Episode Two

Five Misconceptions About Teaching Grammar

In this Episode…

• Why most native speaking English teachers start out extremely unprepared to teach grammar

• Some of the big mistakes we made in our first grammar lessons

• Why grammar books don’t always help with grammar lessons

• The difference between meaning and form

• What you need to know to teach a successful grammar lesson

• How to make sure a grammar lesson is engaging instead of boring

• How to make the grammar you’re teaching relevant to your students’ experience

• Why the way teachers often study grammar is the opposite of how it should be presented to students in class

• Why time for students to practice grammar in a lesson is essential

• How to set up effective grammar practice activities

• An easier way to learn grammar: our grammar course

Show Notes

If you’re an ESL teacher, you might have some strong feelings about teaching grammar. Most native speakers think they know grammar…. until they start trying to teach it and realize that being able to use grammar correctly is not at all the same as knowing terminology and being able to explain and teach grammar effectively. In this episode, we’re talking about five common misconceptions that native speakers often have about teaching grammar when they first become teachers… and how to deal with each of them. We also recommend helpful grammar resources to make teaching those dreaded grammar lessons a breeze.

Resources mentioned in this episode…

• Teaching Tenses by Rosemary Aitken

• Understanding and Using English Grammar by Betty S. Azar

• Grammar in Use by Raymond Murphy

• About Language by Scott Thornbury

• Be Your Own Grammar Guru: complete online grammar course

“A lot of times teachers in training will go into it thinking that they know enough about the grammar, because they’re native speakers (. . .) and they think, ‘Oh, I’ve got this…’ but what we’ve seen over the years is that thinking that you know grammar doesn’t necessarily translate into being able to teach it. ”