How to teach grammar to young learners

5 FUN ways to personalise grammar with young learners

Anne Robinson shows that it is possible to study and practise grammar with young learners and make it relevant, meaningful and fun at the same time!

What is grammar?

Let’s find out what the Cambridge English Dictionary says:

Can young learners study grammar rules and then use them?

Yes! Knowing rules can help students learn faster and make learning easier. Of course, the content and focus must be suited to our students’ age and level.

One thing to consider is if young learners are studying grammar in their first language and how similar to English their language is. I mainly teach Spanish children, who start learning about grammar at around seven years’ old and there are a lot of shared concepts (and differences!).
Let’s look at 5 ideas for focussing on grammar.

Idea 1: Getting creative with compound nouns

In the sets of flashcards for Pre-A1 Starters, A1 Movers and A2 Flyers, downloadable from World of Fun, there are pictures of several compound nouns.

Suggestions for Pre-A1 Starters level: playground, armchair, table tennis, bedroom, football, meat balls, board game, tennis racket

The ‘rules’ of compound nouns

Spelling
Some compound words are written as 1 word (football, bedroom). Others are written as 2 (board game, tennis racket). This is important for learners to notice and remember when they learn new compound nouns.

Usually, the first word is singular (toothbrush, table tennis, football) with the exception of a few words like sports and clothes (sports equipment, clothes brush).

Pronunciation
Usually, the first word (or part of the word) is stressed:

Getting creative with compound nouns!

Invent a new word! Get learners to draw a cloudbow, or a sunbow.
Invent a new thing! For example, a neck brush or an elbow brush.

Idea 2: Find pictures, write your own challenges

It’s useful. It gets learners to think about the order that words need to go in.
In the second exercise, learners add very or really to sentences.

Source: Fun Skills Level 2. (Pre-A1 Starters)

Again, a good way of focusing on rules but it’s not very personal or meaningful!

To make this more relevant, meaningful and fun, ask learners to find pictures for the 5 sentences in their coursebook. I easily found pictures for all of them in my book!

And/or, learners write their own very nice, really cool sentences. Then, they jumble their sentences for a classmate to unjumble.

Idea 3: Sentences about a picture

Fun Skills A1 Movers poster
This poster, available to download from World of Fun, can be used to practise finding the differences and matching definitions to pictures, 2 tasks in the A1 Movers Test. You can see there is a mixture of sentence structures in the colour squares on the poster.

Why not use the poster to focus on a particular structure?
Present continuous: A girl is wearing a green sweater. A boy is holding a comic.
There is/there are: There are five people in both pictures.
But: In the top picture, a clown is giving the girl a ticket but in the bottom picture, a pirate is giving the girl a ticket.
This is something: This is something you can read when you are bored. This is something you need to buy when you go to the cinema.
Someone has… (*A2 Flyers level): Someone has put two bottles of juice in front of a rock.

Idea 4: Your own sentences – with a twist!

To make sure that learners use these conjunctions correctly and that they see their relevance, we can get them to write their own sentences.

I like to add a little twist or extra challenge. Here are 2 suggestions:

Which is false?

Two of the sentences are true, one sentence is false. Their classmates read them and decide which two are true and which sentence is false.

Me, my family, my friend

One sentence is about the learner, one about a family member, one about a friend. Their classmates read them and decide which sentence is about which person.

Idea 5: Grammar as a springboard for discussion

In this activity, learners work in pairs to complete sentences about the things and people they like and practise using relative clauses. Then, learners share and discuss their sentences.

Source: Fun Skills Level 2.

You could use this for other grammar areas, like:

Superlatives: The best place to go at the weekend is the park. The most interesting subject at school is science.

Comparatives: Dogs make better pets than cats. Maths is more difficult than history.

Should: Everyone should learn two languages. No one should have to wear a school uniform.

Adverbs of frequency: My room is always tidy. In class, I never turn round and look at the back.

I hope I’ve shown that it is possible to study and practise grammar with young learners and at the same time, make it relevant, meaningful and fun!

Watch Anne share 5 ideas for teaching grammar to young learners in our Catch Up FUN series.

