With a little time and effort a grammar presentation can be made interesting and engaging; or the presentation in the coursebook can be brought to life. Do they like noticing grammatical structures? Are they motivated by communicative activities or do they prefer to reflect on language on their own?
Picture stories
These could be on IWB flipcharts, flashcards, etc. There are many ways of using picture stories (see the activity ‘Picture stories in communicative classroom’ for some examples). They are great for setting a context quickly and can easily be used to elicit language. You can use them in a Test Teach Test (TTT) approach, to see if you can elicit the target language (Test), then tell the students if they don’t come up with it (Teach). Pictures can be reused as a basis for writing practice (Test) after you have told the story, i.e. the students retell it either with or without support.
Pictures
Use individual photos as part of a presentation, e.g. old and new photos of your home town for the present perfect. Get students to bring in their own photos and talk about them, e.g. to practise relative clauses: “This is the friend who…”. For a good source of usable, copyright-free photos go to the ELTPics flickr stream here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/eltpics/sets/
Teacher monologues
Tell the students a story, in the way that you would tell some friends an anecdote, but grading the language and content much more, of course. After the students have responded in a natural way you can go back and look at some of the language you used. Many teachers find it easier to record themselves, or someone else, doing this. That way they can go back and replay a section and hear exactly the same language with exactly the same intonation.
Building up a situation which will generate the language. This technique was popular back in the 1970s and is still a useful way to explain meaning clearly. The teacher introduces a situation, e.g. some friends go to a park for a picnic and thieves steal their money and phones. You can use visuals to build up the situation or just do it orally. The teacher then elicits the target language: should have + past participle, e.g. “They should have been more careful” / “They shouldn’t have put their bags behind them”. If the students don’t know the structure, you give them it.
A dialogue build is another tried and tested technique for functional language (which can include new grammatical content). Again, the teacher builds up a situation and elicits, in this case the dialogue between two people, e.g. 6-8 lines in total. This can be a good way to supplement a coursebook which is weak on functional language or to introduce more teen-friendly language. Teachers usually have very specific language in mind when they do this and often use lines as cues to show how many words are needed. However, you could leave it more open and accept whatever the students produce which is appropriate. Once you have elicited the target phrases, you can write up the first letter of each word on the board as an aid to memory. Elicit and mark up the stress and intonation. Then get the students to practise the dialogue, as a class, then in pairs. With a low level you can practise the lines in pairs, then the complete dialogue. Finally, give students a copy of the complete dialogue (or re-elicit, write it on the board and get the students to copy), and focus on any grammar elements which are new.
Use Cuisenaire rods to tell a story which incorporates the target grammatical structure. These are those small, coloured pieces of wood which were invented for maths classes. They are great for telling stories economically and making full use of students’ imaginations. Rods can be used for stories involving movement (e.g. traffic accidents) or when the layout of a place is important (e.g. an airport or a burglary story). Tell your story laying down the rods as you go – it’s usually best to use as few as possible. If necessary you can point to the rods to recap the story. The students can retell the story in pairs with their own selection of rods using the target language (e.g. past continuous / past simple), then invent another similar story.
Cuisenaire rods are also useful for showing grammar or pronunciation patterns, e.g. 1 - give/dictate sentences and get students (in pairs) to use different colours for different parts of speech:
She can swim. white – pronoun red – modal green – main verb
e.g. 2 – get them to use different colours for stressed / unstressed words:
Can she swim? white white red
She can’t swim. white red red
She can swim, can’t she? white white red red white
Use realia to demonstrate grammar rules. For example, to show the difference between countable and uncountable nouns, bring in food and demonstrate the difference. Sweets are good for showing the difference between “Do you like…?” and “Would you like…?”
Bring in your possessions to talk about, particularly ones with a story behind them, for example a piece of jewellery (“I was given this…” – passive or “I’ve had this since/for …” – present perfect with for/since). Get students to bring in their own objects for further practice.
Use authentic texts - newspaper articles, adverts, poems, songs, videos, etc can all be excellent for looking at grammar in context. Start with some kind of extensive reading or listening task before pulling out the grammar you want to look at. Teenagers will always be grateful for song videos, so tying them in with grammar tends to go down well. With a monolingual class I recently played a song video with a general task, then gave the students a small section of the song translated into their language. They had to translate into English, then listen to the song again to check (they needed several replays). Then we looked at the grammar area – informal reported speech.
Using dictation – there are many different types of dictation which can be useful for grammar lessons and a good way of using a coursebook text in a different way.
Dictogloss practises many things at once: listening, note-taking, grammar, writing, speaking. Read a short text aloud to your students at natural speed. The first time is for general understanding; the second time they make notes. The students then work together in pairs or groups to recreate the text. When they have finished you can compare their texts with the original and look at important differences – this is the time to focus on the target grammar, e.g. the use of the past perfect.
Wall dictations can be great fun for introducing or practising grammar. Put several copies of a short text on the wall and get students to go up to the text, remember a sentence, go back to their partner(s) and dictate the sentence for them to write down. The process continues until the text is complete. Plan your classroom management carefully, students usually run to the wall and bang into each other or desks.
Use games – it’s easy to devise your own games to practise grammar. Snakes & ladders and dominoes can be made to practise whatever grammar you are focusing on. Have a template for snakes and ladders and write on one for your particular grammar area – you could include gaps for filling in the correct grammar or incorrect sentences to correct. Dominoes could be used for connecting two parts of sentences, such as conditional sentences. You can download a ‘Snakes and ladders’ game here: https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/snakes-and-ladders
Word hangman can be used for presenting or practising a structure. Play it as you would play spelling hangman, but the cues represent a word rather than a letter.
In conclusion, we can see there are many ways of introducing and practising grammar. When deciding what kind of activities to use, bear in mind the magic “SPELL” checklist:
- Sensory – do you support learning with a variety of activity types drawing upon a range of senses?
- Personalise – does the activity mean anything to the students on a personal level?
- Engage – is the activity inherently interesting, will the learners be engaged? For example, will they learn something new about the world (art, science, history, culture, etc)?
- Ludic – is there a playful element? Is it fun? This could be a personal challenge to solve something or some kind of competition, depending on your students’ personalities, ages, culture, etc.
- Learning – this is the big one – will the students have a better understanding of the meaning, form or phonology (or all three) of the target language by the end of the lesson?
Obviously not all activities will include all these elements, but in any grammar activity, besides the final “Learning” aim, it’s a good idea to include at least one of the others.
By Helen Hadkins
use critical thinking