Grammar

The role of grammar in language instruction is a highly debated topic among world language teachers. Recently this topic was brought up on Teachers.net (click here to see thread). Here are my thoughts:



1. One of our main goals as language teachers is to get our kids communicating comprehensibly and to be understood by native speakers there needs to be a certain degree of accuracy in their communication. To obtain that accuracy, grammar is essential. But we can't lose sight of the goal of communication and so it is key to obtain a good balance so their your kids are learning to communicate accurately.



2. Kids don't know grammar terms or even their English grammar but can still communicate accurately in English. So it is important in this discussion to separate the study about a language with the study of meaning. Both of which require some focus on grammar or structure at least.



3. Concepts click better with kids when they are used in meaningful contexts. So grammar should never be isolated from communication. It needs to be a part of communication. And communication needs to be rich in the structures being presented at the time so that students get ample input.



4. With no understanding of grammar terms in English, I personally doubt the importance of them (at least in the lower levels as we are trying to get kids communicating) and actually have seen how terms like "indirect object pronouns" can further confuse kids. Instead I think we should be focusing more on meaning. Understanding that "le" means to him/her/you(formal) makes far more sense than realizing that "le" is an indirect object pronoun. If I understand the meaning, I can apply it. If I understand only the grammar term for it, there is very little chance of me being able to apply it.



5. Again, I really feel that balance is key. I still do drills and conjugation games with my students because I feel that they better ingrain the concepts in their heads. But on top of that we use them in many contexts and I have them do many more creative tasks to get them communicating with the next concepts.



6. More advanced grammar instruction can really benefit from more detailed English grammar instruction to the advanced student who is trying to perfect their skills (not develop them). The lower levels, on the other hand, are still trying to develop their skills and so expecting them to learn English grammar at the same time as the Spanish grammar can be very overwhelming to some students.



Let me give you an example of how I taught indirect objects to my Spanish I kids.



Students were writing a class story which inevitably included indirect objects. Individually I worked with students who were trying to express this concept in their story. Then as we went over the class, I pointed out some examples of indirect objects and talked about what they meant. At this point, there was no expectation of students mastering the concept. I just wanted to plant a bug in their head and show them multiple examples of them in their own writing.



Then a couple of weeks later we were talking about what students did for their mother's on Mother's Day. We started the lesson by having students write on the board what they did for their own mothers. I then pointed out how many of their examples were things they did TO or FOR their mother. At that point, I picked one which I asked the class to translate. I left a blank where the IOP needed to go. Before we had even finished the sentence a student who had remembered what we had done in the story pointed out that we needed a "le" in the sentence. Again we talked about what that "le" meant. I asked them questions about where we put the "le" in the sentence, why we doubled up, what "a" or "para" meant. And then we did another example. At that point, I asked them to for homework translate their phrases. I was available to help them with any vocabulary they didn't know.



The next day we returned to it with them answering questions that required IOPs. And we did a few translations, English to Spanish. At this point I assigned homework which involved translating more sentences (many of which were taken directly from their own sentences about their mothers) English to Spanish. At no point did I ever talk about the fact that they were called indirect objects. Instead we focused on meaning. And not once did I see the usual confused faces when I talk about indirect objects. And as I walked around the room or checked their homework, I was finding that in a very short time kids were finding a lot of success with this concept. Which was refreshing after spending so much time with my Spanish II kids who still weren't getting it (I had taught them using a more traditional grammar focused approach).

New Favorite Song

I absolutely love this song I found recently. It is called "Qué vida la mía" by Reik. And my students are really enjoying it as well. I love to hear that they liked a song we did in class so much they downloaded it to their ipod. Click on the title of this post to see a live version of this song on YouTube.

Final Exams

What is the objective of final exams?

My thoughts in the past have always been that it is a way for students to put together all the knowledge and skills they have been acquiring. It really forced students to go back and review what they had learned. So in the past I have always put a lot of emphasis on the final exam and made it 20% of the semester grade.

My one issue with final exams in the past has been that grades have always been due so quickly after the exam so that doing an authentic assessment is really out of the question (due to lack of time to correct it) and so my exams have traditionally been MC, T/F, fill in the blank, matching (no more than a word per answer). I've overcome that frustration slightly by adding an authentic part to it completed the week or two before hand and worth at least half of the final exam grade.

But today I sit here thinking about my Spanish I class. Over the weekend I had already started to put together a traditional exam using old ones as a guide. But when I gave students a chance today to look through their files and look through how much they had accomplished and reflect on it, I started to realize that with this group, they already had been putting it all together. And much of what they had learned throughout the year was still at their fingertips because they had retained so much. I realized that over the past months they had already demonstrated to me their ability to put it all together. One student even voiced my exact thoughts when she asked why we needed a final exam with all this proof of what they had accomplished.

So what is the point of the final exam now? Do I really need to give them a test that tells me exactly what I already know?