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51Scientific Journal Impact Factor
THE ROLE OF INNOVATIVE METHODS IN TEACHING GRAMMAR COMMUNICATIVELY IN EFL CLASSES
Abstract: This article focused on the methods which are used in teaching grammar communicatively as well as grammar-translation methods and innovative methods are pointed out. As we know teaching grammar communicatively has been a controversial issue among teachers and researchers for many years. A communicative grammar lesson allows students to practice the target grammar item through specific communicative tasks and activities. All these issues are the main purpose of this article.
Keywords: grammar-translation method, innovative methods, teaching grammar, EFL.
Annotatsiya: Ushbu maqolada grammatikani kommunikativ ravishda o'qitishda ishlatiladigan metodlarga, shuningdek grammatik-tarjima usullari va innovatsion usullarga e'tibor qaratildi. Ma'lumki, grammatikani kommunikativ ravishda o'qitish ko'p yillar davomida o"qituvchilar va tadqiqotchilar o'rtasida bahsli masaladir. Kommunikativ grammatika darsi o 'quvchilarga aniq kommunikativ vazifalar va mashg'ulotlar orqali maqsadli grammatikani mashq qilish imkoniyatini beradi. Ushbu masalalarning barchasi ushbu maqolaning asosiy maqsadi sifatida o 'rin tutadi.
Kalit so'zlar: grammatik-tarjima usuli, innovatsion usullar, grammatikani o 'qitish, EFL.
Аннотация: В статье рассматриваются методы, которые используются при коммуникативном обучении грамматике, а также указываются методы грамматического перевода и инновационные методы. Как мы знаем, коммуникативное преподавание грамматики было спорным вопросом среди учителей и исследователей на протяжении многих лет. Урок коммуникативной грамматики позволяет студентам практиковать целевой элемент грамматики с помощью конкретных коммуникативных задач и действий. Все эти вопросы и являются основной целью данной статьи.
Ключевые слова: грамматико-переводческий метод, инновационные методы, обучение грамматике, EFL.
M.Isamukhamedova Teacher of Uzbekistan state world languages university, Tashkent, Uzbekistan
INTRODUCTION
For many years, researchers and teachers have argued over whether we should even teach grammar. Despite the long-standing grammar debate, the fact remains that we do not use language without grammar. Perhaps, then, the problem is not grammar itself, but the ways that grammar has been taught and learned. Early approaches to foreign language instruction, including the Grammar Translation Method1, often taught grammar separate from the larger contexts in which language is used. While these approaches were often effective for developing a receptive (reading) knowledge of a language, they sometimes failed to provide students with the ability to use language communicatively in speaking and writing. As a result, several approaches to language instruction since Audiolingualism have focused on developing communicative competence. Communicative competence does not mean an absence of grammar instruction but rather grammar instruction that leads to the ability to
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communicate effectively. Rivers (1968) identifies the 'major methods of the past', which are the Grammar Translation Method, the Direct Method, the Reading Method and the Audio-lingual Method. These methods developed from the 19th century through the first half of the 20th century and they had widespread use and strong credibility at the time.
METHODS
At first, we should answer the question what means teaching grammar communicatively. It means that grammar instruction and lessons are not limited to introducing a grammar item or items, having learners do control exercises, and then later assessing students on their ability to understand grammar items. It means designing grammar lessons to include a communicative task or activity. A communicative grammar lesson might start in very much the same way as a traditional approach with the presentation of a grammar item and examples, followed by controlled exercises to practice the grammar item.
Other innovative methods are those described by Blair 4 as 'humanistic and psychosuggestive approaches'. Among these, Suggestopedia was certainly the most remarkable method. It was based on a branch of philosophy called suggestology and consisted in intensive teaching of the foreign language to groups of learners. Following the presentation and practice stages, a communicative grammar lesson
1 Johnson K. An introduction to foreign language learning and teaching (2nd edition). Abingdon and New York: Routledge. 2013.
2 Siaw-Fong Chung. A communicative approach in teaching grammar. Article. England. 2016. 19 p.
Dykes B. Grammar for everyone: practical tools for learning and teaching grammar. Camberwell, Victoria: ACER Press. 2007.
4 Johnson K. An introduction to foreign language learning and teaching (2nd edition). Abingdon and New York: Routledge. 2013.
