DEVELOPING

PRACTICAL
ACTIVITIES FOR
GRAMMAR
STRUCTURES

communicative approaches which

emphasise language use over rules of
language usage are more popular
among linguists at present;

LANGUAGE TEACHING METHODOLOGY

The following three language teaching

methods devote a significant amount
of classroom time to promoting
communication among students:
Community Language Learning
Suggestopedia
Communicative Approach

the motivation for language

instruction is to create the optimal
conditions for effective and efficient
L2 pedagogy;
teaching grammar means enabling
language students to use linguistic
forms accurately, meaningfully and
appropriately;

A THREE-DIMENSIONAL GRAMMAR
FRAMEWORK

The three-dimensional grammar

framework (Celce-Murcia 1991:280) is
a guide in the approach to teach
grammar;
three dimensions of language that
must be dealt with are:
form and structure
semantics and meaning
practical use/ in context

Context has two meanings:

social
linguistic discourse context

Pragmatics influences can be

determined by:
When/why does a speaker/writer select a
specific grammar structure over
When/why does a speaker/writer contradict
the form of a particular

FORM OF POSSESSIVE
possessives in english requires inflection of
regular singular nouns and irregular plural
ending in /s/ with /s/;
meaning of possessive is indicated by
using possessive form (s);
in English, possession can be expressed in
two ways:
a possessive determiner (his, her, and their)
with the of the form (e.g., the legs of the table)
the form, meaning, and use of the possessive
structure can be classify using the ternary scheme;

PHRASAL VERBS
In phrasal verbs, the particle can be
separated from its verb by an intervening
object;
Adlin looked (the word) up in the dictionary

The meaning of phrasal verbs are

figurative and have more than one
meaning;
In the pragmatics of phrasal verbs,
consider the context where phrasal verb is
preferred to a single-word verb;

Practicing Grammar Structures:

Designing Activities
grammar lessons comprise three phases;
presentation, practice, and communication;
activity characteristics depend on the nature of
the learning process and of the learning
challenge;
identifying the type of learning will assist
teachers to think about the favourable
characteristics of a practice activity.

Questions
questions can also be used to elicit other
structures when it is the formal dimension
with which the lesson is dealing;
games such as Telephone Game and
problem-solving activity can encourage
students to ask probing questions;

Meanings
When working on the meaning of a particular
grammar structure for example, verbal
association, multiple discrimination, and concept
learning could be conducted;
student have to learn to integrate the form with
its meaning and also to differentiate the meaning
of one particular form from another;
when practicing with the semantic dimension,
realia and pictures are very useful;

Pragmatics
Pragmatics (practical and realistic), involves
teaching our students to be able to select the right
form of a structure for a particular context;
suitable practice activities will provide students with
an opportunity to choose from two or more forms
for the one most appropriate for the context;
Teachers can use skits and role plays when
working on the pragmatic (practical) dimension;
Role-plays can be manipulated and exploited to
emphasise other structural choices as well;
linguistic discourse context will determine the
choice of which forms to use;

COMMUNICATIVE STAGE
the aim during this stage is to have students
manipulate the structures they have been
practicing in realistic context;
usually, there is less control over
grammatical structure and this may result in
students seeking ways to communicate;
activities such as direction-giving exercise,
write a reply to a letter addressed to a
newspaper columnist would be appropriate ;

Pedagogical issues
different aspects of form, meaning, and
pragmatics of a given structure may be
acquired at different stages of interlanguage
development;
However, sequencing of developmental stages
may affect students communicative needs;
During the presentation phase, teachers can
choose to either work inductively or
deductively;
Teachers should cultivate in the learner,
linguistic behaviour that follow the rules, not
knowledge of the rules themselves

When presenting a structure, some

language examples should be used to
illustrate the teaching point;
Besides dialogs, other formats which
can be used:
songs and poems
authentic texts (newspaper)
realia
segments of taped radio

In error correction, focused error

correction is acceptable;
It furnishes the negative evidence
students need to discard or refine
their hypotheses about how the target
language is formulated or operates;