Читать книгу Grammar for Young Learners - Gordon Lewis - Страница 3

There are few topics which arouse more heated and passionate debate than grammar. And the debate extends even to young learners, with some advocating the necessity of inculcating grammatical concepts and rules with this age group, and others equally resistant to such practices.

The authors of this book take a middle passage between the shoals of grammatical prescriptivism and of communicative over-indulgence. They take the view that meaning will always be primary at this level, so that grammar will be integral to activities rather than taught as a separate area. The extent to which grammar is made explicit will also clearly depend on factors such as age and cognitive maturity within an age range from 6 to 14.

Their aims are threefold: to enable learners to express themselves as clearly as possible in English, to increase their grammatical accuracy, and to raise awareness of grammatical features – rather than to teach explicit rules.

They do this by offering a rich variety of activities, many of which are game-like in nature, but all of which are based on the most common essential grammatical features of English. The activities take account of the learning style preferences of the learners, and are flagged for physical, aural, spatial, and verbal emphases. This is particularly important for younger learners, who often have a preference for activities involving movement and the manipulation of objects.

Those teachers who have already used other books in this series by Gordon Lewis will not be disappointed in this collection, written in collaboration with Hans Mol, who brings his own long and extensive experience of working with younger learners to bear. Teachers of younger learners will find this an invaluable addition to the Young Learners titles in this series.

Alan Maley