Wanna know how to make the teaching of grammar a lot more fun than it is right now for both you and your students? Then you’re in the right place! I have found out that I have to do a certain thing to make grammar rules stick a lot better in students memory. And that thing is teaching grammar in context!
I remember being taught German and French in high school. I loved both dearly, but the grammar parts I really hated. The way it was taught, which was just telling us the rules that we had to follow and getting a bunch of fill-in exercises to practice. And that was it. We didn’t learn how to use these rules in action, and we didn’t practice them when we spoke, or when we wrote things. As a result, I can barely speak any German or French at all. I don’t want my students to have that experience, so here’s what I do!
Want a sneak peak to the main parts of this blog post? Grab my free Great Grammar Lesson Road Map which will tell you all about teaching a great grammar lesson by clicking here!
Teaching grammar in context
The main message I’m trying to share here is that you must teach grammar in context. You have to show students when exactly, in what situation, they need the rule that they’re learning about. You have to show it to them in spoken form, so this could be a video or an audio fragment. Or have them read a text that contains this grammar rule in action on the page. But you gotta make sure that they see what it looks like in a real English piece of spoken or written text!
Teaching grammar activities should then involve reading these texts and listening to these texts, but also using the grammar in action a.k.a. in context as well. Students should get enough practice with actually using this grammar rule as a communicative tool, rather than a fill-in exercise. Because filling exercises don’t ask them to actually show that they can use a language It doesn’t help them transfer their knowledge.
And that’s key!
These are actually the first and last parts of my Great Grammar Lesson Roadmap. You should start by introducing the grammar topic in an active way in which the grammar rule is shown in action. Download my Great Grammar Lesson Road Map by clicking here and I’ll give you some examples of how to do this! It contains all my teaching grammar strategies!
And the last part of the road map is actually to produce language. This means I always want students to either use the grammar rule in action in spoken form, or write a piece of text, in which they transfer their knowledge of the grammar rule.
Teaching grammar through writing
So, as I said, I like students to either speak using the grammar rule they just learned or write a piece of text. I give my students lots of different text types throughout the course of my year with them.
So sometimes I’ll give them a newspaper article to write, for example, if I’m teaching the past simple, the passive, or reported speech. Or I’ll get them to write a letter or interviewif I want them to practice asking questions. And maybe I want them to write a brochure in which they can practice using prepositions, or the imperative with a recipe. Not only is it super fun for them to create these text types, but it’s also another skill they learn in the process.
Teacher grammar jokes help too!
There’s this other teacher on my team, and she is seriously full of the funniest grammar jokes. She loves to share them with us, and even more so with her students, who love them! And the funny thing is, after students have heard these jokes, it’s so much easier to remember the rule how it should be. So now no one in her class will forget the comma in “Let’s eat kids!” 🙂
Teaching of grammar in English
It can be a real challenge, teaching grammar to ESL students, but I think my strategies really work. In short, the steps I outline in my Great Grammar Lesson Road Map are as follows:
- Introduce the topic in a fun way
- Teach the rule
- Practice the rule with exercises
- Produce spoken or written text
Definitely grab it if you want more info on this.
Teaching grammar worksheets
The third step of my road map involves giving students practice with the rule. You do need them to practice the mechanics for a bit, to just hone in on the specific technique they must use. I love using digital or printable worksheets for this. I have a great number of these in my TPT store, if you’d like to see what I do with my students. Click here to go there now!
And another thing I like to use is GAMES! Students really enjoy using their knowledge in the setting of a game, preferably one in which they can move, and they get really competitive with showing off their skills. I also have lots of grammar games in my store, such as board games, dominoes, and memory.
So that’s what I do to make the teaching of grammar more fun and engaging! I hope you will use these strategies too to help your students learn grammar rules more quickly and in a better way!
Related articles:
How to introduce grammar topics in a fun way
Why these are the most wonderful grammar worksheets students will love
