I was recently introduced to a friend of a friend and... it happened again. When I told him that I was an ESL teacher/ teacher trainer, he nodded enthusiastically. "Oh, right, English grammar and all that! I could teach grammar." He proceeded to tell me how he works in journalism so he often has to proofread articles to make sure everything is spelled and worded correctly. And he assured me he was very confident in the difference between "your" and "you're." I nodded and smiled politely. I've learned that responding with, "Oh, you know grammar- great! So how about that past perfect continuous tense, huh?" tends to elicit a less than positive response. (It's like no one even wants to talk about auxiliary verbs and present participles at dinner parties these days.)
But really, this does happen frequently. I’ll mention something about training ESL teachers and everyone within earshot will pipe up about grammar and how terrible it is that nobody uses the correct version of there/ their/ they’re anymore. And I have to bite my tongue to keep from saying, “Yes, I feel your pain. But you do realize that grammar is not just spelling…right?”
To be fair, most native English speakers don’t know much about grammar because… well, why would we? We don’t have to know the names of all the verb tenses or be able to explain what a gerund or infinitive is in order to speak English fluently and correctly. We learned all the rules implicitly, which means we use them all the time… but we have no idea what they actually are. Talking to people like the dinner party guy reminds me that, when it comes to grammar, ignorance is bliss. Most native speakers don’t even realize just how much we don’t know about our own language.
Until we start trying to teach it, that is. Many new teachers get a rude awakening when they realize that there’s a lot more to grammar than they thought. Anyone who’s worked with adult ESL learners knows that the students usually aren’t afraid to interrupt a grammar lesson with, “Why?” They have specific questions about sentence structures. They want you to break down exactly why you can say something this way but not that way. They know terminology. And they expect their teacher to know it, too.
Hate to break it to you, but in grammar there definitely are. And if you’re a teacher, you gotta learn ‘em.
“Students know terminology. And they expect their teacher to know it, too.”
When I first started teaching, I actually felt pretty good about my grammar knowledge. I’d been lucky enough to have some great English teachers in high school, I’d taken a few linguistics classes in college, and I was fresh off my CELTA course. One of my very first classes was a general English class that met in the evenings. Most of the students were at least ten years older than I was and came to class straight from work. They always seemed slightly intimidating sitting at their desks with their briefcases and polished business clothes. I don’t remember what exactly I was teaching one evening, but a sentence came up that was something like, I had my house painted. Of course, a student asked me about it, and I promptly realized I was clueless as to how to respond. I started a frantic mental grammar analysis.
“I think it’s, um… oh, it’s, uh, the passive voice?” I tried to move on.
Another student raised his hand. “Isn’t it the causative?” It was a correction, not a question.
I balked. I had never heard of the causative before. And I had no idea how to tell this nice man who had paid some serious money for me to teach him English that I had no idea what he was talking about. When you’re standing in front of the class and the students are teaching you grammar, you know you have some homework to do. “Um, yeah,” I managed. “Maybe. I don’t know. I mean, I’ll get back to you on that.”
I survived the rest of the class, but I felt like I’d lost a good deal of credibility with my students. I went home and looked up everything I could find about the causative structure. I wasn’t going to get caught off guard again. At least, you know, until a student brought up the next grammatical structure I’d never heard of.
And that’s exactly the thing for new or prospective English teachers. It’s not that I couldn’t use the causative correctly; I’d been saying things like I’m getting my hair cut and I need to have my car washed for years. I’d just never actually considered that the structure I was using had a specific name, and I certainly hadn’t expected anyone to put me on the spot about what it was.
Have you ever felt like this after a grammar lesson? We’ve all been there.
“When you’re standing in front of the class and the students are teaching YOU grammar, you know you have some homework to do.”
That’s the way many new teachers gradually learn grammar: by stumbling over it, one structure at a time. They get asked a spontaneous question, realize they have no idea how to answer, feel terribly embarrassed, do some feverish retroactive research… and then the whole cycle repeats again in the next grammar lesson. It’s a slow, painful process until eventually the teacher is fairly confident at fielding students’ questions. It’s trial by fire… over and over again.
So how do teachers avoid the cycle of clueless to embarrassed to slightly-less-clueless?
Here are a few ways to gain unshakeable confidence in your own grammar knowledge, so that you’ll feel as confident as you (and your students!) deserve in your classroom.
Do the research. Yes, it sounds obvious. But so many new teachers don’t realize that they have homework to do before they teach. Invest in a good grammar book- you can check out our favorites here- and spend a little time each day looking up a new structure.
Take a grammar course. Don’t feel like digging through a bunch of reference books? I don’t blame you! While consulting book after book may be an effective way to build your knowledge, it’s not exactly efficient. And it’s probably not most people’s idea of an exciting way to spend an afternoon. If you want all the information you need curated for you and delivered in an engaging and easy-to-understand format, enroll in an online grammar course. Make sure the course doesn’t expire so that you have access to the resources whenever you need them. This way, you can go back and review anytime you’d like. The best courses should even include materials you could use in the classroom with your students. We’re confident ours is the best one out there.
Pay attention. Throughout the day, challenge yourself to notice how you say certain things, not just what you say. Mid-conversation with a friend, for example, you may wonder, “Hmm. Why did I say, ‘I have never been to that restaurant’ instead of ‘I never went to that restaurant?” Once you tune into this, you’ll start to notice patterns that match up with the grammar rules you’re studying.
What about you? What sort of reactions do you get when you tell people you're an English teacher? Did you experience any sort of "grammar awakening" when you first started teaching? Or, if you're a non-native speaker, was there a moment when you realized you actually knew far more about English grammar than the native speakers around you?