Using grammar to create a good relationship

Michael McCarthy

This was the title of a recent webinar hosted by Cambridge English Teacher and presented by Michael McCarthy.  He should have been joined by Anne O'Keefe, but unfortunately technical issues meant she was unable to connect.  What follows is a summary of what Michael had to say.

Grammar is more than just a set of abstract rules - it can be used to create appropriate relationships:

• Forms of address (sir, madam, mate, etc.)
• Formal vocabulary (e.g. we wish to advise you....)
• Hedging and vagueness (e.g. a bit hungry, hungry-ish)
• Indirectness (e.g. one shouldn't worry, it is hoped that....)
• Using tense, aspect and modality (e.g. I wondered..., I should be grateful...)
• Involvement strategies/use of pronouns - ways of making the person you're talking to feel more part of the topic of conversation
• Ellipsis (e.g. want some coffee? you ready?)

Corpus evidence

• Cambridge English Corpus - 2 billion words
• CANCODE Spoken Corpus - 5 million words (mostly informal speech)
• Cambridge Learner Corpus - 5 million words
• CANBEC Spoken Business English Corpus - 1 million words
• CLAS Spoken Professional/Academic Corpus - 1 million words taken from a hotel management context in Ireland

These corpora give us the evidence to understand how grammar is used.  Where grammar gives us choices, the choice you make affects how your spoken or written word is received.  Look at this example which goes from direct to less direct and, therefore, more polite:

• Where's the key?
• I hope you've got the key.
• I was hoping you had the key.

Or this example:

• I wonder if you can help me?
• I'm wondering if you could help me?
• I was wondering if you could help me?

All of these sentences are grammatically correct, but small changes affect the degree of politeness.

Some verbs are more polite and less direct when used in the continuous form (present or past).  For example:

• Are you needing something?
• I was wondering if I could ask you a question?
• I was hoping you'd come to visit.
• We were thinking we should finish this by Friday.

Look at this example in context:

 

or this one:

Customers and servers work hard from the beginning to set an appropriate relationship.

 

Use of pronouns (we versus you)

 

Choice of pronouns can create closeness or distance.  In this example, the salesperson uses 'you' and 'your' to make the customer feel involved - almost as if he owns the item already:

 



In this example, we see the pronoun of involvement used in an academic setting - a hotel and catering college:

Modality

 

Modality can express degrees of formality and degrees of imposition.

 

Looking at corpora for incidences of 'can I ...?' and 'could I ...?', we see a huge difference in the number of times these are used in spoken informal English.  We can also see that there are no examples in Cancode of 'might I ...?' being used.  Corpus enables us to see the degree of formality these forms express, but also in what context they're used.

 

Ellipsis

 

Ellipsis, the non-use of items normally considered obligatory, in conversation reinforces directness and closeness.  For example:

To conclude:

 

Incorrect choices can project the wrong relationship in terms of the degrees of directness and imposition.  The grammar discussed in this webinar is all very common and is normally taught at low levels, but we need to look at it again at higher levels to explore the subtleties.  Good teaching materials should include this grammar of choice to enable students to communicate effectively.

 





 

Corpora and the advanced level: problems and prospects

Michael McCarthy

This was the title of a recent Cambridge English Teacher webinar presented by Michael McCarthy. What follows is a summary of what he had to say.

Key issues at the advanced level

Beginner level English is easy.  Students need to know basic vocabulary and grammar.  Once you get up to upper-intermediate and advanced levels (B2 - C1 - C2), though, it gets difficult!  There really isn't much consensus about what we should teach at advanced level, but evidence from corpus can help us decide.

Once you get beyond the 2000 or so most common words, vocabulary becomes a vast catalogue of low-frequency items, so how do we know which words to teach?  Grammar loses its sense of progression and tends to be a rag-bag of difficult and arcane items.  How do we bring a sense of usefulness to the grammar at this level?

