Khazratova K.M

UzSWLU RLLC

Grammar practice activities

I decided to write this article because I needed it and as soon as I began to discuss the idea with other teachers and students it became clear that many of them felt the same need as I did, and for similar reasons. We felt comfortable using a broadly communicative methodology in our teaching, and contextualized grammar practice.

What’s grammar?

Grammar may be roughly defined as the way a language manipulates and combines words in order to form longer units of meaning. For example, in English the present form of the verb be in the third person has two distinct forms, one (is) being used with a singular subject, and the other (are) with a plural; and if the plural are is combined with a singular subject the result is usually unacceptable.

Thus, a sentence like: This is a pen is grammatical, whereas This are a book is not. There is a set of rules which govern how units of meaning may be constructed in any language: we may say that a learner who “knows grammar” is one who has mastered and can apply these rules to express him or herself in what would be considered acceptable language forms. I have not attempted here to describe the structures themselves and I only to provide ideas for classroom practice.

· The place of grammar in language teaching.

There is no doubt that a knowledge – implicit or explicit – of grammatical rules is essential for the mastery of a language: you can not use words unless you know how they should be put together. But there has been some discussion in recent years of the question : do we have to have “grammar exercises”? Grammar , may finish the basis for a set of classroom activities during which it becomes temporarily the main learning objective . The learning of grammar should be seen in the long term as one of the means of a thorough mastery of the language as a whole, not as an end in itself. And even these activities will be superseded eventually by general fluency practice, where the emphasis in on successful communication , and any learning of grammar takes place only as incidental to this main objective.

· What does learning grammar involve ?

Before planning the organization of teaching, we need to have clear in our minds exactly what our subject- matter is: What sorts of things are included under the heading grammar, and what is involved in “knowing “a structure? The sheer variety of all the different structures that may be labelled “grammatical” is enormous. Some have exact parallels in the native language and are easily mastered; others have no such parallels but are fairly simple in themselves; while yet others are totally alien and very difficult to grasp. Some have fairly simple forms, but it may be difficult to learn where to use them and where not. Some involve single- word/ a/ an/ some ,others entire sentences (conditionals). When we teach any one of these types of structures we are –or should be – getting our students to learn quite a large number of different, though related: how to recognize the examples of the structure when spoken, how to identify it is written form, how produce both it is spoken and written form, how understand it is meaning in context, and produce meaningful sentences using it themselves.

· The organization of grammar teaching.

Any of generalization about the “best” way to teach grammar-what kinds of teaching procedures should be used, and in what order –will have to take into account both the wide range of knowledge and skills that need to be taught, and the variety of different kinds of structures subsumed under the heading “grammar”. Thus the organization suggested here represents only a general framework into which a very wide variety of teaching techniques will fit. I suggest for stages;

· Presentation

· Isolation and explanation

· Practice

· Test

We usually begin by presenting the class with a text in which the grammatical structure appears. The aim of the presentation is to get the learners to perceive the structure- its form and meaning – both speech and writing and to take it into a short term memory. As a follow-up, students may be asked to read aloud, repeat, reproduce from memory, or copy out instances of the use of the structure within the text. Where the structure is a very simple, easily perceived one, the presentation ‘text’ may be no more than a sample sentence or two.

At the stage Isolation and explanation we move away from the context, and focus, on the grammatical items themselves; what they mean, what rules govern them. The objective is that the learners should understand these various aspects of the structure. In some classes we may need to make extensive use of the students native language to explain, translate, and so on.

The practice stage consists of a series of exercises done both in the classroom and for home assignments, whose aim is to cause the learners to absorb the structure thoroughly.

The function of such exercises is simply to help make the rules of form clearer and to ensure that they are learnt more thoroughly. A learner who has worked though a series of them may find it easier, eventually ,to express him or herself correctly, in language that will be acceptable to a native speaker.

Another category of practice procedures still stresses the production or perception of correct forms, but involves meanings as well- though as yet unlinked to any general situational framework- and cannot be done without comprehension. Such exercises are, again , usually based on discrete items, and tend not to be open- ended. Some examples;

Translation, to or from the native language

Slot- filling, or multiple- choice, based on meaning,

e.g. He(works, is working, worked) at the moment,

Answer: He is working at the moment.

Slot- filling, with choice of answers not provided,

e.g. Last night we __________ television.

Matching

e.g. He an animal

I is doctors

She are a woman

The men am a student

The cat a pupil

Answers: He is a pupil, etc.

The language is still not being used to ‘do’ things, but merely to provide examples of itself. They are certainly more interesting to do than purely form –based ones, and provide more learning value.

Learners do tests in order to demonstrate- to themselves and to the teacher- how well they have mastered the material they have been learning. The main objective of tests within a taught course is to provide feedback, without which neither teacher nor learner would be able to progress very far. We have to know where we are in order to know where to go next.

Of the four stages in grammar teaching described above, the practice stage is , I think, the most important, in that it is through practice that the material is most thoroughly and permanently learnt. So let us consider next what a grammar practice technique entails, and what makes it effective.

Being polite

Use of modals to formulate polite requests and offers ( Would you(mind )…?, Could you…?, Shall I…?, etc.); oral interaction.

Procedure: Discuss briefly the importance of the forms of courtesy, in an English- language culture and in the students’ native culture. Then present a brief transaction in abrupt, direct commands/ questions/ comments, for examples:

A: Hey, you! Open this door!

B: It’s locked. Want me to get the key?

A: Year. Get it. Fast.

And discuss how it could be made more polite, for example:

A: Excuse me, would you open this door?

B: I’m afraid it’s locked. Shall I get the key?

A: Please, if you wouldn’t mind, as quickly as you can.

Then divide students into groups of four, give each a situation involving getting someone to do something (some examples in B 1), and ask them to compose two similar alternative dialogues. They then perform the dialogues to the class, with appropriate acting. The dialogues may, of course, be slightly tongue-in-check: the abrupt one obviously aggressive, the polite one exaggeratedly deprecating.

Variations: To make it easier, you may prefer to compose the original dialogues yourself in advance, and give them to the groups directly—but this makes the exercise rather more mechanical and less creative.

When preparing their dialogues, the groups should decide on an exact context; then spectators may be asked to try to guess what these are.

B 1. Dialogue situations

1 Getting something to eat in a cafe.

2 Asking the way.

3 Booking a room in a hotel.

4 Helping a blind person to cross the road.

5 Asking someone to go out with you.

In all such relatively free variations, you may find that you need to remind, or help students to use the’s as they interact.

Literature

1. “Learning Teaching” Jim Scrivener. 2005.

2. “English Grammar for Today” Leech, G.., Deuchar,M. and Hoogenraad , R. ,Macmillan, 1983.

3. “Oxford Advanced Learner’s dictionary”. Jonathan Crowther.

4. “Practical English Usage” Swan.M., Oxford University Press.1980.

Хазратова Кундуз Мамараимовна

Узбекский государственный Университет Мировых Языков УзГУМЯ