Vast amounts of daily news content are widely available and easily accessible, and they can be converted into materials for intermediate and advanced ESL classes. This article will describe the why and how for integrating news media sources into a multiskills ESL classroom. Through the news, students are immediately engaged with the material…

Describes a classroom grammatical activity in which the teacher isolates typical sentences from textbooks and writes the individual words on placards. Describes how students are each given a placard and asked to form a sentence. Reports that students enjoyed this activity and began to get the feel of language and sentence structure. (RS)

Second in a series of books designed to make learning to write and understanding the structure of language easy and fun, this book gives students the opportunity to see how each of the parts of speech functions in a sentence. The focus of the book is twofold: to help students learn to recognize and write complete sentences and to familiarize…

First in a series of books that illustrate the functions of words in sentences, this book uses cartoon characters (a different "Humpty" for each part of speech) to help make learning grammar easier by associating an abstract concept with a visual image. The book introduces each part of speech and offers practice pages where students can reinforce…

Most students today have been reared on television and have had only slight brushes with the parts of grammar. Nevertheless, a variety of sentence pattern exercises and sentence combining lessons based on the students' own writing can be used to augment, challenge and improve students' writing skills and vocabulary. In the first exercise, students…

Four classroom exercises for second language instruction are described. In the first exercise, the teacher tells a story from a skeleton outline. Then the teacher pairs the students, provides them with a series of questions about the story, and invites them to cross out the ones they do not like and then to ask their preferred questions of another…

Argues that the teaching of grammar supplements learners' natural tendency to formulate and test hypotheses about the language. Complicated linguistic analyses can impede this process. Pedagogical grammar can be made less formal by keeping the analysis and metalanguage to the minimum. (36 references) (Author/CK)

Relative clauses are useful for differentiating clearly between similar ideas. Exercises that demonstrate this purpose of relative clauses, or other grammatical constructions, can provide useful practice for students. More generally, an approach to teaching grammar that asks what purpose a structure serves can enable teachers to design exercises…

Describes a device or "game" using 3x5 cards to divide sentences in such a way as to guide the language learner to anticipate grammatical structures; to make him aware that grammar, as well as vocabulary, conveys meaning. (EJS)

The purpose of this study was to explore the effects on college students of audiotaping classroom assignments. As part of their course requirements, students were asked to submit both a hard copy of their work plus an audiotape containing their assignments. During a 3-year period, 231 undergraduate education majors enrolled in 12 courses at 3…

A collection of 56 classroom games to be used in grammar instruction in English as a second language includes five game categories: (1) traditional, competitive games modified to allow students to work in small groups and show themselves and the teacher how much or how little grammar they know; (2) Silent Way or Silent Way-inspired exercises in…

Three activities used with first-year French students are described: (1) drawing pictures by following directions which demonstrates knowledge of subjects and prepositions, (2) reading a poem in French and rewriting it in French prose, and (3) learning numbers through role-plays involving money. (PMJ)

Drawing on a program used successfully in the classroom for 20 years, this book presents 15 reproducible skills lessons that teach students in grades 4 through 8 essential grammar rules in an engaging, meaningful way. The book uses games, puzzles, mazes, and model sentences that tell amusing stories while teaching rules. Units in the book cover…

Pupils need to study grammar that is useful and functional. How much stress should the language arts place upon pupils understanding the eight parts of speech in traditional grammar? Good teaching emphasizes proceeding from the concrete to the semi-concrete in teaching-learning situations, then the abstract phase of learning needs to be…