For more resources for preparing young learners for Pre A1 Starters, A1 Movers and A2 Flyers visit World of Fun.
If you enjoyed this blog, make sure to check out Delia Kidd’s article about developing early literacy in very young learners.

How to teach grammar to young learners?

What is the most challenging thing to teach? I bet 70% of the teachers would say “Grammar!” And 30% would say “Grammar to young learners”. So, which things are important when you teach grammar in primary school?

Key principles

Children cannot understand abstract concepts, schemes and apply grammar rules. You cannot just have them sit and listen to the rules. It won’t work with kids. They do need a clear meaningful context, a situation to sort out, to deduce the rules themselves. The context helps them to connect the language to a specific situation, to find patterns. The teaching should be theme-based. For example, they listen to the dialogue where the target language is used (e.g., Present Simple: you can tell a story about your or the puppet’s day).

The language you use to set a context, clarify the rules, focus on the grammatical form should be graded according to the students’ level. You should explain the rules using the language students already know. For example, you teach Present Continuous. Use the verbs students know, e.g., jump and say “I’m jumping” or point at the other student and say “He is listening” (mime it too).

We always need to keep in mind different learning styles: visual (need images), auditory (need verbal presentation) and kinesthetic (need a hands-on approach). However, when we teach grammar we need to direct special attention to this as it is one of the most difficult things to teach and all the children need to grasp the meaning.

Another great idea is to use games when you teach grammar. It motivates students. It becomes interesting for them and student do not even notice that they are studying. For example, you can adapt the “Snowball ” game. Let’s say, the topic is Present Simple. Say a sentence about yourself. Have the student repeat your sentence and add the next part.

Teacher: I play volleyball on Mondays.

Student: I play volleyball and do homework on Mondays.

Chain game is a way to practise the grammatical form.

If you play the “ Zip-Zap ” game, have the student say an affirmative sentence for “Zip”, negative for “Zap” and questions for “Zip-Zap”.

Noughts and crosses can also be used for teaching and practising grammar. For example, write verbs, pluses for affirmative sentences, minuses for negative sentences and questions for… questions and have students make sentences to go with crosses or noughts.

Board games, “True-False”, miming, “Duel”, “Cancel my instruction”, role-plays are also a great way to practise grammar.

Young learners need to review the material from time to time. The new language should be revised in the next lesson and should be recycled throughout the course. In addition, it’s essential to have Revision lessons every Unit.

The typical stages of “Grammar” lesson are:

Set the context and use the new language in a specific situation. Ask Concept Checking Questions. For example, tell a short story (use pictures to support the meaning) about your day when you introduce Present Simple.

2. Passive practice.

It’s a part of the presentation stage. Examples of exercises: usually, they’re matching exercises

Student do not use the language themselves at this step, do not produce it.

3. Focus on form.

Students see sentences where the target form is in bold or underlined. They listen, read and repeat.

At this step, you can also organize a short practice of the form. For instance, do a gap-filling exercise or ask students to choose the correct option.

4. Controlled practice

This stage typically includes games or TPR activities to practise the target language.

5. Semi-controlled/Freer practice

Students try to use the language in a freer setting and teachers set the tasks that personalise the language.

At the end of the lesson, there’s a game to recycle the grammar learnt.

Principles of teaching grammar to teens

Grammar is notorious among teenagers for being hard and boring. Drills and gapfills can bore everyone to death, Present Perfect is constantly confused with Past Simple, the difference between adverbs and adjectives seems vague, malicious irregular verbs leave no chance to be remembered. Familiar, isn’t it?

Today’s article will shed some light on the basic principles of teaching grammar in general and provide examples of activities especially useful in lessons with teens.

Present grammar in context

Have you ever walked into the class with something like ‘Today we are going to talk about Past Perfect’? I have, and it obviously didn’t mark the most exciting or useful lessons of mine. Whatever we teach, setting up the context is important. All students tend to remember things better when they are engaged. However, establishing personal interest and connection with the topic is of crucial importance for teenagers. Most adults can tolerate a ‘not-so-interesting’ grammar lesson because they need English for their jor or are polite enough to start grumbling. This will never work with teens, though.

