ESL Grammar Games

This useful grammar game helps students practice error correction. Write 12 sentences on the board with each one containing a grammar mistake. Teams then read the sentences and look for the mistakes. Using a total of 100 points, teams then gamble points, depending on how confident they are about correctly identifying the mistake in each sentence. Team A starts and chooses a sentence for Team B to correct. Team B decides how many points they would like to bet, the more confident they are, the more points they bet. The maximum bet is 50 points. The members of Team B then consult with each other and give their correction. If the team correctly identifies the grammar mistake, add the points they bet to their total. If they fail to identify the mistake, they lose the number of points bet. Team A then has a chance to steal the points by correcting the sentence. If Team A answers correctly, they get the points that Team B would have won. Team B then chooses a sentence for Team C to correct and so on. The team with the most points at the end of the game wins.

Here is a fun grammar game to help your students identify grammar mistakes. Write 16 sentences on the board some of which should contain grammar mistakes. Explain that all the sentences on the board are for sale and that you are going to auction the sentences off to the highest bidder. Each team has $100 and their task is to buy the sentences they think are correct. In their teams, students discuss which sentences they think are right and decide which ones to buy. Students should also decide how much they are prepared to pay for each sentence. You then take on the role of an auctioneer and sell each sentence to the team that offers the most money, keeping track of how much each team has spent on the board. When all the sentences have been sold, go through them one at a time and elicit which ones are correct and which are incorrect. If a sentence is wrong, ask the students to correct the mistake. The team that bought the most correct sentences wins the game.

This grammar revision game is ideal for reviewing grammar, sentence structure and vocabulary. It also helps you to spot problem areas or common mistakes your students are making. Choose one student in each team to be the 'runner' and one to be the 'writer'. The writers stand next to an assigned space by the board. Give each team a different keyword. The keywords should be vocabulary or a grammar point you wish the students to revise. Each team then comes up with sentences using their keyword or grammar point. When a team thinks of a sentence, they tell the runner. The runner then goes to the board and tells the sentence to the writer who writes it on the board. After a few minutes, stop the round and evaluate the sentences. Award one to three points for each sentence, depending on the grammar, sentence structure and vocabulary usage. If you spot a mistake, the other teams race to identify and correct it. The first student to correct the mistake scores the points for their team. The team with the most points at the end of the game wins.

In this grammar game, students practice peer correction of spontaneous speech. In groups, students take turns talking about a chosen topic for one minute. When someone hears the speaker make a grammar mistake, they challenge the speaker. The time is paused and the challenger explains what the student said without correcting the mistake. The other group members then vote on who is right by placing one counter on either 'The speaker is right' or 'The challenger is right' card. You then judge who is correct. If the speaker is correct, they take all the counters on 'The speaker is right' card. If the challenger is right, they take all the counters on their card and attempt to correct the mistake. If they do this, the challenger takes one extra counter from the speaker. If the correction is wrong, the challenger gives the speaker one counter. The speaker then resumes talking about the topic until the time limit is up. If there is a second challenge, the process is repeated. If a student runs out of counters, they are out of the game. The student with the most counters at the end wins.

Here is a fun grammar game for practicing or reviewing verb conjugations. Each team sits in a line facing the board. Assign each student in a team with a subject pronoun: I, You, He, She, They, It or We. Say a present tense and a verb, e.g. present simple and 'run'. The first student conjugates the verb using their subject pronoun and writes it on some paper, e.g. I run. The student then passes the paper to the student behind them. The second student writes their verb conjugation (e.g. You run) and passes the paper to the person behind them and so on down the line. When the student at the end of the line has written on the paper, they run to the board to write all the answers up for everyone to see. The first team to correctly write all the verb conjugations on the board in the right order scores a point. The student at the back of each line then moves to the front and everyone else moves back one place, changing to a different subject pronoun as they go. The game is then repeated with a different tense and verb and so on. The team with the most points at the end of the game wins.