Pedagogical+Grammar

This page links to a world language teaching methods course sequence we teach at Michigan State University. We have been working on a number of curricular overhauls of our teacher preparation program. At the heart of these changes is using WL teacher education to help teacher candidates develop, extend, refine, etc. their target language proficiency.

One unit we are integrating into the courses for the first time addresses pedagogical grammar. Almost every university language major includes an advanced grammar course; sometimes it's even called a pedagogical grammar course. But our experience with language majors on our campus is that there is a considerable amount of time between when they take these advanced grammar courses and when they start their teaching methods courses. That is, when they take the grammar courses, they tend to see the work as //students//, not as //future teachers//.

In this unit, we revisit pedagogical grammar to help teacher candidates re-consider the advanced grammar they know, but to do so with an eye on how to //explain// and how to //teach// this grammar to their future students.

Importantly, almost all this work is done in the respective target language. In other words, the prompts you'll see on the linked page are given in English, but we expect teacher candidates to do the work and interact over it in their respective TL.

Take a look: pedagogical grammar

The wiki this links to is viewable by the public, but only members can edit or comment. So, if you have ideas, suggestions, corrections, etc. please send them to me at jbale [at] msu [dot] edu.

Thanks!

Jeff Bale Assistant Professor of Second Language Education Michigan State University