Grammar is difficult for students of all ages and languages to grasp, but it is especially challenging for ESL students. Learn teacher-tested tips and tricks for teaching your adult ESL students all about the grammar rules of English.
“Teacher, I am very exhausting today.” I looked up from my desk to see Maria standing there, clearly tired. She meant exhausted, of course. We’d been over this. Multiple times. I’d explained participial adjectives, shown examples, done the whole “boring vs bored” demonstration. She got it… in that moment. But understanding participial adjectives in isolation […]
“Teacher, I need two advices.” I still remember the look on Fahad’s face when I told him that wasn’t quite right. He’d spent days mastering plurals, proudly adding those ‘s’ endings to everything, and now I was telling him some nouns just…don’t do that? Yeah, now you’re teaching noncount nouns, where the rules your students
Teaching the passive voice went from not on my radar to one of my favorite things to teach! I’m about to admit something embarrassing. When I first started teaching adult ESL, I had no idea what active versus passive voice was. None. Zero. I used both all the time when I spoke and wrote, but
I will ALWAYS love… grammar. Okay, that’s a lie. I don’t always love grammar. Sometimes I love it. I often tolerate it. Rarely did I ever find myself dancing around my classroom because I had the chance to explain adverb placement that day. But frequency adverbs? Those I actually liked teaching because they’re useful in
Years ago, after hearing a co-worker complain about how much they hated teaching modals, I decided right then to make it one of the most fun things for my students to learn. No, I wasn’t trying to show up my co-worker; I figured that if my students were having fun, I’d be having fun. (That
Future perfect activities require no time travel. I promise. Though for real, wouldn’t a time machine make this whole thing easier? You could just zip your students forward to next Tuesday and say “See? By this time, you will have learned the future perfect tense!” Problem solved. But since time machines don’t exist (yet), we’re
Some adult ESL teachers might be wondering, “Why do I need to teach the past perfect tense? Can’t I just stick to the simple past and call it a day?” I hear you. I really do. Past perfect is one of those verb tenses that makes you question your life choices. It’s conceptually complicated, students
Did you know that the present perfect tense is a bridge between the present and the past? Okay, that sounds poetic and all, but let me be real with you here. The present perfect is one of the most confusing verb tenses in English. Students hate it. Teachers struggle to explain it. And native speakers
You’re probably teaching future progressive because it’s in the curriculum, and you need to cover it before the next unit test. Maybe you’re teaching it because your students keep saying “I will work at 8 pm” when they mean “I will be working at 8 pm,” and the difference matters. Either way, you’re here. And
Did you know that the past progressive tense is a powerful tool for describing ongoing actions in the past? Okay, yeah, that sounds dramatic. But let me tell you what past progressive REALLY is: it’s the tense you use when you need to paint a picture of what was happening at a specific moment in
