Teaching English Grammar in Context
Learn to teach English grammar as a meaning-making resource, not a list of arbitrary rules, to promote engagement and retention with this course from UCL.
Duration
5 weeks
Weekly study
3 hours
Premium course
What's included?
On this five-week course, you’ll discover methods for teaching English grammar in context throughout primary and secondary education.
With this approach, you can employ grammar in other aspects of your teaching for a more unified experience. This engaging method helps your students explore grammar through authentic texts and discussions about meaning, choices, and effects, rather than simply identifying features.
This technique has also been shown to have positive impacts on students’ creative writing and analytical reading.
You’ll discover how you can teach your students to apply grammatical knowledge to a range of texts, genres, and styles to keep your activities interesting.
This allows you to combine aspects of both language and literature for an integrated approach to teaching. Drawing on tools from literary linguistics and stylistics, you’ll come away with usable ideas you can immediately include in your lessons.
You’ll learn from Professor Bas Aarts who teaches English linguistics at UCL, as well as drawing on useful resources from Englicious – a free library of English language teaching materials tailored closely to the national curriculum.
With the new national curriculum requiring school teachers to teach English grammar from primary school, this course will help develop your own grammar knowledge to feel confident in the classroom.
Gain an overview of the course, meet your fellow learners, take a poll on how much you teach grammar, and discuss your current practice.
Some background on the Englicious project and the resources it offers for schools.
Your introduction to what we mean by 'teaching English grammar in context'.
What we have done so far, what's next and your thoughts.
A refresher from Week 1, and an introduction to the core principles that underpin this course.
Definition and examples of reader response.
What it means to call grammar a meaning-making resource.
The importance of losing at authentic texts in context.
What we have done so far, what's next and your thoughts.
What we can expect when looking at non-fiction texts.
How headlines create bias.
How to write paragraphs with cohesion.
How the wider context is used to persuade.
What we have done so far, what's next and your thoughts.
What we can expect when looking at fiction texts.
How poetry uses patterns.
Using language to describe characters.
Building a narrative that hooks the reader's attention.
What we have done so far, what's next and your thoughts.
A quiz on the principles that underpin teaching English grammar in context - and what to avoid!
The final task is to create a resource based on the principles we have covered on this course.
Concluding remarks and how to stay in touch.
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