Your adult ESL students barely manage to politely smother their sighs and suppress the glaze from creeping across their eyes when they realize that today’s grammar lesson will be a review on comparative adjectives. You know they need the practice, and if pressed, they’re likely to admit it…even if only in their heads. Still, judging by their reactions, this is obviously not the time to bust out a worksheet, no matter how funny the questions on it may be.
You’re teaching adult ESL students who absolutely appreciate that comparative adjectives have clear rules—add -er, use ‘not as ___ as’ for slight differences, throw in ‘more’ for longer adjectives. Simple enough (unlike a heck of a lot of English grammar). But explaining rules isn’t the same as getting them to use the language. And right now, you need them engaged and talking because their polite acting skills aren’t fooling you. They’re bored before they’ve started.
Just as our taste buds hunger for something different, our students crave a break in the routine. And while you could use my three ways to make any grammar worksheet fun, sometimes activities created especially for a particular grammar concept are just what’s needed. The following activities will get them sitting up in their seats and take some of that performance pressure off you.
Activity #1: On-the-Spot Comparisons
Goal: Students link two possibly unrelated nouns together in a descriptive sentence with a comparative adjective.
Preparation: Create a stack of noun cards. These can be simply a noun spelled out on each card, an image to represent the noun, or an image with the term. Now is the perfect time to incorporate a little review of previously studied vocabulary words into your grammar review activity!
How to play:
Put students together in groups of 2-4. Give each group a stack of noun cards. Have one student from each group shuffle the cards and pass out an equal number to everyone in the group.
Choose, appoint, or otherwise have students decide who will go first. A quick round of paper-rock-scissors is pretty much always accepted as a fair way to decide on the first player.
The first student sets their card in the center of the table, face up. The remaining students take turns placing a noun card of their choice next to it and creating a comparative sentence to link the nouns. These sentences can use the nouns as given, like “An elephant is not nearly as small as a hamster.” Or, they could change the noun slightly for a sentence such as “A tiger’s tooth is sharper than a frog’s toe.”
Once a comparative adjective has been used, students may not use it again. If someone makes a grammar mistake related to comparative adjectives or cannot think of a sentence to make, they forfeit their turn. I prefer not to penalize students for making grammar mistakes unrelated to comparative adjective rules. I want them to feel free to dive into their creativity and use more complex sentences rather than sticking to very simple formulaic sentences.
Whoever uses up all their cards first wins.
What about the groups that finish early? Have them write down their favorite sentences to share with the rest of the class later. This is when you get the gems. Oh, and don’t miss the subscriber freebie at the end of this article…it’s perfect for this activity!
Activity #2: Fascinating Facts & Opinions with Comparative Adjectives
Goal: Students use the context of sentences to guess the missing comparative adjective.
Preparation: For page 1, make a half-page list of facts that incorporate comparative adjectives but leave a gap where the comparative adjective should be. Instead, provide the adjective in its base form. On the bottom half of the page, list an equal number of facts with the comparative adjectives underlined, highlighted, or in bold.
On page 2, reverse it. Page 1’s bottom sentences go on the top with the comparative adjectives replaced with blank lines. Page 1’s top sentences go to the bottom of page 2 with the missing comparative adjectives in the sentences marked. Now is a great time to use facts to go with whatever theme you have recently taught!
How to Play:
Pair up students with one as Student A and one as Student B. Give students the corresponding handout.
Student A reads aloud the first sentence from the top of their page, filling in the gap with the comparative adjective they think should be there. If they have guessed correctly, they win 5 points. Because Student B has all the answers at the bottom of their page, she/he is the one who awards or denies the points. If Student A’s guess is incorrect, they can try twice more. If they guess the second time correctly, they win 3 points. Third time is the charm? They get one point. But, if they missed all three times, Student B reads the sentence to them with the correct comparative adjective.
Now switch. Student B does the same with the first sentence at the top of their page. Repeat back and forth until they’ve completed all the sentences or time is up.
The winner is the one who won the most points.
Activity #3: Survey Says
Goal: Students ask questions using comparative adjectives, record answers, and write a one-sentence summary for the results of each question.
Preparation: Create a handout with questions and model answers (if your students will survey another class) for each. For example, Which do you think is smaller, an elephant or a whale? I think an elephant is smaller than a whale. Which language do you think is more difficult, Chinese or Tagalog? I think Tagalog is more difficult. Having model answers makes it easy for your students to give any necessary prompts to someone who is struggling to answer. If planning to have students survey others in another class, set up a begin and end time with the teacher of that class.
Be sure to choose a class that is either equal to or above yours in proficiency level and ask the teacher of that class to do a quick review on answering a comparative question with a full-sentence answer. I’ve found that telling the other class that part of the reason for the activity is for your students to practice speaking and that they should refuse to answer until the student has spoken the full question helps prevent students from rushing through to finish first.
Surveying another class:
Tell students that they will practice using comparative adjectives in a speaking activity with students from another class. Point out that practicing/reviewing is helpful for everyone, so they must make every attempt to get the other students to give full-sentence answers.
Surveying within your own class:
Tell students that they will practice using comparative adjectives in a speaking and listening activity with their classmates. Remind them that they must take the time to listen to each other’s answers in full.
How to do the activity:
Give each student your handout. First, have them fill in the blanks with the comparative form of the given adjectives. Next, they must ask as many students as possible all the questions. You can also have them choose a certain number of questions to ask based on the amount of time you want them to speak to each person.
Students go from person to person, ask the questions on their handouts and record the answers.
Once students have spoken with everyone or the time is up, have them write a short summary of their survey results. You may wish to provide some example sentences as a model for them to work from.
Pair up students and have them share their results.
The Bottom Line
Look, worksheets aren’t the enemy. They’re your reliable staple. They’re dependable and they get the job done. Your adult students even appreciate them for structured practice. But activities? They’re the side dishes that make the meal memorable. They complement rather than replace worksheets, and your students will appreciate them when that staple has been served three days in a row.
You don’t need activities all the time. Just when the routine needs a break (or when you know you’re going to be observed).
That’s it from me. See you in the next post!
Need some ready-to-use resources to teach or review comparative adjectives?
The following are available in my TpT store:
grammar guide & worksheets . . . | | | . . . task cards . . . | | | . . . linguistic investigation
