Teaching grammar creatively at elementary level

English level A1 is the first level of English in the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR), a definition of different language levels written by the Council of Europe. In everyday speech, this level would be called “beginner”, and indeed, that is the official level descriptor in the CEFR, also used by EF SET. In practice it is possible to be at a pre-A1 level of English. A student who is just beginning to learn English, or who has no prior knowledge of English, is at a pre-A1 level.

An A1 level of English would be sufficient for very simple interactions, for example as a tourist in an English-speaking country. An A1 level would not be sufficient for other academic or professional purposes.

According to the official CEFR guidelines, someone at the A1 level in English:

Can understand and use familiar everyday expressions and very basic phrases aimed at the satisfaction of needs of a concrete type.

Can introduce herself and others and can ask and answer questions about personal details such as where she lives, people she knows, and things she has.

Can interact with other people in a simple way provided the other person talks slowly and clearly and is prepared to help.

The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEF or CEFR) was put together by the Council of Europe as a way of standardising the levels of language exams in different regions. It is very widely used internationally and all important exams are mapped to the CEFR.

There are six levels: A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2. These are described in the table below.

CEFR English levels are used by all modern English language books and English language schools. It is recommended to use CEFR levels in job resumes (curriculum vitae, CV, Europass CV) and other English levels references. We list here the CEFR descriptors for language proficiency level with the approximate equivalent to other global English evaluation schemes- Cambridge ESOL, Canadian Language Benchmarks / Canadian English Language Proficiency Index Program (CLB/CELPIP), Canadian Academic English Language Assessment (CAEL), BULATS, IELTS and TOEFL.1

English language levels description:

English Basic User (A1, A2)

A1 (Beginner)

A2 (Elementary English)

English Independent User (B1, B2)

B1 (Intermediate English)

B2 (Upper-Intermediate English)

Proficient English User (C1, C2)

C1 (Advanced English)

C2 (Proficiency English)

Identify your level with free English placement test

Start the free pre-test

A levels- English Basic User

English test A1 (Beginner)

Can understand and use familiar everyday expressions and very basic phrases aimed at the satisfaction of needs of a concrete type. Can introduce him/herself and others and can ask and answer questions about personal details such as where he/she lives, people he/she knows and things he/she has. Can interact in a simple way provided the other person talks slowly and clearly and is about the grammatical constructs of the language in question.

The theme of our qualification paper is “Teaching Grammar in A1 level”.

The Creative Grammar Practice section provides ideas for a deeper and more personalised familiarisation with these items, always with an element of individual creativity. Each lesson ends with the creation of a learner text - a permanent and original record of the grammar, in the form of a story or a poem for example.2

Teaching Grammar Creatively works without explicit grammar rules like class-books normally do. The idea behind it is that especially younger learners need to learn more subconsciously. This is called Awareness-raising, meaning the students discover the language and find the rules for themselves while the teacher only provides a frame in which the learners work. This learner-led method is said to be more efficient because these self-done discoveries of rules lead to a reorganisation of the learner’s knowledge. Thus the learners have a higher possibility to remember the rules and apply them correctly. The ability of applying rules subconsciously, rather than knowing them by heart, is the main goal of the whole approach. 2 3. Language Awareness Activities The Language Awareness activities or lessons are divided into three sections called Discovery, Consolidation and Use. This model sounds like the traditional Presentation, Practice and Production method which is often used in schools today, but the authors explain the differences between both ideas. (Gernegross p.7 ff) Because of the learner-led approach, the term Discovery is more appropriate than Presentation is as the learners are given data or are confronted with problems and then discover the according grammar themselves, instead of learning precisely what a teacher “presents” to them. According to the author, Practice mainly involves the learners in repeating given structures without really realizing how the given structures work. This is where Consolidation uses another way. Instead of simply repeating things or having a speaking practice, students will be confronted with understanding tasks. “For example, students may be asked to read (or listen to) a series of sentences – some including structure X and some including structure Y – and to match these sentences with the appropriate picture.” (Gernegross p.7) The last section is Use. Contrary to Production, Use means not only that learners produce something concerning the taught grammar, but develop a personalized use. This means students use the new learned item in a context that is important to them. According to the author, language is only memorable when it has been owned. 4. Creative Grammar Practice Creative Grammar Practice provides further practice of grammar with focus on the individual creativity of the learners. Thus, students are thought to be more motivated. This section is also divided into a total of four smaller sections: Lead-in activities, Presentation of model text, Reconstruction of model text and Text creation. Lead-in activities are meant to be a sort of warm-up for the students and for getting ready to work in a foreign language. Presentation of model text is the presentation of a short text which shows the target structure and clarifies its function. In the section Reconstruction of model text learners shall remember the model text and recreate it from a gapped version for example. “[…] By remembering the model text the students can experience a felling of success and gain ability in using structure(s) accurately.” (Gernegross p.9) Finally, Text creation lets students create their own texts within the frame of the model text. This can be done in several ways: groups, orally, written… 3 5. Theory in practice After briefly explaining the theory behind Teaching Grammar Creatively, there will now be a look on how a chapter of grammar looks like. For this purpose the topic Adjectives/Adverbs (Gernegross p.97 ff.) was chosen. Like most of the units, the topic is subdivided into sections A and B – analogue to Language Awareness Activity and Creative Grammar Practice. The suggested time of both sections is approximately 50 minutes, thus a little longer than the usual class session. Section A starts with the aims of the unit, followed by the first sub-section Discovery. Herein, the teacher is asked to write the words good and well on the board. Now, students shall fill the gaps of the sentences He cooks ___ and his food smells ___ with the two words. After this, other adjectives and adverbs shall be given that could fill the gaps. Now, the teacher is adviced to “highlight the difference between the kind of words that go into the first slot […] and the kind of words that go into the second slot […].” (Gernegross p.97) After this explanation, the learners should complete other gapped sentences. Now the sub-section Consolidation starts. The teacher is advised to write down several adverbs and adjectives and read out a given text that includes gaps again. The learners are supposed to find appropriate adjectives or adverbs for the gap. This could also be done as a kind of competition between groups of learners. Finally, the sub-section Use concludes the first section. The teacher is supposed to write sentence frames on the board: What makes you feel…? / What makes you react…? And give a list of words that could complete each frame. After this, learners shall prepare questions to ask one another in pairs or groups and finally report on some of their conversation. This is the end of section A. Section B starts with advices for the teacher telling him which given texts should be copied. These texts are given on an accompanying CD. The four tasks of text work consist mainly in recreation and gap-filling. Concluding this section, the learners are supposed to go through the texts again and write out adjectives and adverbs. Finally, they shall write their own small texts similar to the ones they worked with. This completes the mainsection Adjectives/Adverbs.