Broken Sentences

Let’s face it, grammar stinks! There, I said it. It stinks to teach, it stinks to learn, it just plain stinks. Whenever I even say the word, my students cringe. But there’s no denying its importance in English. It is vital to the development of writing and oral skills and it’s something that needs to be practiced daily in a mostly-ESL environment. I tell my students that practicing good grammar is like flossing or working out; you don’t have to do it, but it’s always a good idea (although that doesn’t seem to sell them).

I wanted to try something a little more, well, fun for this week’s grammar lesson so I introduced them to the broken sentence. I’m sure this is not an original idea, but basically it’s a sentence that has been scrambled and the students have to “fix” it. The way that I did it requires a few minutes of extra prep time, but trust me, it was totally worth it. The kids were INTO IT! Here’s what I did today:

I printed a few questions and sentences on a piece of paper (large font/bold works best) then cut them into strips.

Cut each sentence up into individual words and mix them so they’re out of order.

Set up numbered stations around the room and had them copy the sentences into their grammar notebooks.

For an added bonus, I offered 10 cool points (our sticker system) if they could correctly answer or ask questions to match the broken sentence. For example, we’ve been studying second and third conditional and one of the broken sentences was:

·         If you met Justin Bieber, what would you say?

They would have to answer:

·         If I met Justin Bieber, I would …

This is a really great activity to trick engage students in grammar. J If you have any fun grammar activities, please share them. Thanks, and have a great night!