To teach English grammar creatively, we need not just expertise but imagination—the ability to give a touch of personality and magic to what would otherwise be routine, dry-as-bones instruction and ideas. In short, we need to make grammar instruction interesting and attractive to its learners. But teachers like you know very well that this is easier said than done. I can’t claim to have the innate ability myself to teach grammar creatively, but I have watched and listened to a few grammar teachers with the admirable gift for doing it. Aside from having a good command of English and above-average public speaking skills, they have the power to establish strong empathy with their audience—a knack for connecting with each of them and making everyone feel like a special audience of one despite being among many. And good creative grammar teachers—like good creative teachers in any subject or discipline—don’t take themselves so seriously; they are certainly not the unsmiling, look-at-the-ceiling type that parrots out cut-and-dried lessons without even establishing eye contact (much less rapport) with the class. Indeed, creative teachers typically have a strong sense of humor and are not above cracking a joke or two at their own expense, the better to impart to their listeners the sense or nuance of the lesson. After all, grammar and usage is a language thing and teaching it is all about the different shades of meaning created by combining words.
The truth of the matter, though, is that the teaching of English grammar and language in general doesn’t attract the best and the brightest nor the most creative in in our society, the top tier of which invariably aspires to become medical doctors, engineers, or scientists. As for the rest, it is our misfortune as a nation that economic and social forces encourage them to seek to join the already bloated ranks of our thousands upon thousands of lawyers, or otherwise settle for jobs as call-center agents, nurses/caregivers/househelps-for-export, politicians, or entertainers-en-route-to-a-career-in-politics. Despite these adverse circumstances, however, we are very fortunate that computer technology has made possible the development of modern instructional tools for teaching grammar creatively without demanding a very high level of creativity from the teachers themselves. Today, with the use of digital presentation and construction tools like PowerPoint, Adobe Dreamweaver, and Microsoft Paint, for instance, a competent grammar teacher can easily put together various modular digital elements—typefaces of various styles and sizes and colors, attractive off-the-rack graphics and illustrations, photographs, music, and sound effects—to make instructive, interesting, and memorable lessons in English grammar and usage. In my case, for instance, the PowerPoint program enables me to effectively present in just four one-and-a-half-hour lecture modules what would probably take a whole semester of formal coursework in English grammar and usage (and with middling results at that!); indeed, without the currently available computer technology, I wouldn’t even dream nor dare to cover so much ground in just one seminar day. The secret is in using text, graphics, photography, and color in digital form and combining them creatively with vocal instruction to produce concise but highly comprehensive, interactive, and memorable grammar lessons. On top of these instructional tools, of course, teachers can encourage their students to make the web a continuing source of instruction to improve their English grammar and usage; there’s so much creative grammar and usage instruction on the web that the learner can very easily and conveniently avail of, and it’s mostly for free. In sum, whatever problems may be plaguing the country’s educational system, I think there’s no better time than today for resourceful grammar teachers to teach grammar creatively even if they couldn’t really claim to be inherently creative themselves!
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