Grammar Class Observation [PDF]

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Grammar Class Observation Xiayu Guo Colorado State University

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GRAMMAR CLASS OBSERVATION

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This semester, I visited six grammar classes in different levels. These classes helped me a lot. In China, the language teaching focus is grammar, but grammar class is always boring and not productive enough for students. I want to be a teacher in China in the future, so I need to find effective ways to teach grammar. I observed five grammar classes in INTO CSU. The classes I observed gave me some inspiration about teaching methods and activity design. Observation One The first class I observed was a grammar class in level 1, there were twelve students in class and their native languages were Chinese and Arabic. The topic was past tense. In the warmup activity, teacher led students into this class. She asked students, “What did you do yesterday?” Here, teacher stressed on yesterday. Students answered this question in past tense. A student answered, “I watched Two Broke Girls yesterday.” Then teacher asked, “Is it funny?” Teacher explained why she used is in this question, because this is a fact. We don’t need to change the tense of a fact. For example, the sun rises in the east. No matter today, yesterday or tomorrow, the sun always rises in the east. Last class, students learned two expressions: have to and get to. Teacher talked about the difference between them. When you say you have to do something, it means you don’t want to do that but you have no choice. On the contrary, get to do means you are excited about this thing. Next, it was a competition game. The game was about some special words in past tense sentences. Students were divided into two groups and they were told to fill in the blank in the sentences. I think this is a good activity. Actually, students were sleepy and hungry in this class because it was lunch time and they were in class the whole morning. Teacher used competition to make them excited and get involved in the class. Students were given five sentences; they were asked to write the prepositions and adverbs in these sentences. For example,

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the poet lived in Massachusetts over 100 years ago; she died at the age 55 on May 15, 1886. At the end of the class, students learned negative form of past tense: He didn’t eat bread yesterday. Generally, I like the competition activity. I will try to use it in my future classes. I noticed that teacher changed tense in paragraphs when she gave examples. This is related to implicit shift of time. There are sometimes less overt reasons for shifting one’s axis of orientation, such as the rhetorical structure of text. Observation Two The second class I observed was the grammar class in level 3. There were fifteen students in class; the native languages were Arabic and Chinese. This class discussed agreement between clauses. This teacher also stressed on past tense. Event is past; condition can be past, present or future; universal truth is always present. When the teacher talked about past tense, she didn’t explain an important use of past tense. She said the universal truth is always present; however, sometimes past tense can be used to express facts. When it occurs, past tense adds a sense of remoteness (Knowles, 1979, cited in Larsen-Freeman & Celce-Murcia, 2016, p.111). Although the focus in this class was not remoteness use, teacher should state this to students. In this class, there was an exercise. Students should combine two separate sentences into one complete sentence. This exercise was time-consuming and difficult. Students were confused about it. I found students had disagreement in a sentence. Many people don’t know something. Do some robots think like humans? When students combined these two sentences, they said Many people don’t know something whether some robots think like humans. This sentence is wrong because something is redundant here. The correct sentence should be Many people don’t know whether some robots think like humans. Then, a student asked a question about Do people want solarpowered car? He thought this sentence should be Do people want to have solar-powered car?

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Teacher explained that to have can be omitted in this sentence. Additionally, teacher taught students do you know and can you tell me can be expressed as I wonder. Teacher took this sentence as an example: Do you know when he will go to school? Students changed this sentence to I wonder when he will go to school. There were not many activities in this class and the teaching method was traditional. Observation Three The third and fourth class I observed were two consecutive level 2 grammar classes. There were fourteen students in class. The native languages were Chinese, Korean, Thai, Indonesian and Arabic. The topics were modal verbs with suggestion and advice and present perfect tense. At the beginning of class, students had a quiz. They should write the past tense and past participles of verbs. After the quiz, teacher let students answer those questions orally because she could check the pronunciation. Teacher gave students a letter; the content was about a man and his girlfriend. Students should give him advice with modal verbs. This is a good writing activity. Three to four students were in a group, and each of them wrote a piece of advice. After they gave advice, they organized their advice as a short paragraph. However, I think there is a problem in this activity. This is the first class where they learned modal verbs, but teacher just told students what the modal verbs were. Teacher didn’t have enough preparation in pre-activity. Because students were required to give advice and develop a paragraph, teacher should tell them how to use modal verbs. That is, teacher could show the degree of urgency. For advice, we can use must/should/ought to/might/may/can/had better to depending on speaker’s authority. Here, teacher didn’t talk about phrasal modals. Phrasal modals are also very common expressions when we give advice and each modal verb has corresponding phrasal modal, like be able to, be going to, have to, and be supposed to. Students had many questions about how to

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choose modal verbs. They asked me, “Do I use should or could in this sentence?” Obviously, they were confused about these words but teacher didn’t explain them thoroughly. For students’ understanding, teacher was supposed to introduce ability/tendency, social interaction and logical probability for modals. But generally, this is a good activity. Students were interested in the content of the letter, so they were active when they gave advice. Students discussed and collaborated. After modal verbs, teacher prepared for next class. The topic of second class was present perfect. Teacher gave students some words that may indicate present perfect. They are yet, already, recently and since. Observation Four At the beginning of next class, teacher showed a passage titled Unsolved Mysteries; students highlighted the past participles and added words such as yet in sentences. There were six sentences. The scientists haven’t found another planet like earth. (yet) we have sent spaceship to Mercury and Mars. (already) Researchers have discovered something to treat hypertension. (recently) People have looked in many spaces for new medicines. (already) No one has found out why we dream. (yet) Some scientists have been in the news. (recently) Basically, in positive sentences, we use already; in negative sentences, we use yet. If you want to suggest “time”, you can use recently. Teacher also told students how to use for and since. This is an important concept in present perfect. For means length of time while since means a specific point of time. There were two simple sentences: Since I was a child, I have always worn glasses.

