G is for Grammar lesson

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G is for Grammar lesson

7/04/2013

I recently received a request for an article for a teachers’ journal in Denmark. The editor wrote:

The teaching of grammar in Danish secondary schools seems to be moving back towards a rather traditional view on grammar (for example, an A-level examination in English testing whether students can correct wrong sentences and explain the rules of grammar). I was hoping that an article by you may offer a new perspective on the teaching of grammar and authentic language.

I haven’t written the article, but I did write this piece of doggerel:[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

The Grammar Lesson
The teacher enters briskly, taps the board:
‘Now pay attention, class, and not a word.’
Her steely gaze subdues the general clamour.
‘I’m going to teach the rules of English grammar.’
‘I’ll start by explicating all the tenses,
Their forms, a few examples, and their senses.
We’ll finish, as is usual with a test.
A prize for which of you can answer best.’
He always takes the bus (she writes). ‘The present.
(Though present, as we speak, it clearly isn’t).
We call this timeless present “present simple”.

My tailor’s very rich is an example.’
‘Now look at me,’ she orders, as she paces
Between the rows of startled little faces.
‘I’m walking to the door. Now I am turning.
I’m teaching you the grammar. You are learning.’
Intending that her actions be the stimulus,
She demonstrates the present tense (continuous).
‘For acts that are in progress, it’s expressive,
And so it’s sometimes classified “progressive”.’
‘Now, who is this?’ She shows a pic of Caesar.
‘An ancient Roman?’ someone says, to please her.
She draws a Roman galley, oars and mast.
‘He came, he saw, he conquered: simple past’.
‘And when he came, the weather – it was pouring’,
She adds this detail to her simple drawing,
And with a gesture eloquently sinuous
She illustrates what means the past continuous.
‘I’ve been to China. In my life. Just once.
Time not important. Use the perfect tense.

He lost the race since he had started last:

Had started represents the perfect past.’
‘Although it seems a little bit excessive,
We also use the perfect with progressive.

Have you been playing badminton? is how
We ask if something’s happening to now.’
‘The future forms we’ll save until … the future.
I think by now you have the general picture.
So pen and paper out – yes, you have guessed it:
I’ve taught you stuff and now it’s time to test it.’
And this is how, as any learner knows,
The English language grammar lesson goes.
And this is why (the moral of my verse)

The English language learner can’t converse.[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]