TESOL International Association

Advancing Excellence in English Language Teaching

www.tesol.org

More Grammar Games:

1. Sentence Scrambles – Create several long, compound-complex sentences and have students
put the words in order. For example:
The girl, who danced at the party, is very tired today and her feet hurt.

2. Creating Sentences – Give students a subject, a verb and an object. In pairs students must
create 9 sentences, using each tense, i.e, cat, to chase, mouse.

3. Board races – Almost anything can be made into a board race. This video gives a brief
explanation. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wam5PscoSjU. Here are some other
suggestions:
a. Students have to pick words out of a sentence to put on the board. For example, write
the verb on the board: Sarah types on the laptop.
b. Write down what tense the sentence is: They had studied for the exam, but still failed.
c. Students have to write a complete sentence on the board, one at a time.

4. Dictation is a great way to work with punctuation.

a. Appointments - Read the times and dates. If you repeat them (as you should) you can
vary the format (for example “two fifteen p.m.” and “quarter past two in the afternoon”
or “Monday, May 7” and “Monday, 7 May”)
 2:15 pm, Thursday, 25 June
 12 noon, Wednesday 27 April
 Saturday, the 19th of August, 2:05 am
b. Flight Schedules - I find it’s best to read flight times in the 24-hour format (for example
“oh-seven-forty,” “thirteen-thirty…”) because most tickets are actually printed that way.
 departs Paris terminal 2A 12:25, 3 May, flight AF 157
 Arrive Quito, 07:40 4 May
 Depart Jakarta, 11:45, 4 May, flight TH263
c. Writing out complete sentences are also fun!
 That girl, sitting by the door, who is she?
 My favorite subjects in school are English, math and history.
You can also leave words out for grammar/vocabulary practice
 ______ do you prefer, vanilla or chocolate?
 I would like to buy an apple, three oranges and ____ grapes.

5. Mad Libs are a great way to have students start thinking of parts of speech. This video shows
how it is done: http://teachertube.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=1417&title=ESL__Warm_up
These are some great examples of online Mad Libs to play with students.
 http://allaboutfrogs.org/funstuff/java/madlibs/madlibs1.htmlv example
 http://allaboutfrogs.org/funstuff/java/madlibs/madlibs1.html example #2

Sarah Sahr
DOS, English Language Specialist
English Programs Manager, TESOL International Association Page 1 of 3
TESOL International Association
Advancing Excellence in English Language Teaching
www.tesol.org

6. Pictures and Propositions – each student starts with blank pieces of paper. Each student
must write a sentence in a particular tense, let’s say present continuous, on the paper. You
can even be more specific… The sentence must be present continuous, have a prepositional
phrase but no more than 10 words. The first student writes the sentence, following the
constraints, then passes the paper to the person sitting to the left or the right or behind.
The next student must draw a picture of the sentence, but not too big. Once the picture
has been written, the student folds over the paper to hid the first sentence. Then, the
paper is passed to the next student to write a sentence. (Sometimes it is best to

7. Pass the story – Similar to the activity above, this exercise starts with a blank sheet of paper,
or one story starter. Students are responsible for making a comprehensible story by writing
one sentence and then passing the paper to the next person. The next person makes the
next sentence and so on…

8. Go Shopping! – cut out the cards below and give them to students. They have to travel
around the classroom

Go to the grocer. Do they have…? Go to the restaurant. Do they have…? Go to the clothing shop. Do they have…?
Chicken Cereal Trainers
Ice cream Pancakes Jackets
Cucumbers Salad Socks
Bananas Lamb Chops Hats

Go to the clothing store. Do they have…? Go to the grocer. Do they have…? Go to the restaurant. Do they have…?
Shoes Potatoes Pizza
Blouses Meats Cake
Shirts Apples Sundae
Jeans Soda Soup

Use Phrases like… Use Phrases like… Use Phrases like…

Can I…? Can I…? Can I…?

Could I…? Could I…? Could I…?
May I…? May I…? May I…?
I’d like… I’d like… I’d like…
Would you like to…? Would you like to…? Would you like to…?
Do you want…? Do you want…? Do you want…?

Grocer Restaurant Clothing Shop

Bananas Juice Socks
Apples Soup Shoes
Carrots Salad Shirts
Tea Lamb Chops Jeans
Cucumbers Hamburgers Trousers
Chicken Macaroni Skirts
Soda Sundae Hats

Sarah Sahr
DOS, English Language Specialist
English Programs Manager, TESOL International Association Page 2 of 3
TESOL International Association
Advancing Excellence in English Language Teaching
www.tesol.org

Online links

Parts of Speech (POS) activities:

 http://www.toonuniversity.com/flash.asp?err=487&engine=2 – all POS
 http://www.arcademicskillbuilders.com/games/invasion/invasion.html – all POS
 http://www.cityu.edu.hk/elc/quiz/partspee.htm – all POS
 www.funbrain.com/grammar/index.html - all POS
 http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/english-grammar - all POS
 http://www.learningplanet.com/act/rats/ratslist3.asp – younger learner games, nouns,
verbs, adj & adv.; pay after trial period
 http://www.dowlingcentral.com/MrsD/quizzes/grammar/DeltaExer/transandtransverbs
.htm & http://www.quia.com/quiz/653869.html Transitive & Intransitive verb quizzes
 www.ego4u.com/en/cram-up/vocabulary/both-either-neither-nor - conjunctions
 http://www.englishpage.com/verbpage/verbtenseintro.html - Verb tenses
 http://www.letslets.com/ - verb tenses and songs
 http://www.usingenglish.com/reference/phrasal-verbs/ - Phrasal Verbs

 http://www.ego4u.com/en/cram-up/grammar/conditional-sentences - conditionals

Collection of Activities
 http://anthonyhalderman.com/english/esl.htm
 http://www.1-language.com/englishcourse/index.htm
 http://a4esl.org/
 www.manythings.org
 http://speakspeak.com/english-grammar-exercises
 http://www.englishgrammar.org/
 http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/language/
 http://www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/words/grammar/tenses/getting_the_right_tense/gam
e.shtml

Online dictionaries
 http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~pxc/nlp/nlpgloss.html
 http://webspace.qmul.ac.uk/cjpountain/linggloss.htm
 http://www.usingenglish.com/glossary.html
 http://www.ldoceonline.com/

Sarah Sahr
DOS, English Language Specialist
English Programs Manager, TESOL International Association Page 3 of 3