Job Discussion Forums

[bj80]

Hi Everyone,

I am on a short job in Russia.

I realized I will need to teach grammar. I have a textbook all planned out, but I want more fun games, activities, etc. to make things interesting.

Any good suggestions, websites, etc.?

Thanks!

[nomad soul]

Google is your friend. A basic Internet search using ESL grammar activities yields plenty of links to websites with grammar activities, games, worksheets, videos, etc., for you to review for your particular students and teaching situation.

Easy breezy.

[scot47]

We do not expect Calculus or Algebra to be fun. Why should Grammar be "FUN" ? Something has gone wrong with our Pedagogy !

[spiral78]

Fun and games in Russia? Who are your students? Unless they're under about 12, they're unlikely to expect (or to react positively) to much edutainment. They generally take things pretty seriously and if they are adults they may well know English grammar far better than you anticipate....

[RedLightning]

[schwa]

Long before "edutainment" was even a word, talking 50 years ago in my case as a student, I can only recall a small handful of my dozens of teachers. They stood out because they made classroom learning fun & engaging, including supposedly "dry" subjects. They spurred me to want to discover more on my own, which is where real education starts to happen.

Do you yourself remember any teachers who droned on & on in class? Did passing their tests actually improve you?

Why shouldn't learning English be fun? Native speakers, be honest. You honed your own language skills through tons of playful interaction with others.

You can't be a games, games, games teacher, but jeez, lighten up. Old here, still teaching, but I'd like to think I'm having an impression on my students like one of those creative & humorous teachers I once had.

[santi84]

[fluffytwo]

It might help if we attempted to explain however briefly in exactly what way grammar might (but only might) be useful rather than simply claiming (but only claiming) that it "IS".

In my experience grammar is ultimately just a means of organizing rather than necessarily analyzing language (one can after all use serviceable-enough analyses without being [too] much of an analyst, and all grammars "leak" [have holes] unfortunately!).

That is, it primarily enables one to access grammars and other reference works (especially ones detailing foreign languages, if we can forgive the often Latinate assumptions) and marshall examples. Given a classroom setting and the R&D necessary to deliver non-trivial lessons, this should obviously be mostly the teacher's job, not the learner's.

Whatever other supposed benefits of grammar are IMHO debatable at best (even via so-called discovery activities etc), and I haven't seen much supposedly form-focussed instruction that is at all convincing functionally (as too many teachers seem to suffer from "target fixation" and completely lose sight of meaning).

IN CONCLUSION: Make meaning rather than form your starting point...or if you are going to plump for form then prioritize lexis rather than structure "per se" (and it is actually possible to learn a fair bit of grammar in passing from learner dictionaries, and lexicogrammars such as those from COBUILD, which flesh out structures in the abstract into non-trivial lexical specifics and in plenty of detail).

Tl:dr is that a lot comes down to "somehow" finding and selecting decent (meaningful, generally appropriate) examples to present or convey or otherwise feed to students, and that methodology, even much supposedly "communicative" stuff, is not necessarily (indeed, often by no means!) the language itself.

[spiral78]

Fluff, this thread was supposed to be about fun with grammar. Not the ancient, existential, overly-well-worn hamster-wheel argument about the essence of what grammar and its teaching are.
Also, I think word count matters these days, as it does in many/most real-life contexts.