In this post, I share some of my favourite grammar-based speaking activities and demonstrate how to use seating plans and grammar cards to make grammar learning more effective.
Even mentioning the word grammar can be enough to have students wailing in protest. Which is a shame because I think there’s a lot of value in focused grammar instruction followed by a bunch of enjoyable practice. I’ve found that games and speaking activities can be a fun way of tricking students into learning English grammar so I’m sharing some activities that have worked for me. The activities use the grammar cards featured in this set of grammar posters / flash cards from my TES.com store. This is a set of cards for multiple English grammar structures. Each card represents a different structure (e.g. Present Simple Tense – Positive Sentences). It shows how to form the structure and gives an example:
The Onion Speaking Activities
Known as The Onion because it uses the onion seating plan I wrote about in my post on effective seating plans:
There are various activities you can do once in this set-up. For activities one to four, when time is up, the students on the outside stand up and move to clockwise to a new seat. They then repeat the activity with a new partner. For activity five, the students don’t change partners.
- Give each student on the inside of the onion a different grammar card. The students then have two minutes to take turns making sentences that use the structure on their card (swapping the card between themselves if necessary). Then repeat with the card hidden.
- Give each student on the inside of the onion a different grammar card. The student with the card begins a conversation using the structure on the card. The students continue the conversation for two minutes. If they get stuck or the conversation reaches a natural conclusion, they start again using the same structure.
- Share the whole pack of cards between all the students – they should have about 5 cards each. The students have two minutes to take turns announcing the grammar structure to their partner who then attempts to make a sentence without seeing the card while the first student checks their grammar and assists them as necessary.
- Share the whole pack of cards between all the students. The students have two minutes to take turns to make sentences from their cards.
- Give every student on the inside of the onion a different grammar card. That student makes a sentence with the grammar structure on the card. Their partner replies. The card is then passed clockwise and they begin again with the card they receive. After a few minutes, swap the cards to the outside players and repeat.
Memory
Put students in groups of four or five. Hand them a pack of cards and a list of all the grammar structures on the cards. They lay out the cards face down. One player acts as the caller. The rest of the group take turns which consist of the caller calling out a grammar structure and the student trying to find it by turning over a card. If they find it, they show the group, announce the structure, and make a sentence using the card, which the group then repeats chorally. The player with the most cards at the end wins.
Milling Activity with Cards
Clear the room of tables and chairs. Give all the students a card. Everyone stands up. They take turns to find a partner and interact using the cards. As with the onion activities, you can vary what they do:
- Begin a conversation with the grammar structure on their card.
- Have a short conversation only using the given grammar structure.
- Challenge their partner to use the grammar structure correctly.
- Challenge their partner to identify the grammar structure from the example on the card (or their own example).
- Challenge their partner to describe how to form the given grammar structure.
When they have both used their card, they swap cards and find a new partner.
Turn-Based Story Telling
This can be done in small groups or as a whole class. It’s probably more fun as a whole class (and you can support the students more), but students get more turns in small groups. This is how to play:
- Nominate a writer (often it will be the teacher in whole group games).
- Either:
- Give everyone a card (easier as students can prepare their sentences)
- Put the cards face down in a pile in the middle of the group (more difficult, but good for improving students’ speed at thinking creatively). Students take turns to pick a card from the pile.
- The students sit in a circle.
- Any student can start. They must make a sentence using the grammar structure on their card. The writer records their sentence on the board.
- The student to the left of the first player now does the same – making the second sentence using their card. The game continues until everyone has had a turn, the cards run out, or the story reaches a good conclusion.
- When complete, the story is presented to the class.
- A good follow-up (which should actually happen before the presentations) is for the group to edit the story themselves. A good way to ensure that everyone takes part is to have the students retain the cards they’ve used and then check their own sentences using the cards. After that, open the editing up to the whole group.
Hot-Seat
Students sit like this:
One student sits in the hot-seat and the cards are shared out between the other students. They take turns to ask the student questions based on their grammar cards. Similar to the onion and activities, they might challenge the student to:
- Make a sentence with the grammar structure.
- Identify the grammar structure from the example.
- Explain the grammar structure step-by-step.
- Reply to the example sentence.
After everyone has asked a couple of questions, a new student takes the hot-seat and they start again.
Musical Hot Potato
I’ve also written about this one before in my post of great ESL games warmers. Here’s how to play:
- Everyone sits in a circle.
- Choose some music.
- The teacher has the pile of cards.
- Give one student a potato (a soft ball).
- Play the music for about 10 seconds.
- Stop the music.
- The teacher selects a card and the student holding the potato must stand up and speak a sentence using the grammar structure on the card (or any of the other challenges described above). Everyone else must listen carefully – if anyone else speaks, they also take a turn to speak.
- Repeat until the song is finished.
Optionally, you can have multiple potatoes and have students have short conversations using the given grammar structure.
If you think you’d like some lovely, colour-coded English grammar posters and flashcards, you can buy the whole 93-poster set from TES.COM. They also come in smaller packs for all the different English tenses and aspects, as well as conditional sentences.
If you know any other good activities for learning grammar, please comment below!
Credits
All the images on the cards are from freepik.com. Specifically:
- Pink Tyrannosaur – Designed by Freepik
- Other Pink Dinosaur – Designed by Freepik
- Green Dinosaur – Designed by Freepik
- Cute Dinosaur Headshots – Designed by Lesyaskripak / Freepik
AB Teaching Materials 