4. Language skills Because of the permanence of writing and the demand for perfection in grammatical form in written English, grammar work may be more suitable for improving written English than for speaking, reading, and writing.
5. Register Informal contexts often make fewer demands on a learner's grammatical accuracy. In conversation classes, for example, form may be less of an issue than in a class on formal writing.
6. Needs and goals If learners are headed toward professional goals, they may need to stress formal accuracy more so than learners at the survival level. These six categories should be looked on as general guidelines for judging the need for conscious grammatical focus in the classroom, but none of these suggestions here are absolute! For example, you can probably already think of numerous situations where it is quite important indeed to focus on form with beginners, or to get learners away from too intense a grammatical focus in a context of a formal register.
Issues About How to Teach Grammar There is still a good deal of current debate on the particular approach that teachers should take in offering grammatical instruction. Four primary issues characterize this ongoing professional discussion:
1. Should grammar be presented inductively or deductively? Do learners benefit from an inductive approach where various language forms are practiced but where the learners are left to discover or induce rules and generalizations on their own? Or would they be better off being given a rule/generalization by the teacher or textbook and then allowed to practice various instances of language to which the rule applies? These two approaches are often contrasted with each other when questions about grammar teaching arise. Generally, an inductive approach is currently more in favor because
(a) it is more in keeping with natural language acquisition (where rules are absorbed subconsciously with little or no conscious focus),
(b) it conforms more easily to the concept of interlanguage development in which learners progress through possible stages of rule acquisition,
(c) it allows students to get a communicative "feel" for some aspect of language before getting possibly overwhelmed by grammatical explanations, and
(d) it builds more intrinsic motivation by allowing students to discover rules rather than being told them.