Taking Traditional Classes

Taking Traditional Grammar Classes; Why the EFL Learners Have to Be Bothered?

ENG | 27 January 2011 | 19:06 Dibaca: 376   Komentar: 4   1 dari 1 Kompasianer menilai bermanfaat

For many years, it may be up to now, grammar has been taught very traditionally to the English as Foreign Language (EFL) learners. However, the way of grammar teaching, whether it should be taught explicitly or implicitly, is still a controversial issue that has been debated at least in the last ten years (Nassaji & Fotos, 2004. p 126). Karshen states that learning grammar explicitly, develops only the declarative knowledge of grammar not the ability of using grammar (Karshen, 1981 in Nassaji & Fotos, 2004. pp. 24 - 25) while Garau argues that teaching grammar explicitly, with a formal instruction, gives benefit for the lower linguistic scores learners to develop their language performance and it also improves learners’ lexico - grammatical competence ( Garau, Arranz, & Noguera, 2007. p.8). There is still unclear whether the best way to teach grammar is giving formal instruction about grammar or teaching it implicitly and let the learners have grammar acquisition.

Learning grammar explicitly may give some advantages, such as developing learners’ grammatical knowledge that will support their next learning process, take for example when they learn phonetic, they are also learning about lexicon, a research shown that grammatical knowledge of learners support their learning process in understanding lexicon in phonetic. However, the most important thing in EFL is communication aspect or language performance. Take another example, a research found that learning grammar explicitly is an ineffective learning process, it is proved by the result of students’ writing (Andrew, 2006. p.39).

It is still controversial issue that grammar should be taught explicitly or implicitly, each method has its own strength and flaws. However, Ellis explains that

‘the learners must have at least some...