Grammar up your classes! (book review)

This is a book about grammar, but not so much a book about how to teach grammar as a book about how grammar is learnt.

Scott Thornbury

The way I can explain my attitude to English grammar is love-hate relationship. I must confess something you might find fairly incriminating – there were two exams I had to retake in my uni when I was doing my BA, and one of them was grammar.

When I think of my own education, I must admit I found grammar a royal pain in the neck, and a phrase I’m going to bed with Michael Swan was something used quite regularly. To be sure, I still have two copies of his Practical English Usage (one of them being the only book I ever marked quite heavily with highlighters, something I generally consider a major crime against books), and I still refer to them whenever I have a grammar-related doubt.

After three years spent in the company of Thomson and Martinet, and L.G. Alexander, I happily graduated. Then I started working in a school, hoping never to return to the torment of Learning Grammar. And then week one came, and I had to explain what Present Simple was. That’s how I realised that teaching grammar was the best way to learn it.

Needless to say, I never got rid of either Thomson and Martinet or L.G. Alexander. What’s more, I started looking for more sources on how to explain grammar better and make it easier to grasp. One of the books that helped me enormously was Uncovering Grammar by the amazing Scott Thornbury. I read it years ago, and I’ve just finished rereading it to see how many things I implemented and how much useful it could be to an average EFL teacher.

Content

This is a book (…) not about covering grammar in the traditional sense of ‘Today’s Tuesday, so we’re going to do the Present Perfect’. (…) Rather, it is a book about uncovering grammar – letting the grammar out, placing one’s trust in the emergent properties of language.

Scott Thornbury

Grammar doesn’t come in pieces like chicken nuggets that we can feed to our students. It’s a process, so instead of teaching it traditionally, we may encourage our students to go on an adventure and discover it. Obviously, that’s the idea I really like. Scott Thornbury takes us on a journey where we rediscover the main principles of grammaring and how we include grammar in our language. Then, we look back at our own learning process, and finally focus on our role as a grammar teacher.

The important aspect of this journey is practice – there are many tasks and exercises that will prompt you to consider Thornbury’s ideas and reach the conclusion on your own. That’s why you will remember things better and use them more willingly.

Book organisation

Much like its approach to grammar, the book takes you on a journey, where you begin to discover what grammaring is, and how to make our students grasp its importance. There are two parts in the book. The first consists of theoretical approach in the following chapters:

• Grammar as process: what role grammar and grammaring play in learning a language
• Learning to grammar: which activities may activate grammaring
• Noticing grammar: how teachers can help in grammar acquisition
• Emergent grammar: the role of a teacher in grammaring
• Process teaching: how to implement grammaring in your classroom

The second part is full of exercises and photocopiable materials you can use in your classroom. They are divided into three parts: grammaring tasks, consciousness-raising tasks and grammar emergence tasks. You will find them very useful when introducing various grammar aspects to your students.

Recommendations

As I’ve already mentioned, I read this book years ago, and have reread it recently, only to see how useful it proves to be. And it is! So I can happily recommend this book to:

• teacher trainees – it will show you that grammar isn’t something you should be afraid of, both from the student’s and from the teacher’s perspective
• fresh teachers – it will help you avoid the perils of “today we’re going to cover Present Simple” approach
• experienced teachers – it will be an enjoyable journey through grammar, with some entertaining stops for self-reflection

It looks like I’ve recommended it to pretty much everyone! But I truly believe there’s much you can  learn while uncovering grammar with Scott Thornbury.

Enjoy!

Title: Uncovering Grammar

Author: Thornbury, Scott

Publisher: Macmillan Education, 2005

ISBN 9781405080064