Assessment targets become more difficult to distinguish at higher levels.  For example, fluency:

• B2 - fluent
• C1 - very fluent
• C2 - extremely fluent

What does this mean?  How do we judge it?  Lower level learners get lots of opportunities to show their level in exams.  Higher level students perhaps don't.

Vocabulary

The English Profile programme uses corpora to answer questions about vocabulary and grammar.  It is available online here.

The main problem is, if we just teach and learn new words as they come up, we find that these words give back less and less.  The first words we learn give great text coverage, but as we learn more words, the return reduces as they are less common.

At more advanced levels, collocations and language chunks become much more prominent.  The same words appear in more and different combinations. Register, connotation and style become more important.  There is more specialised vocabulary and subtle, evaluative nuances of adjectives, for example, need to be explained.  There is also a growth in domain-specificity - vocabulary particular to specific disciplines.

There is evidence of possible slowdown and attrition at higher levels, too. The pace of learning slows and students may even reach a plateau and stop developing completely.

The English Vocabulary Profile gives labels for words and phrases and can be browsed by CEFR level or by the vocabulary item itself.  This helps teachers to know what vocabulary is most useful for students to learn at a particular level. It also gives students a progression if they focus on the words they need to know at each level.

Grammatical issues

At higher levels we can focus on:

• New or not typically taught functions for known forms.  For example, we can teach the uses of present perfect that we haven't had time to cover at lower levels.
• Low-frequency patterns - structures that are still used by native or proficient speakers, but not often.
• Patterns that underlie academic success - grammatical structures that help students to score well in exams.

Example - Future Perfect (Continuous)

The common usage which we teach at intermediate level is - At the end of this year, I will have been living in Vietnam for three years.  However, if we look at corpus, we can find another common use for this tense:

You'll have heard about the terrible earthquake.

You'll have been given a handout.

Here, future perfect is used to make assumptions about the present - things that have already happened!

Look at these examples from the corpus of present perfect continuous being used in the same way:

At higher levels, we should find and teach examples like this.  We need to show our students different functions of grammar which is already known. They will be able to use them in their speaking and writing, and recognise the meaning when they hear or read them.

Example - Subjunctive Patterns

Here, we are talking about instances where the verb is always in the base form.  For example,

They insist that he wear his uniform at all times.

......their insistence that he wear his uniform ......

......is important that he wear his uniform .......

verb/noun/adjective + that + subject + base form of the verb

We can look at a corpus and see how the subjunctive is used.  Although it's not so common, it's useful and students think they're making progress when they learn about it.

Look at these examples taken from English Profile:

We can teach these structures as a piece of grammar and link it with vocabulary by using English Profile.

The power of the corpus is that it can give coherence and purpose to syllabi at higher levels.

Example - Nominalisation

Here, we are talking about the process of turning a verb into a noun.  

We fly at seven.    >        Our flight is at seven. 

Mr X donated Y.    >        Mr X made a donation of Y.

It is seen as a sign of good academic writing.  This can be confirmed by looking at the Cambridge Learner Corpus which takes examples from students' work and researches what grammar structures and vocabulary attract the highest marks.

Example - Modality

Analysis of success at higher levels indicates that the use of adverbs after modal verbs is good!

Conclusion

The corpus is relevant and current - results from it can be put straight into teaching materials.

Ask:

• What is it that remains to be learned at higher levels?
• How can the corpus help us to decide what must be taught and how to teach it?

Students can't learn every word in the English language, so tell them to concentrate on the words that interest them.  By reading texts that interest them, their general vocabulary will improve and they will make progress - FACT!!

In the world in which we live in - a summary of David Crystal's plenary at IATEFL 2013

 

David Crystal

I have to admit that, despite my best intentions, I didn't manage to see much of this year's IATEFL conference in Liverpool live, but I'm certainly catching up now by watching the recordings.  There was one session I saw live, though - the opening plenary by David Crystal.  It felt great to 'be' there, even though I was sitting at my desk 6,000 miles away in Vietnam.  Before the plenary began, Eric Baber invited the audience in the hall to wave to all those of us following online, wherever we were in the world.  I'm sure I wasn't the only one to wave back!!  What follows is a summary of David's presentation.  I realise I am by no means the only one to do this, but I'm writing it anyway for my own PD and as a reference for anyone else who wasn't there on the day.

