Module 5, Assignment 1: How you learnt grammar at school
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I have thought for a long time trying to remember any formal grammar education that I had growing up, but I have been able to remember very little. I do remember in sixth grade doing sentence trees where we would underline prepositions, verbs, subjects and so on with different colors. This is not to say that grammar was never taught to me in a formal way, rather it is likely that I just never realized I was being taught grammar. Most of my grammar was learned naturally. I don’t remember formally be asked to conjugate verbs. This is likely because learning this is a natural part of our language.
Thinking about this also makes me question if “teaching” grammar is really the best way to learn. As a native speaker, I likely had very little formal grammar education as compared to those who have learned English as a second language. However, it’s probable that my grammar is better than most of those who have learned English as a second language. Because of this, I feel that when teaching grammar to ESL students, the best method may be to teach in a natural, unstructured way.
Good question,how was Grammar taught to me when i started school.Honest i have no recollection what so ever.As i did my Primary school years and part High school overseas in Holland and what i remember from later years of being a student overthere is that there was a lot of repetitious learning and drilling i hate to say.The way teaching was overthere in my years,you would have a book and a page with Nouns for example,verbs etc,the teacher would read thru them with the class a few times then ask a student to give an example of their own.Quiz games like fill in the blanks were played i can recall.As for sentence building that came in later years,ie 2nd grade.Grammar you don’t realise how much you have forgotten over the years untill you have to try and teach it.
As I recall, grammar was first taught when I was 7 years old and entered 1st grade. It was simply nouns, verbs, adjectives. Then it eventually progressed to subject- verb agreement, the kinds of sentences, and so on and so forth. Everything was reviewed and practiced in school all the way through my university years. My love for reading English books which started when I was 7 years old, and my love for watching English movies, reinforced everything about English that I have learned in school.
Having no real recollection of learning grammar in a structured/drilled way, I can only assume it was learnt more subconsciously. Of course the basics in terms of identifying verbs, nouns, adjectives etc were clearly taught, but I do not recall significant amount of drilling or focus on sentence structures & composition. (Re -) looking at grammar over the course of this training, makes me realize that my grammar knowledge needs some polishing, if I am to clearly explain basics to young children.