Grammar: how to tame the unruly beast

Simon Buckland
A young child sat at a desk in a classroom writing

“Grammar, which knows how to control even kings”- ѴDZè

When you think of grammar, “rule” is probably the first word that pops into your mind. Certainly the traditional view of grammar is that it’s about the “rules of language”. Indeed, not so long ago, teaching a language meant just teaching grammatical rules, plus perhaps a few vocabulary lists. However, I’m going to suggest that there’s actually no such thing as a grammatical rule.

To show you what I mean, let’s take the comparative of adjectives: “bigger”, “smaller”, “more useful”, “more interesting”, etc. We might start with a simple rule: for adjectives with one syllable, add -er, and for adjectives with two or more syllables, use more + adjective.

But this doesn’t quite work: yes, we say “more useful”, but we also say “cleverer”, and “prettier”. OK then, suppose we modify the rule. Let’s also say that for two-syllable adjectives ending in -y or -er you add -er.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t quite work either: we do say “cleverer”, but we also say “more sober” and “more proper”. And there are problems with some of the one-syllable adjectives too: we say “more real” and “more whole” rather than “realer” or “wholer”. If we modify the rule to fit these exceptions, it will be half a page long, and anyway, if we keep looking we’ll find yet more exceptions. This happens repeatedly in English grammar. Very often, rules seem so full of exceptions that they’re just not all that helpful.

And there’s another big problem with the “rule approach”: it doesn’t tell you what the structure is actually used for, even with something as obvious as the comparative of adjectives. You might assume that it’s used for comparing things: “My house is smaller than Mary’s”; “John is more attractive than Stephen”. But look at this: “The harder you work, the more money you make.” Or this: “London is getting more and more crowded.” Both sentences use comparative adjectives, but they’re not directly comparing two things.

What we’re actually looking at here is not a rule but several overlapping patterns, or paradigms to use the correct technical term:

  1. adjective + -er + than
  2. more + adjective + than
  3. parallel comparative adjectives: the + comparative adjective 1 … the + comparative adjective 2
  4. repeated comparative adjective: adjective + -er + and + adjective + -er/more and more + adjective

This picture is more accurate, but it looks abstract and technical. It’s a long way from what we actually teach these days and the way we teach it, which tends to be organized around learning objectives and measurable outcomes, such as: “By the end of this lesson (or module) my students should be able to compare their own possessions with someone else’s possessions”. So we’re not teaching our students to memorize a rule or even to manipulate a pattern; we’re teaching them to actually do something in the real world. And, of course, we’re teaching it at a level appropriate for the student’s level.

So, to come back to grammar, once we’ve established our overall lesson or module objective, here are some of the things we’re going to need to know.

  • What grammatical forms (patterns) can be used to express this objective?
  • Which ones are appropriate for the level of my students? Are there some that they should already know, or should I teach them in this lesson?
  • What do the forms look like in practice? What would be some good examples?

Existing grammar textbooks generally don’t provide all this information; in particular, they’re very vague about level. Often they don’t even put grammar structures into specific CEFR levels but into a range, e.g. A1/A2 or A2/B1, and none fully integrates grammar with overall learning objectives.

At app, we’ve set ourselves the goal of addressing these issues by developing a new type of grammar resource for English teachers and learners that:

  • Is based on the Global Scale of English with its precise gradation of developing learner proficiency
  • Is built on the Council of Europe language syllabuses, linking grammar to CEFR level and to language functions
  • Uses international teams of language experts to review the structures and assess their levels

We include grammar in the GSE Teacher Toolkit, and you can use it to:

  • Search for grammar structures either by GSE or CEFR level
  • Search for grammar structures by keyword or grammatical category/part of speech
  • Find out at which level a given grammar structure should be taught
  • Find out which grammar structures support a given learning objective
  • Find out which learning objectives are related to a given grammar structure
  • Get examples for any given grammar structure
  • Get free teaching materials for many of the grammar structures

Think of it as an open-access resource for anyone teaching English and designing a curriculum.

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  • A teacher sat with a student at his desk, the student is writing and the teacher is looking at him doing this smiling.

    7 ways to individualize your teaching

    Por Andrew Walkley
    Reading time: 4 minutes

    There's no denying that tailoring your teaching to individual students is an effective strategy. However, many teachers struggle with finding the time to include teaching moments which address an individual learner's specific needs. So, what's the best way to create an individualized classroom? Andrew Walkley, co-author of Roadmap, explains the benefits of this approach and shares some techniques to ensure that every student gets the most out of your lessons.

    The best of both worlds?