You can present a grammar topic with the help of a personal story, an anecdote or a song. For example, when we start contrasting Past Simple and Past Continuous, I usually come into the class with a photograph of my school friend and a question to students: ‘What’s your first impression of this girl?’. After listening to some opinions, I tell them a little story: ‘It’s my best friend, Kate. When we first met, she was wearing a terrible pink T-shirt. She started talking – and I didn’t like her voice. What’s more, she was always listening to pop music, but I loved rock. We’ve been friends for 14 years now’. Then I take out a phrase like ‘When we first met, she was wearing a terrible pink T-shirt’ and we work on figuring out the difference between the tenses and how they work.

Also, you can create a classroom character who will appear in grammar topics. Ours has been Kevin, the alien. Every time new grammar is delivered, Kevin is drawn somewhere on the board. Teens immediately know that one more episode of Kevin’s adventures is waiting for them and are ready to struggle with grammar for that. Last time Kevin was telling us about life on his planet. A great deal of comparatives and superlatives were used.

Show grammar in use

Drills and gapfills are an integral part of our lessons. However, teens might get stuck when it comes to actually using the target grammar. Provide them with real-life situations when they would need this or that particular structure. Probably, you will need to alter your coursebook a bit and add some twists and turns for the production stage, but it’s totally worth it. If you connect grammar to its social use and encourage natural interaction, teenagers will master it much faster. So, why don’t you begin a lesson with a small talk party by asking your students to mingle and tell each other the latest news which starts with ‘Have you heard…?’. Or you can start a dialogue in a group chat and find out about their holiday plans – good chance to practise Present Continuous, isn’t it? Social networks alongside with messengers and digital services like iFake Messages can help you show grammar in use and vary paper exercises. One more great way of demonstrating grammar to teens is by using memes which are an intergal part of teen life and culture.

Add creativity

While younger kids seem to be full of zest and always ready to do every task you offer, teens need to be inspired and motivated every now and again. A sprinkle of creativity will not only encourage your students, but also prepare them for all future situations when they have to innovate and improvise. Start small – show them that grammar doesn’t have to be boring. You can add some spice to it by using funnier activities or games. Grammar Games series by J. Hadfield, Teaching Grammar Creatively by G. Gerngross, H. Puchta and S.Thornbury or Grammar Games and Activities for Teachers by P. Watcyn-Jones might provide you with some ideas or even lesson plans.

Below I will also share some favourite activities of mine.

For this activity, prepare a ball of wrapped paper. Write a question or any bit of target grammar on each piece of paper, then wrap them around each other.

The students pass the ball in a circle, preferably with some music on.

When the music stops the student who has the ball unwraps one piece of paper, reads the question and answers it.

We often use it to practise question-answer format with various tenses. However, you can ask teens to spot and correct a mistake in phrases written on pieces of paper, or even fill the gap.

Prepare two sets of cards. The first set should include the fields one can be an expert in. Write something funny or unexpected like ‘gardening’, ‘penguins’, ‘ufology’ or ‘fishing’. The other set of cards will include some pieces of target grammar, such as names of the tenses, signal words, comparatives or superlative forms, modals, etc. A student takes out the field card and you welcome the world greatest expert on fishing. Other students should ask any questions about fishing. Before answering every new question, the expert takes a grammar card which must be used in the answer.

Story Cubes are sets of cubes with pictures which come in different thematic sets. Their main focus is storytelling, but who said you can’t use them for teaching grammar? Story cubes can be easily used with any type of grammar practice. Ask teenagers to make sentences with target grammar structures, be it Past Simple or conditionals, and share them on the board or read aloud. Throw two dice each to practise comparatives or use them in a small group to write a story in narrative tenses.

https://www.amazon.com/Rorys-Story-Cubes-Original-Gamewright/dp/B006HVMK8Q

There are a lot of variations of grammar auctions. It is an amazing way to get the students involved and add excitement. Also, grammar auction is a useful tool for developing error correction skills. Before you start, make sure that teens are familiar with the concept of an auction. Divide the class into small groups or pairs and give them a sheet of sentences which contain mistakes. Give each team a limit of fake money. Set a maximum bid and let the students plan which sentences they are going to bid for. Then, they bid one by one. If they bid the highest, they have a chance to correct the sentence. If they do so correctly, they win the amount of money bid, but if it is wrong they lose the money. The winners are the team with the most money at the end of the game.

