Topic: Teaching Grammar

While the form of English grammar, or how it is made, is quite straightforward, the use of those forms is somewhat more complicated. It is actually the use of grammar, not the form, that presents the most challenges for both students and teachers alike. In this session we will examine one of the most effective techniques to use when teaching the use of grammar to students – timelines. We will briefly discuss how to draw basic timelines including the use of symbols and colours. We will then walk through possible timelines for all of the verb tenses in English to illustrate the different uses of these tenses. At the end of this session you will have a solid understanding of how to create accurate and useful timelines for each of the tenses in English.

The typical grammar practice activity comes right out a textbook. It is usually a fill-in-the-blank, multiple choice, matching or sentence completion activity. While there is a place in our language classrooms for individual written grammar practice from a textbook, this is not the only type of grammar practice activity that we should use. If we restrict our grammar practice to textbook-based activities, our students will not have the opportunity to work on the language in a more productive, interactive and spontaneous way. In this course, we will take you through different activities that will allow you to take your grammar practice activities out of the textbook to give your students a more engaging and memorable learning experience.

In this video, we explain two concepts from Scott Thornbury, the E-Factor and the A-Factor, that can be used to evaluate the potential and effectiveness of your grammar activity choices. The E-Factor refers to efficiency and the A-Factor refers to appropriacy. Using these factors allows us to make good strategic decisions when planning our grammar lessons.

Explanation is the grammar presentation technique typically used in the ESL classroom when new language structures are introduced.  While there is a time and a place for explanations, there are many other techniques with which teachers can present grammar more effectively and memorably.  In this course, we will look at demonstrations of grammar presentation techniques that go beyond the explanations provided in textbooks.  We will then compare and contrast the different techniques, based on criteria such as preparation time, challenge for the student, and appropriateness for particular grammar structures.