Grammar

Look at the word cloud below. What belongs together? Do you know what the terms and expressons mean? Than think about what role grammar plays in primary ELT. Are the ways we grew up learning it necessary or would a lexical approach be better? Is there any reason to teach grammar? What does it help? There's not always a right or wrong, but there is always a lot to think about and discuss!

Grammar Teaching Vocab

• implicit / explicit
• "focus on form" / "focus on forms" / "form-focused"
• inductive / deductive
• tenses / passive / perfect / simple / continuous /  progressive / contractions / affixes 
• adjectives / adverbs / determiners / articles / nouns / verbs
• exceptions
• structure
• use
• features
• "parts of speech"
• rules

Grammar Testing?

Like with vocabulary, grammar is tested THROUGH reading, writing, speaking and listening and is perhaps a point in accuracy of production or knowing when something took place in receptive skills (the use of past indicates it's over).

In this example, the teacher was getting tired of the "it has"es and decided to insist a bit more on the learners using "there is/are" through vocabulary they knew already (the classroom). This test was scored for writing skills - accuracy of the structure and spelling of the words (so two categories of writing).

In this example, the text is directly taken from a text the learners had worked with in their books. You can argue that it is a vocabulary test, but it is grammar in some ways, too!! What was recorded was information on reading skills (the right word regardless of the form or spelling) and writing (spelling).