What is Grammaring?
'Grammaring' as the fifth skill you need for your lessons.
Grammaring is not about teaching grammar rules, but about helping learners use grammar as a skill.
Too often, students know the rules but freeze when they need to apply them in real communication. So today we’ll look at what grammaring is, why it matters, and how you can build it into your lessons to make grammar active, flexible, and genuinely useful.
Grammar as a skill
You might have read my previous article about the different skills that folks claim are the ‘fifth skill’ for teachers. Grammaring is one of those, and is a contender for first place.
Most teachers and students think of grammar as a body of knowledge. You learn the rules, do the exercises, and hopefully remember them in a test. But grammaring takes a different view.
Grammaring treats grammar as something you do, not something you know. It’s like a sport. You cannot learn to play football by memorising the rulebook. You need to practise, make mistakes, and adapt in real time.
When learners engage in grammaring, they use grammar as a tool to make meaning. They stop memorising and start experimenting with patterns and choices. That’s what makes the skill stick.
Example: A student knows the rule for the past continuous but struggles in conversation. When they tell a story about what was happening at a party, they finally get to use the tense in context. Now it starts to feel natural.
Why grammaring matters
Traditional grammar teaching often does not transfer into spontaneous speech. Students can ace the controlled exercises but still stumble when speaking or writing freely.
This matters because real communication depends on both accuracy and fluency. Learners need to know the rules, but they also need to apply them flexibly. Grammaring bridges this gap.
By practising grammar in context, learners notice how grammar changes meaning. They become more confident and fluent.
Example: Students planning a party debate whether to use will or going to. They see that each choice shifts the meaning slightly. This noticing gives grammar a purpose.
Practical grammaring activities
The problem with many grammar lessons is that they stop at gap fills. Useful for control, but not enough for real-life transfer. Grammaring asks us to go further.
Here are some activity ideas:
Grammar retelling: Students read or listen to a short story, then retell it using a different tense.
Grammar transformation: Students rewrite a text, changing it from past to future or from active to passive.
Problem-solving tasks: Set a group task where certain grammar structures are needed to succeed, like planning a trip that forces the use of modals (must, should, can).
These activities help students build grammar as a living skill. They’re not just reciting rules, they are using them to achieve something.
How to integrate grammaring into lessons
Grammaring should not be treated as an add-on. It’s most effective when woven into every skill. Reading, listening, speaking, and writing all offer chances to practise grammar as a skill.
A simple framework you can use is:
Notice: Learners identify grammar in a text or conversation.
Practise: Learners try controlled use of the form.
Create: Learners use the grammar to make their own sentences, dialogues, or stories.
Reflect: Learners look back and see how grammar affected meaning.
Example: Students read a short article. They highlight the past tense verbs and discuss how they shape the story. Next, they write a short version of their own using the same patterns. Finally, they reflect on what they changed and why.
This cycle makes grammar part of communication, not separate from it.
Good luck with using grammaring!
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