I have mentioned the Schoolhouse Rock songs on English grammar. I use them in class occasionally, but have not fully explored them here.
In the news is the death of the songwriter Bob Dorough, whose name I had not encountered or thought to ascertain. He wrote many but not all of the songs.
A convenient playlist of the grammar songs
During my year teaching in at a university in South Korea, I developed an introductory lesson in which I would review simple sentence patterns like ‘I am …’, ‘I have …’, ‘I live …’ and ‘I love/like/don’t like/hate …’. The students would then practice in pairs or small groups, then write some sentences for me to check and correct. (You’d possibly think that first-year university language students would know this already, but apparently not.)
Some students’ writing was close to perfect. One student, though …
(PS I don’t like giving any free publicity to corporate entities, but in this case it’s impossible not to.)
Some years ago (soon after I returned from Korea the first time, I think), I bought a quiz game made by a company called BrainBox. The shop had several in stock, but the one which I bought was of the countries of the world, which seemed most applicable to English language classes.
I have used it several times a year since. On Tuesday I was browsing through a local shop and saw another game from the same company, about Australia. I went back and bought it on Thursday morning and used it that evening in class.
Never Pure and Rarely Simple 