The importance of pedagogical grammar in language teacher education is unquestionable, and, in recent years, publications related to teaching grammar have abounded. More often than not, English teacher training programs, be it in English as a foreign language or English as a second language contexts, include a component on grammar teaching. The topics covered in such a course range from structural descriptions of the English language and error analysis tasks to exploring the role of grammar teaching in a communicative language classroom and activity design and lesson planning.

In every classroom of pre- or in-service English teachers, a few individuals will name themselves grammar geeks and exhibit fervid enthusiasm when new grammar structures are presented and challenging exercises are assigned. But despite an abundance of new approaches to grammar teaching, such as awareness raising or grammar through discourse, for the majority of language teachers, pedagogical grammar is a course that has to be taken and passed, and in their own classroom, it is the domain of language associated with daunting tasks and boredom (Nassaji & Fotos, 2011).

The way English teachers approach teaching grammar in their own classroom is affected by many factors, including their own beliefs about grammar as well as former grammar learning experiences (Keck & Kim, 2014). Just as we want the teachers in our courses to stop thinking about grammar as a set of rules that needs to be inserted into a learner’s brain and move away from the structural syllabus, we need to structure the pedagogical grammar courses in a way that prompts reflective practice and innovative teaching methods. In this article, we offer an approach to pedagogical grammar instruction based in loop input (Woodward, 2003), which we have applied successfully in our own EFL teacher training program for 2 years.

Loop Input

Loop input is an experiential teaching approach that “involves an alignment of the process and the content of learning” (Woodward, 2003, p. 301). In teacher education courses, this means integration of the content of learning into specific classroom tasks. Pre- or in-service teachers participate in activities that illustrate language-teaching practices and simultaneously utilize the course content. In contrast to other forms of experiential learning, loop input necessarily includes a “decompression stage” during which students reflect on and analyze the instructional method they have just experienced and consider in what ways they can apply it to their own teaching (Woodward, 2003, p. 303). We find loop input particularly beneficial in pedagogical grammar instruction. It not only allows for more in-depth processing of the content but also leads to increased consciousness of how grammar works and fosters improvement of teachers’ own grammatical competence.

Model Lesson

Whereas most of our lectures include only one or two loop-input activities, we sometimes apply this approach to model a complete lesson plan. In a session that focuses on restrictive and nonrestrictive relative clauses, our students participate in a model content-based lesson and experience examples of an enhanced input strategy, mechanical practice, and a communicative task. The lesson’s content objective is the students’ ability to apply these techniques in their own teaching. The language objectives state that students should be able to identify subject, object, and possessive relative clauses and different types of relative pronouns (who, whom, which, that, whose), and to explain the difference between restrictive and nonrestrictive relative clauses.

To implement loop input, we utilize relative clauses as the content theme in this lesson. Following a brief brainstorming session, the students receive short passages describing relative clauses. To illustrate teaching of relative clauses through enhanced input, relative clauses in each of the passages are highlighted to make the grammatical structure in focus more salient. For example:

Relative clauses, which constitute a type of subordinate clauses, are categorized into restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses. Relative pronouns that introduce a restrictive relative clause are not separated from the main clause by a comma and convey information that is essential for identification. Nonrestrictive relative clauses, which are separated from the main clause by a comma, add essential information about the antecedent in the main clause.

Working individually, students then participate in a mechanical practice task in which they are asked to label a number of clauses as either restrictive or nonrestrictive. The following sentences provide some examples:

1. In a mechanical task, which is a task you are completing now, students usually supply a missing word or identify a grammatical feature.
2. Mechanical tasks that are particularly boring are those in which the sentences are taken out of the context.

In the next stage of the lesson, the students experience how a communicative task can be used in a lesson about relative clauses. Students are divided into small groups and each group creates one section of an instruction manual. For instance, one group is asked to work on subject clauses, whereas another one is responsible for object clauses. In order to compile the complete manual, students need to exchange information with their classmates, which is accomplished in a jigsaw task.

In the decompression stage, students unpack the whole lesson and analyze each of the activities in which they have just participated as “language learners,” discussing what they found challenging but also considering challenges their own students might experience. As a learning scaffold, they receive a handout with the following table (Table 1).

Table 1. Relative Clauses: Model Lesson Analysis

We often initiate reflection by filling out the first row together with the whole class. Alternatively, students can be asked to work in groups, with the instructor rotating around the room and monitoring the process. We hope that this detailed analysis and reflection will prompt our students to critique the activities they experienced first-hand and consider the ways in which they can apply similar strategies in their own grammar teaching. As Woodward insists, decompression time is a necessary step in loop input as it allows students to “learn more deeply as a result of [the] reverberation between process and content” (2003, p. 303).

Model Activity

Apart from applying loop input at the level of a complete session, we also apply it at the level of an individual task. To familiarize students with the principles that communicative language teaching (CLT) advocates, we try to incorporate different CLT activity types. One of the tasks in which students engage in is the design of a poster. The grammar focus of this lesson is on modality. The objective of the lesson, therefore, is for preservice teachers to be able to explain the differences between the different interpretations of modal verbs and to employ various communicative strategies to teach modal verbs.

For the task, students are divided into five teams based on the following modals: can, must, may, should, and will. Working in groups, each team is given a poster displaying extensive rules from different pedagogical grammar handbooks and a selection of communicative activities about their modal. After reading the poster, the five groups are asked to create their own poster to educate their students about their modals. They are instructed to summarize key information from the section assigned including the different interpretations of their modal (e.g., can displaying potential, ability, permission, and possibility) with examples highlighting each use. Using a comic strip creator or their own artistic abilities, they also have to illustrate a particular use of their modal. When they are done, students give feedback on a poster to the other four groups incorporating modals in their sentences. For instance:

1. You should have used a clearer example of your modal conveying possibility.
2. You might want to use some color in your drawing.
3. You must also include a section listing all the different interpretations of your modal.
   
   

The posttask reflection stage aims at generating discussion about the steps of the task, what makes this task a CLT task, as well as the drawbacks and merits of incorporating such tasks in the classroom.

Conclusion

Pedagogical grammar courses are an essential component of language teacher–education programs around the world. To prepare pre- and in-service teachers to utilize a variety of grammar teaching approaches in their own classrooms and to foster reflective teaching practices, we have employed loop-input activities and lessons in the pedagogical grammar course we teach at our institution. Because the loop-input approach involves decompression time during which participants reflect on and evaluate the teaching strategies they have experienced, it leads to more in-depth processing of the course content. We have found this approach to be highly successful with our own teachers in training, and we hope to encourage its use in other teacher education programs.

References

Keck, C., & Kim, Y. (2014). Pedagogical grammar. Amsterdam, the Netherlands: John Benjamins.

Nassaji, H., & Fotos, S. (2011). Teaching grammar in second language classrooms. Integrating form-focused instruction in communicative context. New York, New York: Routledge.

Woodward, T. (2003). Loop input. ELT Journal, 57(3), 301–304.

Anna Krulatz is associate professor of English at the Faculty of Teacher Education at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, Norway, where she works with pre- and in-service EFL teachers. Her research focuses on multilingualism with English, pragmatic development in adult language learners, content-based instruction, and language teacher education.

Georgios Neokleous is associate professor of English at the Faculty of Teacher Education at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, Norway, where he works with pre- and in-service EFL teachers. His research focuses on the use of the mother tongue in monolingual classrooms, English for academic purposes, and classroom anxiety.