Grammar Activities and Classroom Games
This page contains a large collection of English As a Second Language (ESL) grammar activities and games. They are free for classroom use in teaching English as a second language to foreign students.
60 Seconds - the objective of this grammar activity is to speak for 60 seconds without making any grammatical errors.
Back-to-Back Description - students use present continuous tenses to describe each others appearance.
Collective Noun Performance - similiar to charades, this game require students to act out a collective noun while the class tries to guess the noun.
Common Prepositions - involves constructing a sentence using common prepositions from a picture.
Follow the Leader - this activity involves repeating the phrases and action of the leader. Students must use Present Continuous phrases or sentences to describe what the action is.
Fortune Teller - an activity that is suitable for all age levels. It involves students using future tenses and reported speech to have their fortunes told, and reporting what they learn to the class their fortune.
Giving Advise Using Modal Verbs - in this activity the "problem solvers" use modal verbs to solve the problems of "problem people." After the activity, the class discuss their best or worst advise.
Grammar Auction - a game where students work in teams to bid fake money for grammatically correct sentences.
Hats Off - this game involves taking hats off of other peoples head, putting them on your own head or other people's head and using a pronoun to describe what you are doing.
Life Achievements (Past Simple) - this activity involves using past simple grammar to talk about one's life achievements. Students talk and write about their own life achievements.
Past Continuous - involves using images and past continuous statements to describe what students did on their weekends.
Prepositional Phrase Exercise - students ask "yes" or "no" questions to find hidden objects in a picture.
Present Continuous Tense - students try to guess a miming action based on photographs.
Spot the Difference - players are given one minute to observe what their partners are wearing. They turn around, make three quick changes, and than face each other again. They must use the past tense to ask questions about what their partner had changed.
Spot the Error (Present Simple and Present Continuous) - this game requires students to sort through slips of papers and review present simple and present continuous sentences for errors.
Drawing Activity (Simple Past, Past Perfect and Future Past) - a picture is passed around the class while learners construct a series of short sentences using the Simple Past, Past Perfect and Future Past to describe what they think is happening in the picture.
Telling the Time (Simple Past) - a grammar activity that help students practice the telling the time using a simple past interrogative question.
Syntax and Clause Practice - an efl/esl reading and grammar activity that involves editing text on a word processor. The text has had all of it's spaces and punctuations removed.
Telling the Time - an efl/esl grammar activity that involves asking questions relating to the time such as "Who went to bed at ...?" and so on. Students respond by shouting "I did" and sits down.
Word Comparison Game - In this efl/esl grammar activity, the class divides into two teams. One team uses comparisons to describe a mystery student, while the other team tries to guess who the mystery student is.