Grammar is correctly spoken language. We learn it by osmosis. There is no way we can learn it analytically, anymore than a yoga student can learn yoga by reading a book about a particular asana and then suddenly be expected to move into it without some kind of neurological pathway development in the body first. I mean, we do need bodies to speak languages. It’s not a thing purely of the mind, as some would have it.
So, when being observed once, the administrator connected the stuff that I put on the board (to clarify the comprehensible input) to grammar. He saw the links between grammar and:
1. my spoken French
2. my explication of it via point and pause and
3. the pop up grammar
I really appreciate this. Just because I was not doing grammar instruction in English as it used to be done in the last century doesn’t mean I wasn’t teaching grammar. I was, because I was speaking French correctly and writing it on the board, all the while using a mere fraction of instructional time on formal grammar instruction, thus allowing me to trot the big CI horses around the room.
Specifically, here is part of the note my prinicpal left me on his way out of class:
Today, I noticed that the students are engaging in the learning of both French vocabulary and grammar through your instruction attitude, style, and method.