It's definitely not your fault. I think you need to make an acknowledgement to your students that learning the abstract parts of any language is inherently boring. These things are complicated by nature, they're the outcome of centuries of constant change.

However, you can still make it fun by suggesting books with a lot of twists/cliffhangers, movies & tv shows, making interviews with English-speaking people,.. etc. These things work in that there's a lot of extraordinary content in English but there isn't many equivalents in other languages.

I aboslutely hated English when I was in school. We had a thick grammar workbook and another textbook that was full of out of date phrases. We also had homework that involved copying a new vocabulary 10 times to memorise it. I was so bad at it that my teacher would call me out constantly. Nothing about learning English was fun, or remotely related to our daily life. But then one summer I started watching US dramas and suddenly my English was better than everyone else in class in just 2 months.

Never tell them that other students do much better than they do. It never motivated anyone, rather made ones that had been told that insecure about using English. Really simple, but my teacher doesn’t really get it.

First of all, it's not your fault at all!

I'm still at school, and all I can say is that you can't really force a student into liking english. You can't force a student to like any subject honestly.
Most of my friends just don't want to learn english at school. They don't find it interesting, they just find it boring. They don't feel the need of learning another language. They even find it kinda overwhelming because they're not doing too well.

It might also depend on the school, because here in Poland we're learning; polish, english and german.

At this point most of the students just give up on english and german because they are overwhelmed by the amount of languages they have to learn at once.

Use Dr Seuss books for nonsense sounds and pronunciation - adults enjoy it too. [e.g. I Took a Look I saw a Nook]

Make up poems and raps with the topics your students need to learn. Pose brainteasers {Kevin's mother has three children - Al, Beth - what is the name of the third child?}

And its variation - Kevin's mother has four children, What is the name of the fourth. (Noticing, using, punctuation)

'Let he who stole steal, no more let him labour or work with his hands'. OR should it be 'Let he who stole steal no more, let him labour or work with his hands'. ????? : )

There is a wealth of fabulous and funny pictures on line that can stimulate fun conversations. Google "Camel shadows in desert" for an intro to Optical Illusions - which are always a fun diversion in a class.

In other words, be creative and make sure you are having fun too.

Students might not find learning English fun, but they should at least feel interested. And the best way to do that is to make sure they're learning a lot just beyond their level (L+1). Are you at least doing that?

> How can I make learning English fun?

You haven't really given enough information for anyone to be able to provide useful advice, e.g., the age and level of your students, the duration of the classes, the material you're using, your experience teaching online, etc.

> It breaks my heart when I see my students bored or stressed out.

Just like everyone else, students have good and bad days, and sometimes they're engaged and sometimes they're not. Right now, the whole world is stressed because of the situation we find ourselves in. Add to that the other pressures your students might be facing, e.g., hours of missed classes to catch up on, school/university exams, salary/job loss, and being trapped at home with/without family to name but a few.

> I try my best to make things fun, but I am failing. I have tried so many things to keep students interested.

Keeping students interested and making lessons fun are not necessarily one and same thing. We're teachers not performing seals - there's no need to act the clown, not even if you're teaching 5-year olds.

If you're teaching from prescribed coursebooks, find a way to lift the content off the page, and to enrich it. Use images to spark discussion, add audio and video content, use graded readers, incorporate relevant newspaper/magazine articles (depending on the age of your students, of course), etc.

If you're providing all the content yourself, you need to find a way to make it relevant to your students' lives, needs, and wants. Don't just download ready-made materials, adapt them to make them suit your particular students. Don't just use the same tried-and-tested games/activities day after day, try out new ones - there's only so many times students want to play hangman or do a gap-fill.

Most importantly, find out what your students are interested in. I used to teach a 15-year old boy who hated learning English, but then I found out that he loved birds, so I designed a series of lessons around birds, and his whole attitude to English changed.

Personalize the content for the students and allow them to express themselves or explore ideas in english by giving context to what you are teaching. Youll need an insight into thier interests for this, so provide examples, tell them about yourself and be charismatic and open, they will follow suit.

Diversifying your teaching styles helps too (guided discovery, reciprocol) and use different principles (behaviourist, cogntivist, constructivist). It has to be appropriate for the students however.

This is a hot topic for me personally as well. What are the signs that you are "failing?" Why do you feel this way? What have you tried? What kind of students do you have?

I'm focused on teens and grade school children, who aren't necessarily learning English of their own volition. This is in contrast to adults, who usually want to learn English and are more motivated. Keeping them interested and focused on the lesson is a constant challenge.

I feel that grammar is also transitive. By that I mean that if I learned grammar in one language, the terminology and concepts would also be applicable to other languages.

Let's put it this way.

Almost all the people I know who have reached higher levels in a foreign language have been the people who gave themselves a strong foundation of grammar to build upon.

I accept that there might be different ways for different people to learn languages - but I also think that many people underestimate how useful grammar would be to them because they find it intimidating.

