GRAMMAR WEBQUEST

Should we teach grammar on an advanced course of a foreign language? That is the question that every single second language teacher has asked to itself. But, everyone has done different conclusions. Their answers change and depend on the own experiences of the teacher and the ones they have learned from their students. No decision has been taken. What it is for sure is that being excellent on a second language means to be accurate even in writing and speaking. That is why we think that the process of learning a second language must be as the process of learning our mother language.

All of have first learned to speak and then to write. When we were little kids we learned just to speak and understand the language of our environment, we spoke almost perfect but we made some grammar and structural mistakes and our vocabulary was not very rich. Then, we went to school and began to write. We started recognizing sounds and knowing the way they have to be written. When we were a little bit older we started making simple grammatical structures, which through the pass of the years, got more and more complex. Also, that process in grammatical structure was reflected on the increase of our vocabulary. For grammar teachers, this process has to be based on reading. Elley (1991) and Krashen (1991) confirm this idea saying that “although there is a role for grammar, research and theory show that the best way of increasing grammatical accuracy is comprehensible input. Studies also suggest that the most effective kind of comprehensible input for advanced grammatical development is reading. Getting students interested in books will insure continued grammatical development (as well as improvement in vocabulary, spelling, and writing style) long after the language course ends” (pp. 409-411).

Being on an advanced course of a second language means that we know the language, we should know the way to pronounce and write almost it, and we are there just to improve the language. As in our mother language the only one thing that is left to do is to review the simple grammatical structures and study more and more the complex ones. Also, reading takes a very important role and becomes the way to improve our writing style, vocabulary and spelling.

Also is important to remember that grammar is not a synonymous of boring or staying at a classroom doing a lot exercises. Grammar could be taught in many ways that are not necessarily the ones we have known all over the years.

"The acquisition of the temporal semantics of a second language remains the same linguistic process with or without instruction". (Bordovi-Harling, K.: 2000). This statement means that the process could be applied even if we are learning with a teacher in our country or a foreign one or if we just go to another country to live and try to learn. In other words, the way to learn a second language is almost the same even if we have a teacher or not.

Furthermore, we are conscious that learning a second language is not as easy as we say before. The success in knowing perfectly a foreign language depends also in the capacity and motivation of the student to learn a new language and act as a filter that will increase or decrease our learning of the language as it is said on Language two by Dulay, H, Burt, M., & Krashen, S. (1982) “when a student is exposed to a new language, the first internal hurdles are posed by the individual’s emotional state and motivations. We have learned that language learners, consciously or unconsciously, select only certain types of people as models worth emulating. For example, a person who thinks American English is gauche will probably not learn as much English from Americans as a person who thinks American English is the best type of English to know in the modern world. Other filtering sources are the individual’s anxiety levels, peer identification, and general motivation to learn the language. Together, they make up what we have called the ‘Affective Filter’ or simply ‘Filter.’ The Filter acts to control entry to further mental processing.

Luckily or unfortunately the only way to demonstrate our knowledge of a second language is an exam. An exam that contemplates all the aspects, but in which grammar is the most important part. That is why grammar is important, is the way to say we are the best on a foreign language.

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