ESL Educators Blog Carnival: Teach Grammar Effectively

Welcome to the inaugural ESL Educators Blog Carnival. This month, we'll focus on Teaching Grammar Effectively. We've got some extraordinary ESL Educators writing and sharing their tips! Please click through to read each article.

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The ESL Educators' Guide: How to Teach Grammar Effectively

Teaching grammar effectively, especially for first-time ESL teachers, can be a tricky business. In fact, it is one of the most difficult aspects of a language to teach. Here are a few tips to help you make the best of your ESL grammar lessons.

Carrie Kellenberger, a freelance writer and photographer living in Asia since 2003, writes about life as an expat, Asian travel destinations, and her experiences working in the ESL industry on her award-winning web site, My Several Worlds.

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To Drill, or Not To Drill?

Combining different techniques (Context, Communicative methods, Audio-Lingual methods) in teaching grammar has surprisingly effective results.

Jenna Makowski currently teaches English as a second language in Wroclaw, Poland. She has previous teaching experience in Moscow and Chicago. She thinks that the best lessons are the ones where the students talk more than the teacher, and that the best students are the ones that teach. Follow her blog at: http://jennagmakowski.com/

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Games vs handouts

It is a description of a grammar game and student feedbacks.

Grammar can be fun

Tips for teaching grammar in a fun way.

Eva Buyuksimkesyan is an EFL teacher working in the same high school where she graduated from and it is a dream come true. She's also a teacher trainer and a blogger. She's trying to integrate technology into her teaching. She blogs at www.evasimkesyan.edublogs.org and evab2001 on twitter.

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Are you Supposed to Know EVERYTHING?

Some newbie or wannabe teachers of English fear that they have to know everything about English and about teaching before they can step into a classroom. My #1 advice? Don’t worry about it. The smartest teachers know that they don’t know everything and keep good resources on hand to help them when it is needed.

Don't Teach Grammar, Teach Functions!

It is actually a pet peeve of mine that people teach grammar unrelated to the real need for relevance to the students' reasons to study English or their need for English skills. This blog post focuses on making a class relevant to students' needs by teaching functions and on integrating the teaching of grammar inside a functions lesson. Will that make 'teaching grammar more effective"?  Absolutely!  When grammar - or anything else for that matter - becomes relevant to a student, they pay attention and get involved in the lesson and real learning is much more likely to happen.  In this case, they learn a REASON to know the grammar - within the relevant function(s) they are being taught.

Ted Tucker is a retired TEFL educator and TEFL Teacher Trainer.  With an overseas career that started as a Peace Corps Volunteer in  Botswana in 1989 - he has been abroad ever since working in countries throughout Asia and the Middle East. You can find him at http://www.teflnewbie.com/

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Grammar Tips for the ESL Classroom 

Not every ESL teacher has a strong background in formal English grammar, but this doesn't mean they should avoid the subject entirely. There are subtle ways to reinforce good grammar habits and this post by Andrew Dunkle will explain why they are important.

Andrew Dunkle studied Chinese and Art History at the University of Colorado, and is now the Senior Editor of GoOverseas.com. He loves to travel, and has so far called Colorado, Australia, Taiwan, and California home. His next adventure? He's thinking South America. Follow Andrew on Twitter at @AndrewOverseas, and at GoOverseas.com

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Next month, the ESL Educators Blog Carnival will be hosted by GoOverseas.com, followed by My Several Worlds.

Thanks for reading - happy teaching!