1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
5. 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.
dog
Elephant
Crocodile fly
Mouse
cat spider
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. •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.
10. 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.
11. 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.