The full title of the session was:

In the world in which we live in - Beatles, blends and blogs 

 

Clearly, the inspiration for the first part of the title comes from a line in the Paul McCartney's hit, 'Live and Let Die', 'This ever-changing world in which we live in'.  There is a double preposition here which people don't notice when they listen to the song - it only becomes apparent when you see it written down.  Indeed, so many people noticed it when it was published in the pre-conference material that David was inundated with messages from people telling him about the 'mistake' in the title of his plenary!

 

So, what do we have here?  Well, it's a syntactical blend.  We're quite used to lexical blends (new words formed from two existing words), such as brunch, motel and heliport.  Indeed, such words usually find their way into dictionaries when they are accepted into common usage.  Syntactical blends, in contrast, don't find their way into grammar books.  No matter how widely they are used, they are still considered to be wrong.  Grammar books do not help language learners to understand the syntactic blends they will hear all the time in spoken English and even see written down.

 

Look at these examples:

• I don't know to which hotel I'm going to.
• From which country does a Lexus come from?
• For which party will you vote for?

Syntactic blends happen when people are unsure which structure to use.  This often happens when there is a clash between formal and informal usage.  The old rule was always - Never end a sentence with a preposition.  This led to ludicrous and some tongue-in-cheek examples, such as Churchill's famous '...something up with which he would not put'!!  This rule has left a legacy that an end-placed preposition is wrong, but natural speech makes it sound better, especially if it's a monosyllabic preposition that naturally goes after a verb to make a phrasal verb. 

 

We are more likely to see these blends when there is a lot of distance between the two prepositions.  Blending, though, can take place between any two or more constructions.  They happen all the time in spoken English.  These blends even have a name - anacoluthon (plural - anacolutha) - meaning constructions lacking in grammatical accuracy.  They often happen when you start a sentence, change your mind about what you are going to say half way through, and finish in a different way.

 

Until comparatively recently, blends rarely appeared in public writing because they were edited out.  Now, however, with the popularity of blogs, we are seeing them more and more.  When it comes to publishing blogs, there is little or no external editing.  The style might be spontaneous and conversational, but, because it is written down, the image is that it is formal and careful.  As blog writers, we could self-edit, but the evidence is that we rarely do.  Therefore, blends appear in blogs all the time.

 

Grammar helps us to psychologically process what's going on.  The number of chunks we can process is limited by our memory.  Therefore, if there are too many words between the noun and the verb phrase, errors are likely to occur.  Comprehension is governed by the distribution of weight throughout a sentence.  In English, we usually put the weight at the end of a sentence, after the main verb.  There is sometimes a little adverbial length before the main verb, but not much.  If too much information is put before the main verb, it's difficult to understand.  The longer the subject goes on, the more irritated the listener gets.

 

For native speakers and proficient users, blends occur when the grammar doesn't keep pace with the writer's thought.  So, it is obvious that learners' writing will often contain blends, especially if they are trying to use more complex structures.  Blends tend to be more common when there's pressure on the speaker or writer, homework deadlines or presentations in front of the class, for example. 

 

In our learners, blends should be seen as evidence of growth, not as errors.  As emotions rise, blends increase.  It's no good telling a student blends are wrong if they see them all the time on the internet.  As teachers, we need to be tolerant.  We shouldn't teach blends, but we need to know how to disentangle and explain them.

 

David's final thought - 'Don't condemn yourself if you use a blend - after all, it;'s the world in which we live in!'

 

 

You can find the pdf of David's slides here.





The difference between written grammar and spoken grammar

This was the title of a webinar I attended back in June.  It was hosted by Cambridge English Teacher and the presenter was Mike McCarthy.  It seems strange to be writing a summary of it so long after the event, but I made detailed notes at the time and recently re-read them and was reminded of how useful a webinar it had been.  So, here goes!

