Week 9

Topic: “How to teach grammar in a fun way?”

Grammar teaching is an essential aspect of education. Without proper grammar, writing, reading, and speaking all lose meaning and value. Grammar is an important subject for teachers to impart to their students. But learning how to teach grammar can be a challenge.  I don’t want to say grammar lessons are the ugly stepsister of teaching, but they can be if they’re not implemented in a fun and meaningful way.  For our students, learning grammar can be an amazing experience, or it can be a monotonous routine. It’s true that students are more likely to be engaged in the learning process if you’re excited about the content, but I’ve noticed from my experience that students will stay engaged if they’re participating in a way that leaves room for creativity, choice or snort-inducing laughter.

How can we define grammar? Grammar can be defined as the way a language manipulates and combines words or bits of words in order to form longer units of meaning. There is no doubt then that teaching grammatical rules constitutes an essential aspect in the mastering of a given language.

Tips for teaching Grammar to students, from ‘young learners – beginners’ to ‘high school – intermediate and advanced learners’

First of all, the teacher should use different steps when teaching grammar. Thus, the teacher should make sure that the lesson is structured accordingly and that the students are being exposed to the grammar properly and are getting enough practice while using it.

4 General Steps to teach Grammar:

1.Exposure. We have to expose the students to the grammar structure. This, could be in written form, for e.g. I could give the students some sort of a story, a reading passage, a dialog that they can look at in a video and the grammar is also there. Another way, could be in a spoken form by telling the students a story; or in listening form, where students can listen to a dialog and basically listen to the grammar structure. So, what’s important here is that the students are exposed to the grammar structure.

2. Notice and select: After the students are exposed to the grammar structure, I give students some exercises that allow them to notice and select the pattern of the grammar structure. For instance, I could give them an exercise, like a controlled exercise, where the students have to answer some questions, look at the structure and the questions, basically lead the students to notice the pattern for the structure, while I’m guiding the students to do this.

3. Practice Stage – Here, I allow students to execute the structure on their own by doing some practice activities. For example, if I have exposed the students to the grammar through a written text, I’ll have them practice with the written text, like completing the missing words such as verb forms either in the present, past simple tense or another tense in the text and I ask students to make their own sentences with those words; or answer questions related to the text. On the other hand, if I’ve exposed grammar to students through a dialogue, I’ll have them practice on writing their own dialogues by working in pairs or small groups of students.

4. Homework and assessment – I give students their homework to practice at home on their own, and finally do some sort of an assessment, such as a ‘game – quiz’( using interacting features to do that such as action buttons, hyperlinks, pictures in it, sounds that tell if the answer is correct or wrong and gifs showing their thumbs up or down) at the end of the lesson or maybe in the next lesson, that allows me to evaluate how well the students have understood the grammar structure and how well they can use it. The assessment stage should mirror the exposure stage.

Tips to make the lesson more fun and enjoyable in the classroom

1.Include, games, songs, pictures or videos                     

• Games: By using games that include a little competition in the classroom, you can have fun and get your students to learn as well. In terms of grammar, for example: “Jeopardy”, “Who wants to be a millionaire?” –  And a traditional board game format where you throw a dice and move around the board all lend themselves well to grammar points. We can make our own or find them online. I could also award points to the winning pair for each task.  This, will encourage them to do their best and if I do this over the course of a week, they’ll see their points build up and become even more competitive. They can convert these points into a prize on Fridays. For instance, 20 points = chocolate, 30 points = a music video of their choice played for the class to enjoy, 40 points = no homework.

• Songs - offer a wealth of grammar points and help students to practice their listening skills too. I, as a teacher may create my own lyrics completion worksheets or have students listen to and read the lyrics of a song while looking out for and highlighting specific grammar areas.

• Pictures, such as pictures cut out from illustrated magazines, postcards, photographs, posters, maps, transparencies, etc. – Teaching grammar through visual aids, especially through pictures, seems to be important in the sense that it arouses interest, motivation in the pupils / students in beginner but also intermediate and advanced classes. As the saying goes “Interest begets effort”, this is true in the sense that for undertaking any work, we must be first and foremost motivated and interested in that work. So, if a pupil / student is motivated, the process of learning grammar will become easier and he will understand quicker without time consuming. But if the teaching is verbal, it may appear as something boring for the pupils / students. Then the teacher should bear all these factors in mind not to use abstract things which may result in not conveyed messages.

• Using videos – e.g. specific activities could involve rewriting the dialogue with a specific focus, answering comprehension questions based on a video clip or continuing the story with – “what happens next?” type of task.

