Running Head: GRAMMAR CLASS OBSERVATION 1

Grammar Class Observation

Xiayu Guo

Colorado State University

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Introduction

This semester, I visited six grammar classes in different levels. These classes helped me a

lot. In China, the language teaching focus is grammar, but grammar class is always boring and

not productive enough for students. I want to be a teacher in China in the future, so I need to find

effective ways to teach grammar. I observed five grammar classes in INTO CSU. The classes I

observed gave me some inspiration about teaching methods and activity design.

Observation One

The first class I observed was a grammar class in level 1, there were twelve students in

class and their native languages were Chinese and Arabic. The topic was past tense. In the warm-

up activity, teacher led students into this class. She asked students, “What did you do yesterday?”

Here, teacher stressed on yesterday. Students answered this question in past tense. A student

answered, “I watched Two Broke Girls yesterday.” Then teacher asked, “Is it funny?” Teacher

explained why she used is in this question, because this is a fact. We don’t need to change the

tense of a fact. For example, the sun rises in the east. No matter today, yesterday or tomorrow,

the sun always rises in the east. Last class, students learned two expressions: have to and get to.

Teacher talked about the difference between them. When you say you have to do something, it

means you don’t want to do that but you have no choice. On the contrary, get to do means you

are excited about this thing. Next, it was a competition game. The game was about some special

words in past tense sentences. Students were divided into two groups and they were told to fill in

the blank in the sentences. I think this is a good activity. Actually, students were sleepy and

hungry in this class because it was lunch time and they were in class the whole morning. Teacher

used competition to make them excited and get involved in the class. Students were given five

sentences; they were asked to write the prepositions and adverbs in these sentences. For example,
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the poet lived in Massachusetts over 100 years ago; she died at the age 55 on May 15, 1886. At

the end of the class, students learned negative form of past tense: He didn’t eat bread yesterday.

Generally, I like the competition activity. I will try to use it in my future classes. I noticed that

teacher changed tense in paragraphs when she gave examples. This is related to implicit shift of

time. There are sometimes less overt reasons for shifting one’s axis of orientation, such as the

rhetorical structure of text.

Observation Two

The second class I observed was the grammar class in level 3. There were fifteen students

in class; the native languages were Arabic and Chinese. This class discussed agreement between

clauses. This teacher also stressed on past tense. Event is past; condition can be past, present or

future; universal truth is always present. When the teacher talked about past tense, she didn’t

explain an important use of past tense. She said the universal truth is always present; however,

sometimes past tense can be used to express facts. When it occurs, past tense adds a sense of

remoteness (Knowles, 1979, cited in Larsen-Freeman & Celce-Murcia, 2016, p.111). Although

the focus in this class was not remoteness use, teacher should state this to students. In this class,

there was an exercise. Students should combine two separate sentences into one complete

sentence. This exercise was time-consuming and difficult. Students were confused about it. I

found students had disagreement in a sentence. Many people don’t know something. Do some

robots think like humans? When students combined these two sentences, they said Many people

don’t know something whether some robots think like humans. This sentence is wrong because

something is redundant here. The correct sentence should be Many people don’t know whether

some robots think like humans. Then, a student asked a question about Do people want solar-

powered car? He thought this sentence should be Do people want to have solar-powered car?
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Teacher explained that to have can be omitted in this sentence. Additionally, teacher taught

students do you know and can you tell me can be expressed as I wonder. Teacher took this

sentence as an example: Do you know when he will go to school? Students changed this sentence

to I wonder when he will go to school. There were not many activities in this class and the

teaching method was traditional.

Observation Three

The third and fourth class I observed were two consecutive level 2 grammar classes.

There were fourteen students in class. The native languages were Chinese, Korean, Thai,

Indonesian and Arabic. The topics were modal verbs with suggestion and advice and present

perfect tense. At the beginning of class, students had a quiz. They should write the past tense and

past participles of verbs. After the quiz, teacher let students answer those questions orally

because she could check the pronunciation. Teacher gave students a letter; the content was about

a man and his girlfriend. Students should give him advice with modal verbs. This is a good

writing activity. Three to four students were in a group, and each of them wrote a piece of

advice. After they gave advice, they organized their advice as a short paragraph. However, I

think there is a problem in this activity. This is the first class where they learned modal verbs, but

teacher just told students what the modal verbs were. Teacher didn’t have enough preparation in

pre-activity. Because students were required to give advice and develop a paragraph, teacher

should tell them how to use modal verbs. That is, teacher could show the degree of urgency. For

advice, we can use must/should/ought to/might/may/can/had better to depending on speaker’s

authority. Here, teacher didn’t talk about phrasal modals. Phrasal modals are also very common

expressions when we give advice and each modal verb has corresponding phrasal modal, like be

able to, be going to, have to, and be supposed to. Students had many questions about how to
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choose modal verbs. They asked me, “Do I use should or could in this sentence?” Obviously,

they were confused about these words but teacher didn’t explain them thoroughly. For students’

understanding, teacher was supposed to introduce ability/tendency, social interaction and logical

probability for modals. But generally, this is a good activity. Students were interested in the

content of the letter, so they were active when they gave advice. Students discussed and

collaborated. After modal verbs, teacher prepared for next class. The topic of second class was

present perfect. Teacher gave students some words that may indicate present perfect. They are

yet, already, recently and since.

