Lesson no. 14

Lesson no. 14

29 July 2009 / Wednesday

(16:00 – 17:30)

No. of students present = 4 (2 beginners, 2 advanced)

Beginners:
I used http://iteslj.org/v/ei/verbs.html to prepare a handout. Before the lesson began I wrote down all the words present on the handout on the green board in alphabetical order. I handed out the exercise and explained each word. Most words were a repetition from previous lessons, however there were a few new words. Once all words were explained, I asked the students to attempt the exercise and choose the words that represented the pictures. This way of teaching was more successful than last time because when I was explaining the words written on the board, I asked the students to guess their meanings first. In this way I knew whether they were acquainted with the meaning of a word or not.
Once the exercise was finished I asked them to make sentences. Afterwards I asked both students to write 5 sentences each on the green board.
In constructing the sentences, different forms of the verb ‘to be’ were used:
I ‘am’, You ‘are’, He/She ‘is’, We ‘are’ and They ‘are’.
The following vocabulary was discussed today:
Bloom / Cook / Cough / Clean / Climb / Cry / Dance / Drink / Fight / Get married / Look / Paint / Pull / Shout / Sit / Ski / Sleep / Smile / Smoke / Swim / Think / Wait / Wake up / Walk / Write

The handout can be found below:

Advanced:
For the advanced (and general) group I had written explanations of the handouts on the green board beforehand. The advanced students were taught the following topics:
- comparative/superlative (2 handouts: 1 from last time, 1 for this time)
- prepositions (only one student attempted this exercise)

The explanation of the comparatives as written on the green board can be found below:

I wasn’t well-acquainted about the rules when to double the consonant in a words when converting it to the comparative or superlative form. Therefore, for Friday I’ll check the rules and explain them.
Another difficulty was guessing whether a word ended in ‘–er’ (‘-est’) or whether ‘more’ (‘most’) was added in front of the word. Using the right form of the comparative and/or superlative can be learned by practice.

Link for this time: http://www.englishexercises.org/makeagame/viewgame.asp?id=1140
Link 1 from last time: http://www.englishexercises.org/makeagame/viewgame.asp?id=2065
Link 2 from last time: http://www.myenglishgrammar.com/english/exercise-3-adjectives.html

One student who wasn’t present last time, found today’s exercise a bit difficult, therefore I gave him the exercise from last time first. After finishing it, he managed well with today’s exercise.

The second topics dealt with the use of conjunctions ‘and’, ‘but’, ‘so’ and ‘or’.
Link: http://web2.uvcs.uvic.ca/elc/studyzone/330/grammar/coconj1.htm
Their explanation as written on the board can be found below:

This exercise wasn’t marked as difficult by the students.

Only one student attempted the exercise about the third topic ‘prepositions’ - use of ‘at, about, on, etc’.
Link: http://www.englisch-hilfen.de/en/exercises/structures/gerund_prepositions.htm

The student found the exercise quite difficult. It was a very informative exercise in the sense that it taught the use of prepositions in combination with other words --> there are certain expression that need to be learned. The following expressions were used in this exercise:
- good ‘at’ playing volleyball
- complains ‘about’ bullying
- afraid ‘of’ losing
- feel ‘like’ working
- looking forward ‘to’ going out
- dreams ‘of’ living on a small island
- apologized ‘for’ being late
- agree ‘with’ staying in a foreign country
- insisted ‘on’ going out
- thinks ‘of’ climbing trees