Monday and Tuesday were spent in the classroom studying grammar. There is absolutely nothing fun to write about it. It is a necessary evil. Grammar isn’t extremely important in teaching English to foreign learners because their native teachers usually take care of that and I’ll be there for more speech and writing reinforcement. But, as we learned over the last two days, having some ability and a quick refresher from grade school doesn’t hurt. It was evil of the trainer to start it Monday morning but it’s over now and it’s Wednesday, the start of the water festival.
Very, very true… however…. I’d like to add that as far as learning the rudiments of teaching grammar – yeah, it sucks. However, by incorporating various ‘grammar aspects’ into our lesson plans we can develop a lot of speaking skills with them… let the native teachers do their grammar explanations (which do suck) and work on top of that with various activities. Take a look @ http://www.grabandgolessons.com/category/grammar-games/ and you can see how those grammar topic are actually a great way to build on student progress – as they need theory, and we need to give them the practical experience of how it all works. Just remember that grammar is a global feature of language – not the aim. If your students get that… they’ll be lucky indeed. 😉
I didn’t even want to read beyond your title for this blog post, that’s how bad grammar sucks.
I think I was absent the week we learned grammar…or at least my brain was. I could never teach it. ^_^