I'm a big fan of studying grammar.

Words are easy, and usually drift around from language to language, but specific functions are....er....specific.

and It becomes easier to figure out an unknown word!

I wouldn't truly understand conditionals (in English) if I hadn't learned them. Yes, I used a conditional to boost my ego. I hope it's not a wrong one, that would be embarrassing.

Mentor sentences — look them up. The kids enjoy them if you do them correctly. I keep my grammar instruction to 5-10 minutes daily.

After 30+ years of teaching the one game that has given the most bang per minute of instruction and is really aligned with skills is one I have called various names, The Grammar Battle, Proofreading Race - whatever fits your style. Here is how it works:

Prep:

Create a collection of sentences with 3-5 errors each - they can match whatever you are teaching, be collected from student writing, or come from workbooks like Daily Oral Language for the grade you teach. They are particularly fun if you use the names of students and make them silly. Make two copies of this list and cut them into strips, and keep them in order so you can hand a person from each team the same sentence at the same time. Clear two sections of your board to make two side-by side areas where each team can write a sentence large enough to be seen from the back of the room by you (the judge.)

Gameplay: 1. Divide your class into two teams and have one team sit on each side of the room, let them name their team or just call it A and B - whatever floats their boat. assign or let them choose a team captain who chooses whose turn it is to go to the board to be the writer. Each team member must write at least once.

2. Have the two writers come back to you, hand them each the same sentence, no one can see it but the writer, and when they both have a marker in their hands, say, "go." They should begin writing the sentence and correcting the errors as they go. (You can play a slightly less frenetic version that has one person write at a time while the other team stays silent, if you wish.)

3. If a team sees that their writer has an error, they can shout at them from their seat to correct it. The game often starts out calmly but if the sentence is harder to correct sometimes arguments ensue about where to put a comma or if there is a possessive noun - this is fantastic, let them squabble and disagree and finally figure it out.

4. When they think their sentence is 100% correct, they stand aside and say "Check" and the teacher/judge gives the point to the first team to have the sentence 100% perfectly corrected. If there is still an error, the gameplay continues until one team gets it right and scores the point.

5. The game is over when everyone has gone once or when a team reaches x points or whatever you decide.

Notes: This game is loud and messy fun if the level of the questions is challenging enough so that the whole team has to weigh in to get it all right. Even kids who are terrified of going to the board and who are not great at grammar are ok volunteering to go up because their team can shout answers at them - this is excellent, they are not alone struggling with an answer, and nothing makes a struggling student remember that an apositive is separated by commas like having a group of your peers scream, "PUT A COMMA - its an APPOSITIVE!!" at you, and then cheer for you when you do it. This game activates all the senses, visual, tactile, auditory, and even that adrenaline that helps you access long term memory. My kids blew the roof off of standardized tests that ask them to identify errors in a sentence. When I taught a new grammar concept, kids would engage because they were worried about their team's score when I integrated it into the game. It was hilarious to teach something like indefinite pronouns and actually have kids ask questions like, "So in the game, you're gonna put an intervening prepositional phrase between one of these and the verb to try to make us think its plural aren't you? Do you hear this people?! We gotta watch for this!" I also had kids tell me that when they took standardized tests that they felt like they could hear their team in their head screaming answers at them. One kid told me, "Miss! All I could hear was Mike shouting, 'capitalize it, capitalize it!' the whole time." I found that playing regularly at the end of a grammar unit every couple of weeks, was really effective because I was able to build in review seamlessly. Integrating sentences from their essays (anonymously of course) was super effective. I'd sometimes have an administrator pop in due to the noise of the game and find kids literally raging about verb tenses - they loved that there was this wild engagement over grammar targets. The first couple years that I started making this a feature of my instructions, test scores when from the low 50%tiles to 89%tile in a school with extreme poverty.

Treat it as a writing course. 

They can write scripts for podcasts, radio plays and short films, then perform. They can write their own stories and comics. They can write their own songs and see how the grammar can be broken for effect. Have them create their own choose your own adventure stories or create a grammar game in canva.

My most popular grammar lesson is the round robin. In a small group, they each write a sentence starting a story, then give their story to the person on the right, who writes the next sentence. Each sentence has to have the grammar skill we're on that day.

I like using Noredink.com for the kiddos to practice. I think you can work on writing prompts and then teaching how to revise/edit. They can be daily journal prompts, or creative writing, or essay writing.

Kids like choice; I’ve done an analysis essay with my kiddos where they can pick any narrative (tv show, movie, video game, book, manga, etc) to analyze based on character development, theme, or compare/contrast (this is for analyzing adaptations). They have to submit a topic proposal telling me what they what to analyze, why, and what direction they’re going in. After they get approval, I consult with them. Teach the class how to brainstorm, mindmaps, outlines, pros/cons chart, etc. When they do their rough drafts, you can consult with them, and based on what the class’s frequent mistakes are, you can pick grammar topics to go over. Teach them how to peer edit properly and use that feedback to write their next draft. Then I make them turn in their brainstorming notes, outlines, and rough drafts. This creates a paper trail to minimize cheating. While their working on their final drafts, teach them MLA formatting. Create a rubric to grade and that’s an entire unit.

