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Most Fun Games and Activities to Teach Grammar?
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bj80



Joined: 31 Mar 2017
Posts: 63

PostPosted: Sun Mar 18, 2018 9:26 pm    Post subject: Most Fun Games and Activities to Teach Grammar? Reply with quote

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!
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nomad soul



Joined: 31 Jan 2010
Posts: 11454
Location: The real world

PostPosted: Sun Mar 18, 2018 9:37 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

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.
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scot47



Joined: 10 Jan 2003
Posts: 15343

PostPosted: Mon Mar 19, 2018 6:02 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

We do not expect Calculus or Algebra to be fun. Why should Grammar be "FUN" ? Something has gone wrong with our Pedagogy !
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spiral78



Joined: 05 Apr 2004
Posts: 11534
Location: On a Short Leash

PostPosted: Mon Mar 19, 2018 6:57 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

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....
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RedLightning



Joined: 08 Aug 2015
Posts: 137
Location: United States

PostPosted: Mon Mar 19, 2018 9:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

scot47 wrote:
We do not expect Calculus or Algebra to be fun. Why should Grammar be "FUN" ? Something has gone wrong with our Pedagogy !

When I make comments like this during department meetings, I'm told that I simply don't understand modern education or else I'm 'afraid of change'. Meanwhile, grades continue to drop.
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schwa



Joined: 12 Oct 2003
Posts: 164
Location: yap

PostPosted: Tue Mar 20, 2018 8:36 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

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.








RedLightning wrote:
scot47 wrote:
We do not expect Calculus or Algebra to be fun. Why should Grammar be "FUN" ? Something has gone wrong with our Pedagogy !

When I make comments like this during department meetings, I'm told that I simply don't understand modern education or else I'm 'afraid of change'. Meanwhile, grades continue to drop.
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santi84



Joined: 14 Mar 2008
Posts: 1317
Location: under da sea

PostPosted: Tue Mar 20, 2018 12:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

schwa wrote:
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.








RedLightning wrote:
scot47 wrote:
We do not expect Calculus or Algebra to be fun. Why should Grammar be "FUN" ? Something has gone wrong with our Pedagogy !

When I make comments like this during department meetings, I'm told that I simply don't understand modern education or else I'm 'afraid of change'. Meanwhile, grades continue to drop.


I don't disagree.

I would argue that using task-based grammar activities are a good midpoint between edutainment and zzzz.
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fluffytwo



Joined: 24 Sep 2016
Posts: 139

PostPosted: Tue Mar 20, 2018 5:06 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

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.
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spiral78



Joined: 05 Apr 2004
Posts: 11534
Location: On a Short Leash

PostPosted: Tue Mar 20, 2018 6:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

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.
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peripatetic_soul



Joined: 20 Oct 2013
Posts: 303

PostPosted: Tue Mar 20, 2018 7:16 pm    Post subject: Most Fun Games and Activities to Teach Grammar Reply with quote

Dear bj,
If you google "EFL and interactive grammar activities" + level or age group, many websites will appear. One I've used for all skills is eslflow.com.
There are so many to choose from.

PS
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fluffytwo



Joined: 24 Sep 2016
Posts: 139

PostPosted: Tue Mar 20, 2018 7:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

If it's fun with grammar you now want Spiral then provide some general pointers yourself, why don't you. And yes yes yes, within the word limit (my post above is comfortably so, thanks all the same). Or would you rather stick to what you said in your first post? Round and around we go.

Personally I prefer to not make grammar more than (or indeed any less than) it really needs to be: primarily a means of organizing and accessing exemplars in a language or between languages, and which nowadays one may not even need that much of, if one takes a more lexical than "structural" view of language. And yes, I think it is helpful to try to boil things down however "slightly" in this way, it's better than vague claims about supposed value (for developing "deeper" understanding, or recognizing "ungrammaticality" if not inappropriateness, or...? What, exactly? Lots of unclear assumptions in this thread).

But I'm sure one could have untold fun with stuff like hmm say Rinvolucri's Grammar Games (that, or the students could even <GASP> study the "necessary" grammar - specific verb forms, irregular plurals, and any other relatively undisputed facts - at home by themselves with the possible aid certainly of bilingual references). As always, beats trying to have an honest conversation with your students eh.


Last edited by fluffytwo on Tue Mar 20, 2018 9:22 pm; edited 1 time in total
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spiral78



Joined: 05 Apr 2004
Posts: 11534
Location: On a Short Leash

PostPosted: Tue Mar 20, 2018 9:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I have never understood why you think I and others here don’t have genuine conversations with our students. Mine are entirely competent and confident (regardlesss of their current level of English proficiency) to negotiate with me on what we deal with in class and in individual consultations, and that has been my status quo since about 2003.
You seem to endlessly accuse the rest of us of being grammatical and lexical dictators in class, based on no evidence. It’s tiresome.
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fluffytwo



Joined: 24 Sep 2016
Posts: 139

PostPosted: Tue Mar 20, 2018 9:39 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

When I say 'your students' I could equally have said 'one's students', Spiral (indeed I switched between 'one' and 'your' in that last paragraph). Nothing directed at you personally, but rather at those teachers who seem incapable of convincingly contextualizing even the most basic language (Is this a pen etc, but let's not belabour this painfully obvious point).

I have to wonder however what others make of your more or less constant slipping in of the to you clearly unacceptable notion of any 'edutainment', and your disinterest in establishing quite what you or others mean by grammar and the teaching and/or learning of it. Like I say, a lot of assumptions, and little detail or clarity from at least some of the posters here. It's especially puzzling when I'm saying that I'm not actually that interested in teaching grammar (though I do take an interest in dissecting questionable grammar "lessons").

What exactly IS a "fun" grammar lesson then? To me it's almost an oxymoron, especially if the grammar is made too explicit (by the teacher/in "speech", I mean. Books like Murphy I have no problem with though, fine for homework or self-study at least).

Part of the problem is that we are talking in the abstract. Perhaps the OP should come back to us with a specific activity or two and ask 'Is this any good let alone fun?'. I could give an honest answer as to whether something is linguistically well thought-out or not, but fun may ultimately be up to an individual class to decide (though the two factors are surely related). We can't please everybody all the time, especially when they're not even our own students LOL.


Last edited by fluffytwo on Tue Apr 10, 2018 6:25 pm; edited 2 times in total
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spiral78



Joined: 05 Apr 2004
Posts: 11534
Location: On a Short Leash

PostPosted: Tue Mar 20, 2018 10:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think PPP and CCQ must be acronyms you’ve dredged up and clung to from your decades-old pre-CELTA course. Ancient and irrelevant historical terms to me and most others here. You make a lot of unwarranted assumptions based on your own very limited and outdated cert course experience. That stuff has been been growing more irrelevant for years. Nothing near as stimulating as ‘heresy’.

Like most modern teachers, I teach grammatical structures as needed in context. And, again, like the many other teachers whose working context is made up of students who engage in genuine communication in Englsh for personal, academic, and professional reasons, student needs dictate what we focus on- and how.

If you are cycling and recycling in a bounded context of rinse-and -repeat teaching to low/mid level students with mostly extrinsic motivation, then your never ending focus on and criticism of ancient techniques for dealing with the basics is understandable, though in my view, unutterably dull.
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spiral78



Joined: 05 Apr 2004
Posts: 11534
Location: On a Short Leash

PostPosted: Tue Mar 20, 2018 10:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

BTW, this OP rarely if ever follows up on any thread s/he opens. Not holding my breath on any specifics from him/her.
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