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Can Teaching Grammar Really Be Fun?
   Today we have a special guest Betty Azar is the most successful writer of grammar textbooks. Generations of English learners will recognize her best-selling book Understanding and Using English Grammar. Today Ms. Azar will offer some advice on how to teach grammar.
   Have you ever heard an English teacher say, "Teaching grammar is boring!" Betty Azar has, and she strongly disagrees. "For me teaching grammar is the most fun class of all. I think that is a misconception—that teaching grammar is a boring thing to do. Teaching grammar, for me, always was the class I looked forward to the most because grammar was just the foundation. It was where you started. Grammar is just the starting point"
   The common misunderstanding that Ms. Azar sees is that grammar can be taught as a subject, like history or math. Teachers try to get students to memorize rules. Grammar is not just learning rules. It is a way to help students along the way to communication. "If you have a class named ’grammar’, it doesn’t mean you’re teaching rules that the students have to learn. It just means, grammar is where we’re going to start, and then we’re going to have a lot of fun with it, and practice, and do a lot of interesting things, and most importantly, have successful communication experiences. Those are the building blocks of learning a second language."
   A piece of advice for teachers is that students do not all learn in the same way. Each may have a different learning style when it comes to learning grammar. Some may see a pattern and understand the rule. Others need more explanations and practice. Another piece of advice for teachers is to understand their students’ language backgrounds. If the students have a native language with a similar grammar rule, they do not need to spend time practicing it in English. "But to teach grammar as a subject matter and test it as though you were testing the memorization of dates in history is sure to bore everybody and not reach the goals that you are trying to reach—successful communication experiences."
   Some teachers hate teaching grammar. Why? Because grammar was removed from the regular course of study in the U.S. and U.K. in the 1960s, most native speakers of English did not learn it in school. Ms. Azar imagines that many teachers are not comfortable teaching grammar because they do not know how to answer their students’ questions. "We now have an entire pool of possible teachers who don’t know the grammar of their own language. If you don’t know any grammar of your own language, and then you are asked to teach it, you walk into a class: very likely your students may know more grammar than you know, and you cannot answer their questions. You’re going to have hostility towards teaching grammar."
   An organization called The International Research Foundation for English Language Education(TIRF)has been doing long-term studies of ESL students. TIRF’s research reports that teaching grammar along with communication is effective.