As instructors, we’ve been told that beginning students cannot handle multiple paragraphs and more advanced grammatical concepts, such as infinitives or subordinating conjunctions. The aim of this post is to challenge that belief.
Cambridge University Press is hosting a panel for grammar week in March 2021, and we’ve been asked to come up with questions to explore with colleagues. I know exactly which question I want to ask. How do I move grammar practice into students’ meaningful use? After decades of […]
Here is a drawing-and-guessing activity from our new book, 60 Kinesthetic Grammar Activities (Alphabet Publishing) that gives students an opportunity to practice the imperative in a fun and meaningful way. The activity can easily be adapted to a socially-distanced classroom with partners sitting face-to-face and six-feet apart.
Last spring, Maissa and Bushra were discussing fall courses, and Bushra casually mentioned that she was not planning to take grammar. “It’s all online.” She said, “I don’t need it.” Bushra has a point. Youtube has made it possible for anyone with a cell phone to post a […]
What if there is not just one way to categorize and describe grammar? What if there are several? What if one grammar exists inside another and that exists inside a third? This view of the way language is organized for communication comes from Complex Systems Theory […]
UPDATE: Based on the popularity of this post, we got inspired, and are very excited to announce the upcoming publication of our new book by Alphabet Press, 60 Kinesthetic Grammar Activities! Please click here to find out more and order a copy. There are activities for everything from […]
Our recent presentation at the state TexTESOL was a blast! Here’s a link to the handout: Aligning OC & Pragmatics. We talked about pragmatics, grammar, vocabulary, and lexicogrammatical chunks. We laughed a lot too. The audience role-played two colleagues meeting for dinner at a TESOL conference, under slightly uncomfortable […]
Download: Sentence and Clause Connectors Every semester, I see my students holding enormous charts of transition words that they’ve downloaded from the Internet. I’ve never been a big fan of them. They usually give too much […]
Students rely on models to help them communicate accurately and effectively. How often do you see a student’s thesis statement modeled after one in the textbook? Words are swapped out, but the pattern of the sentence essentially remains the same. Swapping is a useful learning strategy, and one […]
Making tests that push our students enough but not too far can feel like one of the biggest challenges for teachers. Tests that are too easy may lead to a false assessment of proficiency. Those that are too hard can be discouraging to students, and challenging for teachers to grade. What we want […]
English Endeavors 