[CUFS_TET_Ohio Discussion] The Most Challenging Aspect of Teaching Grammar

I made a little change to the question number 1 removing 'online' because I usually teach students offline. I feel every area of English skills is difficult when it comes to teaching, but Grammar is especially challenging, given that English structure is totally different from Korean language and that learning Grammar, to some extent, requires students' efforts to memorize certain rules of the language, which is not likely fascinating at all to young students. Nevertheless, I believe there are some ways that would make both teaching and learning Grammar more accessible.

From a teacher's perspective, it is unrealistic to spend a lot of time coming up with activities and preparing materials solely for Grammar lessons to be fun. And when it comes to teaching middle school students grammar, there is even a set curriculum pushing a teacher to finish as many chapters as possible in a short period of time.

When I teach kids grammar, I usually make them go right into practice questions in the designated textbook. It is because students focus better when they solve questions in person. Moreover, every teacher doesn't necessarily feel pressured to be a fluent grammar lecturer even if they are not ready to do so. One way lecture is sometimes needed, but the more important thing in class is interaction with students.

If the students go wrong, then I give them some time to think about why it's incorrect. I give them explanations when it's needed. Once they mark their answers, students must read a full sentence with the right answer they've just got. I emphasize this part because I believe a lot of repetitions after model or correct sentences can contribute to students' natural ability to form a correct structure.

At times, when I have to teach difficult concepts of grammar, then I encourage students to do their usual learning differently by offering them a flipped classroom. One time, we were to do the lesson of subject/object complement. I recommended some youtube clips about 'complement' and shared them on a kakao chat of our room. They were also asked to hunt more clips they would find easy to understand. On the next day, I distributed about 10 minutes to each student to do their own lesson based on what they learned through the clips. After each flipped lesson, we had some time to freely talk about how the lesson was. In this process, I tried to mention what was good in the lecture that we rarely find in adults teachers' lesson.

I should go the extra mile in terms of teaching Grammar. What I can do now is to make a class in which a teacher lets students have as many chances as they can to do trials and errors.