Teaching Grammar

Grammar teaching may grow directly from the tasks students are performing or have just performed as part of a focus-on-form approach.

Activities for teaching grammar: • The postman: The teacher says some characteristics about a specific job and

the students have to guess that specific job.• Girls’ night out:Students read a text and they have to match questions with

the answers based on the text.

Light in space: We present the students a reading about people living in a

space station. Then, we ask the students to list things that people did that were “bad” or “not sensible” and write them on the board. After that, we ask them to make sentences using should and should not.

• Disappointment: We show students a picture of mother and a son talking to each

other. The mother asks some questions about a conversation between a girl and her son. Her son tells her what the girl said. Then, the students create their conversations using reported speech.

Discovering grammar

Comparative adjectives: Students listen to a dialogue in which people have been

comparing things. Then, they receive a hand-out in which they have to analyze how one -syllable adjectives turn into comparatives. After that, the teacher puts a group of words on the board. One student draws an arrow between any two of words and the other students have to come up with sentences.

dogElephantCrocodile flyMouse cat spider

Rules and Freedom:Students discuss what rules they would expect to find in places

such as airports, bars, beaches, etc. They, then look at a number of different signs. After that, the teacher can get them do a fill-in exercise where they have to discriminate between have to, don’t have to, should and are/ aren’t allowed.

Practicing grammar Where am I?We tell the students to think of a place they’d like to be. They

should keep the choice by themselves. Now, we tell them to imagine they are in this place and we ask them to look around them and write 3 things that they can see using the present continuous. One student now comes to the front of the class, reads out his or her sentences and then says Where am I? The other students try to guess.

Simon’s adventure:Students are asked to read the story about Simon. They have

to underline all the past tenses in the story, and then separate them into three different types. Students close their books and tell each other the story of Simon and the surfboard. Finally, the teacher can ask the students if they know any similar stories of lucky escapes.

Matching sentences halves:We can give the students two lists that they have to match

up. This can be done in pairs or by students working on their own.

•Find someone who:Students get a chart which asks them to find the names of various people by going around and asking questions.

•Perfect one liners:The teacher divides the class into small teams of two to four students. She tells them that she will be reading sentences for which they have to find appropriate responses using past perfect continuous. The teams are given a short time to come up with a good explanation for each sentence. If they are correct and/or appropriate, the teacher awards a point, but no team can offer a sentence that has been used previously.

Grammar games Ask the right question:Students sit in two teams. There is a pile of cards between

them. On each card there is a word or phrase. The cards are face down. A member of team A picks up the first card and then has to ask the other team members questions until they give exactly the answer that is written on the card.

Putting sentences back together: The teacher provides two sets of envelopes, each numbered 1-

12. In each envelope there are words that make up a sentence. Both envelopes marked 1 will have the same word cards, and there will be two envelopes for sentence number 2 and number 3.

Using grammar books:A teacher having noticed that a student is making a lot of

mistakes in one particular area, might tell students to look up the language in a grammar book in order to understand it better.

Students can work through the explanations and exercises in self-study grammars.

Teachers often use grammar books to check grammar concepts.

Say and tell:Students who do not understand the difference between say

and tell can read a grammar book for understanding the differences.