Syntax City – Where Grammar Comes to Life
Welcome to Syntax City!
As the mayor of this great city, I must warn you — we take our syntax very seriously here. When Syntax City was founded, our mission was to create a place where verbs agree with their subjects, tenses are always correct, and pronouns live in perfect harmony.
Now, you and your students are invited to explore the city — where learning grammar becomes an adventure!
Syntax City is an interactive, evidence-based app designed by speech-language pathologist Barbara Fernandes, M.S., CCC-SLP. Created for children in elementary and middle school, the app teaches English grammar and syntax through themed locations, animations, and play-based learning — perfect for speech therapy or classroom use.
Explore 8 Grammar-Focused Locations
Each area of the city targets a specific grammatical goal, with 415 questions across multiple levels of difficulty:
• Gym: Do / Does (3 levels, 50 questions)
• Beach: Third Person Singular (1 level, 50 questions)
• Bakery: Was / Were (3 levels, 52 questions)
• Ski Resort: He / She (2 levels, 50 questions)
• Farm: Irregular Past Tense (2 levels, 59 questions)
• Grocery Store: Has / Have (1 level, 51 questions)
• Park: Is / Are (1 level, 50 questions)
• Zoo: Regular and Irregular Plurals (3 levels, 54 questions)
Each phrase is professionally narrated and paired with high-quality visuals that support comprehension and engagement.
Engaging, Evidence-Based Learning
• Multiple levels of difficulty adapt to each student’s learning pace
• Visual cues reinforce comprehension and grammar recognition
• Record and playback feature helps children hear and self-correct syntax
• Positive reinforcement with animations, coins, and treasures
• 127 collectible rewards across all locations motivate consistent practice
After 10 gold coins, students unlock a treasure — each themed to the location they’re practicing. All earned treasures are stored in the player’s personal trophy case, which can be shared via email or printed.
Built for Therapy and Classrooms
Syntax City supports 1–5 players per session, allowing flexibility for individual or group practice.
Students can work on one or multiple grammar targets at a time — creating nearly endless session combinations.
Use two-finger zoom gestures to navigate the city map and assign players to specific locations. Each player’s goals, scores, and rewards are tracked individually.
Powerful Data Tracking
Just like all Smarty Ears apps, Syntax City offers detailed progress tracking:
• Tracks accuracy, goals, and performance for each student
• Provides color-coded graphs for visual progress review
• Displays session summaries and goal mastery trends
The language students SLPs work typically require A LOT of repetition before they begin to understand taught concepts. So, it would be valuable to them if this app repeated the sentences once touched. That way students would be able to hear the verbal model time and time again. Otherwise, it’s just me repeating the sentence over and over before they can record themselves. They have already heard me talk. Now I want them to hear the same thing from someone else (i.e., the app).
Needs work.
Kthru6 SLP
I am an SLP, who has used this app and a hundred others a few times but I have not visited all the areas of Syntax City. I wish there was an index at the beginning if the app to remind me of the choices in grammar targets. I used the Has/Have part of it today. There wasn't enough contrast in the white/gray words on the white background. We couldn't read most of the sentences. I wish a person could go to settings and remove some of the sentence items that wouldn't be targeted the first few times through... Like "they will have finished shopping"... Or some kind of craziness. I also don't want to hear the intro every time I turn it on so I want a setting to turn it off.
Great app, would like a pre-test
Okslp
This app is great. It would be so much more useful if it had an overall pre-test with a few items from each category that I could use as a baseline!
Awesome app
EmilyBSLP
I was excited when I purchased this app because I had not been able to find many apps to specifically work on syntax. My students love this app and find it highly engaging. They ask to use the iPad and want to "play" this app over and over again to work on their syntax goals.
We have enhanced our report card screen to make th data clean to see!
Version 6.1
The developer, Smarty Ears, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Not Collected
The developer does not collect any data from this app.
Privacy practices may vary, for example, based on the features you use or your age. Learn More
Accessibility
The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More
Information
Seller
Smarty Ears, LLC
Size
145.6 MB
Category
Education
Compatibility
Requires iPadOS 15.6 or later.
iPad Requires iPadOS 15.6 or later.
Mac Requires macOS 12.5 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip or later.
