I’ve been teaching grammar for several years and I’ve seen many students who consider grammar to be a set of rigid rules they have to painfully memorise. In fact, your natural use of grammar in everyday English isn’t proportional to the effort you put into cramming grammatical rules. It’s better to get a strong feeling for accurate grammar instead. Playing games is a great way to do this, and it’s also fun as well.

Here are some grammar-based games you can play at low to no cost:

Silly story tellers

Kids take turns to say one word each to narrate a story which makes grammatical sense. They usually find the crazy sentences really funny and illogical and laugh along. To make them more aware of grammar, you can pause them when they say a word that is not the right part of speech and make them act out the previous sentence as a little punishment.

Hot potato game

The more participants, the more exciting this game is. Kids form a circle, then you call out a verb and throw a ball to any of them. Kids pass the ball to the person on their left or toss it to any other kid while the instructor keeps chanting ‘hot potato, hot potato, hot hot hot potato…’ When the instructor stops, the kid who has the ball needs to name a specified form of the verb. If they make a mistake, they leave the circle. Depending on the level of the children, the game can be used to help children recall the present participle, past and past participle forms of common verbs.

Verbal treasure hunt

This is a game designed for practising questions and prepositions. First, you hide an object (something small that can be given to children as a reward) anywhere in the room. Kids ask questions using prepositions, such as ‘Is it in the drawer?’ or ‘Is it under the book?’ The one who has the right guess is allowed to keep the treasure.

At i-Learner, our Advanced Grammar and Reading course is packed with fun games and varied activities to ensure that students really practise the grammar topics we learn each week. We know that with a little effort, grammar really can be fun!