Another thing I’ve done is find images on Pinterest and have the students write me a story based on what I’ve chosen. They get to pick something that speaks to them and start the writing process. You would do the same as above. Teach them how to brainstorm, outline, rough draft, edit/revise, peer review, 2nd draft, and finals. Create another rubric for grading. You’ll want to consult with students on their writing and you can bring up more grammar lessons based on what you see the kids writing levels.

Ultimately, we try to teach grammar so they can be better writers. Teach a concept and have them start looking for it.

Let me know if you want any more info.

Also look at teach this (dot com). It is my favorite resource. I could use their material or use it as inspiration. They have everything categorized. You can search by grammar point, language use, or topic. They even have a sections filled with game ideas and teaching tips. I subscribed for a year and was able to dl and keep everything I found useful.

I'd recommend getting a ball. It facilitates a lot of games and keeps things fun.

If you can, showing short video clips that are related to the grammar you are teaching can help cement things, and you can get students to play around with them. (Like, when I'm teaching hypothetical phrases, I use the bare naked ladies "If I had a million dollars". My kids are sick of that song at the end of the week, but by that time they know the lyrics and their hypotheticals lol).

If you have the space, relay conjugation games can be fun, or try the flyswatter game.

Bingo and Pictionary are easy in classes. Taboo or Apples to Apples if you can get your hands on a set or make your own. I particularly like the last 3 since they force kids to learn to "talk around" words they don't know, which is a useful skill. If your class is working with a vocab list, these games translate well. Charades is great. Vocab battleship is fun too but doesn't really reenforce skills IMHO.

The story by a sentance game is fun too, if you have a shy-er classroom. You just sit them in a circle, and each person says one sentence, and the others build off it. It works best if you can encourage them to be a little silly.

Hope this helps! I have a few blogs I use for ideas in my classrooms, and I'd be happy to share if you PM me. I also have ways to adapt these games for classrooms at a lower level, if you think some of them might be above what your students are comfortable with.

As a side note, I know that being an introvert can make teaching hard, but it's important to be engaging however you can. I have my "teacher persona" who is a lot louder, sillier, and less worried about being embarrassed than actual me. I also think that you set the tone for the class, and if you are a little quiet or shy, it might make it harder for the students to feel like they can get active in your portion of class time.

Hope this helps, and good luck!

If possible, make use of the corridor or space outside the classroom door. There are many different “running dictation” games, and you can probably think of more.

For example, I recently game a group of kids a bunch of small pictures each of a farm object or animal (cow, barn, pond etc.). Outside were 15 sentences describing a scene containing these objects (The rooster is in front of the farmhouse. The duck is on the pond. etc.). In teams, Ss took it in turns to run out of the classroom, read a sentence, and dictate it to their teammates, who then had to stick the right picture in the right place. Of course, it was a race.

For little beginners, you can do a “count and graph” which works in a similar way. Put pictures in the corridor containing different numbers of things (three pigs, five chickens, one goat, etc.). This time, they just have to count the things and tell their teammates (Three pigs! There are five chickens!), who then colour the right number of squares next to the pig picture, the goat picture, and so on.

Excellent points, and I wholeheartedly agree that it should be a fun and engaging process for the child. It needs to be fun, not a chore, as that can create a lasting impact on the child and their relationship with reading.

That's actually one of the goals in my latest app, StoryBeans. Parents and children create their own stories, and StoryBeans illustrates the pages as you go. By the end, you have your very own unique story to read through. Alonging with encouraging creativity, this fosters a healthy and engaging reading environment as the child practices on their own words.

Not a rhyme but if you have a good visual memory the book The Greatest Gatsby by Tohby Riddle helped me a lot.

Visit the country. This is so underrated. You don’t just learn the language in real time. But you also learn about the culture. Plus it’s not some boring Duolingo lesson.

Watching a movie or series and mimicking some of the lines

Start with cursing.

Try making a friend (doesn't matter if it's a guy or girl) from a country where the language you're learning is actually spoken.

lol, so i built a whatsapp bot that to send me content in Spanish daily, making it super easy to learn. I'm now experimenting with putting myself and my friends in a group chat with other learners, where our bot will guide you on a choose-your-own-adventure style game in Spanish, so you can practice using your Spanish! It's pretty fun, cause I get to play with my friends. Maybe you can do that?

Difficult to please all students all the time obviously. Perhaps by selecting books or stories they won't struggle to understand & that they'll find relevant &/or amusing. Asking them to prepare passages/texts they're likely to enjoy before they read &/or discuss them in a class.

I use control the game combined with making students finger track. With tracking, you can instantly see who isn't following (either can't or isn't because of being off task).