Valentina Chiriac, Lingvistica aplicata, Didactica Lb.

Engleze, Master II
Choose a distinctive feature of L2 (phonetics, phonological, lexical, grammatical...) and propose your
own approach or method (+ types of example - annex) for teaching it to non-native speakers.

Teaching grammar to non-native speakers

Grammar teaching has always been a challenge even for the most experienced teachers. In order to be
able to understand the importance of grammar in language teaching I consider necessary to have a
clear vision on what grammar actually is and how it helps learners acquire better a second language.
David Crystal defined grammar as [] the business of taking a language to pieces, to see how it
works (Rediscover Grammar, 2000). Thus, people created first the language, through spoken
utterances and only after, grammar appeared as a means or a tool of analysing it. From this quote we
understand that grammar goes way beyond than just being able to name parts of speech, it represents
the comprehension and analysis of how a certain language functions, teaching us how to express most
efficiently what we want to say and getting our message across.
Amongst the arguments on why grammar should be taught to students that learn a second language
one of the most important would be that the knowledge of language and the comprehension of the
mechanics behind its functioning is essential while trying to have a correct understanding and critical
view of a certain text or message. Furthermore, grammar can offer to pupils something solid to grasp
on while making their first steps into learning a new language. It can provide them confidence through
its organisation and systems of rules, guiding them on the path of discovering that specific language
and providing a starting structure for further information to be built on.

Over time, teachers adopted various positions regarding grammar teaching. Some of them believe only
in the normative grammar, meaning the grammar used in formal speaking and writing ignoring the
grammatical forms of spoken or informal language. Thus, their approach on teaching grammar usually
consists in providing a set of rules that must be learned and abided no matter what and applying these
rules through exercises. The result of this method consists usually into longsome and boring lessons,
the students not being able to apply the rules into real life.
A second approach, adopted by some modern teachers consist in actually not teaching grammar at all.
The fundament of this thinking is if children learn their first language without grammar, then they will
be able to learn a second one the same way, assuming that learners will acquire grammatical
knowledge by using language.
The communicative competence model balances these extremes. The model recognizes that overt
grammar instruction helps students acquire the language more efficiently, but it incorporates grammar
teaching and learning into the larger context of teaching students to use the language.
The disadvantages of the rule driven learning, would be that a lot of time is wasted on presenting the
theory and very little time remains for the activities. Also, most often students lose their focus and can
no longer follow the teachers instructions because they are not actively involved since the teacher
explanation sacrifices student interaction. But, what in my opinion could be the biggest disadvantage
of this approach is that some of the students may not be able to understand the terms and concepts
used in definitions since they are not familiarised with the specific terminology. Thus, what may seem
very easy for the teachers, students may find difficult as they stumble upon unfamiliar words and have
no access to the actual meaning. Of course, in the case of other students, with a more critical thinking
and endowed with analytical abilities, this method may seem very appealing. Nevertheless, all students
should be aware that mastering a language does not mean mastering a set of rules, an idea which this
approach tends to implement and needs to be eradicated from students minds.

Valentina Chiriac, Lingvistica aplicata, Didactica Lb. Engleze, Master II

From my experience as a student, I can say that this method was not of a great help for me because I
used to solve many exercises and it was from the variety of those exercises that I was able to
understand better the rules. When the teacher explained in class I seemed to understand everything, the
rules were very clear. The exercises that we did, they were easy as well, because they were custom
made so that they tested strictly the application of the rules we learned. However, when I tried to solve
other exercises on my own, I couldnt point the correct answer and justify my choice based on the
theory because it seemed to me that there was more than one possibility. It was only after some time
that I understood that indeed, it can be more than one correct answer in grammar but with a slightly
change in meaning. And it was in these changes of meaning offered by grammar that I became most
interested in. For this reason, I believe that teachers, while teaching grammar content, no matter the
approach that they use, their point of focus should be on meaning and function and how the use of
certain grammatical elements in the detriment of others make a difference in meaning.

