The Helpfulness of Two Pedagogical Grammars in Describing the Grammatical Features of Passive Voice and Epistemic Modality

Today, the educational system and the individuals who are inclined to this institution require exercising its maximum manifestation of its unique and specific potentialities. The most appropriate lessons, favorable learning environment, and effective teacher must be the predominant foundations as they face the extra demanding challenges brought about by different attributes of contemporary living. For instance, the emerging and popularizing culture of internationalization and globalization paved way to the changes in the learning situation of every student. Decades ago, traditional teaching mechanisms and strategies are used and obtained favorable results. With the dynamic changes in the technologically-driven society, every traditional roles and activities in the academe before are now modified or even totally changed by innovative and more efficient systems.

In particular, grammar or language in the classroom with few age groups is affected. In the world of education, sophisticated instructional methodology and the use of advanced technology is popularly recognized and commonly applied. Thus, the interplay between theory and practice has produced education practitioners who are among the most informed and pedagogically knowledgeable member of the instructive profession. As people approach the midpoint of the current century, it is difficult to think of the language classroom in elementary, secondary, or tertiary as anything but a highly contemporary and methodologically advanced learning environment particularly in terms of teaching grammar, vocabulary, or English language in general.

In teaching grammar, there is a need to show learners the living, dynamic nature of grammar as opposed to static, rule-based instruction insisting on only one “right way” (Fotos and Hinkel, 2002). Fotos and Hinkel also presented the following methods: use of pragmatic analysis of the meaning expressed by different forms, discourse functions of grammar structures, several types of task-based activities, authentic texts to provide context, and invented sentences to promote awareness of form-function relationships. Thus, various teaching styles are very much imperative in the exploration of the potentialities of a learner to achieve maximum knowledge absorption.