Teaching Grammar Communicatively - Reflections- Organic Garden Approach VS Brickwall Approach

From what I can gather, I had been taught English by the brickwall approach at school and university. I had to reflect a lot to see if it worked out for me or not. I guess not. I had a good grasp of grammatical knowledge and still made mistakes. I could say “I wait for her” instead of “I am waiting for her” (the action took place at the moment of speaking). So, having had a great repertoire of declarative knowledge, I couldn’t draw it into the real life action. I couldn’t see the whole or “organic garden” with its flowers which should have been nurtured and fertilized properly by the context and situation.

I think that a learner has to see the whole picture of the language not just its tiny bitsy parts. It should be “an organic garden interwoven with a variety of plants and flowers” or lots of exposure to authentic resources and situations. I let each and every student walk across such a “garden” to notice forms, to learn its meanings and use them in a relevant context. In my classroom, Ss tend to use learning strategies, work at their own pace, or whatever works for them in learning grammar or language as a whole, as stated in the article: “The rate of growth [garden] is determined by a complex interplay of factors related to speech processing constraints (Pienemann and Johnston 1987), pedagogical interventions (Pica 1985), acquisitional processes (Johnston 1987), and the influence of the discoursal environment in which the items occur (Nunan 1993)” (Nunan, 1997).