Teacher Discussion Forums

Hi. I've been teaching in a private language school for 6 months after getting my CELTA over the summer. I have a degree in English, and my task since I started has been to teach Intensive Grammar Sessions using the Longman Focus on Grammar Texts. The courses are 4 hrs/day for 6 weeks, and the students get three days of grammar and two days of conversation (I don't teach them for conversation).

My problem is this: I started out at one level and taught it for 4 sessions (High Intermediate II), so I developed a lot of activities, games, etc., and got pretty familiar with the material, so classes went ok. But now I have to go back and a)learn new material b)prep new lessons for the new class. I realize this is all part of being a teacher, etc., but the grammar I'm teaching is a lot of high intermediate refinement of tenses (the difference between the present simple and present progressive, simple present and present perfect, future with will/going to, etc.) A lot of it is stuff I'm still trying to sort out in my own mind, so prepping lessons tends to take a while and they often come out pretty dry and teacher-centered. I've never quite gotten down my grammar presentation- the book uses a PPP approach for every lesson, and this gets old for them and me. But they're required to buy the book and expect to use it.

My question: how can i refine my grammar presentation so that I don't spend 45 minutes to an hour presenting every day, and we're not just reading the rules together from the book? How do I keep the students motivated for 4 hours of grammar? I try to vary activities, use games, etc., but with a new session it's tough to come up with new activities for each class (we do a major grammar section in each class.) Any ideas about how to a)simply lesson planning and b)keep classes interesting?
Any suggestions would be welcome, especially from anyone who has taught intensive grammar classes.

Thanks so much!

I used real texts and had them pick out the feature that we were studying. I kept the texts on one topic that was exciting for them so they could learn the vocabulary of that topic along with the grammar feature. I would even give them a text that didn't have the grammar feature and then ask why it wasn't used. By text, I mean an a page in their textbook, a newspaper article or a magazine article or something short from the Internet - maybe 3 paragraphs. Then they wrote something on the topic and justified why they used the grammar feature where they did. If they got something else "wrong" we would save those sentences until we did study that feature and go over them to see what went wrong. We had a list of grammar features around the room with a sample sentence from their writing and many wrong uses of it with corrections. They liked to review those from time to time by moving around the room and reading them over.

You can get them to work in groups to make up texts for other groups - games or exercises - and then pass them from group to group to do. It is good for you to do the lessons plans until you are confident of your own knowledge but after that it is good to give the tasks to the students. As you must realize, you learn by making up the games or the exercises and so will they.

Don't worry if there are great discussions or disagreements or you don't have the answer or some student thinks they have the answer and you are wrong. Just use these as part of the lesson and encourage them to disagree but come back the next day with justification of their argument. You don't always have to tell them the answer even if you know it - searching for their answers will help them remember.

And you can always bring problems to this forum or the Applied Linguistics forum and go back to the class the next day with good arguments.

Those are good suggestions. I think a lot of my problems revolve around being nervous in the classroom, and dealing with classroom management. I'm pretty young, and my students are adults, which means many of them are my age or older, which I feel is an especial disadvantage when I make mistakes.

Thanks for the ideas. I use the "find the grammar in the text" method sometimes, but I should make use of it more often.

Sally has a lot of good suggestions. Articles, stories, listening exercises, or other examples of the language in use, are great ways to demonstrate target language. I do this with a lot of my self-made lesson materials, which end up on my website. Depending on the level of the students and the difficulty of the grammar point, you can even give the article/story to the class before teaching the grammar point. Have them speculate its meaning, nuance, and/or usage. For example, the students could speculate and compare inversions, as in:

He didn't fully understand the grammar point until he practiced it.
Not until he practiced the grammar point did he fully understand its use.

Most importantly, though, remember that you aren't teaching the students to become grammarians. You're teaching them to understand the practical applications of the grammar, so that they are able to communicate effectively and be understood. As such, don't worry about giving 45 minute grammar explanations that cover every aspect of the target language. You just need a solid explanation of the key elements, with room for the students to ask additional questions as they pop up during the practice and reinforcement phases of the lesson. You can also break the target language up by teaching the first element of the target language, practicing it, then moving on to the next one.

Hope this helps.

Chris Cotter
www.headsupenglish.com