A
perennial problem for English as a second language teachers is finding
compelling ways to teach grammar. Many grammar textbooks are less than
ideal. At best, these books provide a general overview of a language
feature. At worst, their exercises are tedious or culturally biased. All
commercial texts are by their nature disconnected from students' lived
realities. Ask yourself this: Did you ever really care what happened to
Dick and Jane?
It
is up to the teacher to make the language come alive for the students.
Our online picture dictionary partially solves this problem. The
student-created dictionary has evolved into an image bank from which I
can mine content for grammar examples. When I want to present a new
grammar point (subject pronouns, for instance), my first destination is
Our Dictionary. There I retrieve interesting photos of the students and
make questions based on the visuals. Usually the pictures are funnier
and more original than what appears in any textbook. As you might
expect, our students are much more willing to study esoteric syntactic
structures if they themselves have crafted the content.
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