I like to be careful about giving any advice
to teachers because it's a long time since
I've done any teaching. I would say that if
you're teaching a language, teaching English,
you should inform yourself of how the language
works. It's interesting anyway, and even if
you're not explicitly using that, you should
be aware of it. Not just your language, but
the language of the people that you're teaching.
Even if you don't speak the language, don't
get very far with learning it, you can still
learn about it. But don't get obsessed about
it, and don't feel that your students have
to learn grammar. Because they're not there
to learn grammar. Grammar's a part of the
language; they're learning the language.
You don't learn grammar as a separate thing. So
I think the focus in teaching and learning
should be, most of the time, somewhere else.
Occasionally, you can focus on grammar, but
generally speaking you should be focusing
on other things. I also think it's important
to realise how grammar - and language generally,
really - is learned. You can't really talk
about grammar being learned: it's language.
I mean, you can't have grammar without words,
or words without grammar. To be aware of the
way in which it's learned, and the variety
of ways. Because you're dealing with people
- if you're dealing with adults, particularly
- they're very, very different from each other,
and people learn in different ways and at
different speeds. It's important to be aware
that learning a language is a bit like learning
to drive, or learning to do anything like
that. Learning to dance, learning to play a sport.
People learn at different speeds,
and learning happens in different ways, and
the brain acquires things almost when you're
not aware of it. You know, you suddenly find
you can drive one day, and the day before
you couldn't. It's just when things come together.
And grammar comes together in the same way.
So you might teach a lesson on using this
tense or something, and...don't expect it
to work immediately, you know. It's going
to be a while. That's just one little bit
of input, and hopefully there'd be lots of
other bits of input. And then things come
together, quite sort of miraculously, really.
And differently for different people.
