Developing effective pedagogies of grammar: The two-in-one approach

Teaching grammar at tertiary level can be challenging because students’
language repertoire is comparatively higher than at any other level of
teaching and learning. While there is a great demand for grammar teaching
in Academic Language Learning (ALL) contexts (and, consequently a broad
range of materials to facilitate grammar teaching), the teaching of grammar
has attracted much controversy. As a result, many teachers adopt their own
techniques and some of these may be under-theorised. The approach
proposed in this paper, incorporates Sfard’s (1998) “two metaphors of
learning” as a framework to underpin grammar teaching pedagogy. It also
encourages ALL practitioners to encompass characteristics of
Csikszentmihalyi’s (1990, 2004) “flow” in language learning. By embedding
cognitive as well as socio-cultural or participatory learning principles when
creating grammar learning tasks, and by stimulating learners for “goal
orientation”, the approach outlined in this paper aims to facilitate students’
grammar learning through an analytical learning technique. Grammar
proficiency is a necessary part of language proficiency standards for nonnative speaker students in Australian universities, and so analytical and self exploratory learning techniques will benefit students in their thesis writing
process and later in their careers as researchers and academics.