The Grammar Lesson

The instructor places a pen on the ground to start the instruction

What just transpired is brought up to the students. They are instructed to begin the statement with the teacher’s name. As an illustration, the pupils might state, “Ms. Carol dropped a pen on the floor.” A student is asked by the instructor to identify the sentence’s subject and verb. A student must say “Ms. Carol” for the subject in the case above and “dropped” for the verb.

The instructor does it again

Students are instructed to construct a sentence starting with “The pen.....” that describes what just transpired. For instance, a student forms the sentence: “The pen was dropped by the teacher.” Students are asked to identify the subject and verb in this sentence. A student should identify “pen” as the subject and the verb as “was dropped.”

Two sentences are compared

Students are made to understand that in the first sentence the subject is doing the action. Students have to understand that in the second sentence the subject is not doing the action. They should understand that the subject is passive, it is the one being acted upon.

Verbs in these two sentences are compared

Students are asked to identify the tense in the first sentence which should be past simple. It is shown that in the second sentence, the auxiliary verb was accompanied by the past tense. That is the verb “to be”. Examples given to students. Students are made to practice more with the examples of passive. Another actions are carried out, and students are encouraged to explain what has just happened. They are given tasks to identify sentences from the stories in the listening class in passive forms. Students are told to explain what they think happened to the children when they were separated from animals and incorporated in the normal human life. This should help students to learn more about passive tenses.

Learners are made to understand the active structure of a sentence

They should get the idea that some sentences cannot be changed into passive tense. Students are informed that only voice sentences that have direct objects can be changed into passive. Examples are given from the stories in the previous lesson.

The teacher ensures that students are in a position of identifying sentences with active structures

This makes it easier for them to change the sentences into passive voice. Students should understand that the subject always precedes the verb in a sentence in active voice. The verb is then followed by either a direct or indirect object. The teacher informs students that the object is the one that becomes the subject when the active sentence is being transformed into passive. Student should be in a position to understand that a sentence that lacks a direct object cannot be converted into passive voice.

Sentences given as examples from the stories in the previous lesson are reviewed

Learners identify both active and passive sentences. To ensure that all fifty students have understood the lesson, the teacher performs the following test towards the end of the lesson.

The sentences given as examples are restructured from active to passive voice

Students are asked to make the direct object of the active sentence, the subject of the passive verb/sentence. Students are also informed that the tense of the sentence changes when converting the sentence from active to passive. They have to understand that every passive sentence must contain the verb “be” as well as the past participle of the active verb in the active voice sentence. For example, such a sentence: “The children could eat the backs of trees” becomes: “The backs of trees could be eaten by the children.”

There are several sources of information to be provided to the students as described below

The grammar resources are for both students and the teacher, which will help to make a quality lesson plan. The grammar resources also help students interact with teachers effectively. These grammar resources that are to be used in the lesson are discussed below. Furthermore, a teacher shall provide questions from course online. There is a variety of question chances that will help students do practice to make their grammar skills perfect. The site consists of approximately four hundred practice questions. It also helps students understand punctuations, word usage, and passive voice. The teacher should also use an interactive whiteboard activity. This source will provide learners with several ways to interact with grammar to gather more knowledge. These ways include: playing games, typing, doing computer tasks etc. Interactive whiteboard creates an interactive room where they share different ideas on how to improve and acquire more skills.

Games

There are some websites that provide games to test speed to construct sentences using the correct tenses (Peregoy & Boyle). It is fun to play the game when you learn. An example of such website is British council website that entitles a student to construct a sentence using simple and present continuous tense. The game has a timer to measure students speed. However, not all the sites for such games are good. This is because English grammar in British differs from that of United States.

Gap filling activity

This source gives a student space to fill in missing words to learn how vocabularies are used in different context. Gap fills are found on ESL websites such as ESL- Galaxy.com. As a determined teacher, it is good to write Gap fill activity for students.

Songs

The other material to be used by the teacher is songs. They are made by teachers who use modern way to teach grammar (Riddell). Songs are readily available and can be accessed easily on the internet as well. Songs with passive voice phrases shall be used to make the lesson lively and enjoyable.

Online Grammar-checking software

Students can be taught how to use the online Grammar-checking software. This software analysis work and identifies an error. The Grammar-checking software also provides a student with an appropriate correction. Students are to be given reference books at the end of the lesson. It is essential to give students reference books. Students who are determined to learn are always interested in gathering more knowledge and they should be provided to the students by the teacher.

Works Cited

Peregoy, Suzanne. F., and Boyle, Owen F. Reading, writing, and learning in ESL: A resource book for teaching K-12 English learners. Pearson, 2017

Riddell, D. Teach English as a Foreign Language. Hodder & Stoughton, 2014.

Topics Entertainment. Instant immersion English grammar & pronunciation. Topics Entertainment, 2003.