Tiêu đề Types of Grammar Practice Activities ✅

Types of Grammar Practice Activities Let's have a look at various grammar practice activities: Controlled activities ● Repetition - students are asked to repeat what the teacher has said or what they have heard ● Drills - repeating structural patterns through oral practice The role of drilling and repetition in communicative teaching has been discussed a lot. On one hand, the main focus of the communicative approach is on natural, authentic communication with others. On the other hand, a learner needs a 'bank' of language to refer to. This ‘bank’ is often formed by having a number of experiences, and/or by using specific language meaningfully and with 'fluent accuracy'. Experts say repetition plays a big role in this process, so let's look at some reasons why. Drills can be useful teaching and learning material because they provide practice of small, manageable chunks of language. This helps to build confidence and gives learners an automatic use of structures and expressions that have been drilled. Repeating a communicative situation/task more than once gives a learner a chance to gain confidence, increase fluency and attempt more complex language structure or vocabulary (Thornburry: 2010). Communicative language teaching often highlights the importance of spontaneous communication outside the classroom and reinforces the idea of making lessons as creative and engaging as possible. Adding repetition elements is sometimes associated with boredom. Because of this we ask, how can we balance both? Scott Thornburry (2010) suggests the idea of modifying the task we ask the students to repeat, changing the amount of scaffolding, or visual support we provide to the students (having less and less text so that they could practice a dialogue independently); changing the mode, or the main skill we practice (from speaking to writing, for example); reducing the time allocated for the task in pairs, or asking students to do the same task in a new small group provides variety and spontaneity we seek in teaching communicatively. How else can grammar be practiced in a meaningful, engaging way? Let's look at some examples: ● Repeat in the manner of the word. Ask students to repeat a sentence with the target grammar item softly, loudly, sadly or happily. ● Disappearing dialogue. Write a dialogue on the board and give students some time to practice it. After the students are comfortable with the dialogue, omit a word or phrase and ask students to perform it. This time they have less of a written record and are required to remember the dialogue. Repeat the above stage until all the dialogue has gone. ● Running dictation. Type or write a short text on a piece of paper and paste it on the wall. Ask students to work in groups. Each group sends their

travelled by plane. ● Two truths and a lie. Tell the students to write down three sentences about themselves, two true sentences and one that is a lie. Each of the sentences should contain the target grammar structure (e.g. I have /haven’t done this; I’d like to...I wouldn’t like to, etc.). One student reads her/his sentences aloud. The others try to guess which statements are true and which is a lie. ● Guessing games. The students have to find out what a mystery object is or who a mystery person is by asking 20 YES/NO questions. Young learners can be asked to work on their own and prepare a description of an animal. Other students have to ask questions using the target structure (e.g. Does it have wings? or Can it fly?) in order to guess what animal the person described. ● Quizzes. The students have to write general knowledge questions about history (e.g. When did World War II begin? to practice the Past Simple Tense) or geography (e.g. What is the name of longest river in the world/in our country?) to practice superlatives. After they have prepared the questions, the students are divided in two teams and ask each other the prepared questions. Free practice activities Here the students have complete freedom in the language they produce. The teacher can't predict what will be said before the activity begins. Students have the greatest opportunity to personalize the language, experiment, and incorporate previously learned grammar and other language points. ● Information gap An information gap is created when two (or more) students have different bits of information. They have to share these pieces if they want to understand the whole thing. They have to talk to each other to close the information gap. We can make information-gap activities closed, the students can use only specific language items, or open, they can use a range of language items. ● Other free practice activities include role plays, simulation, debates, discussions, composing and telling stories, etc. Source: World Learning. (2019). The Role of Grammar Practice. In “Teaching Grammar Communicatively” [MOOC].