How to make your grammar lesson interesting?
Many teachers tend to bore their students to death during endless grammar lessons. They just introduce the material and then make students do exercises in their workbooks. Usually such activities are done automatically, with the use of students’ mother tongue, so after completing a number of exercises students still are not able to use a new grammar rule in practice.
Below you will find some tips that should help make your grammar lesson more involving and interesting:
- If possible, use computer; there are plenty of grammar exercises online as well as some interactive programmes used by learners of English all over the world.
- Why not try some games involving movement as well as riddles and crosswords?
- Remember that on each English lesson you are supposed to activate all language skills – apart from reading and writing students should have opportunity to speak and listen.
- You may try role playing.
- Sometimes you may play a song and tell students to fill in the gaps while listening. (These may be gaps with prepositions, gerunds etc.)
- You may divide students into groups and make a quiz.
- Whatever you do remember about variety; you cannot devote the whole lesson to one activity or repeat the same game every day.
- You may reverse the order; instead of explaining to students some rule, write some sentences on the blackboard and let them work out what the rule may be.
Some examples of games and other activities used to teach grammar:
- Noughts and Crosses - As in a traditional game draw a grid but instead of noughts and crosses put some words in it. These may be irregular verbs, gerunds, prepositions etc. Then play the game as usual but each time the student draws a nought or a cross he or she has to make one sentence with the word from a chosen space. The game is to be played in pairs.
- Putting words in the correct order - This simple and popular grammar exercise will be more interesting if you decide to cut out pieces of paper (cardboard) in a rectangular, circular of funny shape and write some words on them. Students are supposed to make sentences from these words. This exercise may have a form of team competition.
- Where am I? - Each student is supposed to imagine that he or she is in some place. Then he or she writes down five sentences in Present Continuous. Next some students come to the front of the class and read their sentences. The rest of the class must guess what kind of place it is.