At the start of every academic year, the teachers decide that they would fix all the grammatical errors of their students. Often students cannot express what they speak on a paper. Quite possible reasons are they aren’t aware of the parts of speech or aren’t familiar with grammar-oriented words.
In this tech-dominated era, students follow more of the urban dictionary. More of the internet- Twitter ish lingo. They’ll certainly have a hard time writing a grammatically accurate sentence at all.
And to find a solution, before starting the new academic year, all students are taken aback and taught grammar again from square one. Students’ focus is drawn onto speech lessons, grammar drills, punctuation exercises, and other elements for the first few days or even weeks, of every new academic year.
These grammar lessons will indeed work out well for the students provided the teachers go in-depth. Or else the same grammatical errors will repeat, in the loop.
Despite teachers constantly teaching and drilling grammar to students. The student forgets and repeats the same errors. This leads to teachers raising their voice in frustration saying they had taught it.
What’s the solution for this never-ending loop situation?
Teaching out of context doesn’t go on for a long time
When it comes to grammar, you must know it’s not only the language but everything like spelling, punctuation usage, capitalization, etc. Besides, grammar taught in isolation doesn’t help students in acquiring grammar knowledge. The formalized and routine way of teaching won’t help for too long to erase out grammatical errors in students.
Firstly the grammar isn’t meant to stress students, though it’s challenging. If not taught explicitly and through real-life examples, students can get confused within no time. In this article, we will understand what are students’ grammatical errors and different steps to deal with them
Here are some of the effective ways to teach grammar and fix grammatical errors students make:
Encourage students to read and write efficiently
One of the best ways to help students improve their grammar provide them a lot of time to read and write. An excellent way to start is by joining any reading or writing workshops. When it comes to reading, help them get some real books, articles, or texts. This will help them build interest in learning the language formation.
Writing works wonders! Students who do writing are more analytical. Students should be exposed to writing assignments. We’re not encouraging scripted writing programs or just reading non-meaningful passages. It should be meaningful and explicitly within contexts of what one is writing and reading.
Both formal and informal pieces of writings should be encouraged. This includes writing journal entries, accessible entries, short stories by the students. Teachers can take the first ten minutes for regular grammar instruction and the remaining twenty minutes for writing and reading. This will help students jot out mistakes and naturally get good at grammar.
Reading helps to reinforce correct grammar in students’ minds. The combination of seeing, saying, and hearing helps students to solidify their learning. Both reading and writing will help students inculcate fluent vocabulary and reduce grammatical errors naturally.
Make few creative grammar lesson plans
Creativity dominates the mind more than both reading and writing. Students won’t turn into grammar nazis overnight. They’ll still make a mess. Certain mechanical errors can be eradicated amid writing’s context class. Consider setting a more creative system that enables your students to learn the traditions digitally.
You can create a file or cabinet form which features a high-quality lesson for each error. For instance, you can have a folder including your-you’re errors, for then-than mistakes.
These lessons can be inspired from an old textbook, YouTube videos, worksheets, etc., or even google images. Above all, ensure that you don’t confuse your students with dumping all folders together. Prepare the databases and place them in serial numbers if possible. The visual interpretation can also analytically benefit the student in lowering down the grammatical error. Curate all the materials in a way that students can access easily and at whatever time they wish.
Plan individual lessons for individual kids
No two kids are the same! We can all agree to this, more or less. You’ve done your part by explaining to them the structure and concepts. Give each student their lessons and let them get to work. You can instead cut back on the whole class grammar instruction and send individual lessons to individual students. Students should know what they’re drafting, they should their writing tasks authority.
Grammar is much more than punctuation, Capitalization. Once the students start understanding what they have to write, they’ll ask for help when needed. They’ll help themselves out through existing resources.
As a responsible and dedicated teacher, you can mail remarks to students individually More individual approach can work amazingly provided you have a small group of students. No doubt it is a lot of work, but this approach tends to work perfectly as students feel they aren’t judged. They won’t shy away or feel bad about the remarks. It works best if you attentively examine and identify each one’s mistakes and get ahold of them individually. This will increase their focus and they’ll always look out for grammatical errors in their copy.
Take it easy, it’s all process
Here’s a fact: Students are going to make grammar mistakes! Nothing to worry about because grammatical errors are bound to happen in the process of language acquisition. Approaching students with an all-perfect mind can be detrimental for them. Students who are aware of the rules also face some issues making grammatical errors at times. Consider spending at least 10 minutes on social media and find that even adults are making some.
Instead of correcting, you should ensure that your kids are into reading and writing as much as possible. When it comes to producing correct essays, you need to help them develop a personalized interest in writing.
On the spot vs. Delayed Correction
A plethora of experts say that it’s beneficial to fix the mistakes on the spot draws the attention of the student at that particular instant time. This helps the students identify grammatical errors and correct them once and for all.
Some people say that spot-fixing of errors lowers the student’s confidence. The next time they encounter mistakes, they won’t be able to confront teachers about them. At times when they make mistakes, they won’t open up because they are stressed or maybe don’t want to be looked down upon.
The midway out here is that you shouldn’t go for on the spot or delayed correction; instead, you should set some target. For example, your target structure is simple past tense, the students making errors in the structure then ensure you correct it. But if the mistakes tend to be with the prepositional phrases, you can fix them by asking your students to focus on one thing at a time. It is because your students will achieve better results if you say one thing at a time.
Besides that, you can also consider organizing one class just to solve queries. The best thing you can ever do is ask the students and make the doubt session more two-way interactive.
Do group general correction
When it comes to the general correction you don’t need to stress over each pupil individually. General mistakes in the exercises, speech, writing tasks. Additionally, you also need to ensure that they practice targeted grammar structure and learn from the general mistakes.
You can generally address the whole class and use class boards to address the mistakes and their corrections. It’ll help everyone to pair up or group up and reduce their general grammatical mistakes.
Add games, fun activities and experiment
At times students aren’t entirely interested in learning English linguistics. Not all students love writing, so why not help them with the basics so they develop some interest in the language. You can add playful activities, experimentations, and fun games to help them gain interest in learning grammar.
Practice with your students
Practice makes a man perfect! The saying applies to grammar skills as well. Ensure that your students practice as much as possible. You can also set up different quiz games, fun activities, and rewarding exams to help your students practice more along with not getting bored.
Interact with the students
What’s better than your students listening to your speech?!
Nothing beats listening when it comes to improving grammatical skills. When you speak in front of your students, they can get an idea about how to express and not use run-on sentences. It’ll help them build conversations among their peers. At times teachers can also initiate conversation activities among pupils to help them reduce grammatical errors.
Conclusion
Fixing grammatical errors is one of the primary duties of teachers. But not by excessive drilling or exhaustive punctuation exercises. Students learn the correct grammatical form and structures when they’re given more conscious control of the language.
And that’s exactly what we’ve pinpointed throughout the entire article.