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allows students to practice the target grammar. The beginning stages of a communicative grammar lesson often focus on accuracy while fluency becomes more important during the practice stage. Communicative grammar practice has often focused on speaking activities; however, writing activities are also an important and valid way to practice using grammar communicatively5. A communicative grammar lesson allows students to practice the target grammar item through specific communicative tasks and activities. Whether focused on writing or speaking, a communicative task should provide students with the opportunity to use language to communicate. Some of the activities that often take place in the communicative stage of a grammar lesson are games, role-plays, and discussion activities. Games are an excellent method of communicative grammar practice because they allow students the opportunity to practice and develop language skills in an enjoyable and low-stress manner. A communicative task should provide students with the opportunity to use language to communicate. Starting from comprehension-based methods, the Total Physical Response by Asher6 was certainly a very innovative approach, which based itself on the way children learn their mother tongue. Asher believed that comprehension occurs when children have to respond to some input with an action, which functions as a sort of confirmation of comprehension by the young learner.
RESULTS
In large classes which are concluded from more than eight students, there are some difficulties. As teachers, we ideally want our students to practice using language communicatively. In some large classes, however, communicative practice can be challenging; putting students in pairs and groups and monitoring their activity can be difficult with many students. With large classes, teachers should not feel guilty if they cannot make each lesson a completely communicative experience; rather, they should focus on what they can do. For instance, in a large class, a teacher might not be able to do an entire communicative lesson but might be able to do one or two interactive activities. In a large class, a teacher might not be able to do an entire communicative lesson but might be able to do one or two interactive activities.
Teachers can also find ways to set up situations for productive grammar practice outside the classroom. One way to give students more opportunities for communicative practice in English clubs7, where students meet regularly for
5 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/242258225.
Dykes B. Grammar for everyone: practical tools for learning and teaching grammar. Camberwell, Victoria: ACER Press. 2007.
7 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/242258225
communicative practice and other fun activities such as poetry contests or singing competitions.
Another way to provide students with more opportunities for communicative practice is to give them out-of-class assignments that require using the target grammar point. For instance, if students are practicing the present simple for routines, they might practice the grammar point in class and later, for homework, write a short paragraph about their daily routine. If students have cell phones or other devices, they can record themselves producing the target language either with another classmate or on their own. For example, students might make interview questions based on the target grammar point and interview a partner, or they might write a script using the target language and record themselves acting it out. For students with Internet access, there are numerous possibilities for productive communicative practice. Students could correspond with e-pals, 1 record podcast, or write blogs. All of these activities can be carried out with a focus on target grammar points that relate to in-class lessons. With large classes, teachers might have to think a bit differently about how they plan classes, but there are still many ways to provide students with opportunities for productive, communicative language practice. Finally, the Diglot-Wave Input developed by Burling in the 1980s proposed another innovative way to increase the
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comprehensibility of the foreign language .
If we say about the problems of grammar teaching communicatively, there are a lot of issues that needed to be done. Though great progress has been made, there are still some problems in teaching English grammar in foreign countries: the methods are dull, outdated and simplistic; the effects of teaching English grammar are very unsatisfactory; most students lack. Grammar teaching is an extremely important part of foreign language teaching but there exist two universal problems. One is that it is ineffective: during class, teachers explain grammar rules one by one, and students seem to understand and they have done many related exercises, but when they speak and write, they still make many grammar mistakes9. Teachers and students must change their beliefs in grammar. Teachers cannot regard grammar as fixed and strict rules, but we should consider it as a skill, and we must teach students grammar like the four skills. We should cultivate students' ability to use grammar structures accurately, meaningfully and appropriately. If grammar instruction is appropriate for a class, the teacher's next step is to integrate grammar principles into a communicative framework, since the fundamental purpose of language is
8 Johnson K. An introduction to foreign language learning and teaching (2nd edition). Abingdon and New York: Routledge. 2013.
9 Siaw-Fong Chung. A communicative approach in teaching grammar. Article. England. 2016. 19 p.
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communication. Unfortunately, grammar is often taught in isolated, unconnected sentences that give a fragmented, unrealistic picture of English and make it difficult for students to apply what they have learned in actual situations.
Many teachers only focus on forms and infusing knowledge of grammar by repetitious instruction, but neglect training the students' ability to communicate and use the English language. They often spend most of their time explaining dull, complex grammar rules.
