But through the years of teaching ESL in different countries and in multilevel settings, I realized how truly important grammar is. This is especially true when it comes to teaching adults. Most of my adult students would ask me “why” and “how” questions when we learn about sentence construction. This is even more challenging with students whose first language does not have the same tense structures as English. Based on my experience, the most difficult to explain are reported speech and the conditionals.
In addition, I also had to polish my grammar knowledge when I signed up to teach test review classes like TOEFL, IELTS, etc. The old TOEFL test was brutal. Thank God it has switched to more speaking test questions in the recent years.
Finally, we teachers need to have a good grasp of grammar if we wish to teach writing. Paragraph writing, expository writing, essays,. short stories, etc — we need to be able to explain why this word is not appropriate or why this phrase needs to be there.
As I continue to build this website, I will share lesson plans, worksheets, videos and more tools to help students, parents and teachers learn/teach grammar.
OK, if you find a grammatical error here, let me know. LOL
Question: Which grammar topic is the most difficult for you to teach? Why?
Joiful Teaching 