Starting Points

• anomalies in spoken and written frequencies.
• consistency across users.
• examples that seem to violate codified rules.

The Cambridge International Corpus

• 1 billion words
• texts from books, newspapers and magazines
• spoken - informal, business and academic conversations
• learner data taken from Cambridge ESOL exams (good for identifying common errors at all levels)

The  Cambridge International Corpus (CIC) is where we get the evidence of written and spoken grammar from.

Questions to ask

• Are there differences between written and spoken grammar?
• Are they important?
• Are they important for us as EFL teachers?
• What should we do about it?

First, we need to find evidence of differences.  When we look at corpora, there are anomalies (differences).  We can make frequency lists of these using specialist software. 

We can then use a corpus to develop a descriptive grammar - how the grammar is used in reality.  We are looking for consistent phenomena of usage across geographical regions, all social backgrounds, both genders, and all ages.  If we find something consistent across all users, it is grammar in common use.

Before we had corpora we had codified rules - grammar rules handed down through the generations; a set of rules that we are taught is the right way to use the language.  Now, with corpora, we also need to take into account cases where these rules are broken.  If enough people are breaking the rules, the rules are wrong.  Think about the city and map analogy.  We change the map to fit the city, not vice-versa, and this is what we should be doing with grammar.

An example

Though/Although - both of these are correct gramatically, but, in the spoken form, though is six times more frequent than although.  Why is this?  It's not enough to say 'it's shorter and easier to say' or 'it's only one syllable'.  We need to analyse it a little more.

Though is the 175th most commonly used word in British English and the 190th in American English.   (It should be noted that if a word is ranked 1 to 2000, it is very important - we can't do without it.)

There are two parts of spoken grammar:

• form (syntax)
• function (there will be functions of spoken grammar that aren't necessary in writing) 

Though has two meanings - therefore, it is used more.  It can be used at the very end of a sentence.  So, it's greater frequency may be due to its flexibility.  Using though at the end of a sentence is very rare in written English.  (Form)

Though is also much more commonly used to resume a conversation which has been interrupted.  (Function)

This is evidence of a difference between spoken and written grammar.

Spoken Grammar

We don't notice what we say in the same way as we do when we write.  By using corpora, we see how people really do speak and not how we think they should.

Spoken grammar is flexible in its word order.  This is good news for language learners.  Spoken grammar is much less strict than written.

The 100 most common words in written grammar are prepositions, pronouns and articles - the small words which give correct grammatical structure to sentences.  In spoken English, many of the top 100 words are verbs.

Let's look at the word know as an example.  Know is the 14th most commonly used word in spoken British English and the 22nd in American English.  Know is a transitive verb and most of its uses in writing have an object.  Conversely, most of its uses in speech have no object.  Its most common use is in the expression, 'You know'.

A similar situation arises with the verbs, 'see' and 'mean'.

In spoken language, we have common knowledge - gauging what the other person understands, sharing a common view.  Spoken grammar needs the function of constant checking which isn't necessary in writing.  If we don't check, we speak in monologue rather than dialogue.  So, we constantly use checking phrases like 'Do you see?' or 'You know what I mean'.

Another illustration is absolutely which appears four times more frequently in spoken than in written English.  In spoken English, absolutely is used as 'yes-plus' - as a stand alone sentence.  It is used as an engaged yes or an interested yes - it turns you into an active listener rather than a robotic one.  It can also be used in the negative - absolutely not - increasing its frequency considerably.

Spoken grammar also has 'response tokens' not used in written grammar - wonderful, certainly, great, definitely, etc.  These are very important to effective oral communication.

In conversation, people have no difficulty understanding such things as: 'His cousin in London, her boyfriend, his parents, bought him a car for his birthday.'  Such constructions with multiple subjects and lots of different noun phrases are not found in writing.  When we write them down, they look strange, but in speaking, they sound fine.