In the deductive approach of teaching grammar, the first step is to give explicit formal instruction on grammar points by the teacher10. This step aims to assist learners in noticing grammar forms, thus raising their consciousness on the target grammar. Then learners are provided with input flood, which includes the target grammar point. The reading exercise provides further examples of the use of the structures in meaningful contexts. Here, the primary focus of the learners is the meaning of the passage. To make learners pay attention to the target grammar point while focusing on meaning, the target grammar point should occur in the passage repeatedly. Besides the repeated occurrence of the target grammar point, teachers can use other, more direct ways to raise the learners' consciousness, such as bolding, italics, and underlining. The target form can also be typographically enhanced through enlargement and different combinations of the previous techniques. The type of enhancement should be varied from activity to activity.
Maximize the novelty of the technique and increase the likelihood that students would attend to forms. The aim of this step is also to raise the learners' consciousness of the target firm and make the learners understand the usage of the target form while giving their primary attention to meaning. This requires that learners use the feature to complete the task successfully; if they fail to use it, they will not achieve a satisfactory outcome. In this respect, the target feature becomes the "essence" of the task. At this stage, tasks the teacher designs had better ensure the "task essentialness" of the target form to test whether the learners have grasped the target form or not. The last step is error correction. Teachers can use the techniques included in instructions such as recast and explicit feedback to correct the errors made by the learners. Thus, students can pay attention to form again and make progress in internalizing the target form. For example, it is a comparative form of adjectives and. Adverts are the grammar points, students will learn in the deductive approach, the first step is the teacher-fronted instruction on the rules of the comparative forms of adjectives and
10 Dykes B. Grammar for everyone: practical tools for learning and teaching grammar. Camberwell, Victoria: ACER
DISCUSSION
Press. 2007.
adverbs11. Then the students will read passages that contained the target forms. The target forms are enhanced by typographical input flooding. Next, purely communicative tasks are designed so that learners must use the target structure to complete the tasks. The learners will be required to exchange information about the features of two cities and then compare the features. To complete the task, the learners have to understand and produce various comparative forms. Then correction should be given based on the errors that the learners made. In the inductive approach, the first step is consciousness-raising input. This step is quite the same as step two in
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the deductive approach . When the learners give their attention to the meaning of the passage, the target forms occur in the given passage repeatedly and are typographically enhanced through enlargement and different combinations of the following techniques such as bolding, italics, and underlining. Thus, the learners' awareness of how the target structure is used in context is increased. Here, the type of enhancement should also be varied from activity to activity to maximize the novelty of the technique and to increase the likelihood that students would attend to forms. After the learners' consciousness has been raised, the next step is to ask the students to arrive at a metalinguistic generalization of the target form on their own and explain the observed use of the structure. Then the teachers should give explicit formal instruction of the grammar to check whether the students get the right generalization or not, so continued awareness is facilitated. The formal instruction here can help the learners activate their previous knowledge of the form and integrate the new material with what they have already known. The next step is productive tasks. In this step, productive tasks that include the target form's production are assigned to the learners to test the internalization of the target form. Teachers should also follow the principles of the task. The advocacy of two patterns of grammar teaching which allow systematic explicit grammar instruction in the communicative classroom based on the EFL context is to promote grammar teaching and foreign language teaching. Through the use of the modified activities, the students can get examples of grammar used in meaningful context as well as the communicative situation. Thus, we can find a proper position for grammar teaching in the communicative classroom to promote learners' grammatical competence as well as their communicative ability.
CONCLUSION
There is no conclusion on grammar teaching in the field of applied linguistics. We intend to find a pedagogically sound and empirically grounded position for
11 Anni T. Grammar teaching methods in EFL lessons. England. 2019. 83 p.
12 Dykes B. Grammar for everyone: practical tools for learning and teaching grammar. Camberwell, Victoria: ACER Press. 2007.
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grammar in the communicative classroom and to show the necessity of systematic explicit grammar instruction as a pedagogical choice of grammar teaching in the communicative classroom. With the development of applied linguistics and foreign language teaching, teachers will surely find an appropriate way of teaching grammar in his or her communicative classroom based on the pedagogical principles, classroom context and learners in his or her classroom.
1. Anni T. Grammar teaching methods in EFL lessons. England. 2019. 83 p.
2. Cook V. Second language learning and language teaching. London: Hodder Education. 2008.
3. Dykes B. Grammar for everyone: practical tools for learning and teaching grammar. Camberwell, Victoria: ACER Press. 2007.
4. Johnson K. An introduction to foreign language learning and teaching (2nd edition). Abingdon and New York: Routledge. 2013.
5. Siaw-Fong Chung. A communicative approach in teaching grammar. Article. England. 2016. 19 p.
6. https://iyx.iyu.fi/bitstream/handle/123456789/49998/1/U
7. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/242258225
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