Further, grammar is thought to furnish the basis for a set of language skills: listening,
speaking, reading and writing. In listening and speaking, grammar plays a crucial part
in grasping and expressing spoken language (e.g. expressions) since learning the
grammar of a language is considered necessary to acquire the capability of producing
grammatically acceptable utterances in the language (Corder, 1988; Widodo, 2004).
In reading, grammar enables learners to comprehend sentence interrelationship in a
paragraph, a passage and a text. In the context of writing, grammar allows the learners
to put their ideas into intelligible sentences so that they can successfully communicate
in a written form. Lastly, in the case of vocabulary, grammar provides a pathway to
learners how some lexical items should be combined into a good sentence so that
meaningful and communicative statements or expressions can be formed. In other
words, Doff (2000) says that by learning grammar students can express meanings in
the form of phrases, clauses and sentences. Long and Richards (1987) add that it
cannot be ignored that grammar plays a central role in the four language skills and
vocabulary to establish communicative tasks.
H. Widodo Approaches and procedures for teaching grammar
English Teaching: Practice and Critique 123
In the context of EFL, teaching grammar has traditionally been dominated by a
grammar-translation method where the use of mother tongue is clearly important to
elicit the meaning of target language by translating the target language into native
languages. For example, according to Larsen-Freeman (2000) and Richards and
Rodgers (2002), in such a method learners are required to learn about grammar rules
and vocabulary of the target language. In the case of grammar, it is deductively
taught; that is, learners are provided the grammar rules and examples, are told to
memorize them, and then are asked to apply the rules to other examples.