TEACHING GRAMMAR IN THE POST COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH ERA

Grammar. To teach or not to teach? This has been the question that language teachers have asked themselves for ages. It has been a matter of debate for teachers, linguists and second language acquisition experts.

Historically, language teaching approaches and methods have moved from one extreme of the spectrum to another as regards the explicit teaching of grammar. Long before our times, grammar was at the centre of language teaching, as it was believed that the study of the grammar of X‟s language was the best way to its mastery. So, from medieval times till around the 1970s, the fixation of language teaching on the study and description of structures manifested in approaches such as the Grammar Translation and the Audio Lingual method, with short interludes of the other approaches such as the Direct Method, Total Physical Response and the Silent way which although claiming to differ still based their syllabus on grammar points.

From the Grammar-dominated end of the spectrum, we moved to the Absolutely-noGrammar end. Grammar based approaches proved inadequate in that students were unable to communicate outside the classroom. Based mainly on Hymes‟ “communicative competence” and Krashen‟s models of language acquisition, the Communicative Approach emerged as the meaning-focused alternative to the formfocused approaches of the past. Strong versions of the approach emphasized the teaching of functions and absolutely discouraged the teaching of grammar structures arguing that communication – and not language description- was the aim of language teaching.

However, the studies of the last 30 years have proved that the lack of grammar instruction has not encouraged language acquisition. On the contrary, more recent studies show that grammar instruction and explicit knowledge of the target language do have positive effects on language acquisition. So, how should we approach the teaching of Grammar in the Post- CommunicativeApproach Era?

Source: https://www.eflmagazine.com/teachinggrammar-post-communicative-approach-era/ Accessed on 17/06/2018

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