Search results for 'tag:Vocabulary tag:Spelling' matching tags 'Vocabulary' and 'Spelling'

Re: Simple Past Lesson Plan

Mister Micawber — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 04:22:11 GMT

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Oh, I can always find something else (but I may have messed up your formatted columns):

Lesson Plan

Preparation

Level : Elementary

Lesson Length: 45 minutes

Objective: To be able to use the Past Simple question forms and short answers.

Target Language: did + subject + base form of verb ( Did your mother call you? )

Question word + did + subject + base form of verb ( What did you do last night? )

Short answers:

Yes + subject + did ( Did it rain? Yes, it did.)

No + subject + didn't ( Did Helen come to the party? No, she didn't. )

Assumed knowledge: Past Simple (regular / irregular verbs, negative form)

Anticipated problems:

Students may use a past form of the main verb to make the question instead of using the base form. E.g. Did you went?

Solutions:

During the presentation stage, draw students' attention to the fact that 'Did' does not change its form. 'Did' is always used to form the question in the Past Simple.(This is not true for the verb 'be' and sometimes the verb 'have'.)
Point out the verb tense in the question form. Did + subject + base form of the verb
Drill individually and chorally.
Practice making questions. Monitoring for errors and having students unscramble sentences

can also help to work on sentence structure problems.

Preparation and Aids: Simple reading text ,dialogue, in the Simple Past, using vocabulary that

students are already familiar with. Handout for homework correcting sentences. Four pictures of people doing things.

Lesson Plan

Stage	Activity	Interaction	Timing
1	Warmer : Timed Scattergories (*spelling? I don't know this word) with pre-chosen* themes (food, things you do on the weekend, etc) Review homework from last class	TS ST	5 mins
2	Introduction : Have two students stand up for a moment to set the scene; elicit their names. Then they can sit down. Write them on the board. Hand out the dialogue between these two friends who are talking about their past weekend. (A dialogue that mostly contains vocabulary the students are familiar with)	TS SS	1 min
3	Have students read the dialogue and answer gist questions about it to check their understanding.	S ST	3 min
4	Ask students to focus on the language used by asking what question Â« A Â» asked Â« B Â». Write this question on the board.	TS ST	1 min
5	Presentation : Show students how it is formed Did + subject + base Did you have a good weekend ? Point out that we don't use the past form of the main verb in questions, but always the base (or dictionary) form	TS	5 min
6	Drill chorally and individually. Focus on pronunciation and correct structure.	TST	2 min
7	Elicit: Draw students' attention to the short answer and explain the positive and the negative structures. Yes + subject + did -- Yes, I did. No + subject + didn't -- No, I didn't.	TS
8	Drill chorally and individually and then conduct a controlled question-and-answer drill around the class : E.g : Â« Sandrine ask Didier...(point to an action on the board : - go to the restaurant / movies / market / bank / etc.) Â» Sandrine: Â« Did you go to the restaurant? Â« Didier: Â« Yes, I did. Â» etc.	ST SS	2 min 5 min
9	Pairwork : Students ask and answer questions from the board and note down their partners' answers. The focus here is on correct pronunciation and structure, so it is important to correct any errors by referring to the structures on the board.	PW	5 min
10	Controlled Oral Practice : Use dialogue text as a basis to talk about what the two characters did on the weekend. Also use visual support such as a picture of a restaurant to prompt questions. For example, show a picture of two friends having a conversation; encourage them to produce the following question : Â« Did they go to a restaurant ? -- Yes, they did / No, they didn't. Â» Give four picture examples as prompts.	TS SS TS	1 min 2 min
11	Monitor closely. Correct errors by using what's already on the board as a point of reference.	TS	1 min
12	If students are performing well, turn focus to what they themselves did on the weekend. They ask each other questions and give short answers.	PW	5 min
13	Follow up with controlled written practice. For example, use questions and answers in which the words are all mixed up ; students put the words back into the correct order.	S	5 min
14	Homework : a transformation exercise (changing affirmative statements into questions and short answers)

Re: How to pronounce often?

Anonymous — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 07:46:01 GMT

Dear Howard Leigh Ph.D., If we are going to get into silly mudslinging battles over the word "often" and claiming illigitimacy of posts due to lack of name, qualifications, and misspellings then I suggest that you start with the very word misspelling which contains two of the letter "s". That is, of course, unless you intended to say that the previous poster pelled something incorrectly, but unfortunately I am not the beholder of a Ph.D. and therefore pell as a verb is not in my vocabulary, nor is it in my trusty old Webster's. Again if we follow your rules that misspellings invalidate a post let us return again to your second sentence where you used the contraction for "You are" when I believe you meant to use the posessive form "your", unless you intended to write "yore" and refer to some other ancient post that you believe to be unreliable. Also I should further point out to you that when you spelled "hat" at the beginning of your last paragraph, your word choice does probably contain a "w" at the beginning to make the word "what." But alas, you have a Ph.D. (in some field that you did not mention - grounds for an unreliable post perhaps?) so you were surely aware of these slight misspellings before criticizing those of others. As for me, I happen to pronounce "often" without the "t" because that is how I learned it, but also to keep with pronunciation schemes words like soft - soften, haste - hasten, chaste - chasten, and also hustle, bustle etc. It does make me cringe a little inside when I hear "often" pronounced with the "t," but if, as several have suggested, this pronunciation has resurged as a result of better and broader education and literacy throughout the world, then I believe that coping with the occasional pronunciation with a "t" is something I dearsay I would be happy to accept as a consequence. I apologize for the somewhat pomptuous (yes, with a silent t - props to that comment by the way) nature of this post, but we all should know that advice we receive from the internet on forum websites should be taken with a grain of salt and misspellings and typos are a reality of the high speed electronic age. Cheers, Peter Broch (sans Ph.D.)

