Why Teaching Grammar is The Biggest Fear of TEFL Teachers
Grammar is always present in our lives since elementary school when we learn the Grammar of our native language. This been said, it is a hundred percent positive that we will find Grammar again every time we start to learn a different language. As teachers, most of us love to teach vocabulary, reading comprehension, and writing, but we do not feel so excited about it when it comes to Grammar. In my case, and I'm not the only one, I genuinely enjoy teaching this part of the language. For me, teaching grammar is challenging, passionate, and rewarding.
This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Melissa P. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT.
The Problem of Teaching Grammar
From my experience, I can genuinely state that teaching grammar can present a significant challenge when teaching a language. It does not mean it is impossible or terrible. Teaching grammar represents an essential stone in students' process of building this new language in their minds. This is why they feel the necessity to thoroughly understand the Grammar but end up crashing against a massive wall of uncertainty and doubts. To prevent this, any good teacher must find many strategies to teach Grammar to the different types of students in their different ages and circumstances. When a teacher finds a way to simplify Grammar's headache, he or she overcomes this challenge.
Positive Outcomes
After winning the grammar challenge, a teacher feels fulfilled, and this can be recognized easily in the way this teacher acts when teaching grammar. Once I found different ways to simplify the basic grammar lessons for beginners, I benefit from every time somebody asked me anything about it. I honestly felt so happy about it that I wanted to share that gained knowledge with my students. I would not mind teaching the same rules over and over again any time they asked me. I found even better ways to teach the same rules after explaining them for a while. I even started to notice that the way I taught Grammar was influencing my student's acceptance responses.
Benefits for Students
They continued with this line of grammar appreciation after the challenging and passionate part comes to the rewarding phase. Every time my students felt good about each new grammar rule, they understood and did not have further questions. They would start teaching their classmates any time they doubted something they already cleared out. This made the classroom a better place to go and learn. By doing this, the students retained more knowledge in their minds, which is the knowledge that stays longer. Watching this scene day after day was what I call a rewarding feeling. Observing how my efforts to teach them were having their fruits was everything I needed as a teacher.
Are you ready to teach English abroad or online?
Grammar is always there when we talk about language, so there is no way that we as English teachers can escape from it. We need to do our best to be better prepared when teaching grammar lessons and when our students come up with doubts cause that is when learning occurs for them when we clarify their thoughts. By overcoming the challenge of simplifying grammar rules and teaching them with passion, we will feel mightily rewarded when we see the fruits of those efforts.
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