This week's first warmer had us chatting on what we did over the weekend, in what seemed to be a harmless and casual conversation. Still, we were practicing grammar; a modal past auxiliary, to be precise ("Oh, so you did so and so over the weekend; you could have done something else, but you decided to...").
After the chat, we discussed the way grammar (and language, in general) has been taught traditionally around here, treating grammar as something which somehow wasn't integrated in language and had to be learned (memorised) aside. Happily, things seem to be quite different nowadays (for some, at least); we see grammar as something of a structure that helps us communicate using a particular language, and which is acquired primarily by using the language to communicate in rich and diverse situations.
We also prepared a mini-lesson in groups, on a grammar item, in which we had to try to get our classmates to learn and practise that particular grammar item. It was interesting to see that most of us chose to explain on the board the grammar item after having performed some role playing or game, as if we didn't believe that the game was enough. That reminds me of a completely different issue, decades ago, when cows were begun to be artificially inseminated. Apparently, farmers didn't quite believe that just with a small shot you could make a cow pregnant, and they used to cover the cow with the bull they had at home, "just in case". Needless to say, they ended up having calfs that weren't anyhow close to what was expected by the vet.
iruzkinik ez:
Argitaratu iruzkina