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Grammar is one of the easiest ways to improve English and it is used everywhere. Grammar is also one of the segments that you can see improvement the fastest. Of course, your child needs to know what the grammar rules are before they know which ones to focus on improving. Some grammar rules include:
Using an apostrophe + s for singular owners, and s + apostrophe for plural owners.
- Eg: the girl’s pen (1 girl)
- Eg: the girls’ pen (2 or more girls)
Using many or few with countable nouns. Use much/a lot or little for uncountable nouns.
- Eg: There are a few cars outside.
- Eg: There is little traffic on the roads.
Use of either … or and neither … nor. Your child needs to know which one to use in which situation.
- Neither Sally nor Ray likes bread
- Either John or Emily is going to the park today
Treat collective nouns (e.g. committee, company, board of directors) as singular OR plural. A collective noun is usually treated as plural, needing a plural verb and pronoun.
- Eg: The committee is having sandwiches for lunch. Then they will go to London.
When two singular subjects are connected by or, use a singular verb. The same is true for either/or and neither/nor
- Eg: Either milk or water is fine.
- Eg: Neither James nor Mary was late.
Use of conjunctions such as ‘and’, ‘but’, ‘or’. The conjunctions both … and are used as a pair for emphasis
- Eg: both the boys and I liked the show
With that being said, here are a couple of ways your child can improve their grammar.
Practise more
One of the straightforward ways is to let your child practice on school papers or assessment books. Our English HOD suggests the following:
“Learn that grammar rule and drill on that grammar rule”
Meaning that if your child learns about the ‘either…or…’ & ‘neither….nor’ rule, then make your child practise around 20 questions per day. Your child can also redo those questions that they got wrong so that they can remember their mistakes and not commit the same problem again.
We recommend school exam papers to find the grammar rules and for your child to practice as they are modelled after PSLE & use similar questions in the exams.
Give them a summary or simple report
Your child can do a weather or traffic report. Give your kids some information about the weather or traffic that day. Then they can present to you about the weather or traffic outside with the information they have.
This helps practise and sharpen their speech and knowing how to say it the right way can help in writing it the right way too.
Common grammar errors that your child may make
We hope now it becomes clearer and simpler how to practise grammar to your primary school kids.