How to Teach Grammar to ESL Students: the Sequence

When I say the word grammar, many people roll their eyes. Everyone has an opinion about it.

Some had to diagram sentences and hated that. Some had to memorize the rules and loved that. 

But my question is: how do you teach a language without teaching the grammatical structures that make it what it is?

The answer? You don’t.

I have noticed a trend in my classroom: Grammar worksheets are really popular. 

Students rush into the classroom, take their seats and ask the question: “Ms.G, what are we doing today?” Any open-ended discussion, group work or collaborative project is met with skepticism. Most of the time. 

Grammar? I see a sigh of relief. 

It is a concrete subject: you learn a rule, then you apply it and use it. Many English learners are familiar with doing worksheets in class and feel in their comfort zone, even when the grammatical concept they are learning is a bit more difficult. 

But many teachers seem to be puzzled for a variety of reasons. Some native speakers have never learned grammar formally and don’t feel comfortable teaching it. Others don’t know in what order to teach grammar. 

In this blog post, I will break down the most important grammar points to touch upon when you get a new beginner English learner and the suggested order in which to teach them. 

Teach what they need

I am a big proponent of practicality and communication in language teaching. So can you imagine how THRILLED I was when I heard an honorable ESL professor and author of multiple books on teaching English learners echo my sentiment almost exactly?! 

In his book, The Grammar Answer Key: Short Explanations to 100 ESL Questions, Keith Folse, says: “First and foremost, teachers should teach what students need. If your students want to improve their conversation, then you should teach students about the forms that are common in conversation. On the other hand, if your students need to write academic papers, then you should teach grammatical patterns that are favored in academic writing”. (Folse, xiv)

A note on grammar teaching in general

One of the more popular ways to teach grammar is to teach a rule and provide worksheets for students to complete. And while a good grammar worksheet always has its place, it does not give a teacher lots of information about whether the student can actually use the grammatical rule in real life or not. 

At the beginning level, students need a lot of modeling and repetition to understand what is required of them. Grammar exercises are simple and to the point and serve as a good practice tool.

Younger children (ages 6-9) learn grammar best through play, singing and real-life use of grammatical structures because they are not able to process the abstract information that is grammar yet. Older students have the ability to think abstractly and therefore, form-focused grammar instruction works well with them. 

In what order to teach grammar to ESL Beginners?

I have looked through the textbooks that I use in the classroom as well as through my own observations and have come up with a suggested list of how to sequence your grammar instruction. 

1. The verb “to be” and sentence structure (English follows S-V-O (subject-verb-object) word order but other languages may be different). 
2. Noun
   • Singular and plural of nouns
3. Personal pronouns
4. Demonstrative adjectives this, that, those, these
5. Yes/no questions 
6. Articles 
7. Adjectives
8. Verbs and tenses
   • Present simple tense (I read/you read/s/he reads)
   • Present continuous tense (I am reading/you are ready/s/he is reading)
   • Past tense
9. Prepositions of time and place
10. Negation 
11. Subject-verb agreement. 

And there you have it. I have also created a downloadable grammar teaching checklist for you.

Download the checklist

Pick a grammar focus for the week and model correct usage not only in what you are teaching but also in other forms that you have not touched upon yet. 

It is best to teach the standard form of a word and then build on it if and when necessary. 

Links mentioned in this post:

The Grammar Answer Key: Short Explanations to 100 ESL Questions

Also check out the blog post (and video!) on how to teach subject-verb agreement to your English learners.

Finally, if you are an ESL/ELL teacher, who is craving more time, sanity and confidence and is looking to have ready-made ESL/ELL beginner resources in one place, click here to see if The ESL Teaching Roadmap is right for you. (We open several times a year, so join the waitlist if you happened to find us in the off-season and get notified about behind-the-scenes and special offers).