Ways for helping learners to master grammatical accuracy

How can learners be helped to master grammatical accuracy? In Hong Kong, the common answer should be drilling. To achieve this goal, teachers will assign exercises, from both workbooks and worksheets, to their students. Parents will ask their children to complete tons of extra exercise books provided by different publishers. I think this kind of drilling is necessary for those who are not native English speakers. While we are requiring the learners to do these dull exercises, we can also organize some interesting activities in order to raise their motivation.

Let me share my experience. I, before entering the PGDE programme, taught a primary 3 class which was recognised as the noisiest and the laziest class in the school. The academic performance, of course, was not good. It was difficult for them to sit still and to concentrate during lessons. But things changed after I introduced some activities, such as group work and competitions, in lessons. They paid more attention, and showed more eagerness on learning. It was easier for me to demonstrate the correct form of using the English words. As a result, only one or two classmates were often late for handing in their homework. It meant they could manage to do it and also willing to complete it.

Beside applying interesting activities into lessons, providing an English-speaking environment can also help learners to master the grammatical accuracy. For every English lessons I taught, I started with asking my students some daily used questions. For instance, I would ask "What day is today?" or "What is the weather like today?". Then, they gave me the answers and I corrected them if the answers were wrong. They had to speak English in my classes. So they had to ask "May I go to the toilet?" when they needed it. In this case, they picked up English as chunks. Therefore, grammatical accuracy is guaranteed.

On the other hand, there are lots of interesting and accessible resources provided for the learners. For example, they can listen to English songs, read the lyrics and surfed the websites for English learning. HK edcity is one of the websites that contain lots of interesting links for learning English. In a nut shell, drilling is not the only way to help learners on mastering grammatical accuracy.