When I was younger, I searched high and low for songs that would help me introduce a grammar point. But there were not many. There was the song Luka by Susan Vega, which has been used for ages to teach the past simple tense, and then I discovered the song Brighton in the Rain to…
I usually deal with complex grammar points, but this time I will share a set of activities focusing on just one verb: HAVE TO. It is quite simple, and students pick up the grammar quickly. However, it HAS TO be taught, and the following activities will hopefully help you. In this post, you will find…
English teachers looking to teach question formation in the present simple tense will find a variety of helpful activities here. These resources include a speaking activity called 444 Grammar Questions, a board game, an instructional video, and several interactive online exercises. All these activities are free to use in your English lessons and are designed…
Learning the -s ending for third-person singular verbs can be tricky. Here are three engaging activities that use Van Patten’s input processing method to help students grasp this important rule. 1. Video Activity: Guess the First Word This activity is designed to focus students on verb forms to determine subject pronouns. How it Works:In a…
Recently I have created a set of videos to teach the past simple tense in English. There is a video that helps students learn to form the past tense in the following situations:
Do your students struggle with the past simple tense? Do you want to make your teaching more effective and fun?
Grammar is very important. But grammar revision is often boring.
The aim of this post is to give you a set of materials to help you teach the difference between the present simple and continuous tenses. You can find several other resources on this topic here and here. Moreover, there is a great video by BBC called Grammar Gameshow.
Grammar Pac and Dictate are two online tools which help me teach English. Both of these tools are online and they are made for interactive whiteboards. Both of them provide a simple way to practise the things which have already been taught.
Imagine that even your most challenged students understand new grammar? Imagine that they discover the rules themselves? Imagine that your students ask you to test them on the topic you have just taught. All these things have happened to me after I started to use colourful teaching.
To teach the conjunctions of time, it is crucial that the students understand the meaning of the conjunctions. That is why I have created the following graphic organiser which I use to explain the meaning of the conjunctions: I print the picture and hand it out to my students. ADVERT: [showmyads] Then I explain the…
I have already taught the verb to be many times. But this year I failed exemplarily. So I stopped and spent a week planning a sequence of lessons to really teach this basic grammar point. In these posts, I would like to share the lesson plans and materials I have created. To be able to…
I remember the times in my teaching career when I dreaded teaching questions. I especially hated the questions in the past simple tense. After my explanation, students got confused and they often failed to produce even the most basic questions. Fortunately, the situation has changed. Nowadays, I look forward to teaching this grammar. I have…
The difference between the words BEEN and GONE is a nice example of how closely grammar and vocabulary are connected. Usually, when you use a grammar rule wrongly, the meaning does not change. However, in this case, the wrong usage changes the meaning of the sentence completely. ADVERT: [showmyads] To help you explain this grammar…
In this post, I would like to give away my book called GRAMMAR UP. This book uses a new, holistic approach to learning English grammar. In this book, you will practise your reading comprehension and grammar at the same time. When you take English in school, you learn one piece of grammar at a time….
“He must be joking!” I thought. I was shocked but I kept quiet. My friend Jane didn´t. “Why the hell should I throw all my work away?” she asked. We went silent and expected that Jane will be punished.
The SVOMPT rule is the most important rule in English. As there are very few declinations in English, the word order rule is the one that keeps the sentences understandable. If you do not apply this rule, your sentences will make no sense. <!– wp:more –> Unfortunately, there are very few textbook that teach this…
Reported speech is not easy but when it comes to reported questions students go mad. “There are so many rules to apply,” they whimper. “First, you have to change the question into an announcement and then you have to shift the tenses.” That was why I tried to simplify this procedure. <!– wp:more –> In…
Recently one of my readers asked me to write a post on USED TO, GET USED TO and BE USED TO. He wanted a clear infographic and some exercises to practise the grammar. So I did exactly that. I created an infographic, an online quiz and a simple worksheet to help you learn these phrases….
Reported speech is often considered very difficult. Students fear the backshifting of the tenses, because they often do not know the tenses very well. If they struggle with the formation of the past tense, you cannot expect them to recognize it and backshift it to the past perfect tense. To avoid all this hassle I…