You can also create a set of cards which is based on your current grammar needs and ask students to create the sentences. When their sentence is ready, let them decide how sure they are about its accuracy and how much their bid is.

All in all, delivering grammar to teenage students is not always easy. However, contextualized, meaningful and creative instruction will bear fruitful and definitely be rewarding both for teacher and learners.

Young Learners and Grammar

Of all the things we teach, most would agree grammar is one of the most challenging.

Try These 4 Methods to Teach Grammar to Young Learners

It Needs to Be Clear

Children aren’t good at understanding abstract concepts and grammar rules, specially young learners. That’s why we need clear contexts that help them connect and associate with the language. One way to achieve this is through theme based instruction. It is important because in early language learning it provides an ideal environment for constructing meaning. In theme based teaching, the curriculum is organized around a theme. Then, within a thematic framework, all the language concepts are interrelated and presented as a whole. Teachers also need to adapt the language to the developmental level of the students and choose the activities to suit a variety of learning styles and multiple intelligences. The advantage is that by working around a theme students have many opportunities to find patterns and connections, experience attractive activities with varied content. All this facilitates interaction with other kids their age.

It Needs to Be Motivating and Interesting

While learning in general, students need to feel as if the are progressing but there also needs to be some challenge. If it’s too difficult they will be disheartened and if it’s too easy they will loose interest. Using games to teach grammar is an incredible option because they give kids an opportunity to interact with others in a natural way. This is important since the construction of meaning also has a social dimension, especially in a language classroom. Games, role-plays and group activities motivate students and enhance learning too. The social dimension of games and classroom rituals is another way in which the brain can attach meaning. The brain searches for meaning through patterning. It looks for patterns as it organizes information. Since young learners i search for meaning in the activities we provide for them, we must be sure to create meaningful experiences from which they construct their own patterns of understanding. Once the students have learned a concept, they can practice it in partners and small groups. The social relationships of partner and small group activities add to the richness of the learning experiences.

Here are some examples of simple activities that you can do with your young learners:

It Needs to Be Simple

Children have a limited amount of language at their disposal and this makes analyzing language difficult for them. Also the vocabulary needs to be simple and familiar so they can focus on the grammar they are learning. According to language acquisition, the language should be as simple and natural as possible. For instance, if the past tense is being taught, it shouldn’t be postponed until students are able to analyze it. What is essential is whether the input is comprehended or not. The grammatical details of a message generally don’t affect the comprehensibility. On the other hand, the context surrounding the verbal message and the vocabulary used to communicate it, affect comprehension much more,especially in the early stages of language acquisition. Making content meaningful and interesting for them may well be the most significant factors of all.

Review and Revise

Children need many opportunities to review and revise the language. This is to help them retain what they have learned and to feel confident. There are many activities that can be used to practice as well as review grammar. Reviewing doesn’t have to be boring at all. Don’t use the same activities you used to learn or practice. Make sure to use activities that are a bit different from others you used before and choose ones you are certain they will enjoy.

What we teach can certainly motivate our students to learn and also how well they retain.

We need to be very aware that it’s not only what we teach but also how.

Teaching grammar for young learners: children learn languages differently to adults

James Pengelley

In spite of our criticisms, one of the confusing things to make clear is that we don’t discourage teachers from teaching grammar entirely. Even though students may to an extent (especially in Hong Kong!) judge a teacher by how effective they think their grammar lessons are (or even how closely their teacher’s grammar lessons conform to the students’ expectations of what a grammar lesson should be), grammar does play an important role in language learning – especially in the early stages of the process where a new language can seem very contradictory, lacking structure and rules and disorganized. In this situation, your “pattern-hungry brain” strives to make order from the chaos – and this is where grammar teaching comes into its own.

However, it is important to keep the needs and interests of your learners at heart: children learn very differently and process information (especially languages) in a very different way to adults – and so your grammar lessons ought to reflect this.

How is it different to teaching adults?

