CRITICAL RESPONSE: ISSUES IN THE TEACHING OF GRAMMAR

There are approaches that have been used in the teaching of grammar to make sure
effective learning occurs among the learners and they have been many issues arise that
concern on the effectiveness in the teaching of grammar whether the approaches or the method
use that implicated in the teaching of grammar. Grammar is essential as the central to the
teaching and learning of languages. It is also one of the more difficult aspects of the language to
teach well. Teachers teach grammar by explaining the forms and rules and then drill the
students. This cause the students interest which result in boredom, some may excel well to
apply the knowledge but consistently make errors when they try to use the language in context
although they know the rules.
Many issues arise where fellow teacher and people question why should teach grammar
in the first place. Grammar is important to any kind of language because we can use the
language correctly when we understand the rule and the structure of the language.
Corder(1967) suggests that learners had their own knowledge for learning grammar. Krashen
(1981) argued that grammar instruction plays no role in the acquisition. He believes learners
would automatically proceed along with their prior knowledge to grammar as long as they had
access to comprehensible input. It is basically language input that can be understood by
listeners despite not able to understand the words and structures in. According to Krashen's
theory of language acquisition, giving learners this kind of input helps them acquire language
naturally, rather than learn it consciously. We can see in the classroom, learners that try to
understand language slightly above their level encourages learners to use natural learning
strategies such as guessing words from context and inferring meaning.


Contrary to Krashens (1993) continued claims, instruction contributes to both acquired
knowledge as well as learned knowledge (Ellis, 2002). Grammar instruction helps learners by
giving them guidance to apply the grammatical concepts either in communication or writing.
There are so many evidences that natural learning occurred in the classroom does not result in
high typically result in high levels of grammatical competence (Genesee, 1987). Evidence
strongly supports the rationale of teaching grammar, many studies shows that learning by
activities fill in the blanks, sentence joining or sentence transformation favour grammar teaching
for the learners. We foresee this matter that learners do not always gain what the teacher taught
them and sometimes it depend on the learner itself for learners to develop their language
structure.
There are experts argue that whether we need to expose grammar in the early stages or
when they acquired the basic knowledge that they need to know to master the grammar
structure and the target language itself. When they question about when should we teach
grammar, first people should focus during the early stages of acquiring a second language or
introduce grammar teaching when the learner had already begun to form the linguistic system.
Errors like sin needs to be avoided at all costs (Brooks, 1960). He suggests that once the
learner have learned the grammar incorrectly especially in the early stages of language
acquisition, it will be hard to get rid of the mistakes and it will take time to fix their habits. It is
important to make sure that learners develop correct practices in the first place.
Learning necessarily commences with an explicit representation of linguistic forms,
which are then developed through implicit learning (N.Ellis, 2005). As stated, he suggests that
teaching grammar early is valuable because it provides a basis for the real learning that follows.
According to Lightbrown (1991), grammar instruction facilitates learning by learners with hooks
which they can grab on to. He emphasizes that greater understanding of grammatical features
and structures work enables the knowledge needed for developing true competence. There is
plenty of evidence which indicates learners can learn grammar naturally without being taught.
Some also say that delaying grammar teaching is ok to push to later stages of development as
long as the learners able to catch on what they are exposed and taught.
We often see the problem when teachers need to decide on how to long they need to
expose grammar for the learners. There have argued concerning that should grammar teaching
be intensive or extensive. First we should know that intensive grammar teaching refers to
instruction over a period of time concerning the grammatical structure and extensive grammar
teaching refers to instruction that cover all the structures within a short period of time which only
each structure receives only minimal attention in any lesson. Many teachers prefer intensive
instruction for grammar teaching, the uses of 3P model present, practice and produce.
According to (Ur, 1996), assumes focus on specific grammatical structures which emphasize on
the learner readiness to acquire specific structure limits. Thats why the 3P model are introduces
to make sure the learners ready to acquire the knowledge by stages. It provides the learners
with sufficient opportunities to practice the knowledge.
However, extensive grammar stress that grammar teaching will happen during learning
activities. Not fully depend on the whole lesson itself such as the form-focused, meaning-
focused lesson. Some teachers hesitate knowing that either intensive grammar lesson are
suitable to be taught. If learners are not ready to learn the targeted structure, intensive grammar
teaching can help them progress through the sequence of stages involved in the acquisition of
the structure (Spada and Light brown, 1999). Since intensive teaching suitable time for each
part of the grammar to be focused on. There also some disagreement which evidence favour to
extensive approach instead. According to Cook (1989), he argued from the perspective of
universal grammar that learners require minimal evidence to set a particular parameter for the
grammar they are learning. As such, principles and parameters do not need to be learned by
exposure to language. Rather, exposure to language merely triggers the bounds to adopt the
correct situation.
The pros and cons can be found for both intensive and extensive grammar instruction.
Some of the structure may not be mastered all the learner without the opportunities to practice
and apply what they learn. Both grammar teaching methods need to be considered which
teacher can integrate these teaching instructions during teaching and learning process.