Organisation of the grammatical course in school

Practical approach

The commonest, didactically justified and practically purposeful organisation of the grammatical course appears to be the concentric one. The essence of concentric organisation of grammar materialcomprises providing new additional grammatical information at every new stage of teaching. At each new stage grammatical knowledge is enlarged and deepened and at a certain stage it is systemised. Each concentreincludes morphological and syntactical items. Thus, the first concentre includes 42 basic structures, the second one adds up 28 structures and so on.

This concentric distribution is determined by the following factors:

1) didactic role of the isolation of difficulty. The degree of difficulties influences their gradual increase in the course of training;

2) needs of communication define the necessity to introduce basic grammatical structures first. Ignoring this factor makes the act of communication impossible.

These two factors operate in close interrelation. Thus, the presentation of verbal tense forms of present simple and present progressive at the elementary stage is submitted to these factors. Students are able to express their ideas with the help of these tense verb forms. They can tell about themselves, their families, friends and the like. Such communicative activities give satisfaction to students, for the activities allow for practical application of the grammatical knowledge previously obtained.

3) Another factor that determines the concentric structure of a grammatical course is the necessity to take into account the students’ individual word-stock. This requirement finds its reflection not only in the grammatical minimum selection on the whole, but also in the distribution of the grammatical minimum in each concentre.

New orientation at the practical language use, especially in oral speech, has determined the need of more precise gradation of difficulties. It means slicing new language input into more minute grammatical fractions, taking into account their occurrence in speech and, therefore, the speaker’s need in them. In this way we can achieve automated operating grammar material at the level of habits. Grammatical material is organised in small fractions at the elementary stage as compared with more advanced levels.

Summing up, it should be stressed that concentric organisation is defined by: practical objectives of mastering the target language; complicity of separate grammatical phenomena and their occurrence in speech; students’ word-stock and the stage of learning. The approach described above is known as practical approach in methodology.

Systematic approach

Systematic approach to a grammatical course organisationis suitable for teaching adults’ receptive skills. In particular, it is applied to teaching reading non-language college students. It may be only partially applied to teaching reading at the senior stage at school. Systematic approach proves to be useful for revision and systematisation of isolated grammar items. The overdose of systematic approach will lead to unnecessary theorising, to assimilation of knowledge deprived of practical habits.

Traditional approach

Besides concentric and systematic types of a grammatical course arrangement the so-called traditional layout of grammaris no news to methodologists. This traditional approach to grammar is characterised by a linear sequence of introducing grammatical themes. The structure of the course reflects the organisation of material in scientific, theoretical grammar courses where language facts are laid out in a strict, precise and complete system with the account of morphology and syntax. Such a structure of the course may be useful for language departments where not only practical aims are fixed in the syllabus but the objectives of theoretical philological training as well.