In many ways, the main ones we focus on here are motivation, processing language, analysis of “form” and the types of tasks that are useful.

Young learners have different motivations to learn

In the most basic sense, younger learners differ from adults in the reason they learn. Typically, but not always, adult are choosing to be in your lesson. There are of course exceptions to this: the learner who needs to pass an exam (the exam is more motivating than being in your class), or the student whose boss tells them that English study is a contractual obligation. However as a generalization, we might say that adults tend to be intrinsically motivated.

Whereas younger learners typically study English because it’s on their school curriculum or because their parents make them. I’m yet to meet a young learner to enrolled in an English course because that’s how they wanted to spend their Saturday mornings.

Young learners process language differently

We know from observations of children, whose brains and language processing centres continue to develop until into early adulthood, process language differently. Part of this is related to cognitive development: we know that a classroom activity based around the possible merits and disadvantages of building a casino next to a primary school isn’t going to generate much discussion with a group of 7 year old learners (they have a limited ability to engage in abstract thought and logical reasoning). It’s also partly to do with language development too. Children learn their first language by identifying the most relevant content words in the context of their own experience. Mum, dada, outside…..these are often the most common words babies learn first. We also know that just before children reach puberty, they go through a lexical explosion as the brain shifts gears, preparing it for adulthood. Children, especially young children, are repetitive learners – repetition in context is the keystone to making progress.

This suggests that children engage with language, and learn it best when it is meaningful and relevant, there are plenty of examples and opportunities to practice, the meaning of the message is the primary focus of any form of communication, and that lexical complexity (and our expectations of this) should be graded loosely on the basis of age.

In this sense, we say that communication in young learner classrooms needs to be meaning driven, in that the priority needs to be communication and negotiation of the message, and the anlaysis of the form and grammar comes secondary to this. This can be a challenge, especially in classrooms where declarative knowledge (e.g. This is the present perfect, or the noun form of procedural is procedure) tends to predominate traditional teaching approaches.

Young learners enjoy very different types of tasks

So how does this effect the types of tasks we choose for our young learners? Well, as a generalization we might say that activities should:

Be meaning driven, with a secondary focus on form

We reinforce a focus on grammar forms by maximizing repetition

Tasks should be age appropriate

Tasks should reflect what our learners might need to do/say/use in their daily lives

That the tasks are enjoyable and challenging, relative to cognitive development of the learners

Ultimately, you need to remember that what works for adults won’t always work with kids. This means that the traditional practice tasks that you might have used to great success might have limited application for your young learners. This includes: controlled practice gap-fills, Mill drill type tasks (e.g. Have you been to Australia? Yes, I have. Have you eaten pasta in Italy? No, I haven’t. Have you seen the hickey on Mr. Johnson’s neck? No, I haven’t.) and long-winded, meta-language laden teacher presentations (SNORE!)

So here are a few ideas of tasks that work best with young learners….

Use chants and rhymes

Chants and rhymes are a ubiquitous feature of young childhood – If I were to ask you to finish the following sentences, I bet 99% of you could…..so here’s a test:

— Ring-a-ring a rosie…..

— Hickory dickory dock….

— Frere Jacques….frere Jacques….

Why do these stick with you well beyond your childhood years? Because they are repetitive. Repetition is one of the key elements we discussed earlier: it’s one way that the developing brain cements neural processes and pathways and reinforces them as “useful” and necessary to preserve.

How does this apply to grammar lessons with young learners? Well, next time you want to introduce you learners to a particulary structure, try turning it into a chant….does this sound like something you already do when you “drill” target language? Well it should. The key difference here is that you can add rhythm to it to make it catchier and a little bit “stickier” like a nursery rhyme.
For example, I wanted my students to design a poster where they reinvented uses for common objects. So, to introduce the phrases to this, I sat everyone in a circle, and put my hand in a bag containing
some of the objects, and described it to the students:

You can use it for cooking, it’s made of metal.

You can use to for phone calls, it’s made of plastic.

It helps you to study, it’s made of paper.

Notice that all of these phrases follow the same basic stress pattern. Look at the following rhythms that match the phrases above (small dots = weak syllable, O = stressed syllable):

Now try saying the rhythm repetitively…see if you can get into a bit of a groove with is, and then add your own example to teach your students.

