As a TEFL teacher, developing strong language awareness begins with understanding the basic building blocks of English grammar: the parts of speech. Each part plays a unique role in sentence construction and meaning, and teachers must be able to both analyze and explain these categories clearly to learners.
Main Parts of Speech:
| Part of Speech | Function | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Nouns | Name people, places, things, or abstract ideas | teacher, Morocco, happiness |
| Verbs | Indicate actions or states | run, is, become |
| Adjectives | Describe or modify nouns | beautiful, tall, difficult |
| Adverbs | Modify verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs | quickly, very, often |
| Pronouns | Replace nouns | he, they, which |
| Prepositions | Show relationships in time, place, or direction | on, at, under |
| Conjunctions | Connect words, phrases, or clauses | and, but, although |
| Interjections | Express emotion or exclamation | Wow!, Oh no! |
"Teachers must be able to identify and explain the function of each part of speech to support learners' grammatical development" (Ur, 2012, p. 87).
Teaching Tips:
Example Activity:
Create a sentence scramble activity where learners categorize each word by part of speech before reordering the sentence correctly. Extend the task by having students create their own scrambled sentences.
Tense is one of the most complex aspects of English grammar for EFL learners. Clear awareness of tense form, use, and context enables teachers to break down grammatical structures effectively.
Tense Chart Overview:
| Tense | Example Sentence | Usage |
|---|---|---|
| Present Simple | She works every day. | Habitual actions or facts |
| Present Continuous | She is working now. | Actions happening at the moment |
| Present Perfect | She has worked for five years. | Past action with present relevance |
| Past Simple | She worked yesterday. | Completed action in the past |
| Past Continuous | She was working when I arrived. | Ongoing action in the past |
| Past Perfect | She had worked before lunch. | Action completed before another past event |
| Future Simple | She will work tomorrow. | Future plans or predictions |
| Future Continuous | She will be working at 3 PM. | Ongoing future actions |
| Future Perfect | She will have worked by 6 PM. | Action completed before a future time |
"Understanding tense and aspect is essential for effective teaching, as learners often struggle with when and how to use various forms" (Celce-Murcia & Larsen-Freeman, 1999, p. 112).
Strategies for Teaching Tenses:
Example Activity:
Assign students to create personal diaries using various tenses and reflect on past, present, and future events.
These grammatical structures add nuance, formality, and abstraction to English. They are essential for expressing modality, hypothesis, formality, and impersonal constructions.
Modals express degrees of certainty, obligation, and advice. They are challenging due to lack of equivalent forms in many languages.
| Modal | Function | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Can | Ability/Possibility | She can swim. |
| Should | Advice | You should study more. |
| Must | Obligation | You must wear a seatbelt. |
| Might | Possibility | It might rain today. |
Example Activity:
Role-play advice columns: students pretend to be agony aunts answering letters using modal verbs.
| Type | Structure | Example | Function |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zero | If + present, present | If you heat ice, it melts. | General truths |
| First | If + present, will | If it rains, we will cancel the trip. | Real future situations |
| Second | If + past, would | If I had more time, I would travel. | Hypothetical present |
| Third | If + past perfect, would have | If she had studied, she would have passed. | Hypothetical past |
"Conditionals require conceptual understanding and careful scaffolded instruction due to their hypothetical nature" (Swan, 2005, p. 307).
Example Activity:
Chain conditionals: One student says a sentence, another builds on it (e.g., “If I won the lottery, I’d travel the world. If I traveled the world, I’d visit Japan…”).
The passive is often used in formal writing, reports, and scientific contexts where the agent is unknown or irrelevant.
Example:
Active: The manager approved the report.
Passive: The report was approved.
Teaching Tip:
Ask students to transform headlines and news stories from active to passive voice and discuss the purpose of the shift.
Sentence structure refers to how words are organized to form meaningful units. English follows a Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) structure in most declarative sentences.
Basic Structures:
"Grammar instruction is most effective when linked to meaningful use rather than isolated rule memorization" (Thornbury, 1999, p. 42).
Common Learner Errors:
Example Activity:
Sentence sorting: Provide learners with jumbled sentences containing errors. Students must correct the structure collaboratively.
Communicative grammar instruction integrates grammar with authentic language use. It contrasts with traditional methods that isolate grammar rules and focus on accuracy over fluency.
"Teaching grammar communicatively involves presenting language in context, encouraging interaction, and focusing on meaning before form" (Larsen-Freeman, 2003, p. 57).
Core Principles:
Activities for Communicative Grammar:
Example Extended Activity:
Conduct a “grammar museum” where students create posters explaining a grammar point with examples and visuals, and then present them to classmates.
Celce-Murcia, M., & Larsen-Freeman, D. (1999). The Grammar Book: An ESL/EFL Teacher's Course. Heinle & Heinle.
Larsen-Freeman, D. (2003). Teaching Language: From Grammar to Grammaring. Heinle.
Swan, M. (2005). Practical English Usage (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press.
Thornbury, S. (1999). How to Teach Grammar. Longman.
Ur, P. (2012). Grammar Practice Activities: A Practical Guide for Teachers (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press.