Teaching Grammar Communicatively by using the Children's TV Show “SuperWhy”

Abstract

The group of students I seek to address is elementary school students in 4th to 5th at WIDA Level 4. They have been mainly learning the L2 through a speaking focused course in an EFL settings. This course is intended for students who need to build up basic conversational skills. The course books are topic-based and cover simple and short daily-life dialogues. The aim of each lesson is to instruct students to be able to say key expressions in different situations; however, I have discovered, while teaching these students, that some have difficulties with speaking accurately due to their lack of understanding of basic grammatical knowledge. For example, many students struggle with when and how to use 'do/does' in questions and negatives. I would like to develop a communicative grammar teaching textbook in order to support their accuracy and fluency in speaking. In my Textbook, Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) will be employed. Richard (2002) states that CLT refers to "a set of principles about the goals of language teaching and how learners learn a language." Therefore, CLT encourages instructors to teach the L2 for learners' development of communicative competence which can be defined as an understanding how to use language for different purposes and functions. Each unit in this Textbook will cover one function in authentic spoken texts along with a specific target grammar forms. In order to facilitate learners' understanding of how to use the target grammar, I will use Focus on Form (FonF). According to Spada and Lightbrown (2008), form-focused instruction can assist L2 speakers to develop their communicative abilities and "increases the accuracy during real interaction." Hence, this Textbook focuses on the meaning of texts first, and then instructs grammar forms inductively through noticing the form in various activities. By studying with this Textbook, students should be able to be acquire when and how to speak English for different purposes since they will be exposed to real language use in authentic contexts. They should be able to enhance their grammar-awareness and bridge the language gap between the target language and their interlanguage. Ultimately, they will be able to increase their accuracy in both controlled activities and fluency based activities.