Observation Four

At the beginning of next class, teacher showed a passage titled Unsolved Mysteries;

students highlighted the past participles and added words such as yet in sentences. There were six

sentences.

The scientists haven’t found another planet like earth. (yet)

we have sent spaceship to Mercury and Mars. (already)

Researchers have discovered something to treat hypertension. (recently)

People have looked in many spaces for new medicines. (already)

No one has found out why we dream. (yet)

Some scientists have been in the news. (recently)

Basically, in positive sentences, we use already; in negative sentences, we use yet. If you want to

suggest “time”, you can use recently. Teacher also told students how to use for and since. This is

an important concept in present perfect. For means length of time while since means a specific

point of time. There were two simple sentences:

Since I was a child, I have always worn glasses.

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I have worn glasses for ten years.

I was a child is a point of time; ten years is a period. Students understood these two words easily.

Then, students did a game about present perfect. This is my favorite activity in these six classes.

The game was I have never had… Three to five students were in a group, and each of them

should develop a complete sentence with present perfect. For example, one student says, “I have

never eaten Japanese food.” If you have eaten Japanese food, you can get a candy. This is an

interesting speaking activity. Everyone in the group have opportunity to participate, and they can

share their experience to others. Also, because of prize, they totally got involved in the activity.

We had fun during the game and practiced present perfect. After the game, teacher collected

some sentences from students. If their sentences were incorrect, teacher would correct them.

Finally, students formed questions with present perfect. They used the sentences in the game.

There was a sentence, “I have never fought with others”. Students should ask, “Have you ever

fought with others?” Students wrote sentences like that and highlighted the past participles.

Generally, this class is very effective and students participate in the class actively, but I think

teacher can add something about the relationship between simple past and present perfect.

Students learned simple past before, maybe some of them mix these two aspects up. For

example, even though one is present tense and the other is past tense, the choice doesn’t depend

on the time at which the event took place (Larsen-Freeman & Celce-Murcia, 2016, p.122). They

are both refer to past, but simple past is relative to a particular time.

Observation Five

The fifth class I visited was a level 3 grammar class. There were fifteen students in class

and the native languages are Chinese, Thai, Arabic and Korean. The topic was attributive clause

and connectors. Students did an exercise. They should rearrange sentences orders in a passage.
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The content is about the primary cause of the loss of forest. Then, students rewrote sentences

with some phrases, such as a major reason, one reason for, the main reason and cause of. Also,

they were asked to complete sentences with these words. Next, teacher showed some wrong

sentences; students circled mistakes. The most part of class was doing exercise. The exercise is

about connectors and attributive clause. There are eight groups of separated sentences; students

connected them with the words in the box. This exercise was a little difficult. Students were

confused about three groups.

The presentation is due on Friday. I need to create my PowerPoint slides. I don’t have much

time.

Next month is Halloween. I need to buy car. Children will come to my door.

We are losing the rainforest. Endangered plants and animals are dying. Something must be done.

It seemed that students didn’t have problems on attributive clause, but they had problems on

sentence order. I saw a sentence: Because the presentation is due on Friday, I need to create my

PowerPoint slides. Therefore, I don’t have much time. This sentence is grammatically correct,

but the order is problematic. Because I don’t have time, I need to create my slides now. It’s more

logical. It took much time on this exercise. This is a traditional but useful way to teach grammar

especially for students in intermediate-high and advanced proficiency. They have solid

foundation of grammar, so what they need to do is just consolidation.

Observation Six

The last class I observed was level 1 grammar class. There were twelve students and

native languages are Chinese and Arabic. In warm-up activity, students reviewed the content

they learned last class (should/can). Teacher told them the meaning difference between can do

and should do. After that, they skipped to comparative degree. Teacher gave students some
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adjectives: lazy, happy, tall, beautiful and stupid. If you want to change these words to

comparative form, what should you do? It depends on syllable. Teacher said that you should add

more before beautiful and stupid because they are multi-syllabic. For lazy and happy, you should

change -y to -i and then add -er. Next activity was cloze. Before the activity, teacher pre-taught

some vocabularies. Students should fill in the blank of a song. There are many comparative

forms in the lyric. Teacher summarized three rules of adjective:

more patient, more beautiful, more thoughtful, more interesting

sturdier, easier

good-better, bad-worse.

Additionally, students compared life and thing between now and 20 years ago. Students gave

sentences like home appliances are cheaper and Laptop are lighter. They also should compare

the cities they live in group work. At the end of class, teacher let students develop sentences. An

Arabic student made a mistake of less and fewer. These two words are related to count and non-

count nouns. I find that many nonnative speakers have difficulties on quantifier and count/non-

count nouns. That student said, “I have less books than her.” Here, less is incorrect because book

is a non-count noun. This sentence should be: I have fewer books than her. In this class, teacher

didn’t talk much about these words, but I think they are important because it’s a difficulty for

learners.

Conclusion

From six classes, I found the biggest difficulty for learners were tense and aspect. They

knew what tense and aspect are, but they had no idea how to use them in sentences. That is,

sometimes students used present perfect in a simple past sentence, but they used simple past

tense in a present perfect sentence. For their understanding, teacher can give them some simple
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past sentences and past perfect sentences and they find the differences together. However, I still

learned some things from the observations. As a teacher, when I want to explain grammar, I can

use examples but not only show students grammar rules. One important thing is to motivate

students to get involved in the class. For example, when students do activities in class, I will

reward them if they finish the tasks successfully.