Thornbury, Essay Example

Thornbury emphasizes that the teaching of grammar serves as a corrective against the ambiguity in language. While the conventional belief in educating students in language was that oral communication is key, it is important to emphasize this learning by encouraging them to read and write. Before reading this chapter, I had believed that oral communication was the primary mode through which children and ESL learners learned language. I now understand that while oral language communication is important to this process, it is important for grammar teacher’s to incorporate writing and reading into lessons to reinforce language skills. Furthermore, using these techniques in combination with oral speech will allow students to correct their language mistakes in a way that is more apparently meaningful to them.

After reading Thornbury on how to deal with grammar errors and presenting tenses to my language learners, I believe that it is important to introduce tense just as I would generally vocabulary. For example, ESL teachers typically present their students with vocabulary by saying a word and holding the identified object. This exercise can be repeated using tense. When teachers instruct their students on words like “apple”, they present it to the class. Just as this is done, the teacher can “eat the apple”, “be eating the apple”, and “have eaten the apple”. Introducing this sense of time into the lessons is helpful to students because it will allow them to visualize terms that are otherwise abstract. To accompany this type of presentation instruction, it is helpful for the teacher to write the associated words on the blackboard so students can understand that the terms are related, but represent different timing.