[ELTWeekly Volume 8, Issue 11 | June 27, 2016 | ISSN 0975-3036]

This year, I’m retiring from coaching my middle school’s award-winning speech and debate team. It has been an amazing 12 years of laughter, tears, frustration, and pride. I look back at my students, at both those who have won trophies at the state and national level, and those who merely learned how to raise their hand in class without allowing a tremor to tip off their fears.

I think about my first year as a coach when I insisted that the grade point average (GPA) be dropped as a factor in deciding who could join the elective. I think about my last year as a coach and the over 150 students who applied to join the team.

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[ELTWeekly Volume 8, Issue 11 | June 27, 2016 | ISSN 0975-3036]

Of course, teachers know correct grammar rules, but it’s one thing to know them, and another thing to effectively teach them, and transmit them so that students not only understand the rules, but also apply them correctly.

In my experience, grammar shouldn’t be taught “by the book”. At least not in teaching English as a second language. That’s not what students are there for. They don’t want to know all of these rules; they’re not interested in them. They want to learn English. They want to speak, read, and write in English. So, how do we as ESL teachers teach them essential grammar and give them what we need, rather than boring them to death with “the rules”. It’s actually quite simple: by teaching grammar in context. And in fun ways.

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[ELTWeekly Volume 8, Issue 11 | June 27, 2016 | ISSN 0975-3036]

Writing a lesson plan will ensure that you are prepared for your class and will make it run more smoothly. It is important to break the material up into several sections and choose activities suitable for each. Knowing approximately how much time an activity will take is important, but after the first lesson you may need to adjust things accordingly. It is best to be flexible seeing as different classes will respond to material differently. If at any point students struggle, you will have to dedicate more time to instruction or drilling before moving on to practice activities. For the purposes of this example let’s assume that an English class is forty-five minutes long.

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