Teaching Grammar: An ESL/EFL Perspective for Sustainable Development in Education

Observation is a position paper that argues for a learner centered approach to the educating the English grammar. It highlights unprecedented need for intercultural communication in the context of globalization and underscores the imperativeness of cross-cultural pragmatics. As English has been nativized to enable it holding the weight of the culture in the new lands of its transplantation, prescriptive use of grammar alone cannot serve the purpose. The changing paradigms demand that descriptive and nonnative grammars also be included in the grammar curriculum. This paper suggests ways to teach grammar with a view to enhance learners’ communicative competence instead of mere metalinguistic knowledge. It also presents a grammar lesson that takes the learners through the different stages of presentation, clarification, practice and feedback and thus exemplifies how the teaching of grammar can promote communicative competence.