Teaching Grammar: The dilemma over choosing a form-focused or a meaning-focused approach

Revista del Centro de Investigación de Lingüística y de Didáctica de la Lengua Inglesa (CILDLI) Año V, N.º 5

Instituto de Formación Docente ´Nuestra Señora del Sagrado Corazón´

Lugar: Córdoba Capital ; Año: 2017; p. 88 - 103

It is widely agreed that when we teach grammar, we have to make decisions about how to teach it and what structures to teach. We view the success or failure of our lessons in terms of whether the particular methodological options we have used to teach specific grammatical structures have worked. That is why EFL teachers are often concerned about the discouraging results obtained when the students are required to show their linguistic (grammatical) competence in written and oral communication tasks after being instructed on the use of a particular grammatical feature. We will all agree that little is to be gained if learners are incapable of utilizing the instruction they receive. Hence, in this article, we aim at exploring the main differences between the form-focused and the meaning-focused approach to teaching grammar, as we believe that only if EFL teachers know the benefits and drawbacks of both approaches will they be able to evaluate their own teaching practices to improve the teaching-learning process.