imals. In this way she guides them into notic-
a sheep + = sheep
ing the difference between the singular and
the plural and noticing the example of the ir- In this way, rather than explaining the rule, she
regular plural in ‘sheep.’ leads the learners to discover it for themselves.
The learners then copy the names of animals They also make their own poster with the rule
in a table under two categories – ‘one’ or ‘two and hang it on the wall in the classroom, so
or more.’ She then helps them to formulate the rather than correcting errors directly, she just
rule, adding also the example of irregular plu- points to the poster and helps the pupils cor-
ral as a special case. rect their own mistakes.

Pete: Can Alex come out to play football?
Alex’s mum: Maybe later. He is playing his guitar right now.
Pete: Oh, really? Right now?
Alex’s mum: Yes. Well, he plays his guitar at this time every day.

Vocabulary and Grammar Combined
The best way to teach grammar to YLs is to use a holistic approach and com-
bine grammar teaching with vocabulary development (Pinter, 2006). This is
especially important for the learners in the first grades (aged 6 to 9) who are
not yet able to fully grasp the concept of grammatical categories. A good
source for combining the teaching of both grammar and vocabulary are
repetitive or cumulative stories, such as Gruffalo, The Enormous Turnip, or
Chicken Little. As the children do activities on the basis of these stories, they
are exposed to various grammatical features of language (prepositions, arti-
cles, tenses, etc.). Pinter (2006) points out that when using stories with YLs,
they will recognise the past tense as the natural tense for stories and will
associate it with the right use without having to learn it explicitly through
language practice.
Another good resource for combining grammar and vocabulary are songs.
A good example is a song from the course book Reach for the Stars 3 (Bratož
et al., 2019). It is a TPR song in which pupils are encouraged to sing and at the
same time move to show the meaning of the physical actions. As they par-

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