How to Teach English Grammar to ESL Students

By Kara Page, eHow Contributor

English grammar is a broad topic with as many exceptions as it has rules, and it can be a long and frustrating topic for students to master. When you approach teaching grammar in your ESL classes, try to incorporate educational games to motivate your students with fun and positive encouragement as much as possible.

Things You'll Need

Computer with Internet Notebook or schedule planner

Instructions

1. Begin your first class with a short grammar assessment. This can be either spoken or written, or a combination of both. Even a simple response can speak volumes about a student's English proficiency level. For example, if you ask "Where did you go yesterday?" and the student responds "I go to school," you know the student hasn't learned past tense.

2. Plan out a basic week-by-week schedule for class, with a new topic for the week. Topic examples could include Food, Careers, Weather, or History. The week before, plan a more detailed day-by-day lesson plan, including times for tests and assessments.

3. Take one week's topic and expand on it to include various components of English grammar based on your students' skill levels. For example, if the week's topic is Food, you can incorporate new food vocabulary with flashcards, new food-related verbs like "eat" and "drink" (and, if appropriate, their conjugations), and adverbs and adjectives like "thirsty" and "salty." Do not plan too rigidly, however, since some lessons may take more or less time to complete than you estimate. ESL teachers must be very flexible in the classroom.

A sample week's schedule for teaching English grammar based on the theme of Food could be as follows. Monday: Introduce new food vocabulary with flashcards and/or word scramble worksheets. Tuesday: Review vocabulary, introduce food-related verbs to complement the nouns learned Monday. Wednesday: Write short sentences using food nouns and verbs learned. Engage in conversation activity that encourages students to incorporate these words verbally. Thursday: Introduce food-related adjectives and adverbs. Play a "sentence scramble" game, allowing students to mix food nouns, verbs in different tenses, adjectives, and adverbs to form complete and grammatically correct sentences. Friday: Assessment test on food vocabulary and grammar.

4. Use topical flashcards and theme games. These teaching tools can be found on a variety of websites, including DLTK-Kids, ESL-Galaxy, and MES-English, most of which are free to print and use. While there is a time when rote memorization and repetition is preferred, games like Bingo and word-search puzzles can break the monotony of learning English grammar and help students have fun while learning spelling and new vocabulary.

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