To teach or not to teach grammar - that is the question

The methods for teaching language have moved from being focused on grammar and translation to teaching anything but grammar. So what should we do? The general opinion today seems to be that the students can learn English without the teachers lecturing for hours about different aspects of grammar, and besides, there’s really no point in spending too much time on grammar anyway because the students won’t learn anything they are not ready for.

I have to admit that I have more or less given up trying to teach grammar in front of the whole class because as soon as you even think of uttering the word grammar you can actually see the brains of some students shutting down and once or twice they have even fallen asleep. And I don’t blame them when even I as a teacher dislike grammar lecturing ;)

So what I do is instead to mark their grammar mistakes in their written production but I don’t give the correct answer straight away. If it is a frequent mistake they make I recommend them to look it up in a grammar book or I will try to explain it individually. So before I give the correct answer they will have to think about their mistakes on their own and most of the times they actually manage to correct them without my help. This way I think that each student will get the grammar he/she needs right then.

Then there are some things like the genitive which I talk to the whole class about and hope that at least some of the students are ready to learn.

But what I would really like to know is how the rest of you deal with the grammar?