Students of English learn to add -s to nouns to form the plural early on, but English has many irregular plural forms that can trip students up. Help is here—our NEW Regular & Irregular Plural Nouns lesson has charts and exercises that provide plenty of practice for common irregular plurals in English! (more…)
This week we’re featuring a simple future reading lesson called I’m in Singapore! This lesson includes three emails between a girl and her parents that use the simple present, simple past, and simple future tenses in context. Your students will hear “will” and “be going to” used naturally as the characters discuss the girl’s travel plans. (more…)
Do your students all have their own cell phones? If they don’t, they probably wish they did! Mobile phones are so prevalent in our culture these days, so our Mobile Phone – Reading Lesson will be relevant and fun for your young English learners.
(more…)
Do your young English language learners struggle with we vs. us? How about I and me? Remembering when to use subject and object pronouns can be challenging. Our NEW grammar lesson, Subject & Object Pronouns, makes it much easier! Students will also love the Family theme. (more…)
Have you ever studied the present perfect tense? We’re excited to promote our NEW lesson on the Present Perfect! We included grammar tips and charts to make this tense easy to teach and learn. We also included both functions of the present perfect along with exercises that compare it to the simple past. The Travel theme makes this lesson fun and relevant! (more…)
Our Spotlight lesson this week was our Simple Past grammar lesson. When it comes to learning the simple past, students rejoice at the lack of subject-verb conjugation. Unlike the simple present, where students must add an -s to the end of third person singular subjects, the simple past has only one form for all subjects. There’s more good news when English language learners realize they must only add -ed to the end of the base verb to form the simple past for regular verbs.
However, irregular verbs can pose a problem for learners. How do they memorize all the various endings and changes that irregular past tense verbs take? Repetition is key, and if teachers can make it fun, students are more likely to want to practice! (more…)
What did you do yesterday? The simple past is a fundamental building block of English grammar that young learners should learn early on. Our revamped Simple Past lesson makes it easy and fun to teach this common verb tense! (more…)
Article use varies widely among the languages of the world. Some languages, such as French, have six articles while others have none—Japanese, for example. English has three main articles, and they tend to cause a lot of problems for English language learners! Our new Articles lesson aims to simplify English article usage by providing charts and examples that make it easy for your students to tell the difference between a, an, and the. (more…)
It’s National Grammar Day on March 4 in the US! Thanks to social media, other countries are getting in on the act too. And really, any day is a good day to improve your grammar! That’s why I decided to round up all the past grammar posts that I’ve written for Sprout English into one place. They are divided up into posts on verbs, other grammar points, and holidays. It’s my hope that teachers of young learners or students studying on their own can benefit from the tips, explanations, and charts in these blog posts. (more…)
When I introduce a gerunds and infinitives activity in class, I’m usually faced with looks of quiet desperation or grim determination. Most students find the endless list of verbs to memorize daunting, to say the least! Also, most textbooks don’t cover the fact that there ARE a few helpful rules for deciding whether to use a gerund or an infinitive in a sentence. The next time you’re doing gerunds and infinitives in class, try teaching the rules below—your students will thank you!
Gerund: VERB + -ING (eating, going, studying)
Infinitive: TO + BASE VERB (to eat, to go, to study) (more…)
