Grammar Exercises

Grammar Exercises

Damaged Property
Grammar Point– Using past tense and passives
A brief description of a an item is presented to the students. For example “My phone doesn’t work.” The teacher has written the reason on a piece of paper and instructs students to ask questions to narrow down the reason such as “Did it get hit by something?” The teacher can give hints “I was at the shore when it stopped working” to keep the game going. The person who guesses correctly gets to choose the next damaged item or ask the first question. This game is best done with true life stories.

Variation: If you have recently studied a story, you can pretend to be the character and have the reason be related to the story.

Why have you got a monkey in your bag?
Grammar Point: Why? Because…
Students are each given a list of questions or can write their own questions – the normal to the ridiculous. Each student asks a partner one of the questions and the other student has to come up with a plausible answer using the pattern S + V, because S + V.

Questioner: Why have you got a monkey in your bag?
Answerer: I have a monkey in my bag because I will take it to the vet today.
Questioner: Why have you got a bottle of aspirin in your bag?
Answerer: I have a bottle of aspirin in my bag because I have a headache.

Jumbled sentences
Grammar Point – word order / directions / prepositions of space
Choose a sentence and write it on the board in a jumbled order. For example: “us very mother nachos elegant just served my” and students must rearrange them.
"My very elegant mother just served us nachos" (mnemonic device for the planets)

Variation: Write the words separately on a piece of paper and each student holds a piece of paper. The chosen student has to give directions to the other students to move to create the correct sentence (Steve, stand between Jose and Juanita”)

Evidence
Grammar Point – Using Modals / Must be / Can’t be
The students assigned as “detectives” have their backs to the board, and the teacher writes a situation description. For example “It must be raining outside” and the other students are witnesses who give evidence. A witness might say “Her clothes are wet.

If I had a Million Dollars
Grammar Point – Conditionals
Students imagine that a large amount of money (can be the local currency) is won by the person / team who can think of the most original, altruistic, or practical use of the money. You can have this related to a recent lesson or to a local cause. The winner is the one who meets whatever criteria you have set up.

Variation: The students can also put together a plan on how to use the money, set up a foundation, start a program, etc. They can make a presentation to the class with details.

What do you see?
Grammar Point – There is / there are
Show students a picture from a magazine or a book. In groups, the students make a list of all the things they see using “there is / are”. One group presents their list while the other groups check off any repeats. The next group presents any “leftovers” from their list, and so on until all the things are listed.

Variation: The same exercise can be used for “to be + verbing” if the picture is active. The woman is dancing. The children are watching a movie. The cat is running, etc.

Prepositional Pictures
Grammar Point – prepositions of place, time, direction
After teaching prepositions, give the students some time with pictures of people / things in different places. Boggles world has some wonderful flash cards that can be used for this. Please see this website: http://bogglesworldesl.com/prepositions.htm

The class is separated into small groups of 5 or 6 people. One student draws a picture, one student writes the sentence, the other students give suggestions. Begin with a simple sentence like “The witch drives the car.” The students then continue adding prepositional phrases until the sentence is very long and the picture is quite detailed. The students then share their pictures with another group and that group tries to cite all the details.

Whose is it?
Grammar Point – Conditionals, past tense, descriptors, reported speech
Each student brings a bag in with an object that is important to them. Students are put into groups of 6-8. They put the bags in the middle of their circle and they are mixed around. Each student then draws a bag and makes sure it is not their item. If it is, everyone puts their bags back and mixes them up and draws until each student has someone else’s item. Students remove the item and decide the story behind it. Each student has one minute in their group to tell a story about why the item is important to the owner. The owner then says “It is mine,” takes the item, and then tells the real story behind the item. That person then tells the imaginary story of the item they are holding. This continues until all students have their own items. Sometimes two students will have each other’s item and then another student will be instructed to begin.

Variation: Fear in a Hat – students write something on a piece of paper they are afraid of or that they know is a phobia. They put that paper in a hat. Each student then picks a paper and talks about why someone might be afraid of that thing.

Write Your Own Eulogy
Grammar Point – Future Tense, Past Tense or Past Perfect Progressive
Students are instructed to write their own eulogy (or someone they knew) and to include the things they want to accomplish and what they were doing when they “died”. For example, “She had been scaling Mt. Everest when she fell in an avalanche.” Students can share them aloud or they can exchange them and try to guess who wrote what.

N.B. – these last two can be very serious. Please instruct students on confidentiality. Use them with discretion.