    First of all, what does individualized teaching mean? It's the concept that students will learn most effectively when the activity is specific to their needs and the language they are using is appropriate for their level. This concept is sometimes seen in opposition to coursebooks and class-based learning, where students are all expected to follow the same syllabus. However, class syllabuses and coursebooks have the following benefits:

    • Providing students with common goals
    • Encouraging learners to follow an unfamiliar topic that then opens new doors of learning
    • The learning opportunities in peer-to-peer explanation

    When we talk about individualized teaching in the classroom, we want to exploit the benefits of learning together while also providing opportunities for more individualized development. So, how can you, as a teacher, combine the two approaches?

    1. Involve students in choosing your route

    All classroom groups are different and made up of people from different age groups with distinct needs and interests. Roadmap can help in two ways:

    1. There is a fast and slow track. The fast track focuses on language input and speaking. The slow track has additional skills lessons at the back of the book that are thematically linked to the corresponding fast track lesson.
    2. Each lesson has a clear goal and final task. For shorter courses, get each student to choose three tasks they would definitely like to do. Based on the results, you can prioritize those lessons.

    At the start of the course, make a point of asking about students' learning priorities and then plan accordingly. Once you've completed an input and speaking lesson, you can ask the students if they want to further explore the topic through the skills lesson.

    2. Make use of tasks

    Open tasks, where students exchange their own ideas in a meaningful way, are a key part of individualized lessons. In essence, they are self-differentiating because each student will attempt to complete the task using whatever language they are able to use. In Roadmap, each of the main lessons ends with a clear task connected to a Global Scale of English (GSE) can-do statement. However, there are also lots of other speaking opportunities without a 'speaking' label (under vocabulary or reading, etc.), as well as the conversation that typically occurs in any lesson, all of which can be treated as open tasks.

    3. Give individualized feedback and then share it

    In a group setting, it's impossible to give individual feedback on every single task. However, you can give individual attention to different people throughout the lesson. Make yourself available to give students the language they need as it arises during an activity. Then, when they've completed the task, write some of these examples on the board, but leave a gap for the keywords. Elicit these keywords from other members of the class. If they can't get it, ask the student(s) you helped to explain the missing language. You might then repeat the task, but this time, pay attention to a new group.

    4. Check what vocabulary students know

    All coursebook writers and teachers make choices about what vocabulary to introduce to students. In the case of Roadmap we are guided by the GSE and teachers might like to experiment themselves using the GSE Teacher Toolkit. However, all students will have their own lexicons. You can individualize learning better by asking students to rate the words you aim to cover in a unit according to whether they know them or not. For example, 1 = it's completely new, 2 = the meaning is familiar but I don't use it, 3 = this is part of my productive vocabulary.

    5. Get students to create their own word lists and cards

    This knowledge will enable you to encourage students to focus on their individual vocabulary needs. They can reinforce learning by developing a word list or making flashcards using a web tool such as Quizlet. For new words they may have a word/collocation with an L1 translation.

    With familiar vocabulary, they could have cards with a keyword on one side and varied collocations or common examples on the other (also in English). It's worth setting aside some time in class to do this at the start of a course. If your students are engaged and motivated, it can become a regular discipline for learning new vocabulary.

    6. Ask more open questions about usage, not just meaning

    When we do vocabulary tasks from the course material in class, we can use open questions to individualize learning with the following two techniques. Firstly, as you go through the answers, rather than going in order 1 to 8, you can nominate people to give the answer that they're most unsure of and want to check. Secondly, we can ask the rest of the class open questions which focus on how words are used. For example, take these questions from different vocabulary exercises in Roadmap B1+:

    • What (other) things might you spill?
    • Why might a character in a series be killed off?
    • What (else) can you describe as reliable?
    • What can someone do to stay calm?

    You could also ask questions such as, "What's the opposite of staying calm?" or "What might you say if you spilled something?"

    When you ask these questions, you are checking meaning, but more importantly, you are also pushing students to reveal how well they know a word. Do they know the collocations of spill and reliable? Do they have the other language they might need to talk about the aspects of a TV series or help someone who is in a panic? You can then encourage students to choose how much of this potentially new language they want to add to their word lists.

    7. Provide open homework tasks and make time to share the results

    Homework is another opportunity to individualize learning. Give students a wide choice of tasks based on the material of the course or beyond, for example:

    • Choose any number of exercises they want to do from workbook material
    • Find and read one article they are interested in (in L1 or L2)
    • Write five things they want to learn how to say in English (perhaps using Google Translate)
    • Write up an interesting conversation they had in English (the conversation could be originally in L1 or L2)

    Whatever task they choose, the key is to dedicate some classroom time to discussing which homework task they did and why. Encourage them to explain their answers and what they learned through the task, and whether or not they would choose to do a similar task again.

    For a more detailed introduction on how you can individualize your teaching, check out Andrew's webinar: