Tutorial

Based on your reading from variety of sources, write a critical essay on some of the
issues related to the Teaching/Learning of Grammar in the Malaysia ESL classroom.
One of the issues related to the teaching and learning of Grammar in the
Malaysia ESL classroom is the language awareness of teachers. Language awareness
is the explicit knowledge that teachers have of the underlying systems of the language
that enables them to teach effectively. Andrews (1999) argues that this explicit
knowledge about language is an important part of any second language (L2) teachers
language awareness.
Despite the high importance of having grammatical awareness, various scholars
have noted that regardless of years of experience in English teaching, many teachers
still lack grammatical awareness or knowledge about language. The situation appears
to be similar in Malaysia. Studies such as Mohd. Sofi Ali (2002) have demonstrated that
ESL teachers lack sufficient English language proficiency to teach the subject. The
study is based on the assumption that in order to be effective, English language
teachers must be able to draw on both explicit and implicit knowledge of the language
and that they must be able to reflect upon the knowledge of the underlying systems of
the language.
The study adopts Andrews (1999) theory of grammatical awareness. Andrews (1999)
states that grammatical awareness comprises four types:
1) Type 1: ability to recognize metalanguage
2) Type 2: ability to produce appropriate metalanguage terms
3) Type 3: ability to identify and correct errors
4) Type 4: ability to explain grammatical rule
The next issue is whether to teach or not to teach grammar. In the Malaysian
classroom, pupils tend to have problems in terms of their proficiency level, language
skills and also their educational background. For example, they tend to apply the rules
of their first language grammar into the English grammar. In the case of Malay students,
most of them tend to use the Malay language when interacting with their family
members and friends in their home environment as well as in school. They also use
their mother tongue to converse with their non-Malay peers who are fluent in the Malay
language too. Hence, they hardly use English outside the language classroom, resulting
in weak performances in their writing, reading, speaking and listening skills. The
problem is most obvious when it comes to examinations. It is always difficult to find
students writing their essays with very few grammatical errors; specifically in the use of
tenses and word order.