Grammar - How to teach it !!

I thought I would briefly mention this highly sensitive and controversial issue, which seems to become a hot topic now and then at T.U.

It seems that the modern trend of teaching grammar without actually teaching grammar is not without its problems.

Our students are mainly from the Saudi schooling system. They have had from three to four years of learning English in school, but in Arabic!!. They are I would say, better than many of us native speakers in their knowledge of grammar, and yet many of them have great difficulty in using the language properly.

The books we use do not teach grammar explicitly, so we have been forced to try to use supplementary materials. The problem is, where do we start?

Not having done much research on the matter, but you could say 'ethnographically' come to a conclusion, I think that the way forward is to tackle 'common grammar mistakes'.

What are these you might ask? Well, students typically translate from Arabic to English which can produce convoluted results. By working on these common problems, I believe that we can significantly improve the standard of our students English. Someone needs to create a definitive list.

Anything else? Well, as I said, this is a sensitive and at times very opinionated topic. I've given my opinion - but whats yours?
peace