11: A Sisyphean Grammar

I just perused the textbook closet for the English department here at school. Here’s what I found:

• Every textbook marked “English Communication Course” was actually just a reading course with a small bit of writing attached at the end of each 5-part chapter.
• The grammar textbooks all used the same abbreviations: S, V, O, and C to show the grammar patterns of English. I could identify 主語 (S, subject), 動詞 (V, verb), and 目的語 (O, object), but I don’t remember ever learning about 補語 (C, complement).
• If the grammar textbooks were battleships, they would be fearsomely well armed. They would not, however, float.
• Because these grammar textbooks are filled to the brim with bits and bytes of grammar information, which the teacher is required to take into his or her beak, swallow and partially digest, and then regurgitate into the brains of his or her students.
• The teacher is required to do this because the students are in high school for primarily two reasons, which are in order:
  
  1. To learn enough bits of information to pass periodic examinations culminating in the college entrance examination of the student’s choice, and
  2. To prepare the students to be mature, functioning adults.
• The first requirement is satisfied by class, the second is satisfied by discipline in class and club activities.
• (That’s overly simplistic and unfair, but this is a microblog not a book, so there.)
• What is missing here is play. The students are sat down at the beginning of the year and set upload as many grammar rocks into their solid-state brains as time allows for. And after this ball gets rolling, the teachers are up to their necks in writing tests, correcting homework, and coaching their respective sports teams or clubs to make time to innovate.
• And so the bland process continues until, occasionally, a teacher as a great idea that they manage to implement.
• For myself, I’d like to approach things like my gym teacher used to do: give us the balls first and let us play around—afterwards there would be time for the teaching of technical details and the testing of specific skills. It might be a worthwhile idea to throw kids into the so-called “deep end” of untethered communication, and only afterward settle down and teach them the reasons they’re saying what they’re saying.
• That might be considered madness in some circles. I mean, how can a student really know what they’re saying in a language they’ve never spoken before unless it’s taught to them specifically and in logical, laid-out stages?
• We all learned our mother tongue this way, so I’d say it’s worth a shot. It would be incredibly difficult to plan a class around this method, but incorporating a few ideas here and there might be just the thing to restore a bit of fun (and the resultant motivation) into EFL classes around the country.