Imagine you are teaching EFL in Poland. Your students are young adults, placed at the B1 level of CEFR. Your class is monolingual. One of your recent lessons introduced the concept of describing past habits using “used to”. However, you are now noticing that some students have not yet internalized the form. What would you do?
As young adults, my students are highly motivated to learn English as it’s widely spread in Europe and is needed for applying for jobs or getting promotions within international companies. Many students travel around Europe and all over the worldand are keen on meeting new people and communicating effectively.
Grammar activity
In this activity students conduct a survey to find out what their classmates’ lives were like as a child by asking and answering, “Did you use to…?” questions. Students compose a question for each category and work in pairs noting down the answers. They can work in pairs and correct each other if needed. I adopted this exercise from the following website:
I believe I can use this activity without the permission of the owner as it is used for educational purposes and is there’s a little icon that says “free”
Did you use to….?
1. …. games
2. … food
3 …. sports
4. …. hobbies
5. …. friends
6. …. housework
When the students have finished, the teacher asks two volunteers to report to the class. Instead of reporting, the teacher may suggest playing a guessing game where the students have to guess if the information is true or not.
At the end of the activity, the teacher asks everybody to write down 5-7 sentences about their habits in the past and their habits in the present ( I used to go camping four times a year when I was a child, but now I usually go camping once a year)
Rationale:
Why did I choose this activity?
I realized that the learners were probably able to grasp the concept of how the verb should be used in sentences but were still having trouble applying this knowledge in practice.
When explaining the concept in the previous lesson, I was using the Grammar-Translation approach.” …lessons typically began with an explicit statement of the rule, followed by exercises involving translation into and out of the mother tongue” (Thornbury, S. 1999, p.21)
In this activity I switched to a Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) method, where the grammar is “…dressed up in functional labels…” (Thornbury, S. 1999, p.22) combined with the inductive approach “, the learner is presented with some authentic language material and expected to discover the grammatical rule on his/her own.” (Sikorzynska,A. 1995, p.8)
I decided to take a different approach this time and focus more on the communicative competence, which “is best taught and practiced in an authentic context and new structure is more likely to stick in learners’ minds if they have immediate and frequent opportunities to use it in such communicative contexts”( Coelho, E, 2004, p. 86)
Another point I would take into consideration is that the class is monolingual, and it would be a good idea for me to ask my students to translate sentences with the verb into their mother tongue. While doing this activity, my students will likely discover that there’s no direct translation of the verb used to in Polish language. So, whether you say “I went fishing a lot in my childhood” or “I used to go fishing a lot in my childhood”, in Polish language it will sound the same. To point this out, I could write the sentence on the blackboard and ask the students to translate it. When summarizing the materials, I will need to draw their attention again to the fact that in English when talking about past habits, the verb used to should be utilized.
Research and summary
To evaluate the validity of my proposed activity, I did some online and in field research and below are a few points which I am outlining here:
1. Have I used the suitable teaching method? I have utilized the inductive method in this activity, which is “suitable when my students’ conceptual development allows then to play with the language” (Dr.Catherine Walter, https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/teaching-grammar-inductively-catherine-walter My students are at B1 level which means that they have enough explicit knowledge to be able to understand the new concept. If I were to teach this concept to the students with lower language levels, I would probably stick with the Grammar Translation approach.
2. Does my activity meet scope, reliability and frequency criteria? (Hulstijn, D.Graff, 1994)? The usage of verbs + to -infinitive has a wide scope as it can be applied a lot in the language. We use this concept a lot when talking about our past experiences, past states and habits, which means that the students will be applying this rule frequently. This concept is quite reliable as well, there aren’t major exceptions to it.
3. Was I able to stay efficient teaching this activity? “…if a grammar activity requires a great deal time to set up or a lot of materials, is it the most efficient deployment of the teacher’s limited time, energy and resources?” (Thornbury, S. 1999) The activity that I have created, responds to this criterion – I can introduce the usage of the verb in a sentences without presenting negative forms, questions or to be used to doing something.
4. Can we use an opportunity to present this grammar in an authentic context? “Grammar is best taught and practiced in an authentic context. A new structure is more likely to stick in learners’ minds if they have immediate and frequent opportunities to use it in communicative contexts ( Coelho, 2004, pp.86-87) I have used the authentic context in my activity by asking students to talk about their own past experiences and habits.
I contacted my friend from Vancouver, BC, Cheng Lok Yeo, who has an extensive experience teaching ESL to students from all over the world.
This is the reply I got from him:
“I personally prefer the inductive approach to teaching grammar as it is a more natural way of learning a language. Think about how you learned your first language. Having said that, we need to remember that it takes much longer for the learner to sense patterns and develop a theoretical framework for their understanding. Also, for learners with a good knowledge of grammar structure in their own language, the deductive approach allows them to use their prior learning as a scaffold to the acquisition of the target language. So, for example, when I was trying to learn Spanish, the deductive approach of learning the rules was more efficient.
The bottom line is: there is no single approach that works for everyone. I always use a combination of approaches and, if I have the luxury of working one-on-one, I would gear the lesson to the learning style and prior learning of the student”
I reflected on his words about more time needed to sense patterns and decided not to rush my students and spending more time practicing this concept. I have also decide to start the lesson with a
group activity and apply the context-built approach, which involves a few steps:
o establishing the context
o establishing the meaning of the target item
o generating more sentences
o writing the sentences down
o practicing more with other contexts
For example, post a few pictures on the board (a person, sea, fishing rod and a beach). Let your students create a story around these pictures in the present simple tense. For example, there is a guy who lives by the sea. He goes fishing every day. He spends time on the beach etc) Then add some other pictures – a couple of skyscrapers and a picture of a busy street. What happened? The guy moved to a big city. Now, lets’ describe his life in the past tense. This is a good time to tell students that in English we use used to +infinitive to talk about past habits. Right down the rule and let the students think about it. Ask students to create sentences about this guy’s life at the beach using the verb used to and write them on the blackboard. Ask students to create more sentences about the main character.
I realized that this would be a better start for our lesson and a good chance to practice group work, so I am going to present this activity before the learners begin asking each other questions about their childhood.
References
AzarGrammar. (2008). Teaching grammar in today’s classroom
Coelho, E. (2004). No more red pen: Teaching English Grammar.
Empire of English lesson Retrieved from
Dr. Catherine Walker’s British Council Seminar in spring 2010, London. Retrieved from
Sikorzynska, A. (1995) Modal verbs. Discover it yourself.(pp8-9) Retrieved from
Thornbury, S. (1999). Why teach grammar.
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