Ask Elaine: Five Steps to Teaching Grammar
Work/Life English 's founder, Elaine Kirn-Rubin, has over 40 years of experience teaching, developing, and publishing effective English language learning and teaching tools. Send us an email below if you want your question covered in the next "Ask Elaine" post! No matter what the “key learning points” are, an effective grammar mini-lesson plan is likely to have at least five (5) steps or stages: 1) Presentation with Recognition, 2) Demonstrating Comprehension, 3) Grammar Explanation, 4) Practice Exercises, and 5) Communicative Expression. 1. Presentation is a context that offers plenty of examples. It can be live-action, visual, printed, verbal, audio, animated, or a combination of several forms. For instance, here’s a strip story with many instances of third-person singular verbs in present statements (from WL-E 3G: Chapter 4 / Work, Part One, p. 58). This particular presentation consists of 8 frames (panels) on the subject of “Job Searches.” The captions ...