Teaching grammar
I find motivation a key aspect in teaching grammar. It depends on the age group a lot, but the vision of a successful career, ability to study abroad or just being cool by learning new language can be very tempting.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningenglish/
Activities
Questionnaires
Prepare a series of question prompts on a topic. For example, if your topic was sports you could have the following question prompts:
- / like sports?
- what / sports/play?
- what / sports / watch on television?
- ever / win / sports award? etc.
First interview the student using the prompts. Then ask the student to do the same for you. When you have finished, review any special vocabulary or grammar that came up. Tell the student that for the next class he or she must prepare a similar list of questions on a different topic to interview you.
Getting to Know You Bingo
I decided to use an icebreaker activity called Getting to know you Bingo. Even though this idea is not originally mine, it’s impossible to acknowledge the author of this game, because there is no evidence of who came with this activity first.
This activity is great for any age group from elementary school to adult classes and is quite quick and simple. It all starts with a question “Find someone who…”, the rest of the question is to be found in the table.
Before:Create a table of easy followings of the question “Find someone who…”, ideally 4x4 (20 in total) or 5x5 (25 in total).
Instructions: Go around the class and ask each person one of these questions. If you find someone who can answer “Yes” to it, you can cross this question out. When you have all the questions crossed out, you must yell “BINGO”! Who yells it first, wins this game.
Example:
Note: This table was created for our class of didactics (for the class of students in their 20s). Adapt the questions to your class (you cannot expect to find someone who has a tattoo in a class of 10-year-old children.
