Most teachers spend a lot of time working on learners’ grammatical accuracy. To make sure your students improve their fluency too, be sure not to skip this important step. What step?
What’s wrong with this picture?
You start your lesson with an article that contextualizes the lesson’s grammar. After eliciting its meaning, you illustrate usage, and use a chart to show form. You give your students some controlled exercises and end the lesson with an extended communicative task. Why do so many students trip over the target grammar? Did they not get enough focused exercises?
Don’t skip less-controlled practice
The problem is jumping straight from controlled practice to free practice with nothing in between. …
Your students get great at using the target grammar when they have time to think about each sentence, but they need more support to be able to have a conversation. Exercises that allow for more than one right answer, but are still fairly controlled, give learners an opportunity to start building fluency.
- Information-gap tasks
- Find someone who…
- Card games (e.g. pick up a card, look at the word, make a true sentence in 10 seconds, and keep the card)
- Native speaker party games (e.g. Balderdash® Taboo®) (easy to adapt for lower levels)
What about your grammar textbook?
Only one grammar series, Focus on Grammar, includes each stage of a lesson in every unit. That’s why thousands of teachers around the world use it in their classrooms. So, if you want fluency with your accuracy, talk to your Pearson representative about Focus on Grammar today.
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