EAL toolkit
Teaching grammar
This toolkit favours teaching grammar in the context of real subject writing over isolated worksheets. Students learn the grammar they need when they need it, in the texts they actually read and write.
Our approach
Start from the writing a subject asks for: a science method, a history explanation, a literature analysis. Find the grammar that makes that writing work, show it in a model text, practise it with support, and then ask students to use it in their own work.
Grammar is organised here at three levels: words, sentences and whole texts. Most strategies work at more than one level.
Word level
- Plurals
- Adding -s or -es, irregular plurals (children, mice), and nouns that don’t take a plural (information, advice).
- Verb forms and tense marking
- Showing time with the verb: walked, has walked, is walking, will walk, and irregular forms like went and taken.
- Articles
- When to use a, an, the, or no article at all.
- Pronouns
- He, she, it, they and their forms, and making clear who a pronoun refers to.
- Prepositions
- In, on, at, between, per, out of, and the fixed pairs such as depends on and interested in.
- Comparatives
- Bigger, more efficient, less than, twice as many, the most significant.
- Word formation
- Building related words with prefixes and suffixes: react, reaction, reactive.
Sentence level
- Word order
- English usually follows subject, verb, object, and many languages order words differently.
- Questions and negatives
- Using do, does and did, and moving the verb in questions: Does it dissolve? It doesn’t dissolve.
- Clause types
- Simple, compound and complex sentences, and how clauses join.
- Subordinate clauses
- Clauses starting with because, although, when, which or that, which add reasons, conditions and detail.
- Modals
- Can, could, may, might, must, should, for possibility, obligation and interpretation.
- Passive voice
- Focusing on the process rather than the person: The solution was heated.
- Reported speech
- Reporting what someone said or argued: The historian argues that the treaty failed.
- Conditionals
- If sentences for rules, predictions and hypotheses: If the temperature rises, the rate increases.
Text level
- Cohesion and connectives
- Linking ideas across sentences: however, as a result, in contrast, finally.
- Reference
- Pointing back and forward with words like this, these, it and such, so readers can follow.
- Paragraph structure
- Opening with a clear point, then developing it with evidence and explanation.
- Genre features
- The typical shape and language of each text type: a lab report, a persuasive essay, a set of instructions.
- Register
- Choosing language that fits the audience and purpose, from conversation to formal academic writing.