Incorporating grammar games and activities into your English class is essential when teaching students of English as a second language. Moreover, making these activities or games fun and exciting increases motivation and encourages interest in the lesson. Generally speaking, the more interested and motivated your students are, the quicker they will learn.

Snakes and Ladders
Prepare several Snakes and Ladders boards for the class. Write sentences illustrating the grammatical structures in approximately half of the boxes. About half of these sentences should be grammatically correct sentences, while the other half should be incorrect. Divide the class into groups of four and issue each group a board, a die and counters. Students play Snakes and Ladders in the normal way, but when a student lands on a sentence she must decide if it is grammatically correct or incorrect. The other students in the group then decide whether she has made the correct choice without consulting the teacher. If the other students decide she has identified the sentence correctly then she can throw the dice again. If incorrect, then her turn is over. When all the groups have finished, go over the sentences together as a class.

What's Going on?
Divide the class into pairs and give one person from each pair a picture in which people are performing an activity, such as a picture of children in a park. Without showing the picture to the partner, the students must use twenty sentences to describe the picture such as, "A child is sitting on the grass." The partner writes these sentences down. When one pair has finished, stop the activity and award each pair one point for each sentence written. Now have the pairs swap with other pairs, and have the students find and underline grammatical mistakes in the sentences. Remove points for grammatical errors. The pair with the most points at the end of the activity is the winner.

You Are . . . Aren't You?
Ask each student in the class to write down three tag questions about people in the class, for example, "Jose, you are over 40, aren't you?" or, "Monica, you like football, don't you?" Circulate around the class as the students work, giving help where necessary. After everyone has finished writing their questions, have the students ask their questions to the appropriate student, who then responds with the correct answer. Put students into groups to relate what they have found out, for example, "I asked Jose if he was over 40, but he isn't. He is only 25!"

First Meeting Questions
Brainstorm with the class common questions people ask when meeting someone new: "Where do you live? "Where do you work?" Write these questions on the board in the form that the students suggest them. When you have twenty or so, ask the students to identify and correct any grammatical mistakes. When all the questions are grammatically correct, have the students ask five different students three of these questions. Circulate as the students work giving help as necessary and noting any grammatical errors in answers. Afterward, have students relate to the class what they have learned about the other students. Write on the board any examples of incorrect language you heard and invite your students to fix them.