In this video, Judy and I would like to suggest a general sequence on how to teach grammar. It starts with a warm up, then grammar instruction, controlled practice, guided practice, and finally communicative practice. >> Right, Emily, there are five main parts. Let's talk about each one in more detail. The first one is a warm up, an activity that gets students interested in the grammar point. You don't usually tell students what the grammar point is at first. You just say or elicit some comments about a topic such as clothing or family. The students' reactions to a warm up can be used to find out what they already know about the grammar point. >> The warm up should also serve as a lead in to the next step, grammar instruction. Grammar instruction is the part of the lesson where you teach about the grammar point. This is where you introduce the structure or form, and the different uses and provide examples. >> The third step is to give controlled practice activities. These are typically exercises to check if students understand the form. They include fill in the blanks, multiple choice, word order questions, and error correction. >> You should not stop with controlled practice, however. It's important to see whether students can use the grammar point meaningfully. This is where guided practice activities come in. These activities push students to use the grammar point to express their ideas and thoughts in a meaningful way, but at the sentence level. In other words, these activities do not have fixed answers. >> Finally, students should be given the opportunity to practice the grammar point in a communicative way. The teacher should provide an authentic scenario or a prompt that is open-ended, so that students can be confident using the grammar point in a more practical context. This involves problem solving, debates, and negotiation tasks. >> This sequence demonstrates the use of scaffolding, such that the teacher use a step by step strategies to develop the students' abilities and confidence to use the grammar point. Students are gradually given more responsibility, and eventually become more autonomous learners. >> Of course, after all the ultimate goal is for students to successfully use English in situations outside your classroom, after the class ends. >> Now that you understand our grammar sequence, for each group of grammar points, we will provide a commentary on how to use the instructional videos. Printable handouts to use during controlled practice, and finally, demonstrations of warm ups, guided, and communicative activities. >> Many of the practice activities that we've created are games in the sense that they are played with cards, there's guessing involved, or that the goal is to get the most points. Students find these games refreshing, because they're not in a textbook. We will also introduce some task-based activities, based on real life situations, such as asking for directions when you're lost, or how to describe your qualifications at a job interview. Compared to games, task-based activities are more meaningful, more authentic. >> Also keep in mind that the successfulness of an activity strongly depends on how clear the instructions are. As you're watching the demonstrations, please pay close attention to these two aspects, conciseness, and modeling. Explanations should be concise. Which means it's limited to only a few steps at a time. The instructor then provides examples, and models these first steps before moving on to instructions for the next stage of the activity. Clear, concise, step by step modelling of instructions will ensure a more successful outcome to these activities. Because instead of being told what to do, students will be shown what to do. >> Yes, they will be able to follow your instructions more easily.
