In my experience, every grammar book in Taiwan consists of teaching specific grammatical structures unit by unit, where you are given many examples of that structure in sentences to practice or whatever. It is generally left to the teacher to explain the context in which the structure is needed, though occasionally you do get those books that include a Chinese explanation, which I suspect is quite a lot better than who knows what kind of misunderstandings are occurring when you’re explaining what is often a rather technical concept to kids in the language they are here to acquire, rather than their native one. Assuming the translation is good.
But the problem is, the kids treat these things like math class or something. They learn the “formula” oh ok, today we are adding “ed” onto the verbs, got it I can do that! And tomorrow we are adding “has +ed” etc.
They are not really giving much consideration to the most important aspect, which is the context that requires this structure. Nor do the books even hardly allow for it, since they don’t mix and match. EVER. It’s always segmented off, so the kids literally never have to think about WHY are we adding this or subtracting that. And thus, they speak in the present tense forever in real usage. It’s like grammar is just an annoying class, that never connects with reality.
So, my long-winded question is, how do I fix this? How do I make it so that the kids are not only learning the structure, but also the WHY and the context, and the MEANING of that structure are just as much a part of the learning process as the “formula” is? Just giving a lecture on it prior to practicing the structure is not enough. It needs to somehow be driven in equitably, just as much as drilling the structure is.
Perhaps you could improve things by structuring drills so that it’s necessary to process the time element, structure, and meaning, and as you say, “mix and match”.
So, my long-winded question is, how do I fix this? How do I make it so that the kids are not only learning the structure, but also the WHY and the context, and the MEANING of that structure are just as much a part of the learning process as the “formula” is? Just giving a lecture on it prior to practicing the structure is not enough. It needs to somehow be driven in equitably, just as much as drilling the structure is.[/quote]
You start from meaning.
You take the structure you want to teach, and you figure out something the kids CARE about, and you talk to them about that, while modeling the structure. You repeat that structure as much as possible. You occasionally comment on when and where that structure is used, by pointing out what it MEANS in a particular place. Alway focus on meaning. If you don’t, they won’t.
Most, if not all grammar reference books look at grammar from a Form, Meaning, Use point of view. When you teach it, like Ironlady said, you must focus on meaning first, regardless of in which order it appears in the reference book or the textbook. Meaning first. Always. Once you do that, form will make a lot more “sense.” If you focus on form before meaning, there is absolutely no way they will make any connection between the form and what it means and then you might as well be having pizza together. At least they’ll remember the pizza.
The best way to fix this is to simply not teach from the book but only refer to the book as backup.
The way I teach, the way that the homework is written and what I tell new teachers is that they need to teach the new unit of material and they need to review related previously learned material at the same time. It is up the teacher to understand what material was taught previously and additionally include that in the lesson. If simple past tense is being taught then the teacher should be reviewing future tense that was taught 3 months ago and present cont/simple present that was taught a year earlier. Just because the book only shows one sentence pattern doesn’t mean that you are limited to only teaching one sentence pattern.
In addition to this I orally begin teaching simple past and future tenses more than 1 year before by asking them what they did/are going to do yesterday/tomorrow at the beginning of class. I write the structure of the sentence on the board and don’t care if they conjugate correctly although I do spell the correct past tense for them to see. This also helps them with sentence structure. Person - verb - (place) - time
One year before what? They have no simple past or present tense for a whole year? It’s practically impossible for you or they to express any meaning anyone cares about if that’s the case. So class is…class. Kind of separate from their lives.
Umm… No… That isn’t at all what I said. I am sorry that I didn’t include everything that I do in a simple response. I focused specifically on the verb tenses that he used as an example.
By the second month they are making sentences about their lives. First they need to know some vocab and then they start sentences.
The sentences vary in order and topic but generally include:
I am angry/happy/sad/tired/etc…
I like cats/bikes/basketball…
I have a black dog…
I want ice cream…
He/She/You/etc forms
I run/jump/read today - don’t even introduce conjugations
intro yesterday/tomorrow
start showing them past/future constructions on the board but don’t correct much
and continue to bring more sentence constructions into the class as they progress
None of these sentences are formally taught in the books at these times. It requires about 10-15 minutes of fairly relaxed time spent free talking with students and unfortunately I would not be surprised if many teachers are not allowed to do that. Expressly not allowed.
The idea is that students have used these constructions many times informally in free speaking by the time that they are formally taught the written form that the concept part of teaching it is already done.
Too many teachers simply open a book and teach a singular unit as it comes up. They don’t even pay attention to what other similar sentence forms the students have learned (but not used). Those teachers will always be limited as to how effective they are. I will also be limited as will all teachers. Nobody is perfect.
