What are some of the most useful methods of teaching English grammar?

Question

As a practising English teacher I have observed that teaching of grammar does not help the learners to speak or write fluently or even correctly especially in speech.only a few bright students are able to use the grammar they have learnt while speaking or writing.

There are many methods of Teaching grammar where English is taught as a foreign or as a second language.

I would like to know some of the most useful methods of teaching English grammar so that I may teach English grammar to the students in innovative ways

Answer 1

TLDR: If you want to teach grammar to be able to test people, you need memorizing techniques. If you want students to learn grammar to be fluent THEY need huge exposure to the language so their subconscious can acquire grammar naturally.

As a native speaker of English, I'd like to add a consideration about your objective to Teach Grammar.

What is the goal of you "teaching grammar in effective ways"? To test the student on their knowledge of grammar? I am a native speaker and would fail pretty well any English Grammar test.

Consider mathematics. How does knowing the Formula (math rule) for the area of a circle help the student? They cannot calculate it in their head. How does knowing the formula (math rule) for a right angle triangle help the student calculate it in their head?

Answer: It doesn't.

Likewise, knowing a word rule (grammar) does not help the Subconscious form a sentence. To the subconscious, the rule of word order as expressed as a "grammar rule" in a sentence, is no different than a "math rule" - both are merely a sentence to be memorized.

How do I know: "Has anyone seen Tony" is correct and not "Has anyone Tony seen"? Because the pattern of words, heard repeatedly, imprints into my mind.

Same way in Dutch that "heeft iemand Tony gezien" just sounds correct and is correct while "heeft iemand gezien Tony" is wrong.

Sorry to tell you, but you cannot learn grammar in a fluency aspect by memorizing rules. Only exposure to the language gets you that.

The only thing memorizing a grammar rule does is allow you to consciously construct a sentence (and of course get tested on it). But that can be slow and tedious for a learner.

All of the above has been researched and published by Stephen Krashen.

Answer 2

In the YouTube video Grammar Lessons That Work, Teach Grammar in Just 10 Min. a Week (10 minutes, 09.09.2017), Laura Randazzo, a high-school teacher in the USA, explains that she used to dutifully go through grammar books with exercises. She noticed that the pupils weren't applying the grammar they learnt in their writing, so she turned to a different method.

In the above video, she explains how she uses “M.U.G. shots”. M.U.G. stands for “Mechanics, Usage and Grammar”; the teaching activity consists in showing a sentence containing several grammar mistakes, having the pupils correct them and then discussing what was wrong and why.

For example, she projects the following sentence (on a smart board) and asks a student to come up to the board and correct it:

This year writing will be a major focus, its' important to understand grammer rules, without them you're writing is difficult to understand.

(Of course, you can also use a white board or a more traditional board.) After the students is done making edits, the teacher asks the rest of the class whether they are fine with the edits. If they are, she goes over the edits one by one and talks about each rule that applies. The teacher later collects the students' papers, check whether they caught all the corrections and grades them.