The Simple and Effective methods of teaching
English Grammar to the Non-natives of English: A
Study on the Higher Secondary Students of Odisha
Dr Sudhansu Kumar Dash
Introduction
The word
grammar offered a generation ago, in 1954, by W. Nelson Francis means the set of formal patterns in which the
words of a language are arranged in order to convey larger meanings The second
meaning of "grammar “is "the branch of linguistic science which is
concerned with the description, analysis, and formulization of formal language
patterns. The third sense in which people use the word "grammar" is
"linguistic etiquette." The assumption that teaching Grammar as
linguistic science will improve the student's proficiency in Grammar arranging
the words of a language or improve his manners of linguistic etiquette , the
form of Grammar is concerned with the description, analysis, and formulization
of formal language patterns is usually taught is a very inaccurate and
misleading analysis. It therefore is of highly questionable value in improving
person's ability to handle the structural patterns of his language.
Grammar is the sound, structure, and
meaning system of language. All languages have grammar, and each language has
its own grammar. People who speak the same language are able to communicate
because they intuitively know the grammar system of that language—that is, the
rules of making meaning. Students who are native speakers of English already know
English grammar. They recognize the sounds of English words, the meanings of
those words, and the different ways of putting words together to make
meaningful sentences. Effective grammar instruction begins with what students
already know about grammar, and it helps them use this knowledge as they write.
By connecting their knowledge of oral language to written language, teachers
can demystify abstract grammatical terminology so that students can write—and
read—with greater competence and confidence. Without
a sound knowledge of the grammatical basis of the language it can be argued
that the learner is in possession of nothing more than a selection of
communicative phrases which are perfectly adequate for basic communication but
which will be found wanting when the learner is required to perform any kind of
sophisticated linguistic task.
Public institutions in Odisha have
been preaching the concept of grammar for years, yet for some mystical reason,
the students cannot seem to figure it out. If one is truly honest about the
topic, he or she will have to admit that the collective grammar of this state
is simply tragic. as it does not find Into whose lap does this task fall. English
teachers, teaching English grammar to a group of students think it to be a job
that should grant super human status to any teacher who manages to do it
successfully. There is a steaming buffet of options to pick from when it comes
to choosing the best way to teach this ever-relevant area of study. There is
the new-age method of teaching grammar, which ironically doesn't actually teach
grammar at all, but instead hopes students just sort of "pick it up"
as they read different texts Then, there is a method somewhere in the middle.
Each method depends on who is doing the teaching, what kind of students occupy
the classroom, the demands of the higher secondary education system,
The traditional method of teaching
grammar is still very popular among experienced teachers and teachers that have
been in the profession for a while. Everyone knows these kinds of teachers.
They proclaim this world has gone to the deepest pits of hell in the roughest
of hand baskets, and truly the rest of the teachers wonder why they are still
teaching at all. There are a few young, fresh, braves who enter the teaching
field and follow the example set by their teachers in high school-- the
traditional, grammar book, worksheet, right or wrong example. Regardless of
whether they look at the student population and see the wasting away of society
or a field of young and potential-filled flowers, these teachers see grammar as
something that should be taught in isolation. It should be given its own time,
its own unit, and its own space in the curriculum. Not incorrectly, they see
their chosen field of study as something so highly important that it cannot be
ignored nor tainted with other subjects; the students must learn it because,
well, that's what students do: they learn grammar. .Well, there may be one fact
these traditionalists are overlooking when it comes to teaching grammar. Why is
it that students, when taught grammar the traditional, isolated way, have to be
re-taught the same grammatical concepts year after year? It seems to the common
observer that they're simply not learning it. They remember the concepts for
the worksheet and the test but soon forget and have to learn the next year
There is certainly something awry in this system. Are teachers wasting their
time trying to fill young minds with grammatical facts? If they're not, then
why do so many adults who have graduated high school and gone through years of
repetitive grammar instruction display horrific grammatical skills. Based on
this information, many have decided to abandon the practice of teaching grammar
all-together. They have brushed it off as worthless and have instead chosen to
cross their fingers in hopes that if students read enough and write enough,
they will start to naturally see the patterns of the English language. For some
students this may work. In fact, it may work for many students. However,
teachers may collide into a problem with this system. In every state, teachers
have a curriculum to follow, a list of "to-do's" These curriculum
lists usually contain a set of pure grammatical skills that the students must
