How to Teach ESL Grammar for Beginners: Tips, Activities and Games

As I was reviewing my blog posts, I realized that I don’t have much content relating to grammar teaching.

So today I am fixing this and will give you my best tips for teaching grammar to ESL students!

In this post, I am going to break down a few of the things to consider when you are preparing to teach grammar to English learners.

The level of your students is important, as always. Some activities are more suitable for students at intermediate English proficiency and up while others need to be tailored to beginners and will take more scaffolding and time.

Here are a few things you will learn:

• Inductive vs deductive grammar teaching
• Importance of context
• Holistic approach
• Activities you can use
• Games for the grammar classroom

Inductive vs deductive grammar teaching

There are two ways to teach grammar. One of them is through the “prescription” of rules (deductive) and one is through the discovery of rules (inductive).

Inductive grammar teaching is when a student is given a chance to discover the grammar rules by noticing, observation and drawing his/her own conclusions. This can be done as a whole class activity when a teacher carefully guides the students to the desired outcome.

Let’s say you are reading a passage that contains a grammar form that you would like your students to learn. For example, present simple tense. As you read the passage, you can draw the students’ attention to the verbs that end in -s and see if they can come up with a generalization about those verbs. They will have to employ their existing grammar knowledge. You can scribe their answers on the board and then go over them as a class. This activity should culminate in the students grasping the new grammar pattern.

Deductive grammar teaching is the more traditional method. Likely, you have learned grammar this way: a teacher goes over the grammar rule, the teacher gives examples and then you practice (by doing worksheets, etc.). While this method may not be as effective as the first one, it certainly does have its place in grammar teaching. Especially if the structure is difficult to discern otherwise.

Context in grammar teaching

One of the things to keep in mind when teaching grammar is context. Although there are some classes that are aptly named “ESL Grammar”, even there context has to play a big part.

What do I mean by context? It can be anything that allows seeing grammar in use: short stories, songs, movies/video clips, or cartoons.

Grammar alone has no meaning and wrapping it in a context that students can relate to allows them to internalize the forms and functions faster.

You can teach any grammar concept through the above-suggested context – from tenses to phrasal verbs and more.

A holistic approach to grammar teaching

Similar to the idea of putting grammar teaching in context is the holistic approach, i.e. the all-skills approach.

We want our ESL students to learn and use English grammar in their speaking and writing. We also want them to be able to pick up on those grammatical patterns through listening and reading.

Therefore, when you present your lesson, make sure you incorporate activities that reinforce the concept through all four language domains – listening, speaking, reading and writing.

Activities to use in grammar teaching

Some of the activities that many students are receptive to include songs, movies or movie clips, reading short stories and making cartoons.

Here is an example of what you can do with a song:

Listening/reading/writing

• identify the target grammar you want your students to learn
• pick a song that is appropriate for your students’ age and level
• prepare a gap-fill worksheet (remove words/phrases that are examples of your chosen grammar pattern)
• listen to the song as a group, go over any vocabulary and answer questions
• students fill-in-the-blanks on the worksheet
• check as a class

Speaking/writing

• after you listen to the song, have a discussion (as a class or in small groups)
• students can also respond to the song in writing or even rewrite it

Other activities

While watching full movies in class may not be possible, picking a scene/clip from a movie will usually suffice to teach grammar.

The students can find grammar patterns in the script of the movie (listening). They can also change the characters’ dialogues into those with the target grammar. Finally, students can also create a comic strip with speech bubbles that contain the target grammar structure.

I already mentioned using short stories earlier in this post. To add, one of my favorite activities of all time to do with the students is to take a short story but make sure the students do not have access to its ending. They then can create their own endings to the story (working in groups and using the target grammar). As a class, compare the endings and then reveal the real one.

Here are a few ideas for your grammar teaching in your ESL classroom.

Sentence structure with pictures for reading, writing and speaking (a digital version of the Who? What? Where? game)

Practice the verb “to be” with your ESL beginners

Games for the grammar classroom

As you may know, I am a big fan of games. Some work better than others and I may have written about them in my other blog posts.

The first one, Ball Toss I described in the blog post about icebreakers. The idea is simple: take a beach ball and write down the target grammar structures on it. Toss it to a student and ask him/her to read and explain/use the grammatical structure that is under their thumb (or index finger).

I have, who has….

This is another game that is great for grammar review.

Here is how it goes:

You need one set of cards (25-30) with a particular grammatical structure

• each card should connect to the next card
• First card: I have GRAMMAR STRUCTURE. Who has….For example, I have present perfect, who has a sentence that uses present perfect?

• Each student should get at least one card, but if you have more cards than students, they can get two also.
• The game continues with each person reading their card when they hear the prompt and think they have the answer. If and when students make mistakes, stop, discuss and lead the students to the correct answer.
• The game continues until the question goes back to the first card (I have present perfect, who has a sentence that uses present perfect).

Finally, a game that involves both physical activity AND grammar review!

It is called SLAP IT

You will need fly swatters and papers with target grammatical structures written on them. You can use sticky notes or put the papers in bags and attach magnets to them.

• stick the papers to the whiteboard (or wall)
• have your class split into two teams.
• each team lines up and the person in front gets the fly swatter
• ask a question, the answer to which is stuck on the board/wall
• students race to slap the correct answer the first person to slap it correctly wins a point
  • anybody who slaps incorrectly loses a point.
  • no points are awarded to the team that does not slap any answer
• Pass the swatter on to the next person and the game continues until there are no more questions.

To end this blog post, I would like to invite you to watch a video that I made about teaching grammar and also to follow me on my new and growing YouTube channel. At the end of the video, I also go over a few of the resources that I recommend for the activities described above. 

For more teaching tips and ideas, join our Facebook group Helping ESL/ELL Teachers K-12.

How do YOU teach grammar? Share with us in the comments below!