What’s the problem?

If you are stolen, call the police at once.

We speaking English.

Slip and fall down carefully.

These sentences all come from public signs in countries where English is not the native language. We can assume that the people who wrote the signs had learnt English – why ask someone to write a public information sign in a language if they don’t know it? So, if these errors represent the result of studying English grammar, what’s gone wrong?

There are clearly many answers to this question; here are just a few.

1 Students have difficulty understanding the grammatical concepts – possibly because explanations of grammatical concepts are difficult, may be unclear or obscure, or may be in direct contradiction of their L1.

2 Students have difficulty in retaining the concepts – the method of presentation may not be memorable and example sentences may lack meaningful contexts. Not all students learn best from reading the written word. Some need more visualisation, some prefer aural presentation, etc.

3 Students suffer from lack of motivation – the practice isn’t engaging, for example, it often isn’t ‘real world’ enough, it isn’t varied enough, it isn’t contextualised enough. A lack of practical feedback can also be demotivating.

4 Some students lack practice – or the correct kind of practice. It isn’t enough to present a structure and give a bit of mechanical practice: the practice needs to be often, varied, reflecting real world experience, contextualised and, where possible, personalised.

So what are the solutions?

1 To make concepts easier to understand, ensure explanations are manageable

This explanation of relative clauses comes from an older, traditional grammar book:

"These describe the preceding noun in such a way as to distinguish it from other nouns of the same class. A clause of this kind is essential to the clear understanding of the noun:

The man who told me this refused to give me his name.

‘who told me this’ is the relative clause.”

Compare this with the equivalent explanation from MyGrammarLab Intermediate:

"Relative clauses give us information about the subject or object of a main clause. Defining relative clauses describe exactly which (or what kind of) person or thing we mean:

which writer?

Arthur Conan Doyle is the writer who invented Sherlock Holmes.”

The first one is clearly more difficult to understand, with potentially challenging vocabulary such as preceding and distinguish;difficult structures such as in such a way as to ..., a clause of this kind is essential to ... While an intermediate-level student may manage these perfectly well in a reading text, it’s unfair to expect the same in grammar explanations, where the concept itself may cause problems.

It is difficult as teachers and writers of grammar to keep grading your language when describing grammar, but one way of making it easier in books is to use a ‘defining vocabulary’. Dictionaries have long used the technique of restricting the explanatory language to a number of words; we did the same in MyGrammarLab, which forced us to produce simpler explanations, examples, and, to a great extent, exercises.

2a To help students retain the grammar, use memorable presentations

Presentation of grammatical concepts should be both clear and memorable, but what constitutes a memorable presentation varies from person to person. Not every learner works best with text, but may favour a different learning style. The main learning styles are visual, auditory and kinaesthetic, although some theorists also put forward a verbal style. Visual learners learn best with the aid of pictures, diagrams, etc.; auditory learners prefer the spoken word; kinaesthetic prefer doing, being hands-on; and verbal are happy with text-based learning. Most of us incorporate all the styles in the way we learn, but generally with dominance of one style.

When we present grammar therefore, it’s a good idea to cater to all the styles, for example, incorporating photos, pictures and videos for the visual learner, spoken presentations (or videos) for the auditory learner, and active work for the kinaesthetic learner, such as using computers and mobile phones. For example, to present modal verbs used in deduction, a visual context may be more immediately obvious than a textual one, such as in the photo below:

2b To help students retain the grammar, use contextualised and real examples

Once you’ve presented a grammar concept, it needs to be supported by examples that are both contextualised and have some meaning for the learners. Look at these examples from older grammar books and course books:

Do you have any cousins?

She’s hurt her shoulder.

The baby’s crying.

We didn’t have to pay.

My house is being burgled.

We’d been expecting the news for some time.

While it may be obvious which structures are exemplified here, the lack of context means that the concept is not reinforced. For example, in the first, only the question mark gives the context of question – surely giving an answer would reinforce the concept. So, these examples could be improved by adding contexts:

Do you have any cousins? Yes, I’ve got three.

She’s hurt her shoulder. She can’t take the yoga class today.

The baby’s crying. We’d better check that she’s OK.

We didn’t have to pay. Entrance was free for under-18s.

My house is being burgled. Quick – call the police!

We’d been expecting the news for some time. Then Mum called last night and told us.

This may make the examples longer, but longer doesn’t mean more difficult – in fact, the opposite is true if a clearer context is given. Basing examples on a corpus, as we have done in MyGrammarLab, ensures that they appear in real contexts.

3 To help motivate your students, use real world, engaging practice

Practice can also take many forms. Traditionally, grammar practice has been provided in grammar practice books, many of which have focused on form-based practice, often in single sentences and with no unifying theme. This is fine in small amounts, but practice should come in a variety of types.

For years, course books have used topic and theme as a background for materials, so why not apply this to grammar? MyGrammarLab uses a modular approach, with each module having a unifying theme that informs the presentations, examples and many of the exercises. The themes range from film and literature to food and drink, from museums to music and from animals to architecture. This puts grammar in a fuller and more realistic context, such as in this exercise from a module in Intermediate focusing on literature:

4 To give your students enough and varied practice, use different delivery systems

It is vital to provide a real variety of exercise types for students who learn in different ways, including concept checking exercises, receptive exercises focusing on recognising the structure, matching exercises, cartoon-based exercises, productive exercises getting students to use the structure, and of course, personalisation exercises getting them to engage with the structure. There can never be enough coverage and variety either in the classroom, because of time constraints, or in books, because of space constraints. But nowadays we have the possibility of giving the student so much more by taking them online. Providing material online has many advantages, including:

- students use the internet in their everyday lives so working online reflects their real experience and can be very motivating;

- online exercises are great for students who are afraid of failing in front of their peers: it is a ‘safe’ environment for experimentation and practice;

- the amount of practice isn’t constrained by space in the same way as it is in a book, so students can practise the same thing over and over again in different ways;

- if properly constructed, online material can offer the feedback that students don’t get outside the classroom, and often not inside it either, and the feedback is instant – no waiting for exercises to be marked by the teacher;

- students often worry about the progress they are making; with online material there is plenty of space for tests, so students can regularly check their progress, which gives them an objective way of knowing what they have and haven’t learned, and also provides tangible outcomes.

Another way we can deliver practice material to students is on their mobile phones.

Whenever a student has five minutes in a quiet moment, waiting for a bus or during a break or they can do a quick exercise with immediate feedback. As we all know, a little and often is usually the best way to learn.

Having online resources is useful for the teacher as well as the learner. Teachers can assign homework exercises to the students, which are automatically marked and scores are recorded in the gradebook, as in the following example:

As well as giving the teacher an overview of the progress of each class, the gradebook can show results for individual students and produce error reports for particular exercises, showing where remedial teaching is necessary.

This blended learning approach to grammar, using books, online materials and mobile phones, provides flexible solutions for tackling what is often considered the most boring part of language learning. This can lead to an enriched learning experience for the student, and better, more informed teaching for the teacher.

About the authors: 

Diane Hall has been working in English language teaching for over 25 years, as a teacher, trainer, editor, publisher and writer. She has an MA in Applied Linguistics, and is currently also an Associate Lecturer in English grammar and linguistics at the Open University. Diane has written a number of books, notably New Total English and MyGrammarLab.

Mark Foley has worked in English Language Teaching for over 23 years and has extensive experience in teaching (mostly in the UK and Spain), teacher training, examining and materials writing. He is the co-author of a number of publications, notably New Total English and MyGrammarLab.