Teaching
Children with ESL Grammar Games
ESL and TEFL
teachers often wonder how you can teach grammar through games.
It's easy enough to see how you can teach vocabulary, but
grammar seems a little trickier. However that depends on how
you see grammar. If grammar means learning rules about how
to string words together then using games might not be the best answer.
However if grammar means having a good command of English
then ESL grammar games are ideal, at least they most certainly are for
elementary pupils to lower intermediates.
If you don't
want your class to glaze over with dictation, writing exercises and
"Jimmy, would you please read paragraph 1," then take heart! You'll
find you can teach everything you want with games, and the children
remember it better to boot.
The best way
to show this is to give an example of an ESL gramar game in action,
such as the game below, All
Change.
A
few teachers have reported not being able to control their class using
this language game, and All
Change is best for smaller groups, PLUS you need floor
space. If you are teaching 40 children in a class lined with
benches then this game is not going to help you AT ALL!
(Aside from the fact that in teaching we often move around
and our circumstances change, so you never know when it might come in
useful). It should therefore be mentioned that there are
dozens of esl games which are ideal for large classes with no room to
move, and which CAN successfully be used to teach elementary grammar.
First,
the game itself:
The players
stand round in a circle with one player standing in the middle. Each
player has a picture of an item, or a word flash card, except for the
player in the middle. Call out two of the picture card items or words.
The two players holding these cards have to change places without the
person in the middle grabbing one of their spots. If the person in the
middle manages to slip into the spot in the circle then the one left
standing goes in the middle. The new person in the middle hands their
flash card to the child taking their place in the circle.
If someone is
stuck in the middle for two turns say, "All Change!" When the players
hear this they must all change places, which gives the person in the
middle a very good chance of joining the circle. Once everyone has had
one go ask your class to pass their picture to the right, and take the
one handed to them from the left. You can give them another go with the
new picture.
Notice that
only 2 children move at any one time (aside from when you say "All
Change"), which makes it easy to keep control.
Secondly,
how the above game can be applied to teaching English:
Firstly, you
can use it to reinforce new vocabulary, secondly, for revision, thirdly
to help spelling by playing the game with word flashcards instead of
pictures, and fourthly, to learn or practise a grammatical structure.
Let us say
you want to teach the conditional tense and you start with "I would
like". Hand out pictures of food that your pupils already know. Call
out "I would like bananas and pie". The pupil with the bananas tries to
change places with the pupil holding the pie without the person in the
middle taking one of the spots in the circle. Continue until everyone
has had a go, repeating the target structure each time. With a class
that learns quickly you can also introduce the rest of the declension
(he and she would like, etc.). You are now ready to proceed to a
speaking game where your pupils use the target structure, as they will
have heard it repeatedly by now. You can follow the speaking game up
with a writing game, and hey presto your children can understand, say,
read and write the new target structure.
Your pupils
will take that grammatical structure on board and be able to use it
spontaneously because they have heard it so often, it has been so
frequently repeated within the game, that they have learned it by
heart. Now what better way is there to teach grammar than that? You are
teaching grammar by absorption and repetition, which is the way we
learn our native tongue, and for children it is by far the best way to
go.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Shelley Vernon has helped 1000s of teachers be an inspiration to their
pupils and achieve results 2x as fast. Teaching with ESL grammar games
can improve the effectiveness of a lesson by up to 80%. Receive free
children's games now! ESL
Grammar Games
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