It was a major move last year – eliminating the grammar ‘words’ from my teaching. This year my students, who were the first classes under this new approach, are also using words in class like “describing word” or “~ly word” when referring to using the language…This post seemed to resound with a lot of others too.
What’s a ‘Verb’? Eliminating the “Grammar Words” in My Teaching
I actually heard a world language teacher say this last year “If he doesn’t know the parts of speech he can’t pass my class”. And I was stunned…really…if you don’t know what an “adverb” is you can’t communicate?
Now I know that there are lots of views out there. There are those who subscribe to all kinds of theories and techniques to teach. First up – I still care about grammar. I care that my students construct their communication (written/oral) correctly so that they are understandable to anyone they might interact with.
I used to ‘teach grammar’ and now I teach with ‘pop-up’ and ‘less explicit’ embedded grammar. As this change has set in so has my view on how I even ‘talk’ about it when I do talk ‘grammar’. So, what I don’t want to do – what I experimented with this year- is any teaching with/using ‘grammar’ words.
And besides – I have kids who can tell me a part of speech – and talk the ‘grammar talk’ but in reality not use it correctly at all. You know – the student who tells me that ‘hamburger’ is the object of the verb but when I ask what an ‘object’ is they can’t tell me – or use it correctly when they speak/write.
So this year I changed my wording…basically going with the ‘explanation’ instead of the grammar word itself. That meant that instead of traditional terms I substituted – using things like:
- Verb – What You Are Doing
- Adjective – Describing Word
- Adverb – How we are doing something or the ‘~ly’ word
- Noun – People/ Places/ Things
- Subject – Who/What We’re Talking About
- Object – What Specifically We are Doing, Eating, Wearing etc
- Grammar Use – How You Say What You Want To Say or How You Put It Together
How did it go? Well – I can say that it don’t go any worse than when I was using the ‘grammar’ words themselves. Perhaps it was just a ‘moral victory’ on my part. But I like this trend. I like the focus away from the ‘parts’ of the language and on to the idea of communicating.
I’ll continue to tweak this …but I think I’m sticking with it!
Colleen
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