Teaching Grammar

Many adult non-native language learners worry about

learning grammar. They perform well enough while learning about a rule, but during using and practicing the language, they suffer from a number of grammar mistakes. From their point of view, certain errors in grammatical structures seem to have no logical reasons. Therefore, how can we teach grammar effectively? Is it better to teach grammar explicitly or implicitly?

When teaching adult learners, we teach about the rule and give students several practices and drills. They have more logical thinking than younger learners do. Teaching grammatical structures explicitly helps their language to improve. Such rules answer many questions they have about how to form a grammatically correct sentence. For instance, why is "s" added to a third-person singular noun or pronoun? They need to understand how language operates as a system. Also, these rules open their minds about mistakes they usually do and make them more alert about them. Such method results in raising their confidence in using the language.

Students in schools, that designate some scores or marks for grammar, prefer to have specific classes for learning grammar explicitly. They are concerned about the section of their exams detained for grammar. They desire explicit grammar lessons. They like to cover verb to be, simple present tense, irregular verbs and so on.

Young learners and kids can acquire grammar through communicative exercises. Kids usually learn spontaneously. They acquire grammar implicitly. For them, grammar is preferred to be taught in communicative contexts and in meaningful ways. Grammar has better be linked to authentic contexts. For example, for learning the past tense, they discuss and share something happened yesterday.

The incorporation between explicit and implicit methods may lead to more valuable results in improving target language. The advantages of the two ways are combined together.  together.