Re: MM's 10-letter word

Mister Micawber — Fri, 30 May 2008 23:34:26 GMT

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pejoration -- No. What happened to pluperfect?
Is it ... an adjective? a noun? a verb? -- A noun

Would you say it's related to ... grammar? vocabulary? pronunciation?-- Pronunciation.

I'm not going to be very coy with this one, because I don't think it's in anyone's active vocabulary. I just happened to think of it because it's related to Spoonerisms... and I had to look it up to check the spelling. It is a phenomenon which produced this mouldy old joke:

A Latino named Jose went to America to see the Yankees vs. the Red Socks. When he got his ticket, it was in the nosebleed section. He did not care what section he was in. Anyway, it was game day. Everyone stood for the National Anthem. When Jose got home, he said, "Mama, they made a song in America just for me." -- "How does it go, hijo?" -- "It goes, 'Jose, can you see?'

Re: multilingual Europeans

Cool Breeze — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 21:57:11 GMT

Koto
Why are European people so fluent in English?
People say it's becasue their languages are all derived from the same root as English but is this the only reason?
Was it easy to master English for you?

Hi Koto

I realise you may never read this but I'll post it just the same. Not all European languages are related. My native language, Finnish, isn't even an Indo-European language. It is related to Estonian and Hungarian but not to such Germanic languages as English, German, Danish, Swedish, Dutch and so on.

One reason many Finns have at least a working knowledge of English probably results from teachers of foreign languages having a very good education in the languages they teach and the teaching methods. The methods are extremely important. All language teachers are university graduates with 4 to 7 years of university studies behind them. As for English, everybody has studied it at school before entering a university, which is also an advantage. Also, the universities select the very best candidates from English-speaking countries to do the teaching. The professors are Finnish, though, and there are some Finnish lecturers as well.

I am mentioning this because I have noticed on my travels that quite a few people who tell me they are teachers of English have a rather fragmentary command of the language themselves. If a teacher doesn't know the language, he can't teach it. In many cases the student isn't at fault at all. There are amazingly incompetent teachers of languages in many countries. Some of the posters who claim to be teachers of English on these forums wouldn't pass the qualifying exams for would-be teachers at Finnish universities.

I have never mastered English. I have a fairly good knowledge of the grammar but my vocabulary could be much larger. Learning languages has always been easy for me; that is, learning the languages I have attempted to learn. I am not so sure how quickly I would learn Japanese or Thai, for instance. English spelling causes me the most problems. And of course any words and idioms I am not familiar with.

Cheers

I have question.

BeginStudent — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 18:13:29 GMT

Hi,

The task is :
Think of all the possible causes and effects of the following situations.
5.Nowadays,young people read less than in the past.Therefore,
a.Most young people haven't good spelling and sentence structure.
b.They don't learn more interesting things . ( I need write "interesting" or "interested" and when i used with two ).
c.They haven't good vocabulary.

This is my answers and I need someone check me that and repair the mistakes.

Thanks .

Re: What makes English so difficult to learn?

Anonymous — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 18:34:01 GMT

Hello, another English teacher here. I have been teaching English in China for about 2 and a half years now and also speak fluent French, decent Spanish and am learning Chinese (not as hard as you may think once you get the hang of those tones, easy grammar). Now I'll start off by saying that English seems to be an incredibly easy language to communicate with (and by this I mean to give the general idea of what you're trying to say). However, if you want to learn English like a native speaker then it's a completely different story. The pronunciation CAN be difficult to learn depending on your native language and also the age you attempt to learn it at. Training your tongue and mouth to move the same way a native speaker does can be difficult to do, especially if you're like many of my students who got their start at an older age or didn't have good teachers. I've also noticed that my younger students are able to mimic my speech much easier than the older ones speaking, both of whom are studying at the same level. I started learning French when I was 4 years old (Quebec French, I'm Canadian) and because of the quality of my teachers and my young age I was able to become quite good with my pronunciation. With my Chinese because I'm learning from scratch from native speakers my pronunciation is also decent (notice I said decent, not great, although when speaking Chinese I'm always understood). Native language has a lot to do with it too as the sounds you use in one language may be very different for another. I've taught in both the north and south of China and find that the people all have the same problems. Chinese people have problems with s (they often pronounce it as a sh sound) and with closing their mouth for the letter m ("sometimes" is a nightmare for them and they often say it like "suntine"). L and R can also be troublesome. One can't forget sentence stress as well as well as linking words together to make it go smoothly.

