Turn grammar into vocabulary

If your school uses a traditional Spanish textbook, then you will be required to teach grammar. For most students, grammar is something they memorize for a test, but never truly retain because they haven’t had enough repetition in context. No matter how much rote practice you provide through games, worksheets and homework, it is very unlikely that it will be something they use naturally. How do we fix that?

Convert GRAMMAR into VOCABULARY!

What do I mean? Take a look at this picture. What do you see?

I’m willing to bet you said water. It’s a word that’s part of your daily life and probably has been since you were a toddler. It has meaning for you.Now look at this picture. What do you see?

This may not immediately trigger as obvious a response. Did you say “water” again? If you did, way to go, smarty-pants! This IS another picture of water, or rather the building blocks of water: H2O. At some point, you probably learned that hydrogen and oxygen combine to make water. But, my guess is that you didn’t start there. As a thirsty toddler, you didn’t need to understand the formula. You probably even got away with just saying “wa-wa.”

And years later, when your french fries needed more seasoning, no one batted an eye when you asked for salt instead of NaCl.

What’s your point?

Good question. My point is that we retain things that matter to us. Eventually some of us learn the rules and formulas (grammar) but first we just remember what we need (vocabulary).

This is why it’s so important to treat grammar like vocabulary. Instead of teaching students to conjugate querer (to want), teach them that “quiero” = I want by using the word over and over and over again! What teen doesn’t want to talk about their own wants?! That’s why Brandon Brown quiere un perro by Fluency Matters is such a great novel for beginners. (You can see my lesson plans for this in a previous blog post.) Kids love to tell you what they want!

I encourage you to take this approach any time you must teach a grammar concept because it’s expected by your department. Is there a way to turn the grammar into vocabulary? I do this a lot with storytelling.