After seeing all these approaches, I consider that the most effective one would be to mix the traditional
approach with the inductive approach. Using my experience as a learner, I would adapt my teaching
techniques in order to fit as good as possible the students expectations.
For instance, in the case of teaching definite and indefinite articles, which were a challenge for me to
learn because I tended to associate them with the Romanian articles, I would start by presenting a few
sentences illustrating different instances of the article usage and through questions I would try to elicit
from them some basic rules and formulate them in such a way that they are accessible to students
(using as less metalanguage as possible) focusing on the differences in meaning that interfere if we use
a definite / indefinite or a zero article.
Firstly, in order to emphasise the basic difference between the definite and indefinite article I would
provide the following example:
I saw a puppy. The puppy was sleeping in a basket. The basket was warm and comfortable. The
puppy woke up when a man came in. The man was wearing some noisy boots.
Starting from this text I would then ask my students the following questions in order to make the
distinction between new elements and elements that have already been introduced:
What did I see? A puppy
Which puppy was sleeping in a basket? The puppy that I saw
Which basket was warm and comfortable? The basket where the puppy was sleeping
Who came in? A man
Who was wearing some noisy boots? The man who came in and scared the puppy
Since many Romanian students make a confusion between a/an because they attach it to gender, I
would emphasise that an is used before a vowel sound and a before a consonant.
After this activity, I would try to elicit from them what was the know input for the reader / listener and
what was already known and see for each situation which article was used. After discussing this, we
will formulate together the first rule, meaning that: indefinite articles are used to introduce previous
unknown nouns that are introduced to the listener / reader while definite articles are used with nouns
that are already known (or assumed to be known) to the listener / reader.

Then I would provide my students the following examples:

Who is he?
He is the president of the United States.

Valentina Chiriac, Lingvistica aplicata, Didactica Lb. Engleze, Master II

Who is she?
She is the Queen of England
The sun is shining bright.
Through questions such as: How many presidents does the United States have in this moment? How
many suns does our Universe have? I would try to elicit from my students answers such as: only one.
After they see what these elements (the president of the US, the Queen, the sun) have in common, i.e
they are unique, I will try to formulate together with my students the second rule which is that if
something is unique (meaning that there is only one of them) then we use the definite article even if
the listener / reader does not know the object.

Finally, in order to illustrate the third important rule I would give them the following examples:
Ex:

1) I like cookies (C).

2) I like the cookie.
3) I like reading books.
4) I like reading the book.
5) Pizza (U) is my favourite food.
6) This slice of pizza is too spicy.

Then I would ask them if they see any difference in meaning between each set and if so, to explain.
Through conversation and explanation I will try to formulate with them the third important rule in
using articles which is: if we are speaking about a noun in general we usually use the 0 article and if it
is countable we should use the plural form.

The reason why I would adopt the inductive approach is that students become more aware of the
differences between articles when they discover them on their own. Amongst other benefits, students
are actively involved in the process of learning rather than receiving it from the teacher and while
trying to solve the problem presented, they actually use even more language. Also, what I consider that
is most important is that students are encouraged to think by themselves and be able to solve the
problem on their own rather than just counting on a set of rules. I have chosen to focus only on these
main three rules because I wanted first my students to understand the general differences and focus on
the exceptions at a later point of our discussion. Through this approach I am more interested to make
my students understand that in some cases any of the article can fit in context but with slightly changes
of meaning. Thus, I am not focused as much on the norms but rather on the functions of language.
Also, I chose to simplify as much as possible the theoretical input, and rephrase it using accessible
language so that my students would be able to understand the concepts.
After these activities my point of focus would be on raising the learners awareness on how they can
play with these differences in meaning in their own compositions in order to raise the readers (or the
interlocutors) curiosity and to create suspense (see Annex).
Basically, my main goal as a teacher would be to make my students see the interesting part of
grammar, and how they can use it to their own advantage in order to express best their mind.

Valentina Chiriac, Lingvistica aplicata, Didactica Lb. Engleze, Master II

Annex
Activity 1
Read the following fragment from The flying stars, written by G. K. Chesterton and identify the
indefinite and answer the questions:

1.
2.
3.
4.

Identify the indefinite and definite articles.

Which type of article predominates?
What is the effect that the author intends to achieve?
How much information do we really get from this fragment related to the committed crime?

Activity 2
Now read the following fragment:

1. Does the reader know who the young lady mentioned in the first
sentence is? Argument your opinion.
2. Do you think that the young man was already been introduced to the
reader before? Why / why not?
Activity 3

Valentina Chiriac, Lingvistica aplicata, Didactica Lb. Engleze, Master II

Read the following riddle.

1. Identify the definite and indefinite articles in the text.

2. Explain the usage of the indefinite article from a couple in the first
sentence. Can it be replace by the? Why / why not?
3. Explain the usage of the definite article in the second sentence. Can they
be replaced by a/an? Why/ why not?

Activity 4
Using the information learned about the usage of articles write a 20 lines
detective story using definite and indefinite articles in order to gradually
introduce your characters and create suspense.

Valentina Chiriac, Lingvistica aplicata, Didactica Lb. Engleze, Master II

Resources:
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http://www.nclrc.org/essentials/grammar/developgram.htm
https://ukla.org/extracts/Teaching_Grammar_extract.pdf
http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/FlyiStar938.shtml
http://www.riddleministry.com/riddles/climbing-trip/1270/
Jim Scrievener, 2010 Teaching English Grammar, Macmillan
http://www.slideshare.net/maicanhtinh/1-teaching-english-grammar-jimscrivenerhay