THE DAY THE CRAYONS QUIT

ENGLISH AS A LINGUA FRANCA

As far as ELF is concerned, it stands for English as a Lingua Franca and refers to non native speakers communicating in English. Therefore, there are people who argue in favour of teaching English as ELF what implies teaching it just as a tool of communication  with non English speakers. As a result of this,  sociocultural aspects may not be taken into account. On the contrary, teaching English as a foreign language aims at communicating with native speakers, giving prominence to cultural aspects. Sociocultural aspects are a very important issue of the process of communication with native speakers, as they cover a verbal and a non verbal code of what is acceptable and not, in the target culture. If these norms are not taught, there may be miscommunication. Because of this,  it´s very important to help our pupils  build a socio-cultural awareness in order to speak English with native speakers in an successful way.  
As regards misunderstanding problems, they may occur not only because of the lack of socio-cultural awareness but also because of not managing the grammar rules properly. For this reason, getting to know grammar is important, whereas teaching grammar rules is not effective at all. The best way of teaching grammar is noticing it by reading books, for example. Another way of teaching grammar is by using a PPP (Presentation Practice Production) method; production is the most important stage of the process and is left behind. Thus, we should give our pupils the opportunity to produce more. 

TEACHING GRAMMAR

Grammar is an important aspect of a language, though nowadays language communication methods tend to focus more on effective communication rather than on grammar accuracy. 

Some years ago, one of the methods which emphasized teaching grammar was the well known method “ grammar translation”. It consisted of reading and translating texts, as if it was latin. Also, its aim was not to communicate at all, but to show off. Time passed by and this method turned out to be inappropriate because not only learners were not able to communicate, but also it was dull and tough. 

Currently, the widely method for teaching English as a foreign language is the Communicate approach. As its name indicates, it focuses on communication and contrary to grammar-translation method, leaves accuracy apart. This means that despite learners can establish conversations and convey messages, they are not accurate at all. Due to this situation, we as teachers have the task of encouraging our learners to communicate without neglecting grammar rules.