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- When it comes to grammar and grammar instruction,
there are three foci you need to constantly keep in view,
and those are meaning, form, and use.
First, I want to define meaning, form, and use in general,
and then I want to look at some concrete examples
of how you can incorporate them into your lesson plans.
Here, you see the three grammar teaching foci.
The first one is meaning, and our book lists meaning
as semantics, which is really just
a fancy synonym for meaning,
but what we're talking about is what
the grammar itself communicates.
Each grammar tense and each grammar point
has a reason for its own existence.
It communicates something in its own right,
and that's something we're going
to have to instruct our students.
When we talk about form, we're talking about
how it is written and spoken.
So first we'll be using things
like grammar charts or formulas.
Anyone who's learned a second language
is familiar with these things.
A grammar chart would have
an infinitive form of the verb at the top
and then list all of the different conjugations,
and a formula will talk about how a sentence is constructed.
We'll look at some examples of those.
Form is also how it is spoken, the pronunciation,
and this is particularly important for grammar tenses
that use contractions where you can say
I am running, I'm running.
We never really say I am going to,
at least native speakers don't,
they say I'm gonna, or I'm-onna.
And it's important that you teach that.
And then use.
Use is the larger picture of how this
is communicatively used within a discourse,
how and when we use this to communicate within a context,
and all three of them are important,
but use is going to be one of the hardest
and most important things for you
to factor into your lesson planning.
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I want to quickly run through a few concrete examples
to give you an idea of what we're talking about.
So starting with the present simple,
the meaning of this grammar tense
is to communicate repetitive actions and current habits.
It can also communicate general truths, facts,
and beliefs, as well as near future scheduled events.
The form, as the name implies, is simple.
For the subjects I, you, they, and we,
we're going to use the base form of the verb.
For the third person, he, she, it, as well as names,
we'll put the verb plus S, and in terms of pronunciation,
you'd want to push them to
be pronouncing that S when it's called for.
Now, some ideas for use,
how can you present this meaningfully
and how can you ask for your students
to communicate meaningfully?
You can describe yourself.
That would be create a little text or listening
where you describe yourself, a friend, a family member,
their actions, habits, beliefs.
You can discuss personal habits.
What do you do every morning, day or night,
your family, members of your family?
What's your favorite day of the week?
If you communicate I love Saturdays,
on Saturdays I wake up, I do these things,
you can use these to present and then ask the students
to communicate these things about themselves.
You can become more general.
What does a firefighter do?
What does a good student do?
Even an animal, a dog, or a lion, wat do they do?
And this is gonna be a great way to present some new verbs,
and you can ask them to do the same
about a different animal or about a different profession.
Moving on to a little harder, more advanced tense.
This would be kind of low intermediate,
past continuous/progressive.
The meaning of this is to communicate specific time,
as interruption, as in at midnight
last night I was sleeping.
You can also, a past action that's interrupted.
So you'd use a past simple verb
that interrupts ongoing action.
So, when you called me, I was sleeping.
Also, parallel past actions.
If you use two verbs in the same past continuous,
two things were happening at the same time.
I was walking and I was talking on my phone.
So the form I, he, she it,
plus this auxiliary helper verb was
plus the verb, I-N-G,
or you the, they, we will use the helper verb we
plus verb I-N-G.
Now, unlike with the present continuous,
we don't use contractions when we speak this tense,
and that will be important.
Now, some ideas for use, if you want to teach this tense,
how can you present it?
Well, what were you doing at specific times yesterday?
Sort of discuss different times of the day
and what you were doing, and you can,
towards the end of the lesson,
present them times and ask them to do the same.
A personal story is a great way students love when you
give personal information or tell a funny, or sad,
or embarrassing story about yourself,
and you can do that using several examples
of the past continuous.
You could also describe your best travel experience,
which is a very clear context,
and it'd be easy to seed examples
like I was swimming in the ocean and the sun was shining.
And then, you know, you would use those examples
to point out the form and the meaning
and then have them write about
their own best travel experience using the same tense.
To move to a non-tense-based grammar point,
adverbs of frequency.
The meaning of these is really the meaning
of the individual adverbs, the frequency,
or the lack thereof of actions and habits.
We're talking about words like never, rarely,
sometimes, frequently, often, always.
So the meaning here is basically the meaning of those words,
and in that sense, this is more a vocabulary focus,
but we do need to focus on the form here,
which is not just the spelling of those words.
It's how they're placed syntactically within a sentence.
So there can be pre- or post-position of the sentence,
meaning at the beginning or the end.
Often, I go to the movies, or I go to the movies often.
They're positioned before the verbs for simple verbs.
I often go to the movies.
It's important for verbs that have auxiliary helpers,
verb tenses, you, they go between the helper verb
and the main verb.
You should never give up.
I'm always sleeping at 5:00 AM.
I have often seen him there.
Now, for use, the ideas are the same as the present simple,
but you can communicate these things
with more information, how often you do these things,
but it can also be used when the past simple
and with any other grammar point,
as you can see in the form examples.
So this is one example of a grammar point
that can be dropped into any sort of communicative use.
You're just adding this information about the frequency.
Similar to that is complex sentences,
and if you're not familiar, this is,
this doesn't mean generally that
the sentences are very complex.
This is a technical term.
The meaning is connecting simple sentences
via coordinating conjunctions,
the four coordinating conjunctions, and, so, but, or or,
and they all have their own use that they,
that the meaning that they communicate.
The form of this is two clauses, a subject, verb,
and an object followed by a comma
and one of these conjunctions
and then a subject, verb, and an object.
If there is no second subject, no comma is needed
and you don't have a complex sentence.
So some ideas for use of this, anything communicative.
I put this here because complex sentences are a way
to get your learners from the beginning stage
where they're writing simple sentences
towards that more intermediate stage
where they're connecting those using these conjunctions.
And so you can communicate anything.
If you're teaching complex sentences,
you can present a reading, you know, an email, a letter,
a text about someone famous.
You can present a listening using these things
that include these and, so, but, or conjunctions,
and then you can ask them to write an email,
or write a letter, or write something like that
where you're pushing them to make their sentences longer
and complex, and even through a writing process,
you can have them write one draft.
You see a lot of simple sentences.
Help them in the second and third draft
to connect some of those sentences
to make complex sentences.
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Now, some of you may be wondering why
I chose to present these foci in this order,
starting with meaning and then moving to form and use.
For some people, it feels more natural
to start with a focus on form, kind of present
those grammar formulas or grammar chart initially,
but there's a very important reason
I decided to do it in this order,
and that's because we, as language teachers,
need to strive to keep meaning in focus
throughout our lesson plans.
I've seen a lot of novice teachers fall into a trap
where they start with a focus on form
and then they find it very difficult
to break out of that focus.
An example would be a prompt that asks the student
write five sentences using the present perfect, for example.
That's a poor grammar language prompt,
because we don't create language
for the purpose of using a language point.
We create language for the purpose
of communicating something meaningful.
So a much better language prompt would be
write five sentences communicating
your life experience about travel.
You could then add use the present perfect,
but if you've hit all three of these foci
within that lesson plan, hopefully you won't need to.
That's just a bit of practical advice,
and hopefully in your future,
language teaching and grammar instruction,
you'll remember to hit all three of these foci,
meaning, form, and use.