Innovation in Language Learning

Supplemental instruction (SI) is practised at most universities all over the world, and at Uppsala University we are adapting this to focus on teaching grammar. However, grammar teaching has not a high status in Swedish schools or in the curricula (Swedish National Agency for Education, 2022). Indeed, there is a widespread opinion that grammar teaching is outdated and need not be included at all (but cf. authorities on teaching and testing grammar, such as Ellis, 2006 and Larsen-Freeman, 2003). The teaching of grammar through SI has been very welcomed by students at the English department at Uppsala University where a special design of SI has been implemented. The SI leaders are high school student teachers in their third term of English. They point out that through SI, they have become more interested, not only in grammar and teaching it in the future, but also in writing about the importance of grammar and grammar teaching in their research papers (see Benati, 2015). This is especially important in the ethnically diverse classrooms in Sweden. Note that here we have students who are likely to be learning both English as a necessary language for their teaching as well as Swedish as a second or third language (see Hinkel, 2016). In this presentation I will share the results that will be relevant to any multicultural language learning environment. Our initial aim was to get the students interested in grammar, not only by studying more and different grammar but also by trying out teaching and explaining grammar including phraseology and sentence structure (see Johansson, 2006). What we found was that that these SI leaders as well as the students they tutor gained a much better understanding of grammar thereby developing confidence as well as improving literacy skills more broadly.