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Don’t tell them what they already know!
…if we give our students
credit for what they already
know it will help our classes
to come alive.
Often when we are teaching grammar, what we are teaching is not really new to
our students. Many of your students will already know much of what you tell
them. They will probably have studied it before previously or been exposed to it
in their reading and listening. If we insist on lecturing to them about things they
already know they will go to sleep. But if we give our students credit for what
they already know it will help our classes to come alive.
You as the teacher need to think about how much the students will already know before you teach a grammar point.
But what should you do if you think your students already know quite a lot about the language point?:
A
good general approach is to go straight to some form of production of the language and then revise some of the
rules by looking at the mistakes that the students make. This way we are only telling them what they need to know.
On top of this, we can be much more communicative in this way.
Let’s look at a simple activity you can do which will illustrate this
approach.
Imagine you are covering the present simple and present continuous
with your students. Give them the following gap fill activity to do (write it
on the board or prepare it on a large piece of paper before class if you
can’t make photocopies).
A good general approach is to go
straight to some form of
production of the language and
then revise some of the rules by
looking at the mistakes that the
students make.
Note: By
checking the
answers, you
can see which
areas the
students really
need to improve
their
understanding in
e.g. ‘state verbs’
for question
two, or ‘question
forms using ‘do’’
for question 4.
Next we get the students to ask the questions to each other. Students will learn more of the language by using it
than by listening to rules about it. If you want to give more practice to your students, get them to interview more
than one other student.
While the students are doing this you can listen to their questions and answers and note down any errors.
Afterwards, write these on the board and get them to correct them – in this way, again, you will be helping them
with something they need to learn rather than telling them something they already know.
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