Understanding grammar: The building blocks of language

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Making an appointment with your dentist

This lesson plan for beginner ESL students teaches basic vocabulary for making a dentist’s appointment.

The lesson plan includes activities such as role plays, comprehension tasks, video and audio activities, and reflection questions to…

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by ESL Directions

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Lesson-specific grammar activities

Find grammar activities in lesson plans on this website (scroll to the “Building sentences” sections).

The “Building sentences” sections use the lesson’s vocabulary to focus on relevant grammar points to help students create short sentences.

Each lesson includes:

Practice activities.

Short grammar explainers.

A story (in both video and pdf form) to review the lesson vocabulary and grammar points.

Please note: All of the lesson plans below include lesson-specific activities defining subjects, verbs, and objects and how to use S/V/O order in producing sentences.

Parts of speech

Canadian Environment and Culture lessons	Noun	Pronoun	Verb	Adj.	Articles	Prep.
Introducing ice hockey	✓		✓		✓
Understanding weather forecasts	✓			✓
Winter weather	✓		✓		✓
Health lessons	Noun	Pronoun	Verb	Adj.	Article	Prep.
Checking in at the dentist’s office						✓ (at)
Making an appointment with your doctor	✓			✓	✓
Parts of the body	✓
Talking about illnesses		✓ (subject pronouns)
Understanding over-the-counter medications					✓
Meeting people	Noun	Pronoun	Verb	Adj.	Article	Prep.
Making small talk about the weather				✓
Food, food shopping, and restaurants	Noun	Pronoun	Verb	Adj.	Article	Prep.
Following a recipe: Making vegetable soup	✓		✓

Verb tenses

Present tense

Canadian Environment and Culture lessons	Present simple	Present continuous
Seasons and months		✓
Three Prairie Provinces	✓ (to be)
Health lessons	Present simple	Present continuous
Checking in at the dentist’s office	✓ (to have)
Filling a prescription	✓ (forming the third-person singular)
Going to the hospital	✓ (I need to)
Parts of the body	✓ (to have)
Talking about illnesses	✓ (to have)
All about numbers lessons	Present simple	Present continuous
Using an ATM	✓ (imperatives)
Meeting people	Present simple	Present continuous
Making small talk about the weather	✓ (using “it is” or “it’s”)
Sayng hello	✓ (using “am,” “are,” and “is” in greetings
Topics for small talk	✓ (using the present simple to answer small talk questions)
Food, food shopping and restaurants	Present simple	Present continuous
Following a recipe: Making vegetable soup	✓ (imperatives)

Future tense

Canadian Environment and Culture lessons	Future simple
Understanding weather forecasts	✓
Winter weather	✓

Modal verbs (can, could, may, might, shall, should, will, would, and must)

All about numbers lessons	Would	Can
Using an ATM	✓
Health lessons
Calling 811 in Alberta		✓
Understanding the Alberta health care system		✓

Question and answer patterns

Health lessons	“Do you?” questions	“Is he/she?” questions	“What is/are?” questions	“What does … mean?” questions
Calling 911		✓
A check-up with the dentist	✓
A check-up with the doctor	✓
Checking in at the doctor’s office			✓
Making an appointment with the dentist	✓
Reading a prescription label				✓
Meeting people lessons	Answering “How are you?” questions	Answering questions with “what” and “do you?”
Saying hello	✓
Topics for small talk		✓

Grammar lesson plans and resources

Lesson plans

A natural pair: nouns and adjectives

Understand how to use and combine two related parts of speech.

Describing actions: verbs and adverbs

Introduce your students to two connected parts of speech: verbs and adverbs.

Resources

Links to helpful external resources …

General grammar

Easy English Boana: What are parts of speech? (YouTube video.)
Ellii: Grammar Targets videos (Short and easy-to-understand videos with practice sections.)
Learning Chocolate:
- Grammar (Practice the vocabulary for a wide variety of grammar issues.)
- Parts of speech (Game to guess the parts of speech.)
TEFL Handbook: Parts of speech, ESL lesson plan for beginners (This lesson plan is classroom based but could easily be adapted for online learning.)