 

2. Get Students to Move with the TPR (Total Physical Response) method

Getting your EFL students up and mov­ing around the classroom will serve multiple purposes. Not only will physi­cal activity keep your students more awake and focus their attention on the lesson at hand, but it will also help them remember and retain the language they are learning. Using TPR (Total Physical Response) method, you can make physical as­sociations with language concepts. Though having stu­dents move around the classroom and do actions during the class may seem chaotic at times, but the ad­vantages far outweigh the drawbacks as it reinforces the learning items and keep them in the long-term memory.

An example of the TPR method activity: The grammar version of ‘hot potato’

Many students, especially those in the elementary grades, enjoy being able to get up and move around. I ask the students to get up and stand in a circle. I give the first student a bean bag and set a basic timer for a random interval, such as one minute and six seconds. The student with the bean bag must think of a word that falls into a particular category, such as a verb, and then pass it to the left as quickly as possible. The student left holding the bag when the time beeps must leave the circle. This also allows me as a teacher to assign the grammar areas based on the students strengths and weaknesses as well as gain a better understanding of to what extent they have greased the material.

3. Teach Grammar Communicatively

Communicative classes focus on com­munication and langue use by stu­dents rather than theory and repetitive practice. It would be perfect for learning to occur if you were used to encouraging your students to use the language that they know in meaningful communications. In grammar class, include speaking activities and give your students a chance to exploit the language they’ve learned in real-life situations whenever pos­sible.

4. Let my students be the teachers

As a way of reviewing grammar points after I have taught and practised with the class, why not hand over the responsibility of teaching to the students themselves! For this, I might divide my students into small groups and have them prepare a grammar activity or two with explanations of the grammar point on a given area. They should then ‘teach’ this to the rest of the class and check the answers to their self-created activity with the group too. This can be a quick or much more dawn out task based on the group’s size, ability and time constraints.

5. Use Group Activities

Using group activities, role-plays, discussions and other such activities will both keep your students interested in the grammar classes and keep them accountable to one another for class participation and task accomplish­ments. Some students are shy and may disap­point you. These shy and disappointing students are often reluctant to participate in individual activities. Take advantage of them by involving them in group tasks when possible. They will feel interested and desire to participate.

6. Avoid Lecturing

Even students with the best attention spans have a difficult time listening to a 20-minute lecture in the EFL class. Nowadays, students of all ages expect and desire quick changes from one activity to another. That means that you should avoid keeping to talk for more than ten minutes on any grammar lesson. Keep things interesting for you and your students by planning quick changes in topics and activities when possible throughout your grammar class.

8. Offer Variety

When you follow a certain syllabus in a textbook, you will find you offer the same activities for your students day after day, unit after unit. This makes your students feel bored, so you should create different types of activities with every grammatical rule you teach, and to engage your students, try to meet their learning styles in your teaching. When your students are using discussion, research, pre­sentations and other means to learn and practice grammar, they will stay more interested in what you and their fellow students have to say.

Some other activities to make grammar more fun could be:

1. Wake students up!

Making my students think by providing incorrect examples now and again such as ‘I have went to America’ and giving them time to correct me. They may not as it’s quite a common error when using the Present Perfect but they might surprise me and if they don’t, I might prompt them! They’ll soon get into the habit of examining all the examples I write on the board and the answers I give just in case I’m trying to catch them out. It’s a great way of keeping them on their toes!

2. Make it personal (3th – 9^th – 12^th grade)

Students love getting to know their teacher and you’ll find that they’re much more engaged when you bring yourself to your classroom. Bring in personal photos of a recent holiday and project them on screen for everyone to see.  Elicit vocabulary and ask questions such as: ‘What am I doing in each photo?’, What do you think will happen next?’, ‘What do you think happened before the photo was taken?’ Then, let them work with a partner to do the same with a few more photos.

3. Dress up as grammar. (3th – 9^th grade)

This could be a thing that you do as the teacher for Halloween or a random Friday, but I think it would be fun to figure out a way for students to participate too. Consider acting out or dressing up as the following:

Dependent clause: A Santa who goes around asking everyone if they can give him a ride, loan him $20, make him a sandwich, etc.

Possessive pronoun: Wears a shirt that says “MINE” and goes around stealing others’ pencils and belongings (eventually gives them back).

Dangling preposition: Walks around with a fishing rod that has “caught” a piece of paper with a preposition written on it.

Part of speech: Has a sign around neck that says “SPEE.” (Get it?)

Make funny examples or practice sentences.

I think it is totally worth the effort to write your own practice sentences for grammar.

4. Celebrity biographies (6^th - 12^th grade)

Find a celebrity biography that will be quick and easy to read in class. Have the students use the biography to identify the different forms of the past tense. For example, underline the difference between “she has performed many concerts in her career” versus “she had performed in many concerts” versus “she was born.” Have the students name the verb form being used in each example and ask them to orally explain the difference between the different usages. This exercise will help students see how grammar can influence the meaning of words and potentially alter a story.

That’s all for this week. Thank you everyone! Have a nice day!