The vocabulary can also be a pain. Someone here mentioned 150,000 words in the English language but the number is actually much higher. The Oxford English Dictionary (2nd edition) contains over 600,000 definitions. Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged contains 475,000 main headwords and it is believed the language grows by 25,000 words a year. Don't believe me, check Wikipedia. There's also the difference in spelling and vocabulary between the different forms of English. British English and American English use different words and the words that are the same can be spelled differently. American English and Canadian English essentially share the same vocabulary to a large degree but the spelling of Canadian English in many ways is closer to British English. British English is pretty much the English form most Asian and European countries will learn but American pop culture will also have an influence, not to mention the American economy and it's impact. This can all be very confusing. To the person saying they are tired of using "well" as in "well, then..." there are many substitutes you could use.

The grammar is also a nuisance. It's not the hardest of things but certainly isn't the easiest. Sure French has a gender attached to all of it's nouns (which I hated when learning it), but English still has more exceptions to it's rules that need to me memorized. So many even native speakers have trouble with it. A language like Chinese that may seem hard to speak actually has very simple grammar. For example if you wanted to ask someone where they are you would say "ni zai na li" or simply "ni zai nar" (you where?). To ask a question in Chinese you merely ad "ma" to the end of a statement. "Ta hui shuo zhongwen" is "he/she speaks Chinese whereas "ta hui shuo zhongwen ma" is "does he/she speak Chinese?". Also in Chinese as there are no forms of he or she.

It's impossible to say which language is easy and which is hard when compared to each other because there are so many things that need to be taken into consideration. Let's just say that English has it's easy parts and it's ridiculously difficult parts as well. Speaking at a native speaker level can be done and I know people who have done this, but it takes a lot of hard work, good instruction, and a good learning atmosphere. I hope all that made sense, I stumbled onto this site a 2 in the morning and am quite tired.

Defense / Defence?

Anonymous — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 17:26:57 GMT

Hello everyone,

Just a vocabulary question. What talking about military defense/defence, is one spelling "better" than the other?

I searched on the Internet and ti seems that both spellings are correct but one would be American and the other British. Is that right?

Thaks very much

Julien

Re: May i please get help on emproving my english skills?

Goodman — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 22:15:10 GMT

Hi Anon,

As you wish... I noticed a few things obvious. Itâs more of a laziness problem than grammar. You have a habit of not applying the capitalization rule and making simple but careless spelling mistakes. Tone and structure are workable nut certainly can use some improvement. I marked it up so that you can seeâ¦.. Hope that helps

Hello everyone! I'm here in search for some help on (improving) emproving my (English) english skills including my spelling and grammar. I'm not here to search for ~~some~~ answers but mostly am ~~here~~ to (broaden) broden my vocabulary as well as my grammar. I notice that my main problem is sentence structure as well as spelling (on some words). I believe that if (I) i learn to speak more on a forum (which is) thats willing to offer constructive criticism (criticise (on) my (capital E) english which would ultimately lead to improving my self (knowledge) knowlege. So with this (cap. I) i hope for people to point me in the right direction, (not necessarily) giving me the (answers) answeres but point and criticize (what is wrong) whats wrong so (that) as (capt I) i can learn from my mistakes. (Anyway- no s) Anyways ( missing apostrophe) dont hesitate to give me feedback.

May i please get help on emproving my english skills?

Anonymous — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 20:35:28 GMT

Hello everyone! I'm here in search for some help on emproving my english skills including my spelling and grammar. I'm not here to search for some answers but mostly am here to broden my vocabulary as well as my grammar. I notice that my main problem is sentence structure as well as spelling (on some words). I believe that if i learn to speak more on a forum thats willing to criticise my english that it would ultimately lead to improving my self knowlege. So with this i hope for people to point me in the right direction not giving me the answeres but point out whats wrong so as i can learn from my mistakes. Anyways dont hesitate to give me feedback.

P.S I hate my english, although my first language is english....

Re: What makes English so difficult to learn?

Anonymous — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 01:49:26 GMT

Anonymous wrote:
Hmmm. If you think that english is difficult - YOU ARE WRONG!!! It is the easiest language! I'm Pole, have you ever tried to say the simplest word in Polish e.g Åazienka (bathroom) I'm sure that 90% of English wouldn't be able to pronounce it correctly!!! Or meaby something from German: einhundertfunfundzwazig (125) - this is correct spelling, there shouldn't be any spaces!!! It is normall that you are not as fluent as natives - it is impossible, there are always differences in pronunciation or in degree of complexity of vocabulary. Only thing which can cause real problems are pronunciation such vowels as 'th' (thing, those). These "dentals" don't occur in other european languages at all. The other things are tenses - twelve of them - most languages have only 3 (past, present and future)... But all of it is not important!!! We learn foreign languages to comunicate, we are able to communicate in English if we know 1000 words. IT IS THE EASIEST LANGUAGE!... The language of the future.

take care
Adam

I agree. Many natively english-speaking people think/assume that english is one of the most difficult languages to learn, but its not.