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Lexis: Irregular Verbs / Week-End
Beginner level

Description

In this lesson, students learn about the past tense of the irregular verbs "go", "see", "read" and "write". We start with a brainstorm activity and then move the focus of the class to the target language, starting with controlled activities that use jumbled sentences and gap-fills, before introducing additional descriptory language in a matching game. Then everyone will write a couple of sentences about their own weekend.

Materials

Abc Gap-fill handout

Main Aims

  • To provide clarification of irregular verbs in the context of weekend activities

Subsidiary Aims

  • To provide fluency speaking practice in a conversation in the context of hobbies

Procedure

Warmer/Lead-in (3-5 minutes) • To set lesson context and engage students

First of all we will do a brainstorm activity on the whiteboard about the things students enjoy doing in their free time. We will start with all sorts of associations and then try to center around the verbs "go", "see" and "read", again eliciting nouns that function in combination with those. I will try to elicit write as well as read.

Exposure (8-10 minutes) • To provide a model of production expected in coming tasks through reading/listening

We will start with jumbled sentences. As this is not a grammar lesson, I will not explain the tense. It follows from the phrases that relate to time that these sentences are in the past. Students will work in pairs and we will use the whiteboard for corrections, geting people to come to up front and join the sentences. The next task is a written exercise that everyone should solve for themselves, it is practically the gap-fill activity that uses exactly the same language as before, with students require to only find the last noun. This should help them to familiarize with the target language without as off yet having to produce it. Answers checked in pairs.

Useful Language (10-15 minutes) • To highlight and clarify useful language for coming productive tasks

We'll introduce additional language for describing books, cafés and restaurants with a matching game with visuals. Because the visuals are not entirely conclusive, this will involve a lot of association and free speaking ("Which sentence goes here?" "What is she doing?", "Can books be long?", "Do you think it's long or short?", "Is it interesting?", "Is this a café or a restaurant?"). I will model and drill the sentences. Next, we'll rehearse past tense, this time getting the students to write down the correct verbs and follow by matching these sentences to the descriptions that we heard about beforehand. Now would also be an occasion to drill.

Productive Task(s) (15-18 minutes) • To provide an opportunity to practice target productive skills

Everyone writes a few sentences about their weekend. ("Please write five sentences about what you did this weekend.") I will supply them with an additional word bank for inspiration. Then, they'll talk to a partner about it and find out what that person did. ("Tell your partner about it") I'll have the sentences handed to me, stick them on the whiteboard and ask students to guess who's weekend this is.

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