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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