This is a native speaker example from the BBC:

'And my grandmother, I've never forgotten, when we were small, my sister and I, she used to take us down and we'd sing to the seals.'

This was said by an educated person and demonstrates that it's perfectly OK in spoken English for the subject to apparently be unclear.  In fact, this structure is deemed to make the speaker sound friendlier.  That's probably what Prince Charles had in mind when he said it!!

How to teach spoken grammar

• Teacher training programmes should include language awareness elements for spoken English.
• Get students to think about the differences between the two grammars in their own language.
• Take out the most important words and phrases from corpora and teach them.
• Listen to examples.
• Notice how the words are used and find other examples.
• Use controlled practice.  For example, give an appropriate answer to something you hear, such as a piece of good news or a piece of bad news.
• Use freer practice.

In the real world, native/non-native interaction is often a problem.  This is largely due to badly taught English.  Most ELT worldwide is based on written grammar.  As teachers, we need to give students the awareness and the confidence to use spoken grammar.

Even educated native speakers say:

'There's four restaurants in this street.'

Everyone says it, so it's correct!

The problem is in knowing if it's a one-off or if it's accepted use.  This is our challenge as EFL/ESL teachers.

Communicative Learner-Centred Grammar

This was the title of a Cambridge English Teacher webinar presented by Peter Lucantoni and what follows is a summary of what he had to say.

What is 'grammar'?

Grammar is a set of rules for combining words to express meaning.  It is the system of a language.  Words are given 'labels' to help us to identify their grammatical roles.

In communicative language teaching:

• There needs to be an active involvement in the learning process (both by teachers and learners).
• Examples from texts need to be isolated and used as a basis for tasks.
• Tasks should focus on both the concept (meaning, semantics) and the form of the target grammar.  As teachers, we are often guilty of focusing on the structure and mechanics rather than the meaning.
• Students should be encouraged to find other examples and work out the rules for themselves.

Jack Richards:

'Communicative language teaching can be understood as a set of principles about the goals of language teaching, how learners learn a language, the kinds of classroom activities that best facilitate learning, and the roles of teachers and learners in the classroom.'
                                               (CLT Today - Cambridge University Press 2006)

Goals depend on context

Everyone learns in different ways; therefore, classroom activities will differ according to context, country, facilities available, class size, etc.

CLT is not a 'method'

• CLT is best considered as an approach (Richards and Rogers).
• Teachers are free to interpret the 'rules' of teaching.
• A wide variety of classroom techniques are feasible.
• It should move us away from learners who are 'structurally competent' but 'communicatively incompetent' - i.e. students who know the grammar, but can't apply it to communicate.
• Grammar is important, but we need to find a balance.

However....

'....it's clearly not possible to engage in purposeful communication in a language without being able to formulate the structures of that language as well.'
                                                                              (McDonagh & Shaw 2000)

As teachers....

'....it's essential for us to interpret the rules and strike a balance between consolidating structures and developing communicative competence in our English as a second language students.'
                                                                                           (Lucantoni 2002)

'Language without grammar would leave us seriously handicapped.'
                                                                      (Rob Batstone 'Grammar' 2000)

Why is this?

Batstone said that there are three stages in language learning:

1. Noticing - an active process in which learners become aware of structure and notice connections between form and meaning.  (An appropriate activity here would be to give students a text and get them to highlight the grammar.)
2. Structuring - when the new grammar pattern becomes internalised.  This is a cognitive process which requires controlled practice.
3. Procedurising - making the grammar ready for instant and fluent use in communication.

Classroom Activities

1.  Who do you think could........?

This activity practises question forms and modals.  It uses the unit structure/s, but it also provides reading and writing skills development in a communicative and learner-centred manner.