learn, and unless the teacher wants to rebel against the curriculum that
teacher must teach those things. the endless dilemmas of the English teacher
would arise. For those teachers who are neither traditional nor rebellious,
there is a middle road of grammar instruction. This type of instruction
combines grammar with reading and writing as an everyday experience in the
classroom. . This method is very much dependent on the teacher's creativity and
his or her ability to weave grammar into every other area of the English
classroom. It is by no means the easiest way to teach grammar, but as research
has shown, it may be the most effective. It is definitely the method that takes
the most time and creativity on the part of the teacher, but for a dedicated
professional, these are both secondary concerns to the level of learning the
students achieve. There are teachers who make the traditional method work;
somehow they have found a way to get bits of information to implant themselves
into student minds like tiny eggs of precious information. There are teachers
who don't handle grammar at all, but they make their students read enough and
write enough that somehow they pass their state tests and grow up with a basic
knowledge of the concepts; and there are teachers who creatively combine grammar
to other classroom activities. Which method works the best is up to the
individual teacher, but one thing is certain: it is the English teacher's job
to make sure this information is cleverly presented. Therefore grammar is one
of those issues that does not have an easy solution. It is tricky and it is
tough, therefore the project. It is not for the faint of heart or the
creatively shallow.
The
Problem
To be honest
about the topic on research, one will
have to admit that the collective grammar of the state is simply tragic. There
is certainly something away in the present system.. There is a steaming buffet
of options to pick from when it comes to choosing the best way to teach this
ever-relevant area of study. Therefore grammar is one of those issues that does
not have an easy solution. It is tricky and it is tough, therefore the project The
simple and Effective methods of teaching English Grammar to the Non-natives of
English. A Study on the Higher Secondary
Students of Odisha.
Review of
literature
Review of literature is an avenue to open the door of
research which enables the investigator to lay rational foundation for his
research study. Review of related literature is concerned with similar or
related studies carried out by other research workers in the same field. It not
only helps the investigator to have a clear absorption of the work already
done, but also gives an idea of the scope of the subject of study in all
aspects and implications.
To adapt a comment from Berns(1999), the concern , the
value and necessity of hearing actual voices and views from the periphery that
provide rich perspectives on and insights into the complexity of English
language teaching throughout the world. Tuder (2001) comments
that the reality of teaching will, of course, vary from context to context.
Accordingly, in this article tries to explore aspects of the realities of
English teaching in one state where English is a foreign language. Harmer
(2003) says the social context in which learning takes place is of vital
importance to the success of the educational endeavor. Shin & Kellogg (2007) argue that
situational teaching competence is much a part of professional expertise as language competence. Another
notable study Tsui (2003) documented the development of expertise amongst a
group of NNESTs in Hong Kong. The overtly ideological nature of ELT and its instantiation
in a periphery community are the subject of Canagarajah (1999).Pacek (2005)
studies that NNESTs have reflected on their experiences as teachers within the
educational systems of English-speaking countries, and the various papers Barine
(1999) reported on perceived identities as native/non-native teachers. However,
these works aside, the active agency of NNESTs as teachers within their own
educational systems is insufficiently explored .
Objectives
1.To study the everyday activities of the teachers in their
classrooms
2.To study the effective method of teaching grammar .
3.To study the attitude of the teacher about teaching and about
being a teacher
4.To study about the careers and classroom lives of teachers of
English in Odisna
Methodology
Data for this article was gathered through in-depth,
unstructured interviews with 32 teachers of Odisha teaching English, each
interview lasting between 2 and 3½ hours. Interviews were conducted in English
though informants occasionally used Odia where they felt it necessary to convey
concept or a particular piece of information for which they could not think of
the English equivalent. The interviews had a broad focus on the informants’
educational experiences as learners and teachers within their social contexts
and a list of topic areas was used as a framework for reasons
for becoming a teacher, family background, presentpost,classes taught,thoughts about teaching,motivation,dislikes,school
administration,induction.staff–student relationships own schooling, pre-service training, in-service training, other formal qualifications,teachers
and society,English
and Its position in Odisha and attitudes to English Grammar
The list did not, however, constrain the discussion and
throughout the interviews. The researcher remained open to any topic informants
wished to raise. The over-arching research question was the subjective
experience of these informants in the state education system in Odisha with respect
to their experiences as teachers within their own context throughout their careers.
