Teaching English Grammar - by Jim Scrivener
Teaching English Grammar aims to help teachers meet these demands by offeringquick access to key aspects of structures, ready-to-use presentation ideas,contexts for first and subsequent exposure to new language and insights onchecking understanding.Teachers with less experience often struggle with providing contexts for the newlanguage they are presenting, and the activities here aim to provide simple andeffective situational contexts for such language at this point in the lesson. This isimportant, because if the situation is chosen so that the human meanings conveyedwithin it are compelling and transparent, then the meaning of the grammatical pointcan almost ‘teach itself’, reducing the need for verbal re-explanation from the teacher,and allowing the teacher to attend to the practice of the forms of the structure.At this point the teacher faces a second challenge: incisive checking of learners’understanding of the language point. The agile selection and use of conceptquestions to do this is also a crucial and often elusive skill for a new teacher todevelop, the lack of which easily leads instead to a habitualised over-reliance onthe misleading question ‘Do you understand?’The illustrative concept questionsin this book aim to help teachers to develop their confidence and facility in usingthese to check understanding.More experienced teachers will be able to use the material here to review7 and overhaulthe texture and elegance of their repertoire of presentation activities and approaches,streamlining their approach and developing their confidence and effectiveness