Eltam journal no 2 8th eltam iatefl tesol international biannual conference managing teaching and learning

Conclusion 
From all that has been said about the process of grammar teaching, explicitly alluding to English 
grammar, and what the recommendations are for it in the future, several conclusions can be 
drawn that can be suggested for better grammar teaching. They are expected to make the 
teaching easier and more goal-fulfilling for the teachers, and beneficial and smoother for the 
students.  
The first recommendation is to present one thing at a time, so that students are led gradually 
from one point of learning to another and not to be bombarded at one time with all the items 
that are to be learnt. Another recommendation is to keep meaning in focus, that is, always to 
direct students’ attention to meaning in order to enable them to learn semantically, not formally, 
then to move from sentences to connected discourse, which means to learn cognitively 
– move 
from the smaller to the bigger part and construct the whole picture out of the small, constituent 
parts. Then, another very important thing is to have learners do something with the input, 

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meaning that they should be provided with appropriate information and required to use it in a 
way and in contexts which prove that they understand how to use it, since the correct usage of 
the input would make it clear to the teacher that the form is understood and learnt, so they can 
use it independently, after practising and repeating it for several times. In the teaching process, 
it is the learner’s processing strategies that should be always kept in mind. In other words, when 
teaching, the teacher ought to always think of the students: how they think, how fast they 
process the information, what easies their learning, how they can be helped if and when the 
learning is slower, and what contexts they can be supplied with so that the forms find their 
appropriate linguistic ‘environment’ in which they can be realised. Another recommendation 
is, although grammar is taught, to teach communicative activities, those that are less focused 
on grammar, since the open and constant focus on grammar may deter the students from 
learning the form and, what is more, the use of the grammar structure. With more 
communicative activities and persistent focus and emphasis on the communicative function of 
grammar, that is, by using grammar in context and by pointing out how grammar cannot be 
used in isolation but it serves to accomplish the communicative goal in the language, the 
students would realize that learning grammar is not only for the grammar itself, but learning 
this language segment would help them voice their ideas and express their thoughts. Very 
closely connected with this is the next suggestion: to move the teaching process from teaching 
grammar to teaching learners to communicate. By teaching students grammar, the teacher 
enables them not only to know that grammar structure, but how to use it and to communicate 
effectively. If students are excessively presented with rules, their language use would be 
diminished; therefore, the open presentation of rules should be avoided, because if given all the 
rules and not practising them, the students would not know what to do with them and how to 
use them, whic
h ‘cripples’ their language ability and makes them only passive users of the 
language. The ninth suggestion is that the teachers are expected to turn their students’ 
communicative competence 
– the knowledge about how to communicate - into communicative 
ability; that is, making them use their knowledge and using it in practice, thus, making them 
really able to communicate and transforming them from passive into active language users. The 
last recommendation that can be made to the teachers, and which has been prevailing in the 
discussion about teaching grammar, is that direct, explicit teaching of grammar rules should be 
avoided, but sufficient, authentic material is to be given to the students so that out of that input 
they are enabled to elicit the rules and come to their own conclusions about the use of the 
grammar structures.  

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