In this
particular article the investigator wants to focus on the following sub-set of
research questions.(1) What are informants’ subjective perceptions of their
classroom lives: what influences and shapes their classroom practice? (2) What
are the sources of the informants’ commitment to teaching? The unstructured
interviews aimed to provide answers to the research questions by opening a
window of understanding onto how these teachers made sense of the social world of
teaching which they inhabited Within this framework, the conduct of the interview
itself was of paramount importance and all teachers on interviewing as a
research technique agree that
interviewing of this type should strive to be more like a conversation between
partners than between a researcher and a subject. Interviews for this study were
only conducted after the investigator had known the participants for some time; with
five of the seven participants being long-standing professional colleagues dating
back to his first involvement in the Odisha educational system more than
fifteen years ago. This familiarity with context and with the research
participants had both advantages and disadvantages: advantages in that the
researcher, , shared a great deal of contextual knowledge and could be seen as
an empathetic rather than a detached outsider; disadvantages in that the prior
relationship might have influenced what informants chose to reveal.. Various
interviewees spoke freely, and seemed to welcome the opportunity to talk in
depth about their lives and careers and to be listened to with respect. The
investigator also observed informants’ in their classrooms when interviews coincided with school terms. In
such cases thr researcher spent 2–3 days with the informants, observing not
only their regularly scheduled classes but their usual daily routines .Precise
patterns of teacher–student interaction or the amount of time spent on teacher
talk or student talk ,impressions of general teaching approaches features of
the lessons were found particularly interesting. The observations were not
designed as the primary research instrument, but as a supplementary means of
allowing an element of methodological triangulation in the research, i.e. to
provide another perspective on what informants had to say about their classroom
teaching. Reference to this observational data will be made on occasion
throughout the discussion of findings 32 participants of which
16 teachers interviewed from the urban schools
and 16 from the rural from four districts of odisha namely Koraput, Nuapada,
Cuttack and Balasore. The former two are the tribal populated districts where
as the later two are educationally advanced .The researcher intentionally sought interviewees who had had
extensive experience of education in their state system and who would thus be
able to speak from the basis of a broad range of experience.
Findings and Discussion
Odisha education is regarded as ‘traditional’ used to
indicate a teacher-fronted, teacher-controlled approach and authoritarian in
nature and there has been considerable public debate about such methods of
teaching and testing now being inappropriate to modern Odia society. The
authoritarianism manifests itself in the highly structured nature of schools themselves
where school directors wield immense power over teachers which, again, is at
odds with official pronouncements regarding the ‘empowerment’ of teachers.
In relation to published literature, rather than to
separate those, to provide a more coherent narrative of these Odisha teachers
in relation to the professional discourse.. The constraints of a journal
article inevitably limit to discuss yet the researcher focused on these two areas as the data reveals
that they are central to the life of an English teacher in Odisha. Classroom practice is no longer entirely the teacher-fronted, grammar-translation
class of popular imagination but that many communicative practices
have been established which could now be said to be the dominant paradigm in
English teaching worldwide, at least in its theoretical representation in
official curriculum documents. But the interpretation of official mandates is a
different matter and classroom teaching, as we shall see, may reveal many
different interpretations of ‘communicative practices’. Against this
background, amongst all the informants interviewed there was high value placed
upon the need to use English to communicate in the class and, generally,
support expressed in principle for a communicative teaching approach. In the
case of the informants as a group,
however, there was no uniformity expressed of how the communicative approach
was used in their own classes, or, indeed, whether it was used at all on a
continuing basis. One informant made clear that he felt there was
misunderstanding within the teaching
community about what CLT and the student-centered teaching at its basis meant.
His view of the prevailing understanding was that many schools focus on the worksheets and a lot of
exercises. Other informants
offered support in general terms for CLT but did not see it as the only
determinant of classroom methods for teachers, regardless of the official curriculum.Another
teacher Indicated that in the last week of the school examination constraints
meant that he could not use a communicative teaching approach, even though he
valued it. The situation also required him to use students’ first language when
explaining grammar points, a common practice in Odisha .Some said to be doing the communicative approach along with
traditional styles because they have to teach grammatical points to the
students. However, the teacher
went on to acknowledge that in her own classrooms there was a need to adapt to
situational realities and so use more Odia and even the local dialect.
