How to take your English grammar to the next level. Part 2

Earlier we discussed some other important points of English grammar that demonstrate your or your student’s fluency. This article is the second part which will deal with some more grammatical aspects.

1. The order of adjectives in English grammar

As most of the mentioned grammar topics, the adjective order isn’t taught to native speakers, this is something they pick up naturally. Certainly, they would understand you if you said something like “my black silk short dress” but it would give out as a pre-intermediate/intermediate English speaker.

The right way to talk about the dress is “my short black silk dress”. Why is that? Because there is a certain order of adjectives in a sentence which is considered right. Luckily, there is a mnemonic that can help students to remember the order.

O. SASH COM

O — opinion

S — size

A — age

SH — shape

C — color

O — origin

M — material

There is a creative exercise you can do with your Intermediate+ students to memorize this magical mnemonic.

Ask your student to describe the outfit of their favorite star or their favorite movie character. For example, I’ve recently found out that one of my students enjoys the movie «Up», I searched around on the Internet, showed some pictures of different characters to my student and asked her to tell me what they are wearing.

Teacher: What is Carl wearing?

Student: Carl is wearing an old-fashioned brown woolen jacket, brown soft pants and shiny black leather boots.

Teacher: There’s something that holds his pants up.

Student: Yes, it’s a belt. A brown leather belt. Also, he’s wearing ugly old square-shaped glasses.

Teacher: Uh-oh. I thought his glasses were nice…

2. So/such/such a

Even advanced students often make a mistake when they need to use “so”, “such” or “such a”. However, the grammar rule sounds pretty straightforward.

“So” is used with an adjective or adverb.

E.g. This song is so fascinating. It’s been raining so badly for the last couple of weeks.

“Such” is used with an adjective + uncountable noun or plural.

We had such awful weather.

She used such powerful words (that) we were all stunned.

“Such a” is used with a singular countable noun.

“I saw such an interesting documentary yesterday”

Be sure that native speakers will be puzzled if you throw this grammar rule with all of the linguistic terms at them. Most of the time, they won’t have the slightest idea what on Earth you’re talking about (unless they are English teachers or grammar nazi). They use “so”, “such”, “such a” naturally without thinking about what part of the speech comes next.

We are aware that our students need to understand the difference to be able to use these three words correctly. Our special mission is to present this difference to them and make certain they have just enough practice.

The fun way to practice this grammar notion is using some games mentioned above such as “action —reaction” or “right — wrong” just replace “a”, “an” and “the” with “so”, “such”, “such a” and have fun.

Also, have a look at these sentences. Ask your students to spot a mistake. Tell them that the one who gets it will be given the honorable title of Sherlock Holmes. (Hint: not every sentence has a mistake in it.)

She wears so nice clothes.

I always feel so tired.

He has never eaten such a terrible food,

It came as such shock to me,

We didn’t realize it was such late.

Her parents are so nice people.

I didn’t know you lived in such a big house.

The weather was such good that we spent all day outside.

During winter holidays we eat such much food that all of our clothes become too tight.

3. Word order in indirect questions in English Grammar

“What time is it?”

“Do you know what time it is?”

The difference between these two questions is in the position of “it” and “is”. According to English grammar rules, we change the word order in reported questions. The reported questions are when we tell someone what another person asked. These types of questions are also called indirect (polite) questions. We use them when we try to sound more polite and formal. We don’t just say “Where is the bank?” but “Could you tell me where the bank is?”. To sound more polite we can also use phrases such as:

I wonder if…

Do you know if…

Do you think…

Do you mind..

Do you mind if I ask..

Would you mind telling me… etc.

One simple activity to practice indirect questions is just to give your students direct questions and ask them to turn those questions into indirect ones. To make this activity more fun, you can throw a ball at a student and then tell them to modify the question as they are throwing it back at you.

“Where is the park?”

“What is the answer?”

“When does the next lesson start?”

“How long is this lesson going to be?”

“How old are you?”

Also, you can play a game “Do you know ..”

The teacher might say “I wonder who invented a radio. Then students turn this question into: “Do you (we) know who invented the radio?”

The students could answer the question in turns. Then, when there is the right answer, the teacher can ask some more questions and so on.

You can also have students say these statements to the class. They can be either general statements or something more personal: “I wonder what your plans for the weekend are. Do you know what my plans are?”. This way students can even get to know each other better.

Similarly, the question “Do you know?” can be replaced with “Do you think?” to find out more about opinions of your students.

Examples:

Does Halloween influence people and especially children negatively?

Do you think that Halloween influences people and especially children negatively?

Are people’s diets in your country getting better or worse?

Do you think people’s diets in your country are getting better or worse?

4. Gerunds and infinitives

“I can’t afford__ rent this car”

“I enjoy __ horror movies”

Try to fill in the blank with the right form: infinitive or -ing. Right, it is “afford to” and “enjoy watching”. Often, it’s hard for your students to remember to use the correct form. They frequently confuse gerunds (V-ing) and infinitives (to + V)

The difficult part is that there is no clear and exact explanation on how it works. Your students just have to memorize the list of certain verbs to use with infinitives or gerunds. Of course, it’ll be too hard and boring just to memorize the verbs and the forms. That’s why, we’ve prepared some fun activities you can use in the classroom to practice this tricky grammatical aspect.

What do you like/hate doing?

What do you prefer?

What do you hate?

This activity is both simple and useful. Just ask your student one question: “What do you like doing” and add certain points in time e.g. in summer, on the weekend, every day, after school etc. With this activity students will remember that we use gerunds after the verb “like”. Of course, you can remind them that there are other verbs such as “enjoy”, “don’t like”. “love”.

The second part of this activity is related to more questions about likes and dislikes.

What do you prefer to have for breakfast/lunch/dinner?

Draw your students’ attention to the infinitive after “prefer”.

5. English grammar and guessing game

This game is also aimed at practicing gerunds and infinitives after certain verbs. Tell students to complete the sentence about their partner. If you have individual lessons with a student, you can try to guess about one another,

“You enjoy (action)… in the morning”

“You prefer (action)…. on Sundays”

“You’d like (action)… next year”

“You want (action) as soon as possible”

“You hate (action) on holidays”

Then both of the students exchange the papers or read their sentences out loud and discuss whether they guessed some things right or not.

6. Complete the story

Ask your student to think of a friend and complete the story about her/him. You can then ask some students to exchange their papers and read someone else’s story.

My friend (their name) likes ___. He/she also enjoys ___. Some time ago he/she decided to __. He/she started and __. Moreover, he/she stopped __ and gave up __. He/she refused __ and tried __. It wasn’t easy for him because he/she really enjoyed __. However. he/she is trying… I suggested him /her __. I hope he/she will listen to me and remember __.

Knowing these details will help your student break the Intermediate plateau and take their English to the next level. More than that, it’ll impress their language buddies and friends from different countries and give them more opportunities for their future career.