Grammar
There is much debate among practitioners on the usefulness of the direct teaching of grammar - that is singling grammar rules and principles to be taught and exercised as if it were something that a learner could memorise and put into practice because they can complete some specific exercises that practice the grammatical forms.
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Personally I feel the direct teaching of grammar - especially in the beginning stages of language learning - is largely a waste of time as I strongly advocate that language is best acquired rather than learned. In presentations about language learning on this site I think I demonstrate that language acquisition should be the goal rather than language learning where lots is known about the language but the ability to communicate may be limited.
Sometimes language learning schools prefer to hire 'native speakers' in the erroneous assumption that the native speaker will know the grammar. Fact is, unless a native speaker has actually studied grammar rules they know very little about it. I appreciate that there are many factors involved in this argument, not least is the different learning styles of individuals or the different requirements they have.
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I am not against the teaching of grammar per se, but I believe it should be taught only after the learner has mastered the basic ability to communicate simply in the language. Grammar should be taught in particular contexts and in stages so that it does not become overwhelming to the learner. I recall my daughter coming back from school when she was in year two and she had to memorise the following sentence: 'The female gender pronoun is she - the masculine gender pronoun is she. Why couldn't the teacher just tell the kids - girls are she, boys are he.
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Enough said about this. For the grammar nazis among you here is a collection of worksheets and activities to practice specific aspects of grammar. Many were downloaded from websites over 15 years ago and once again I give the codicil that if anyone feels I have breached copyright then please inform me and I will acknowledge the source, provide a link to the originator or delete it. Enjoy your grammar!!!!
Formality and Informality
One of the problems with writing components in exams is that the majority of questions require answers that are more formal in nature and so students need to be able to learn to use more formal language in these exams. The following is a number of different activities to first of all find the formal equivalent of the words presented and then substitute the same words in a written text. To correlate the words together on the first slide simply click on the informal word to show its formal equivalent and on the second slide you need to keep moving the cursor over the text to see it change into a hand. That is an informal word that needs to be changed to its formal equivalent. Enjoy.
This is an example of the second slide of the activity which is a text containing all the informal words. Students have to find the informal words and replace them with the new formal equivalents. This slide is related to informal to formal 1 activity.