Following a lesson observation class the researcher remarked on use of the
first language. she commented that some students don’t understand English. Most of the children in her school came from farming
communities and saw little need for English either in their present or their
future lives. In Koraput and
Nuapada the students don’t have a background in English and the context that encourages
them to think that English is very important. therefore used the
students first language as an aid to their learning and, even when some did
become more proficient in English, she continued to use the first language to show
consideration for the students in other ways. Another teacher said that the approach and the amount of English used depended on
the class. Clearly the use of particular methods may be constrained by
contextual features over which teachers have no control, the wash back effect
of examination formats.
The data indicates not only that informants were aware
of the principles of a communicative approach and its place in the required
curriculum but that the older approaches persist because some teachers find
them useful and appropriate with certain groups of learners. This may be tied
to the demands of examinations and the requirement to teach grammar in a formal
way, or related to situational constraints in which teachers respond to students
who have no background in English and feel the language has little or no
relevance to their present or future lives. The perceptions reported in the
data indicate, then, that teachers use methods which they feel to be
appropriate to the purpose of promoting children’s learning – and to enable them
to pass key examinations – and that these may, on occasion, not be those
specified in national curricula.Though teachers have little overt professional
autonomy in relation to officially mandated curricula, they retain de facto independence over the degree to which an official curriculum is
actually implemented in the classroom. Classroom teaching and the methods that these
teachers used are, then, many, varied and frequently imaginative. What unites
them all is that selection of methods is based on an understanding of the needs
of the students in their particular situations. Some of the teachers combined
the curriculum requirement of a communicative approach with older traditional
methods – grammar translation – when circumstances required it; while others
based their practice on communicative methods alone. However, the basic
principle in the selection of methods as revealed in the data is always to meet
the needs of the students at the particular stage of their school career, and
sometimes it is examination needs which predominate.There is
ample evidence in the interviews that these particular teachers had a strong
belief in and commitment to the value of their work; its value to students in
their schools and to society at large. From the observation it was clear that
some teachers were skilled classroom
practitioner with the ability to empathize with the students and develop in
them a desire to learn. All the informants seemed to share a desire for
self-improvement, taking higher degrees where possible and taking advantage of
in-service training opportunities.
Discussion
From the discussion it seems to be clear that if we
consider what makes an effective, successful teacher we have to go far beyond
the boundaries of the technical aspects of teaching –the methods used in the classroom.
Methods are important but they are just one aspect of a teacher’s
effectiveness. Other characteristics are equally important and we can turn to
the perspectives of one of the teachers for an overview who gave number of key qualities for success in
teaching – hard work, devotion, sincerity, honesty, trust, helpfulness and
friendliness. We can not consider methods to be so important if these were
visualized as uncritical adherence to one method .We can’t strictly follow one particular method but more important was a principled selection
of methods based on the students’ background, situation and needs which took
full account of the humanity of the individual. The value of using a variety of
methods was also recognized by the teacher. In his advice to other teachers, he
declared it was important to be open to ideas from whatever source and that any
technique of teaching grammar had potential usefulness in Odisha not being ‘anti’to any techniques but adapting any teaching
approach, any teaching techniques to use with the students.
Conclusion
The teachers’ perspectives discussed here contribute to a vision of ELT classroom practice as a
response to the locally-situated needs of the participants and suggest that the
ELT profession needs to acknowledge a richer and more varied picture of
classroom life than one sanctioned by official curriculam; one in which there
is an acceptance that ‘traditional ‘forms of instruction persist for a reason,
and that to uncover the reason there is a need to investigate the socio
cultural and educational contexts of use of the methods. The researcher here
argues that investigation of socio-cultural and educational contexts in which
classroom teaching is enacted is crucial to the understanding of local
practices. This understanding will, in turn, contribute to correcting a monolithic
view of ELT based on conceptions of idealized
practice. More research of this kind is, in consequence, needed to enrich our
collective understanding of the global practices of ELT in its many and varied
local contexts.
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