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I have worn glasses for ten years. I was a child is a point of time; ten years is a period. Students understood these two words easily. Then, students did a game about present perfect. This is my favorite activity in these six classes. The game was I have never had… Three to five students were in a group, and each of them should develop a complete sentence with present perfect. For example, one student says, “I have never eaten Japanese food.” If you have eaten Japanese food, you can get a candy. This is an interesting speaking activity. Everyone in the group have opportunity to participate, and they can share their experience to others. Also, because of prize, they totally got involved in the activity. We had fun during the game and practiced present perfect. After the game, teacher collected some sentences from students. If their sentences were incorrect, teacher would correct them. Finally, students formed questions with present perfect. They used the sentences in the game. There was a sentence, “I have never fought with others”. Students should ask, “Have you ever fought with others?” Students wrote sentences like that and highlighted the past participles. Generally, this class is very effective and students participate in the class actively, but I think teacher can add something about the relationship between simple past and present perfect. Students learned simple past before, maybe some of them mix these two aspects up. For example, even though one is present tense and the other is past tense, the choice doesn’t depend on the time at which the event took place (Larsen-Freeman & Celce-Murcia, 2016, p.122). They are both refer to past, but simple past is relative to a particular time. Observation Five The fifth class I visited was a level 3 grammar class. There were fifteen students in class and the native languages are Chinese, Thai, Arabic and Korean. The topic was attributive clause and connectors. Students did an exercise. They should rearrange sentences orders in a passage.

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The content is about the primary cause of the loss of forest. Then, students rewrote sentences with some phrases, such as a major reason, one reason for, the main reason and cause of. Also, they were asked to complete sentences with these words. Next, teacher showed some wrong sentences; students circled mistakes. The most part of class was doing exercise. The exercise is about connectors and attributive clause. There are eight groups of separated sentences; students connected them with the words in the box. This exercise was a little difficult. Students were confused about three groups. The presentation is due on Friday. I need to create my PowerPoint slides. I don’t have much time. Next month is Halloween. I need to buy car. Children will come to my door. We are losing the rainforest. Endangered plants and animals are dying. Something must be done. It seemed that students didn’t have problems on attributive clause, but they had problems on sentence order. I saw a sentence: Because the presentation is due on Friday, I need to create my PowerPoint slides. Therefore, I don’t have much time. This sentence is grammatically correct, but the order is problematic. Because I don’t have time, I need to create my slides now. It’s more logical. It took much time on this exercise. This is a traditional but useful way to teach grammar especially for students in intermediate-high and advanced proficiency. They have solid foundation of grammar, so what they need to do is just consolidation. Observation Six The last class I observed was level 1 grammar class. There were twelve students and native languages are Chinese and Arabic. In warm-up activity, students reviewed the content they learned last class (should/can). Teacher told them the meaning difference between can do and should do. After that, they skipped to comparative degree. Teacher gave students some

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adjectives: lazy, happy, tall, beautiful and stupid. If you want to change these words to comparative form, what should you do? It depends on syllable. Teacher said that you should add more before beautiful and stupid because they are multi-syllabic. For lazy and happy, you should change -y to -i and then add -er. Next activity was cloze. Before the activity, teacher pre-taught some vocabularies. Students should fill in the blank of a song. There are many comparative forms in the lyric. Teacher summarized three rules of adjective: more patient, more beautiful, more thoughtful, more interesting sturdier, easier good-better, bad-worse. Additionally, students compared life and thing between now and 20 years ago. Students gave sentences like home appliances are cheaper and Laptop are lighter. They also should compare the cities they live in group work. At the end of class, teacher let students develop sentences. An Arabic student made a mistake of less and fewer. These two words are related to count and noncount nouns. I find that many nonnative speakers have difficulties on quantifier and count/noncount nouns. That student said, “I have less books than her.” Here, less is incorrect because book is a non-count noun. This sentence should be: I have fewer books than her. In this class, teacher didn’t talk much about these words, but I think they are important because it’s a difficulty for learners. Conclusion From six classes, I found the biggest difficulty for learners were tense and aspect. They knew what tense and aspect are, but they had no idea how to use them in sentences. That is, sometimes students used present perfect in a simple past sentence, but they used simple past tense in a present perfect sentence. For their understanding, teacher can give them some simple

GRAMMAR CLASS OBSERVATION past sentences and past perfect sentences and they find the differences together. However, I still learned some things from the observations. As a teacher, when I want to explain grammar, I can use examples but not only show students grammar rules. One important thing is to motivate students to get involved in the class. For example, when students do activities in class, I will reward them if they finish the tasks successfully.

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