• You need two pictures of people - male/female, young/old.  Give these people names.
• Hold up the first picture and ask students to tell you anything they like about the picture - age, hobbies, background, etc.  It doesn't matter what your students say - you are just activating the language they have.
• Give students the 'true' information.  e.g.:

Name:         Amina
Age:            26
Home:         Casablanca
Hobbies:      Loves music, plays piano
Job:            Doctor
Speaks:       Arabic, English and a little Japanese
Other:         Dislikes pets
Dream:        To fly to the moon

• You can reveal this information bit by bit to invite reaction, to raise interest and to engage the students.
• Show the second picture.  Students now know exactly what they have to do.  They'll be interested and excited.
• Give the real information:

Name:          Hasan
Age:             65
Home:          Fez
Hobbies:       Stamp collecting, weightlifting
Job:              Accountant  
Speaks:        Arabic, Greek
Other:          Vegetarian, can't drive
Dreams:       To go to China, to own a Ferrari

 

 

• All the information is made up, but don't tell the students this - let them believe that it's true.
• Display the two pictures and ask, 'Who do you think could.......?'  e.g.:

                           .........help move heavy furniture?
                           Hasan.
                           Why?                                      Because he likes weightlifting.

                          ..........advise you about your health?
                          Amina - because she's a doctor.

                          ..........drive you to the airport?

                          ..........play you your favourite song?            etc.

• Ask questions based on the biographies.
• Students need to tell you why.

You could adapt and extend this activity in several ways:

• Use other modal verbs, e.g. 'Who do you think might.....?'
• Use other structures, e.g. 'Who do you think is going to.........?'
• Use other tenses, e.g. 'Who do you think has..........?'
• Make the reading element more challenging by putting it in a text (you could even combine the information about two people in one text).
• A homework extension could be to find two pictures, write biographies about them, write questions based on the biographies and then exchange information with another student in the next class.

2.  The world

This activity provides a good opportunity for extra-curricula work - it is good for revising geographical lexis.

• Listen to the words.
• Think about in which country you can write them.  e.g. 'scuba diving' - Red Sea.  It doesn't matter where students decide to put the word, but they must be able to give reasons why.
• Discuss with a partner.

You will need to give students the functional language:

                                 Where did you put 'scuba diving'?
                             I put scuba diving in the Red Sea.
                        Why?
                             I chose the Red Sea because....
                        I agree/ I disagree because....

• Show the students a world map.
• Students write the words you're giving them on the map (or, better still, use post-it notes).
• If there is no map available, ask students to write the word you give them and write the place next to it.

The idea here is to link the lexis from a unit with a grammar structure.

3.  Mistakes maze

This activity gives learners an opportunity to focus on identifying grammar mistakes in order to get through a maze.

For example:

IN:  Have you ever eat fish?
      (This is an incorrect answer, so exit using the red arrow)

1. Yes, I have eat.
2. I've drunk never coffee.
3. His been to China.
4. They've never done that.
5. I've lived here for 13 years.
6. Said has lived in Kuwait for 2009.
7. She have tried many times.
8. No, they hasn't.
9. Have they been to America?

If students answer correctly, they will pass through every number once only.

This maze can be used to test any grammar point - just make sure you replace correct answers with correct answers and incorrect ones with incorrect ones.

You can focus on a group of mistakes of a particular type or take them from your students' own writing.

Grammar Doesn't Have to be Grey......

........so says Michael Swan, so it must be true!!

I was lucky enough to be able to attend a seminar Michael gave in Venice on Wednesday, 15th June, 2011 and have blogged about my meeting with the man himself -When Andrea Met Michael.  This post is a summary of his presentation, the title of which was 'Grammar Doesn't Have to be Grey' with the byline, 'Designing Effective Grammar Teaching & Practice Materials'.

Introduction

When it comes to incorporating grammar into our EFL lessons, we need to strike the right balance.  Non-native teachers tend to do too much grammar as it puts them in control of the class, especially if their sudents know more vocabulary than they do or if they have better pronunciation.  On the other hand, native teachers tend to do insufficient grammar, often because they don't know it!

Grammar teaching should be made up of the 'three x's' - explanations, examples and exercises with the emphasis always being on the latter because students learn by what they do, not what they are told.

