Comprehensible Input or Grammar-Based? - Unit 2

Betty Azar is the founder of Azar Grammar and grammar material for TESL classrooms. Her expertise has been formed over years of experience and study. What she has to say about communicative and grammar-based teaching is quite fascinating. She talks about how the goal of grammar is not to just know the rules and be able to translate a sentence appropriately but is it actually meant to be a tool for increasing meaningful, authentic communication by encouraging fluency and accuracy.

Fluency and accuracy are the main goals of grammar learning. They go hand in hand and should be valued as such. Fluency is not the means of speaking remarkably fast, but having a solid understanding so that there is less thought into how to structure a sentence or phrase. 

Accuracy is not gained primarily by a comprehensible input. Azar mentions how that in the late 20th century the naturalist movement in teaching was the newest, biggest and best. This movement pushed for no grammar to be taught in the classroom and those second language learners learned in a similar manner as a child learning their first language, comprehensible input. Yet this has been proven to be a failure. Students who have received years of comprehensible input often have dramatic issues in their grammar in all language skill areas.  

Azar claims that during the time of this naturalist movement in the teaching world there was a group of teachers and researchers who were growing in a desire for grammar usage in the classroom. Teachers were finding that students truly learned faster and better when they had an integrated approach to both a communicative teaching approach and a grammar-focused teaching approach.

Teaching in an ESL classroom can be complicated. Incorporating authentic texts to teach grammar and giving students tools to be able to communicate themselves is all very complicated. How much grammar should you focus on? What kind of grammar should I focus on? All these questions are realities in ESL classrooms. Nothing is ever quite as simple as we would like it to be (Beare, 2018). However, the reward at the end is worth the time and effort as teachers to find and create the right tension in the classroom.

Bibliography

AzarGrammar. (2012, October 30). Retrieved November 16, 2018, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJwbnQOguEk&t=490s

Beare, K. (2018, June 26). Preparing to Teach Grammar in an ESL Class. Retrieved November 16, 2018, from https://www.thoughtco.com/teaching-grammar-in-esl-efl-setting-1209075