Purpose of the activity

The purpose of the activity is to carry out an observation among the colleagues and their classes, where different perspectives of grammar are identified.

A study case: how grammar is being taught in L2 classes

Class observations; in order to identify the perspectives the teacher uses when grammar is taught and how those processes affect or benefit the second language acquisition

Subject of study

College education teacher, nine years of experience at giving English as a second language classes. Her main goal is to have a communicative environment in her classes and in order to do that, she considers she knows her student’s needs and the abilities and dispositions they present against English language. She mentioned -after the observation- that she has used an integrated curriculum in order to give her students the best way to connect their knowledge acquisition with their real life contexts.

About the students

A group of fifteen College students with very varied goals. Most of them in their early twenties and starting their college education; they are motivated about learning a second language and they are conscious about the great importance of English in their educational programs.

Supporting theory

When the grammar presentation was performed, the teacher used communicative grammar theory and the transformational one; the last one states that a phrase structure is quite adequate for a small part of the language and that the rest of the language can be derived by repeated application of a rather simply set of transformations to the string given; so she used it at the very first stages of the presentation. However all the drills and exercises where derived from the communicative approach because the tasks as well as the dynamics were designed in order to make students learning realistic stuff in set up situations, whole language (Harmer, 2000). Yet, as Johnson specified, how the teacher and students used language to communicate in the classroom mediates between teaching, learning and second language acquisition

Students learn about how to communicate using appropriate social language, gestures, or expressions; they learn to communicate in the culture of the language studied by getting immerse on it. In a second language classroom, the language -English- is the medium through which teachers teach and students demonstrate what they have learned. Acquiring that language is the ultimate instructional goal of second language education (Johnson, 1996)

Observation results

• The teacher started the class with a warm up: brain storming and some questions; there was when students were recycling the grammar acquired in previous classes…It could be inferred, because the teacher mentioned constant references to the topic checked a day before.
• After a linkage and a vocabulary presentation as well as a vocabulary activity, the teacher proceeded to have the first presentation of the class. The grammar topic was simple past and she neither gave formulas nor mentions grammatical rules during her presentation. She elicited student’s examples (after four of her own ideas) and after that she had three drills.{ during the eliciting, the students participation was great, but when the first drill was performed some of them were a little lost; however because of her monitoring the teacher realized about the problem and with student’s cooperation she helped them to get a better understanding}
• She had three presentations the first one affirmative and interrogative, the second one negative and interrogative and in the last one she gathered the three forms. After the first and the second presentations she had three drills, in those drills the students had oral, written and listening activities where they were practicing the grammar stuff that the teacher had given them. The activities after the third presentation were an application of the grammar topic in a real situation activity.
• the teacher ends the class by telling them what the grammar topic name was and the construction and usage of it. After practicing the grammar topic where the four skills where integrated all the time
• All the class was given in English, and if the students wanted to know a word they had to explain it to the teacher. The teacher as well did not speak Spanish at all; instead she used body language, gestures and examples

• The class was communicative and dynamic which was great for students because they had fun while they learnt. Some students were cooperative however some others were kind of moody and lazy; but the teacher solved it by having personalization in her class, so as the moody and lazy students were having topics they like, little by little they became more interested in the class.
  
• It has been considered that the class was really communicative even though the teacher talking time was a little bit longer when giving directions to the students. Another aspect to be emphasized is the weakness of the consolidation part; she could have another exercise instead of just writing the grammar formula and its different usages.

Conclusion:

- Grammar was used during all the class; when the teacher was recycling information and during the presentation of the new topic; and of course through all the drills. The students were having communicative exercises and as they were working in pairs, trios or small groups, the peer correction was presented all the time.

- In general the class was communicative, the grammar information was taught in a very inductive way, and the student’s necessity to know about grammar rules was satisfied at the end of the class after a great amount of practice during the class.