Explanations

• Keep them short - 3 lines maximum
• Remember that you don't need to tell students the whole truth - students need to understand from the outset that there are always exceptions
• Make them clear - an example of how not to do it found in an English grammar book published in France: 'Modality is the coloured filter of our subjectivity through which we perceive reality.'!!
• Use L1 especially at lower levels
• Give visual support - use colour to highlight and use diagrams and timelines
• The discovery method has only limited use when explaining grammar (for example, when teaching the use of for/since with present perfect).  In most cases, students want to be told!

Examples

• Make them realistic - we have all seen ridiculous examples in text books over the years - these classics found in books used in Italy and France, for example:

                                   Birds fly high.
                                   The oxen are stepping on my feet. (To illustrate irregular plurals!)
                                   Come down from that tree so that I may kiss you.

•  Examples do not have to be illustrated in texts - you can just use simple sentences
• Texts are useful for certain grammar points - for example, in contextualising present perfect versus past simple.
• Texts don't have to have something done to them - you don't always need comprehension questions or other activities - often, a no-hassle listening or reading is enough to illustrate the point.
• Use the outside world:

                                   Signs - for example, to illustrate determiners:

                                                           Good Food Served Here
                                                           All Day.  Every Day.

                                                           Look Both Ways

                                                           No Cycles

                                   Cartoons - e.g., for negative imperative:

                                                           Marriage Guidance
                                                           Don't!!

                                   Quotations - these are memorable for reinforcing grammar points. e.g.:

                                                          Power corrupts - absolute power corrupts absolutely.
                                                                                                                       (Lord Acton)

                                   Poetry    

Exercises

• There is a place for non-communicative exercises to concept check, particularly when you first present a point of grammar.
• Exercises should be personalised - for example, when practising reported speech, ask the students, 'What did you think when you were small?'
• Use bits of real text for gap fill exercises.
• Use arrows and pictures to make students think
• Get students to use their imagination - 'Imagine a situation............... what is being done/what is not being done.'
• Ask student to write captions for cartoons.
• Use the internet - both to practise a grammar point (e.g. Find some information about a person and write sentences in simple present to describe his or her daily routine) and to check what the teacher has said (e.g. Use a search engine to check which is the more normal form, 'beautifuller' or 'more beautiful').
• Use humour up to a point - for instance, to practise will for future prediction, read some horoscopes and then get students to write their own for each other - the funnier, the better.  If students can make each other laugh in L2, it's very motivating.
• If you are forced to use a boring textbook, hi-jack it! - for example, get students to re-write boring dialogues.
• Use drawings - for example, to illustrate 'supposed to', get students to draw something (it doesn't matter how bad it is) and their classmates have to decide what it's supposed to be!
• Exercises need to be a platform for more personalised and creative work by students.

Grammar and.........

Don't think of grammar in isolation.  Think of it in conjunction with other things:

• Grammar and Culture - use poetry in the classroom.
• Grammar and Thinking - do interesting, challenging exercises which make the students use their brains logically.
• Grammar and Imagination - allow students to be creative.
• Grammar and Vocabulary - how can we help students by teaching lexical chunks?
• Grammar and Writing - for example, give students a text which uses a mixture of active and passive and get them to re-write it twice, firstly using only active and then using only passive.
• Grammar and Reading - give sentence restructuring exercises.
• Grammar and Informality - remember that informal and formal grammar is different and, if appropriate, teach both.
• Grammar and Speech - highlight the differences between spoken and written English.
• Grammar and Pronunciation - grammar consists of a lot of unstressed words - auxialiaries, prepositions, to of infinitive, etc. - which are difficult to hear, so don't forget to do lots of grammar listenings.

Conclusion

Grammar teaching should consist of:

• 25% input (explanations & examples)
• 75% output (exercises)

So, I hope I have done justice to Michael Swan's presentation.  I wanted to write up my notes for my own reference and hope that others will find them useful, too.