A: Beginning Learners

While the diagram above cites that grammar is "less important" to the beginning learner than the more advanced learner, it does not mean that it is not an essential part of the learning process. While an in-depth grammatical explanation would be inappropriate at this level, there are some easy-to-use exercises that you can do with your learner that will help promote accurate sentence structure.

1. Drills

Drills are a good way to assist the lower-level learner in gaining grammatical knowledge without the traditional "grammar talk" or grammar worksheets. Drills are oral exercises that involve repetition in order to familiarize learners with common sentence patterns. Drills allow the learner to increase both her accuracy and fluency.

The Russian or Arepelalese lesson where learners were required to say, "This is a table. This is a chair." is an example of a substitution drill. In it, one word out of the sentence is substituted for another similar word. For example, a noun is substituted for another noun, and a verb for a verb. Complex substitution drills are slightly different. This time, rather than having one type of word that is substituted in the same position each time, the word provided would go into an unknown slot in the sentence. ⁵

⁵ Ruth Johnson Colvin, I Speak English (Syracuse, New York: New Readers Press, 1997), pp 74. Used by permission.