Grammar Difficulties

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The Students’ Grammar Difficulties and Their Possible INTRODUCTION Grammar has been known as one of the most important part in any language. Many researchers have long debated about every single thing of it. Of course it has any teacher’s attention from around the world. Most of the teachers even believe that learning grammar intensively can help the learners build their knowledge, so that they will be able to use the language eventually. Meanwhile, for the learners themselves, learning grammar often means they have to learn different kind of rules and get an intellectual knowledge of it. Unfortunately, in terms of learners’ success in learning any language, grammar has been seen to be a major problem. In particular, it can be seen from…show more content…
The teachers' recognition of this process (i.e., of transferring declarative knowledge about grammar into procedural knowledge) as a problem for many students has been reported by Burgess and Etherington (2002:442).They also conclude that the teachers tend to believe that explicit teaching of grammar is favoured by their students because of the expectations and the feelings of insecurity. How could it be? The first reason is explicit teaching of grammar tend to directly put attention to target form. By giving a direct attention, it is hoped that the method may limit students’ misconception related to grammar. The second, explicit teaching is predetermined and planned. For example, grammar can be set up as the main focus and goal of a teaching activity. The third, explicit teaching is quite obtrusive. It also can be an interruption of communicative meaning. The fourth, explicit teaching presents target forms in isolation. It is still quite related to the first point and that is also why the students will be easier to avoid misunderstanding in learning grammar. The fifth, explicit teaching involves a controlled practice of the target language. It is because the learning process has been arranged, as it has been mentioned in the second point. The sixth and the last one, the reason is because explicit teaching uses metalinguistic…show more content…
For example, using metalanguage or the language about language will help students to talk about the language itselft (Hutchinson, 1987). By talking about the language, the students are expected to have a better understanding about it first. If the students have already grab the main point of the language itself, that will lead them to have a higher chance and possibility to get about its grammar too. In other words, language and its grammar are related to each other and those two things cannot be separated. Besides, it is also believed that using metalanguage will provide students with a shorthand way to talk about grammatical elements (Berman, 1979; Halliwell, 1993). In many cases, it cannot be denied that using a shorthand way can be the most relatable and practical way to learn something. Not only a shorthand way may help the teachers to give a more efficient lesson, but it also may encourage the students to directly get the concepts or forms of grammar that have been taught to them. In conclusion, it can be said that the use of grammatical terminology can be seen as the most effective method to be used as the solution to overcome the students’ problems in learning English grammar and the language. Thus, it finally will help the students to build their knowledge and ability to use the language

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