teaching articles grammar

Adult beginners will usually go along with the tasks set and will only really ask things if they don’t understand something. The students then use these examples to come to their own conclusions about what the rule is. Learning grammar can be no easy task and teaching it can be even harder! Each person has a collection of faces in front of them, they also have a card with one particular face on. The difference with this game is that we have to use a relative clause in our questions. Locations: Encourage the students to describe maps and the features within as a way of teaching definite articles. In the picture there is a house. : Quoting speech, “He said ‘hello’.” / “She said she would text me.” / I said that yesterday.”. First, ask students if they can spot the difference. Take a section of a text and remove all of the articles from it. If they have experienced dry, boring grammar lessons in the past then they will likely expect the same this time around. To the south we can see a football stadium. As it is likely to be children you are teaching, it may help to be a little more interactive and use props to help engage them in the lesson. Explain that they should not become discouraged if they make mistakes, but focus on recognizing common patterns of use before moving on to more uncommon ones. ring fence (noun): a fence completely enclosing a farm or piece of land, ring fence (verb): enclose (a piece of land) with a ring fence, Here of course it is used figuratively about time (15 minutes). “In the north of the city is the library. : Describing words for nouns. Required fields are marked *. Be aware though that the more advanced students can ask you a lot of background questions about a particular topic especially if they are very interested — e.g “why would we use the past perfect continuous instead of the past simple?” — so it’s a good idea to make sure you are prepared! “(-)Camels live in (-)hot, desert areas. If we are teaching one-to-one classes though, our job becomes a little more tricky. There is something to using grammar by using conversation too. Pair students up. To reinforce these points you can set homework (such as essay questions) that are designed to get the student to use the taught grammar. For this reason it’s a good idea to teach these around the same time as singular vs plural. You can use the classic game “guess who”. The nice thing about practicing writing (compared to speaking) is that it gives the students time to think and work things out. Prepare cards with all the rules for articles and divide the class into two groups. When tackling the topic of to-infinitives it is most likely a good idea to bring gerunds into the mix as they can sometimes act in similar ways. If you are teaching one to one lessons then you could always use a scene from a movie and get the student to tell you what the actors said. For a more competitive element, you could split the class into two teams who have to work together to complete the task first. As well as referring to the animals themselves it can be used to refer to environments and food sources. What are adjectives? Lesson 3. Lesson 4. Research into practice: Grammar learning and teaching - Volume 48 Issue 2 Skip to main content Accessibility help We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. You can also give groups of students sentences with correct and incorrect uses of articles and have them identify problems and explain why certain sentences are wrong. Maybe introduce the present simple tense into a class on verbs, instead of bombarding them on all of the simple tenses and their rules for a whole class. The passive voice is extremely useful when teaching students who are studying for things such as IELTS (that requires a high level of academic writing). Save my name and email address in this browser for the next time I comment, I have read and agree to the Eslbase Privacy Policy Also, it’s a good idea not to drop too much on them at once. There are a number of reasons that can make teaching grammar a difficult task, including fossilized errors, irregularity of verbs, plurals, etc and vast differences between English and the student’s mother tongue. Adjectives are quite straightforward. “The cookie was eaten.” / “The signature was forged.” / “The person was murdered.”. Student 1 “I spy with my little eye something beginning with ‘a’.”. It then forces students to engage cognitively instead of passively taking in a presentation which they may or may not be on board with. They are not arbitrary systems imagined out of thin air. “This is a ball.” / “Hello, my name is Tim.” / “There is a lot of information here.”. A simple way to teach this is to have the students discuss jobs they do, their parents do, or that they would like to do. ", "...pretty much all there is to know about grammar.". “He eats sandwiches.” – “He eats sandwiches noisily.”. Not only will you have great material for your lesson plans but you will also feel confident knowing you have something to fall back on if things don’t go according to plan or if you start losing the students’ attention. : Making nouns from verbs, “He is running down the street.” / “I am working in a school.” / “I like playing football.”. They eat (-)plants and drink (-)water from (-)oases”. Hard copy certificate included! Seeing these adverbs used in context will be very useful and getting the students to identify which type of adverb is being used in a sentence will also help get them to think about their own word order. “Today is the 12th of August. Your email address will not be published. The boss needs to get the assistant to ask the worker to do a task. The students have a selection of faces in front of them. Referring to singular nouns for the first time and thereafter: Present a picture and write a description similar to the following: “Here is a picture. When things get more difficult though they will need an extra push in seeing why it has use and why they should use a more difficult sentence structure (compared to using two separate simple sentences.). A simple recapping should be all that is necessary in most cases. : When something is done to the subject. Let me help you to become a successful teacher, working abroad or online from home. Grammar in any language is important, that’s a fact and English grammar is no exception. One method of teaching which has had a lot of success is teaching grammar in context. First and foremost, teachers are encouraged to tap on the concept of noun countability before start to teach the English grammar articles to the ESL/EFL learners. These descriptions, either written or presented can then be contrasted to a specific animal, for example, one shown in a documentary. Once you’ve drawn their attention to that and explained the difference then they should be able to guess any more examples you send their way. : Verbs that can be used as nouns or paired with other verbs. (Make sure to explain that “get” is more casual.). Distribute pictures and tell them to describe them in pairs or write about them. These are good to teach at the same time. Let’s have a look at some “survival tips” to help you and your students navigate the jungle that is English grammar. You will receive emails from JIMMYESL.