This question has been buzzing round in my head for a long time. May be you can help me clarify my ideas. What grammar points should we teach first? And then?

When you teach at school, students use a textbook and you usually follow the units in the book one by one.

But when you teach one-to-one lessons, you can choose the topics according to your student�s interests. So again, the question is, if you have to teach English right from the start to a primary school kid, what grammar points will you teach first? Personal pronouns? There is/are? Present continuous? Can you put the elementary grammar points in order of difficulty?

Thanks in advance.

 

Hugs,

Choli

 

Sometimes, when all we teach is just language - which has no context we are trying to get out of our children what is not in there.  By playing with the children and having them build up first an understanding of what you are saying, then you can move on to teaching grammar as a means of giving them some reason for doing what they are already doing.  When you play with children who can see what it is you are saying, they are internalising a large dictionary of language, that later you can exploit to teach the mechanics of the language.

 

Using this method, at first the kids don�t respond verbally, indeed it may take a few weeks before they start to say anything - but this is short term loss for long term gain.  Teaching grammar, and getting the kids to �repeat after me� gets a verbal response, but is usually short term gain, for long term loss.  This kids learn rules, but they don�t know how to communicate.

 

A question I regularly ask teachers who insist on teaching grammar from the beginning is - when you were three years old, could you speak your language fairly well and the answer is �Yes�.  (You spend three years of a child�s life helping it to learn language and the rest of its life telling it to shut up!!)  So, what grammar did you know at three years old.  The answer is none.  Language is instinctive, it is not something that we have to think about or know the rules about.

 

Ok, later, when they have to take examinations and when they become cognitively curious it helps to teach grammar, but if they are young and they do not have formal examinations then the best way for them to learn is to play with the language.

 

Probably doesn�t answer your question and I feel sure I am going to be shot down by many who look on grammar as being the foundation stone of learning a language.  The foundation is understanding, not knowing. 

 

The floor is open for comments

I teach mainly vocabulary and little grammar.

They learn how to say Like/don�t like but I do not talk about the present simple;

They learn how to say I enjoy reading/riding my bike etc but I do not talk about the -ing form;

They learn how to say I am/She is but I do not talk about the verb to be;

Later on, they will learn the grammar rules but I believe that first they have to gain an instinct;

I teach simple things such as preposition of place (in/on/under) and the article a/an.

I believe they need to learn how to speak and learn a lot of vocabulary. Later on, they can learn some grammar.

A child of 6 or 7 is still learning the grammar from his/her mother tongue, so many times they are not able to understand grammar rules from a foreign language;

 

I agree with logos.  Immersion in the language, doing, saying, learning adjectives and verbs, short phrases is really important.  I have taught complete beginners without knowing their native language.  We do, say, point, attempt to ask, learn instructions etc.  It works really well as this is the natural path to learning a language. 

 

Unless someone is studying for a test or is really interested - it is not overally necessary to teach the rules of grammar.  To me language is about communicating and getting your message across to another person, and understanding what you read.  For this we need a vocabulary - not a grammatical knowledge. 

 

My grammar teaching is basically asking students to identify patterns.  I don�t teach them - the children (AND ADULTS) identify the patterns for themselves - it is so much more meaningful this way. 

 

Of course - this is my opinion - i have not backed it up with quotes, research or anything.  Feel free to take it or leave it.   And now - for the people who disagree - I would love to know why i am wrong.... (a challenge for you!)