Grammar Activities for More Expressive Speaking and Writing

It is a usual difficulty for people learning English. Although many students have worthwhile experiences, opinions, and knowledge, they often don't possess the grammatical skills needed to express them completely. For instance, a student might know the word difficult yet still struggle to describe a difficult experience. Or they might understand the concept of time but not know how to explain the relationship between past and continuing actions. The issue isn't that they lack ideas, but rather that they need the appropriate language tools in order to make their ideas clear.

In my previous blog post, I looked at the way in which compound sentences can help multilingual learners of English to connect their ideas and go beyond simple statements. In this article, however, I am concentrating on the ways in which adjectives, the perfect continuous tenses, complex clauses, and transitions can help students to describe, reflect, explain, and take a more active part in expressing themselves. By using practical speaking and writing exercises, teachers can help students move beyond merely forming correct sentences and begin to share their own experiences, knowledge, and voices.

Adjectives enable students to describe people, places, emotions, and experiences more precisely. Compare “The student gave a presentation” with “The confident student gave an informative presentation.” The second sentence gives the listener more detail. Help students notice how adjectives appear before nouns or after linking verbs, as in “The assignment was challenging,” and apply these patterns in their own writing.

Goal: Use adjectives to improve descriptive writing and spoken descriptions.

Focus on Writing

1. 1. Show a photograph of a classroom, library, park, or community space.
   2. Ask students to write three simple sentences about the image.
   3. Provide an adjective word bank and model how to expand a sentence.
   4. Have students revise their sentences using at least four adjectives.

Example

• • Starting Sentence: The library has some tables.
  • The spacious library has comfortable tables.
  • The spacious, quiet library has large, comfortable tables.

Writing Assessment: Ask students to hand in both their original and revised sentences. Evaluate their correct use of adjectives, the clarity of their descriptions, and their ability to include meaningful details. For their exit task, students should revise another simple sentence and then give a short explanation of how their choice of adjectives had improved the description.

Focus on Speaking

1. 1. Give each student a photograph of a classroom, library, park, or community space. You can also have students bring a picture from home of a location.
   2. The students work in pairs and take turns without showing each other their pictures. One student starts by saying one basic sentence to describe the image, then adds adjectives to describe the image in more detail while the other listens and either draws it or attempts to guess the setting.
   3. Students compare their results and discuss which of the descriptive words had made the communication clearer.

💡 TIP
Give beginning learners illustrated word banks and sentence frames. Ask more advanced learners to make their descriptions more precise and explain their word choices.

Speaking Assessment: When students are describing their pictures to their partners, observe them to find out how clearly and accurately they use adjectives in communicating the visual details and in helping their partners to draw or identify the images. Once they have compared their results, get the students to explain which descriptive words were most effective and give the reasons for this.

Once students can add descriptive detail, they can begin to explain how long an activity has lasted and how it relates to other events. The present perfect continuous links an activity that began in the past with the present or a recent result. The past perfect continuous describes an activity that was ongoing before another past event. Understanding the difference helps students to describe their experiences more clearly.