Interpretation-Based Approach
to Grammar Teaching: New Directions in Theory and Practice
Setiono Sugiharto
A substantial body of empirical research has
revealed that the application of a purely communicative approach, which is
widely employed in the teaching of English in the EFL setting, is inadequate in
helping learners attain high levels of grammatical competence - one of the
salient components of communicative competence. In fact, it has been found in
the previous studies that communicative methodology produced learners with low
levels of accuracy. Drawing on the contemporary literatures related to grammar
pedagogy, this study finds it useful to offer an alternative approach to
grammar teaching in the EFL setting - an approach that is based on task
interpretation. This approach emphasizes the learner’s comprehension of the
specific grammatical features in communicative content. Specifically, it
stresses the importance of input processing rather than output processing. In
so doing, the approach allows learners’ awareness of the grammatical features
to develop so as to facilitate and eventually accelerate the acquisition process.
The theoretical rationales of this approach, along with the general guiding principles
for the design of interpretation tasks, will be discussed, and the empirical
evidence supporting its relative effectiveness will also be presented.
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Sugiharto, S. (2005, March). Interpretation-based approach to grammar
teaching: New directions in theory and practice. Paper presented at LIA
International Conference,
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