Why bother?

Throughout the last few years, having taught ESL to many Secondary students, I realised there was a pattern in the mistakes they most commonly make.
I´ve now become a Primary teacher and my big aim is for my younger students to learn English in a way which resembles First Language acquisition as much as possible. My own experience is what pushes me to this idea: I was brought up in a British school in Spain, I am Spanish, but since I was three I have been taught as if I were British, for this reason I did not need to learn grammar, vocabulary or pronunciation as it is generally taught when learning a Second Language, ie. Trying to memorise grammar rules and lists of vocabulary.
After finishing school and studying for my degree in English Philology, I learnt about the way English is taught, or has been taught for the last twenty years, in many Spanish schools, high schools and universities, where grammatical competence was the basis of the lessons and communicative competence was pushed into the background. As a consequence, too many people in Spain are capable of understanding most of written English, but unable to utter a single sentence.


An interesting link:
To teach or not to teach