Teaching Grammar by Examples

Eman Elturki, US

Eman Elturki is a doctoral student in the Language, Literacy and Technology program at Washington State University. Elturki holds a master’s degree in TESOL from the University of Southern California. She teaches ESL at the Intensive American Language Center of Washington State University. Her research interests include English language teaching, second language acquisition, educational technology, and discourse analysis. E-mail: eman.elturki@email.wsu.edu

There are different practices of teaching grammar. Some teachers follow a deductive approach while others follow an inductive approach. In the deductive approach, the teacher begins with the rule and then gives examples to show how this rule can be applied, whereas in the inductive approach, the teacher begins with examples from which the students can infer the rule (Thornbury, 1999). In this article, I reflect on which method was more effective in teaching English grammar to upper-intermediate English as a Second Language Learners.

Complex grammar topics were covered in this class such as real and unreal conditions, reported speech, past modals, and the passive voice. At the beginning of the course, I taught some grammar points deductively in which I wrote the rule first on the board, explained it, and provided some examples, and then students practiced using the rule. After I had tried teaching grammar in this way, I decided to try teaching grammar inductively. This was really effective in having the students engaged in the learning process and helping them understand and use these grammar points successfully. In the next section, I demonstrate how real conditionals can be taught through examples.

Present Real Conditionals

1. Write the following sentences on the board:
   1. If you put water in the fridge, it freezes.
   2. If you heat metal, it increases in size.
   3. If I shop online, I use my credit card.
   4. If I search something on the Internet, I use Google.
2. Read each sentence and ask students what they notice (you can give them a clue “What is the tense in each sentence?”)
3. While they are discussing the tense, underline each verb in both clauses. Example:
   1. If you put water in the fridge, it freezes.
   2. If you heat metal, it increases in size.
4. After students arrive to the conclusion that they need a simple present tense in both clauses in order to form a present real condition, ask them about the meaning of each sentence. What do sentences 1 and 2 mean?
5. You can provide more examples to help them figure out that these sentences refer scientific facts.
6. Then, you can ask them about sentences 3 and 4. You can provide more similar examples to help them understand that these sentences refer to personal habits.
7. After analyzing the sentences, students arrive to the conclusion that present real conditions are used to talk about (a) scientific facts (or a general fact/truth like “If it is a holiday, the university is closed.” and (b) personal habits as in examples 3 and 4.
8. After that you can ask them what are the form and usages of present real conditions? and write what they say on the board. Example:
   • If simple present, simple present.
   • Simple present if simple present.
   • Present real conditions are used to express a scientific fact, a personal habit, or a general truth that occurs under a certain condition.
9. After that, students should be given some practice exercises or activites to apply the introduced grammar point.
10. You can follow the same method with the other real and unreal conditionals. Before introducing the past and/or the future real conditions, write some examples of the present real conditions as well as examples of the past real conditions, and then ask them about the differences and highlight their answers.

Although this might appear to some teachers as time consuming or difficult to apply, I personally found this approach practical and effective. Instead of reading the rule from a grammar textbook or writing on the board (or using a projector) to present the form, usage(s¬), and examples for a certain grammar point, providing examples and working with the students on discovering the rule make the students engaged as well as ““make the rules more meaningful, memorable, and serviceable” (Thornbury, 1999, p. 54). Moreover, students are given the chance to practice speaking and develop their critical thinking by analyzing the sentences and deriving the rules. Furthermore, the inductive approach ensures active learning “rather than being simply passive recipients” and very likely makes the students “more attentive and more motivated” (Thornbury, 1999, p. 54).

Reference

Thornbury, S. 1999. How to teach grammar. Harlow : Longman.