Note that this is also a really good way to introduce and reinforce classroom language like “can I borrow a pen”, “I don’t understand” or “can you say that again please”. These are phrases I chant with my students immediately before we begin work on any task, as a reminder to them of what to do in case they run into difficulties, which in turn helps them to stay on track and use more English.

Interestingly, it also works quite well with voice control activities where you can drill language using different voices, emotions and speeds. Try playing with target phrases using quiet, angry, robot, slow motion, shy or super happy voices.

Kids love stories and narrative play

As much as nursery rhymes are a prominent feature in everyone’s childhood, stories and books are just as important for language development. Within the language classroom, stories allow for several key components that reinforce language learning: they present authentic language in context, they usually present lots of visual support to match the text and they are often repetitive (especially books for younger children).

When choosing a story to “teach” from, try to focus on:

In this way, hopefully you can see that allowing learners to make mistakes is a central part of working with children, and that encouraging them to identify mistakes and correct their own work is a very useful way for them to study grammar because constructing a text beforehand allows them to deal with meaning first.

Authentic language use is more engaging and more meaningful

As we said before, focusing on authentic language use is a priority with young learners. Many educational boards that set local and national curricula will publish lists of texts that they expect their students to be able to deal with or produce by a certain age. These are like gold dust for language teachers who might only see their students once or twice a week.

By focusing on materials and contexts that are already familiar to students, there is less of a cognitive load on the learners when trying to apply and integrate new language. It also means that the language that is produced is more likely to be a useful and meaningful text, rather than “a list of sentences”, which is something I see written on too many lesson plans than I’d like to admit.

A couple of ways of exploiting authentic language use in your lessons include:

Integrating skills reflects the way language is used in the real world

We also want to ensure that our language learning environment reflects the way our students encounter language in the real world as much as possible. This means that more often than not, our students are given the chance to respond to texts, reformulate their ideas and extend their abilities by applying language using as many skills as possible.

While the focus of your lesson might be grammar, it’s important that this grammar focus is situated in the context of a range of opportunities to practice as many skills as possible (think of it as providing opportunities for learners to process the information using their eyes (reading), their ears (listening), their mouths (speaking) and their hands (writing).

So for example, a focus on question forms, might be situated in the context of a lesson where students have to role play an interview, but then write up the interview into a newspaper article or summary.

A nice example of this would be to use some of Chris Hadfield’s videos recorded on the international space station where he answers common questions about life in space. Typically in the Pre-task stage, I would have students write lists of things they do everyday on earth, or how they do a particular thing on earth. In this example, Chris is shown making a sandwich in space, so I would have my learners make a list of their daily routines, and then discuss how these might be different if they were to do them in space.

Next, in the Main task activity, we watch the video, stopping it at key points and discussing it as a class in relation to how it is different for astronauts and why (e.g. why don’ they use bread for sandwiches? Have my learners ever made a crumb-free sandwich? What normally happens to the crumbs?).

Then in the Post-task stage, learners are asked to plan questions to interview an astronaut. This is where the grammar focus comes in. I ask them to write questions they’d like, then I reformulate them on the board and we drill them using variations of voice control as we discussed earlier. Students them do the role play with as many different partners as time permits. This is all with the aim of collecting information for them to write a meaningful response to the interview they had with one person in the form of an article or summary.

Notice how the grammar focus doesn’t take priority in the lesson, it’s not the first thing students see or do, but it does follow a meaning-driven (often comprehension-based) task. I also avoid common forms of metalanguage (like auxiliary, past participle) – though depending on the level, I could have the learners group their questions into related “forms”…..for example present/past/present perfect….or questions with “do” questions with “be” questions without “do”.

Источники информации:

• http://skyteach.ru/2020/01/26/how-to-teach-grammar-to-young-learners/
• http://skyteach.ru/2019/05/07/principles-of-teaching-grammar-to-teens/
• http://busyteacher.org/23394-young-learners-grammar.html
• http://hongkongtesol.com/blog/teaching-grammar-young-learners-children-learn-languages-differently-adults