journal on grammar class

April 6 Entry #2 Writing the Grammar Journals

Grammar is always an issue for students from what I have got in my experiences. Maybe that is why my boss insisted me to create classroom programs based on the grammar fast track book. I think it is to make it easy for the students to study grammar. Well, it is not just my students, but I think my boss himself seems hating grammar very much, or otherwise, he will not let me lead the English department because he thinks that he is already fed up by it. I have certain ways on convincing the students that grammar is actually easy and fun such as simplifying the comprehension of the tenses. Instead of giving them the 16 tenses, I told them to memorize only 6 in order to be able to construct the whole 16 tenses. Maybe it is because I have dealt with many students that whining the teachers in their school often make the grammar complicated. Well, then again since I am in the informal homeschooling and courses that I have the duty to make the lesson simple instead of make it complicated like formal school teachers do, it is actually what I do, to simplify the lesson. I believe this method is taught at the TEFL-A LIFT-pronunciation class before. Owh good, I just review the previous lesson.

Since grammar is an issue for students, I have learnt that there are certain points to remember to make it easier to teach grammar for the students. The first is that since English is cool for the students, it is always a good idea to put the comprehension in their brain that to be able to speak English well which is cool, we need to learn English Grammar and we have to master it in order to look more sophisticated. And yeah, it is a good and an easy point to teach. I also found that by learning and mastering grammar, we will be able to identify different kinds of words although they might give the same meanings. As an example, the word, “Succeed”, acts as verb in the sentence: If you want to succeed, you have to work hard. It has different kind of word as adjective for “Successful” in “If you want to be successful, you have to work hard”. We also need to put other form of word like “Successfully” in “If you want to pass the test successfully, then you have to work hard”. The same meaning of word can also be applied as noun in “Success is 99 percent of hard work and 1 percent of luck”. I got the idea that we need to be able to identify and understand the concept of words function in order to make such 4 different sentences with the same meaning using different kinds of words. I think this is a good one to make the students realize that they need to master the grammar in English in order to create these “cool” English sentences.

By being in the TEFL-A grammar class, I have realized that we can create a quite long sentence with one period that can be up to 4 lines of writings, still in a grammatically correct ways. So yeah, attending the class, gave me many insights about how to construct sentences in correct ways. I also learnt many kinds of activities in the grammar class that I am sure that I can apply them in my class. Not to mention, I have learnt many fun ways to deliver the grammar in the class. It is always fun for students to play English lessons in puzzles or when they need to move, to get up, or sit at other places rather than their own chairs. Students will love to move because kinesthetic action always works for children up to adult, also adding the competition aspect as in group work will make the lesson even more interesting.

I also found from the class that there are certain uncountable nouns which actually countable, and vice versa. I have learnt that we need to put ourselves in the English culture logic in order to be able to identify the noun in correct ways. It is more like accepting the whole comprehension without questioning it. After all, English is a language derived from a culture that we just need to accept it as it is in order to be fluent to speak of it. Again, without questioning it and put aside our logic, Indonesian logic in the language, otherwise, we will not be able to speak English fluently.

Woops, 766 words already, I think that is it for now because I have mentioned my evidence of learning, insights, summary and opinion on how and what to apply on my class. There are 2 PDFs on grammar that I have got from the ttdlia.wordpress.com, but I think I will keep those notes to myself.