Various Approaches to Teaching Grammar

Tell me and I forget.

Teach me and I remember.

Involve me and I learn.

--Benjamin Franklin
(paraphrasing Confucius)

The quote above sums up my own feelings regarding the teaching of grammar in an EFL classroom.  I have found that telling students about grammar merely gives them an introduction to a form without giving them understanding.  Teaching grammar to students, in a traditional sense, may result in students understanding and perhaps "remembering" the grammar rules and forms, but this type of teaching often seems to fail to enable students to use these grammatical structures effectively.  Involving students in the learning process has, in my experience, been both more successful and more fun for teacher and student alike.

Below you will find a number of links to articles and polls in which teachers describe and discuss their opinions of matters related to the teaching of grammar.

• This TeachingEnglish.com article briefly defines and explains the differences between deductive and inductive approaches to grammar instruction.  The author then describes how to plan a deductive grammar lesson using the PPP method.
  
  
• Another great article on the TeachingEnglish site describes ways to "jazz up" grammar lessons (which means to make them more exciting).  Unfortunately, the author doesn't provide many specific exciting activities, but the general principles provided are good ones.
  
  
• This longer article by Indonesian Handoyo Puji Widodo also discusses the inductive vs deductive debate.  The tables describing the pros and cons of each I found concise and helpful (pp. 6 & 7).
  
  
• The TeachingEnglish site also conducted and posted the results to a survey inviting teachers to vote on whether they prefer to use a deductive or inductive approach.  The comments made by teachers below the survery results are certainly more useful than the poll results themselves.
  
  
• Finally, the article "Changing Approaches to Teaching Grammar" provides some excellent suggestions and clear examples for some creative grammar instruction techniques, including ways to use stories, personalization, and authentic texts.  (You'll have to follow the "read more" link on this page.  And as it's a PDF file, it may take a little time to download, so be patient!)