Teacher Discussion Forums

Due to my experience of being a private tutor, I always feel confused whether to explain what is grammar to those primary school students I am teaching now. At their age, they don't have the conception of grammar, but they always ask me some questions, such as why we should use this preparation here or why we must change the verb into a different way. In most of their exam papers, they also will come across this kind of puzzle. So I choose to tell them some certain grammar, but some of the students seem to so young to accept it.
Then What should I do to solve this kind of problem? I'd like someone to give me some good suggestions.
Thank you !

I think teaching elementary school students grammar is a difficult job. Not only you have this kind of problem. I think the best way is not to tell them why we should do this or that .Just let them remmember the items.

You can start to introduce terms at a young age, but not go into depth like with older students. I work in an elementary school, and in first grade- even kindergarten- we say that words are describing words, or action words. Startin in first grade, we have an activity where we correct sentences. It starts with the problems being no periods (question marks, exclamation points) in sentences, needing capitals at the begining, capitals for names, etc. For correcting verbs, common mistakes like saying have instead of has, gonna instead of going to, we say because it sounds better. Then in later years we start to use terms like noun, adjective, verb, adverb, etc. more.

Geoff Williams of Australia has some really good papers on teaching functional grammar in the lower grades. The students were very successful and in fact when they went on to higher grades were so disappointed that their teachers didn't continue that they came back to the elementary school for futher voluntary lessons. You are teaching grammar in everything you do whether you name the parts of speech or not. Children are so curious and can learn anything that is presented in an interesting way. They want to find out how things work so why not find out how language works? Beverly Derewianka, also from Australia, has a great book, "Grammar Companion for Primary Students".