Teaching Grammar and Vocabulary

Module 2: Why do we teach grammar?

"A student in your class approaches you and tells you she is very bored with the grammar lessons, and that she feels she can learn English without learning grammar separately. What would you tell her?"
I would tell her that it very important to be accurate as well as fluent in speaking and writing a language to have meaningful communication whether for academic advancement, work, or social interactions. Betty Azar "Goal - Create an inter-language that is increasingly fluent and accurate in the use of English structure in meaningful communication" The Naturalist Movement, Krashen (1982) believed grammar would be learnt naturally from meaningful interactions in the classroom. Research has showed that when grammar is included in the program students show accelerated learning and substantial gains in usage ability. The written example Betty Azar gave of a University student was quite astounding. There were so many fossilised mistakes in the text it was even hard to believe they had passed high school. For this reason grammar has returned into the curriculum and communicative methods can be integrated into grammar based teaching. I would say to the bored students that the solution is not to eliminate grammar but to find a more interesting methodology in teaching it to keep their interests high.
     In preparing lesson plans and activities I would do things differently depending on the group of students. I would consider perhaps the age of the students in the class and also consider different learning styles. Hedge 5.2.2 Reasoning and hypothesising "Adult learners in particular tend to use their capacity to analyse a new language." I think adult learners like to learn the rules and figure out the patterns in a language and compare it with the L1. Also by having explicit grammar knowledge learners can monitor and check their language. Perhaps younger learners would find all this analysis boring. In both cases I believe a communicative approach is a better way to teach rules and structure especially with students who find it boring.  I think it would be fun to have activities where the class is moving as in blackboard races for kinesthetic learning styles. I would tell my bored student there is value in learning grammar and we can work on the approach to make it more interesting for them.