Saturday 18 November 2017

TESL 0110 UNIT 2 - AHA!

Aha! Moment

The video provided in Unit 2 "Teaching Grammar in Today's Classroom" by Azar was really interesting and gave a lot of insight. My "Aha" moment came when Azar specifically spoke about the goal of grammar which is to NOT to know a lot of grammar, but to"Create an interlanguage that is increasingly fluency and accuracy in the use of English structures in meaningful communication." She provided an example of a student who wrote:

"I want to know a lot of grammers but is my problem I havn't enough vocabularies." and another:

“[I]f the court sent a kid in adult prisons will get worse not better, or this, I think the society or the court need to build a new jail for the juveniles that have doing crimes and the court should treat them as adults but only in court."


The second quote is written by a student who has graduated and enrolled in college. Quite shocking! Before this, I also placed heavy emphasis on grammar but after some of these examples, it is true that the goal not to master a language. I now think fluency and accuracy are very important in order to get your message across. For example, it is not important to use complex words in a sentence but to use simple words in the correct pattern. I also find that many people nowadays have more problems with fluency and accuracy than before because we live in a modern world and T.v, social media, etc where the majority of them can understand a language and speak well but have troubles when it comes to writing. When learning a second language, accuracy and fluency are two key components of language acquisition!

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